Regional Responses to the Vietnamese invasion

 Regional Responses to the Vietnamese invasion

This chapter revisits the efforts, mostly spearheaded by ASEAN – fighting and talking – which took up much of the 1980s, to bring the Third Indochina War to an end. Recalling the Third Indochina War, Jusuf Wanandi noted that ‘remaining in Cambodia was not an option of Vietnam. A political solution needed to be reached. It was clear that, a little over a decade after its creation, this would be ASEAN’s first real test.’

We must begin our narrative with Thailand given that it was the front-line state of ASEAN. Of the five ASEAN member states, Thailand had the most complex relations with both Vietnam and Cambodia. Without going too far back, Bangkok had a difficult relationship with Cambodia (even when it was under Sihanouk). At the end of the Vietnam War, Thailand made efforts to reorientate its foreign policy towards China, Vietnam, and Cambodia. Indeed, as early as 1973, Bangkok, in its capacity as ASEAN (rotating) Chair  "extended an invitation to the North Vietnamese to send an observer to the ASEAN Ministerial Meeting in Pattaya, which Hanoi rejected because of Thai involvement in the Vietnam War on the side of the Americans. ASEAN again invited the North Vietnamese the following year and was again rejected. Thailand (and the Philippines) eventually established diplomatic relations with Vietnam in 1976 after the reunification, much later than Indonesia (1964), Malaysia, and Singapore (1973). Thailand initiated the recognition of the Khmer Rouge government on 18 April 1975, one day after the Khmer Rouge captured Phnom Penh. S. R. Nathan recalled that Bangkok sought a decision by 07.00 hours Bangkok time of the following morning after the fall of Phnom Penh for a joint ASEAN announcement to recognise the Khmer Rouge government. As mentioned in Chapter 3, Thailand established diplomatic relations with China in July 1975.

"Until 1976, Vietnam (as well as Laos) continued to treat Thailand and the other ASEAN states with hostility despite ASEAN's gestures to engage with the Indochinese states. But in July 1976, the Vietnamese appeared to have changed their attitude. Vietnamese Deputy Foreign Minister Phan Hien visited Kuala Lumpur, Manila, Jakarta, Singapore, Rangoon, and Vientiane. The destinations were deliberately chosen so as not to give the impression that it was a tour of ASEAN, which Hanoi still viewed as an American creation. Nothing substantial materialised from Phan Hien’s visit, although most observers viewed the swing through the region as an indication of Vietnam softening its position towards ASEAN. During Phan Hien’s visit to Manila, Vietnam established diplomatic relations with the Philippines even though Manila still hosted American military bases.

Between 20 December and 12 January 1978, Vietnamese Foreign Minister Nguyen Duy Trinh visited the ASEAN capitals (except Singapore). The visit took place against the backdrop of fighting between Vietnam and Cambodia that, in the words of an Indonesian, ‘aroused old fears of an aggressive, Vietnam-dominated Indochina’. Apparently, besides the ‘fraternal socialist countries .

"Hanoi was ‘privately disappointed’ that it could not win much support for the Vietnamese case.

In end-July 1978, Phan Hien again visited Kuala Lumpur and Singapore as well as Bangkok (which he gave a miss in 1976). In a charm offensive, Prime Minister Pham Van Dong visited the ASEAN states in September 1978, where he expressed willingness to shelve its own concept of ‘Freedom, Independence and Neutrality’ to discuss the ASEAN concept of ‘Zone of Peace, Freedom and Neutrality’, offered a non-aggression pact, and assured that Hanoi would not interfere in the internal affairs of regional countries, which turned out to be untrue. In the case of Thailand, Dong assured the Thais that Hanoi would discontinue its involvement in the Thai communist insurgency movement, but in 1979 a splinter Thai communist movement was formed – the Thai Isarn Liberation Party – based in Laos and drawing support from Vietnam, which in turn aroused ‘Thai feelings about a continuing claim to the sixteen northeastern provinces of Thailand’. In hindsight, all these visits seen in the context of developments in Indochina (as described in Chapters 1-3) can be interpreted as Hanoi trying to win support against Cambodia and China. A few months after the September visits, Vietnam invaded Cambodia, which ‘left the lasting impression, particularly in ASEAN capitals and Japan, that Hanoi’s preinvasion diplomacy had been a duplicitous stratagem’."

"Returning to our main narrative, despite Thai efforts, rapprochement with Vietnam was difficult. According to the Khmer Rouge leadership, diplomatic relations with Thailand were ‘too problematic’. The Thais were still recovering from the rapid fall of Saigon, described as ‘a traumatic experience’, when the December 1978 invasion in one stroke removed the ‘territorial buffer’ between Thailand and Vietnam, which Cambodia had served, made possible by the French colonisation of Cambodia that had persisted after the country became independent under Sihanouk (who disliked the Vietnamese). As Bernard Gordon noted, ‘in the Thai view, a de facto Indochinese federation dominated by Hanoi places Vietnamese..."

"power along Thailand’s south-eastern border, at some points only 120 miles from Bangkok. Roy D. Morey (who was deputy Number Development Programme resident representative from 1978 to 1981) recalled how the mass movement of Cambodian refugees crossing the Thailand-Cambodia border created ‘an enormous headache for the Thais because they were not equipped to handle hundreds of thousands of refugees’. An even larger concern was the fear that the Vietnamese military would push the Khmer Rouge across the border and ‘then keep pushing on to Bangkok’.

Chinese Foreign Minister Huang Hua told Richard Holbrooke that the Vietnamese occupation of Cambodia was a threat to Thailand, ‘where seven Vietnamese divisions are poised on the border’. ‘If Thailand goes’, he said, ‘the rest of ASEAN will fall like dominoes’. The Thai diplomat Sarasin Viraphol noted that the ‘Indochina problem’ was not an ‘academic one, but one which involves directly Thailand’s vital security interests’. One basic difficulty, Viraphol highlighted, was ‘the fact that Thailand accepts the necessity of coexistence with the Indochina states, and yet they are deemed a potential threat, if not actual, source to Thailand’s security’."

"After the Vietnamese invasion, Thailand once again became strategically important as Bangkok ‘provided key support to the Khmer Rouge – beyond physical sanctuary along the border, or secret diplomatic aid’. We may recall from Chapter 3 that while in the US, Deng and Carter spoke about what Thailand could do. It is well known that the national security adviser during the Carter administration, Zbigniew Brzeziński, encouraged the Chinese support of Pol Pot. ‘Pol Pot was an abomination. We could never support him, but China could.’ Brzeziński also encouraged the Thais to help the Khmer Rouge. The US ‘winked, semi-publicly at the Chinese and Thai aid to the Khmer Rouge’. We now know from WikiLeaks that in 1979, a secret meeting took place between Brzeziński, a deputy foreign minister from China, and Thai Prime Minister Kriangsak Chomanand at U-Tapao Airbase, where they agreed to help rebuild Pol Pot’s army – China would provide the arms while Thailand would .

"serve as a facilitator and transit country to funnel those arms to the Khmer Rouge and provide them sanctuary’. The US, on the other hand, would provide medicine and food ‘via its influence over international agencies’.

There was, however, the concern in some quarters that Thailand was ‘being drawn into an armed confrontation with Vietnam by playing into the Chinese hands ... a general wariness that Thai policy may have been unnecessarily bellicose and appeared counterproductive to closely identified with Peking’. At the same time, these critics felt that supporting the Kampuchean resistance with Chinese-supplied arms was the correct move ‘in step with the maintenance of Thailand’s security interests’. Throughout the decade-long Third Indochina conflict, the Thais continuously debated the relative gravity of the Vietnam and China threat, how much time and resources to devote to the Indochina problem, whether Thailand could extricate itself from the Indochina problem, and whether Thailand could avoid an open split in ASEAN by maintaining a tough stance, among other issues. For example, on the one side, there was ‘a powerful lobby led particularly by Kukrit (Pramoj) and Thanat (Khoman)’, which argued for abandoning the Khmer Rouge and ‘accepting the reality of Vietnamese influence over Cambodia’ but still regarded the withdrawal of Vietnamese troops as a prerequisite for any settlement. On the other, there were Prem Tinsulanonda (Prime Minister from 1980 to 1988) and Siddhi Savetsila (foreign minister from 1980 to 1990) who stuck to the ASEAN approach. In summary, generally for the Thais, while China ‘posed no obvious short-term threat’ to the country, they believed China to be ‘the greatest threat to their security’ in the long term. Bangkok would not countenance ‘a Cambodian solution which acknowledges a Vietnam sphere of influence’.

Next to Thailand, Singapore played a particularly active role, despite not being a front-line state. For Singapore, the invasion and occupation were perceived as an existential threat to the country. In the words of its minister of defence, Goh Keng Swee, this was ‘a life "and-death struggle, the outcome of which will have profound effect on the Republic’. S. R. Nathan (permanent secretary, Singapore's MFA) elaborated: ‘The Kampuchean issue was central to Singapore’s policy. The principle involved was that no foreign military intervention should be allowed to overthrow a legally constituted regime. If this principle was violated, it would create a dangerous precedent ... Singapore had to work on the worst possible outcome ... Singapore could not compromise.’ As Jusuf Wanandi put it, ‘Singapore, long nervous about its neighbours to the immediate north and south, was also upset. To them, Vietnam abused the principle of sovereignty, opening a Pandora’s Box for the small island state.’

As for Malaysia and Indonesia, as well as the Philippines (and Thailand as a front-line member state), ASEAN solidarity dictated that they backed its own dynamics and concerns. That said, each country had to face the full brunt of the huge exodus of refugees from Indochina, which arrive in three waves. Prime Minister Hussein Onn was the first ASEAN leader who met newly elected President Carter in September 1977. His meeting with US officials focused mainly on the refugee issue as well as ascertaining the continued US presence in the region."

"The first wave of refugees began to land on Malaysian shores after the fall of Saigon in April 1975. The second wave was brought about by the fighting between Vietnam and Cambodia, which culminated in the December 1978 invasion. The third wave came after the Chinese invasion of Vietnam in February 1979. According to Chandran Jeshurun, by early 1979 the situation had become so serious – with ASEAN ‘quite clearly having very little to offer by way of an initiative through diplomatic channels for a resolution’ of the Indochina crisis – that in March 1979, Kuala Lumpur and Jakarta reached an understanding whereby the Hussein Oon government could make a diplomatic approach to China and the Indonesians would do so with Vietnam ‘in an attempt to prevent further .

"escalation of the fighting’. Jeshurun believed that this was the first attempt by Indonesia to launch a bilateral initiative with Malaysia. The second was the often-cited ‘Kuantan Declaration’ (to illustrate ASEAN disunity), which came out of a meeting between President Suharto and Prime Minister Hussein Oon in Kuantan in March 1980, which essentially asked ‘Vietnam to decouple its links with the Soviet Union as well as China to stay out of Kampuchea’. Some Malaysian politicians questioned the logic ‘of this impossible formula as a means of contributing to regional peace’, criticising the declaration as ‘inimical to ASEAN solidarity’; one Malaysian member of parliament even said that it created new tensions between Malaysia and Singapore. According to Chandran Jeshurun, there are few indications as to the origins of this Jakarta-Kuala Lumpur initiative, although Foreign Minister Tengku Rithauddeen and General Benny Moerdani (of Indonesia) were shuttling between their capitals and Hanoi in the months leading up to the Kuantan meeting. In the words of Jeshurun, ‘it appears that their fingerprints were all over this document’. The ‘Kuantan Declaration’, if implemented, would have likely led to a compromise and a ‘significant degree of Vietnamese hegemony over Kampuchea’. Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur failed to convince Thailand and Singapore."

"In June 1980, the Vietnamese, in the pursuit of anti-Vietnamese Khmer resistance elements, attacked Ban Non Mak Moon, north of Aranyaprathet, which muted discussions on the Kuantan approach. The incursion affirmed Vietnam’s threat to Thailand and disrupted Vietnam's Foreign Minister Nguyen Co Thach’s efforts to ‘exploit differences between “hard line” Singapore and Thailand and “soft line” Malaysia and Indonesia’ (although Thach never gave up trying).

The Americans assured Kuala Lumpur that ‘relations with the ASEAN countries were every bit as important to the US as their rapport with China’. According to Murray Zinoman (political counsellor, US embassy in Kuala Lumpur), ‘the last thing the Malaysians wanted was the destruction of Vietnam, which in a stable..."

" situation they saw as the only really viable buffer against China’ and that ‘it was difficult for the State Department and other Foreign Ministries throughout the world to understand Malaysia’s obsession with the threat from China since it was determined by the domestic political situation’ in the country. The Malaysian embassy in Hanoi also believed that the Vietnamese were ‘disenchanted with the Soviets’ and ‘would like to get rid of the Soviets’. ASEAN thus needed ‘to provide the Vietnamese with a face-saving way out which they could take at an appropriate time’.

That said, as Lee Poh Ping noted, ‘the Malaysian approach has been basically that of subscribing to a united ASEAN position ... The importance Malaysia attaches to ASEAN is clear.’ Zakaria Haji Ahmad made a similar point. In his words, ‘Malaysia’s position in ASEAN remains a commitment that will be hard to dislodge ... That the Malaysian government hosted the formation of the Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea (CGDK) in June 1982 is an indication of “action” rather than verbal deliberations.’ The behind-the-scenes negotiations to form the CGDK were cobbled together in Singapore. Overall, Kuala Lumpur decided to let other ASEAN member states take the lead, ‘having realised that its attempt to play the role of an honest broker was doomed to fail’. Wisma Putra was also ‘severely constrained in steering a shrewd course through the web of regional politics’ because of Prime Minister Mahathir’s ‘adamant insistence on totally transparent policies that did not allow for any calculated pre-emptive strategies’."

"In Indonesia, Indonesia’s Foreign Ministry, under Mochtar Kusumaatmadja, backed Thailand and Singapore, whereas ‘the more powerful Defence Ministry’, under General Benny Moerdani, ‘was more sympathetic towards Vietnam because they saw it as a strategic issue’. In the assessment of some quarters in Indonesia and Malaysia, China was the longer-term threat and Vietnam was strategically important in the region to balance China. In a conversation with the British high commissioner to Singapore, John "Dunn Hennings, on 12 February 1980, Lee Kuan Yew explained that the Indonesians tended to see China as the greater threat to ASEAN in a shorter term than did Singapore because of their memory of the role the overseas Chinese had played in the Community Party of Indonesia. Lee revealed that he had done what he could to persuade the Indonesians that ‘unless communities of Chinese overseas were given a sense of really belonging to the state in which they lived they would inevitably hark towards China’. That was the Singapore situation fifteen years previously but ‘not so now’. Thus, Singapore did not have ‘too many qualms’ about allowing Beijing to establish a trade office in Singapore, which could potentially become an embassy in the future. Not that Beijing would not try to influence when they could and ‘keeping an eye on them would mean extra work’, but he was confident that the Chinese would not be able to cause any ‘real trouble’. Some Malaysians also viewed Vietnam sympathetically as being ‘apprehensive of China’ and thought they could be ‘lured to become more independent of the Soviet Union’ and serve as a ‘bulwark against China’, according to Lee. In Lee’s assessment, there was no need to worry about China for the ‘next ten years or more’. China had no interest in destabilising ASEAN ‘for so long as her dispute with the Soviet Union and her squabble with Vietnam continued’. In the longer term, China could become a threat but ‘it was useless to speculate at this distance in time about how that threat might present itself or allow that speculation to lead to an under-estimate of the threat posed by the Soviet Union and Vietnam’. Lee, according to Hennings, ‘was dismissive of the Thais saying only that they remained Thais and by implication defective in their analysis of their country’s best policy’."

"Jusuf Wanandi recalled that in the end, ‘it came down to Suharto ... he said yes to Mochtar. ASEAN was our priority; and that was it. Benny was forced to withdraw a little because of the public support he had given Vietnam, and that had confused ASEAN.’ There was also the issue of East Timor, which Indonesia invaded in December 1975, hanging over the Indonesian neck Because "Indonesia was still under international pressure over the controversial invasion, Jakarta much preferred ‘a more regionalist-accommodative approach’ compared to Thailand’s and Singapore’s ‘internationalist-confrontational’ approach towards Vietnam. Jakarta, whenever it saw the opportunity, tried to ‘restrict the influence of great powers and external parties in the management of order in the region and regarded this as the key to managing the conflict’. For example, the Jakarta Informal Meetings (JIMs) initiated by Indonesia in the latter part of the 1980s (see Chapter 5)."

"It is no secret that the ASEAN states were not completely united in dealing with the Cambodian issue. But to expect perfect unity is perhaps asking too much. As Lee Kuan Yew said in 1980, there were no signs that ASEAN was divided, because member states identified their immediate and intermediate threats differently. In mid-1982, according to Lee, Singapore shared 90 per cent of Thailand’s objectives. Singapore managed to persuade Malaysia to share about 80 per cent of the objectives. Indonesia gave just about 50 per cent support and the Philippines about 55–60 per cent, enough for a consensus that Cambodia was ‘the greatest diplomatic success of ASEAN’s first quarter century’. ‘The nature of ASEAN’, as Lee Poh Ping explained, ‘is such that while constituent countries strive hard for a united approach, this does not preclude the existence of diverse national views.’ For example, the proposal for Indonesia to continue to ‘act as a conduit for dialogue to Vietnam’ was put forward by Singapore (often described as one of the most hard line ASEAN member states with regard to the Cambodia issue), ‘indicating an acknowledgment of the need for continued dialogue, or at least of the public need for an appearance of flexibility’. President Suharto was ‘very anxious that any notion of disharmony’ should be dispelled."

"Having discussed ASEAN, we now need to shift our attention to Sihanouk, one of the most pivotal, if not the most important, character in this whole episode. Readers may recall from Chapter 1 the sporadic discussions between Zhou Enlai and Henry Kissinger in the early 1970s regarding getting Sihanouk to return to Phnom Penh as head of state. If that had worked out, perhaps the Khmer Rouge might have been constrained. We will never know.

The possibility of Sihanouk playing a role in a political settlement was mentioned at different times and in different conversations in the aftermath of the Vietnamese invasion, although no one could be sure whether the prince could be persuaded to collaborate again with the Khmer Rouge after what he had suffered in their hands. In January 1979, Sihanouk, who was in New York presenting the Democratic Kampuchea’s case before the United Nations, surprised everyone by turning against the Khmer Rouge, charging them with mass murder, and even calling for the expulsion of the Khmer Rouge from the UN."

"In his 27 and 28 August 1979 conversations with US Vice-President Mondale in Beijing, Deng Xiaoping told Mondale that the Chinese had been persuading Pol Pot to let Sihanouk play the role of head of state, but Sihanouk had not accepted the position. Sihanouk’s mindset at this point of time, according to what Deng had gleaned from conversations with the prince, was that ‘he now considers Pol Pot as his arch enemy rather than the Vietnamese’ and he persisted in thinking that ‘he is the person who can negotiate with Pham Van Dong’, which Deng thought was ‘unrealistic’. Sihanouk’s plan was to ‘exclude the main force of resistance in Kampuchea’ (the Khmer Rouge) and set up ‘another government in exile’. Deng believed that Sihanouk may ‘have some political influence within Kampuchea’ but ‘he does not really have strength’. According to Deng, Sihanouk’s view that ‘any political settlement must not include Pol Pot’ was an ‘unrealistic approach’ because ‘whatever may happen in the future, at least for the present it would’."

"Weaken the Pol Pot’s forces, which are almost the sole force in resisting Vietnam’s position and support the Heng Samrin regime in Kampuchea. Sihanouk’s supporters in Europe, particularly France, were in disarray. Sihanouk was cognizant of that and thus he had stated publicly that ‘in view of the disintegration’ among his former followers, he was stepping back from politics. Deng believed Sihanouk was ‘just showing his displeasure’ and he could change his mind. In Deng’s assessment, while Sihanouk was entitled to his opinions, ‘as a national leader ... his views are too narrow and too near-sighted’. While it was understandable why Sihanouk categorically refused to have dealings with Pol Pot, ‘his words and deeds only abet Vietnamese aggression and the Heng Samrin puppet regime’. In any case, Deng felt that the Vietnamese were ‘not yet in enough of a difficult position to accept a political solution’. The US, according to Mondale, was also ‘unsure’ of what Sihanouk’s role might be but agreed with Deng that ‘he should be encouraged to follow a course which could make it possible for him to play a role ... the installation of a genuinely non-aligned government and the removal of foreign troops from Kampuchea’. Lee Kuan Yew had a similar view as Deng and Mondale. Paris, on the other hand, did not think Sihanouk could play a significant role. Bangkok also had reservations about Sihanouk’s ‘reliability’ but encouraged the emergence of a Khmer united front ‘... principally as a political move aimed at securing the Democratic Kampuchea seat at the UN’. This also did not expect ‘the military performance of a united front to improve immediately’."

"In a 7 September 1979 conversation with former British Prime Minister Edward Heath, Chinese Foreign Minister Huang Hua said that China did not entirely oppose a political solution in Cambodia but 'at present the idea was not realistic.' Huang Hua said that Sihanouk wanted to negotiate and strike a compromise with Vietnam in pursuit of at least a partial withdrawal of Vietnamese troops. In the Chinese view, this was an 'unacceptable gamble.' Describing Sihanouk as 'an old friend and patriot,' and that 'despite "divergences the Chinese respected and favoured his national salvation front to oppose Vietnamese occupation', he explained that Sihanouk 'had no real forces at home and if an election were held as he suggested under UN auspices, the result would be Vietnamese control.'

"In early 1980, Sihanouk lambasted ASEAN’s continued recognition of Democratic Kampuchea and not including an assurance in UN Resolution 35/6 that the Khmer Rouge would not return to power. He also criticised Beijing for its military aid to the Khmer Rouge and the Thais for colluding with the Chinese. At the same time, he acknowledged that the Chinese role was critical to resolving the Kampuchean problem.

In January 1981, ASEAN decided that it should help nurture a credible alternative or 'Third Force' to assume the leadership of Democratic Kampuchea to prevent the Khmer Rouge from returning to power. While supporting the 'legality of Democratic Kampuchea', ASEAN was cognisant of the fact that its links with Pol Pot created 'problems', thus the need for a leader with 'popular appeal' willing to form a 'wider based' government."

"The shortlist came down to either Sihanouk or Son Sann, who once served as prime minister under Sihanouk in 1967-1968. Both had their strengths and weaknesses. Sihanouk, still revered in Cambodia as the 'god-king,' had the charisma which Son Sann (described as 'not really a political animal') lacked. In 1980-1981, Sihanouk was living in Pyongyang. (According to Sihanouk, the US was unwilling to grant him political asylum when he requested in January 1979, while France 'placed unacceptable conditions' on an eventual political asylum.) According to S. R. Nathan, while Son Sann 'was gaining credibility as a leader of a third force in Kampuchea,' ASEAN 'still hoped, almost against hope, that Sihanouk would play a role.' Son Sann too needed persuading. He felt that he could not cooperate with the DK 'as yet' as he had far fewer forces compared to the Khmer Rouge. Nathan assured him that 'we' would look to see where to mobilise the practical support – money." and weapons – for him’.48 However, not every ASEAN country was keen on providing the resistance with arms and/or financial assistance so it was agreed that such support would be left to the discretion of individual ASEAN member states. No ASEAN country was opposed to arms being supplied.

Meanwhile, China, through various envoys, travelled to Pyongyang in 1980 and 1981 to persuade Sihanouk. Eventually, Sihanouk agreed to meet Khieu Sampan and a DK delegation in March 1981 to discuss the formation of a united front, ‘following new ideas proposed’ by Deng and Lee Kuan Yew, who had met in Beijing to discuss the Cambodia conflict. In his letter to Lee Kuan Yew on 28 May 1981, Deng Xiaoping said that he had recently met Sihanouk and suggested to him ‘to try his best to bring about an early trilateral meeting of the Kampuchean patriotic forces and Singapore is a suitable venue. This desire is shared by Prince Sihanouk.’ In his letter, Deng exhorted Lee to exert his influence ‘to help bring about the meeting so the united front of Kampuchea and coalition government can be established as soon as possible’. Beijing would ‘play its part by actively coordinating its efforts with those of the ASEAN countries’. 

Following a visit to Singapore in September 1981, Sihanouk (National United Front for an Independent, Neutral, Peaceful and Cooperative Cambodia (FUNINPEC)), however, agreed to join the coalition, which would include Son Sann (Khmer People's National Liberation Front (KPNLF)) and the Khmer Rouge, albeit reluctantly throughout the 1980s. In June 1982, Lee Kuan Yew told Sihanouk that there were considerable reservations about Sihanouk from several ASEAN countries, and he advised the prince to visit not just Singapore and Malaysia – the two countries most supportive of a ‘Third Force’ coalition government – but Jakarta and Manila as well, to consolidate the support of ASEAN.51 The CGDK was eventually formed on 22 June 1982 in Kuala Lumpur, nearly three years after the Vietnamese invasion. The establishment of the CGDK was critical to ASEAN’s strategy of isolating and pressurising Vietnam and as a means of forcing Hanoi to the negotiating table. As Lee Kuan Yew put it, 'without the formation of the coalition government, we would not have been able to move'.52 Singapore was convinced that the Vietnamese believed that time was on their side. Neither economic pressures nor ‘the strains of occupying Cambodia’ would bring about a Vietnamese withdrawal. Thus, the conclusion Singapore drew was that ‘ASEAN has to be equally steadfast and determined, and has to make clear it will not be divided, nor deflected from its present strategy’. 

It is fair to say that had Sihanouk not agreed to head the CGDK,the whole strategy would likely fall apart. The encouragement of political support for the CGDK and the provision of material assistance to the non-communist resistance was among ‘the principal ways of sustaining pressure, rather than as leading towards the achievement of a “military solution”’. The Singaporeans (as well as the other ASEAN states) were under no illusions about the capability of the CGDK forces but hoped that the coalition could ‘make life difficult and unpleasant for the Vietnamese, thus encouraging them to look for a way out’.54 As for the US, Washington’s attitude had been for much of the 1980s, to quote Patricia Byrne (US ambassador to Burma), ‘ASEAN had the lead in this problem (Cambodia)’.55 Washington welcomed the CGDK as ‘a means of harnessing the Khmer Rouge and transferring legitimacy to Son Sann and Sihanouk’ - Son Sann had popular support among the Cambodian exile community while Sihanouk was popular with the Cambodian peasantry and well known internationally.56 According to John Negroponte (US deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs), the US was ‘prepared to give moral support to such a coalition’.57 US policy objectives, as Negroponte described, were: the security of Thailand, the withdrawal of Vietnamese forces from Cambodia, and the restoration of self-determination for the Cambodians. In reply to the awkward question of US support for Pol Pot, Ambassador Morton Ahramowitz replied that the immediate priority was the withdrawal of Vietnamese forces from Cambodia. And, if the Vietnamese ‘were ever to decide that they were prepared to come to the negotiating table… in the context of an overall political settlement … ways and means should obviously and can obviously be found to insure’ that ‘some other political outcome takes place other than the restoration’ of Pol Pot.58 Unlike Carter, the Reagan administration (1981-1989) had ‘fewer qualms about providing aid’ to the CGDK, although there remained no clear policy towards Southeast Asia, particularly in the first few years of the administration. Publicly, Washington continued to refuse any commitment of aid but there were some amounts of covert funding to Son Sann’s KPNLF through Thailand from 1982. The objective was simply to ‘bleed Vietnam white’. The administration never had any illusions that the coalition could achieve military victory over the Vietnamese. 

So long as the DK remained a coalition partner, inevitable as it might be, it would remain ‘ASEAN’s Achilles heel’, which the Vietnamese continued to target.60 Beijing supported the Khmer Rouge to the hilt and Washington during this period was at one with Beijing in wanting ‘to bleed Vietnam white and destroy her economically’. The ASEAN countries, on the other hand, were to various degrees not comfortable with the Khmer Rouge and certainly not supportive of destroying Vietnam (given that every country had their private reservations about China). All these differences played out at the International Conference on Kampuchea at the Number in New York (13–17 July 1981).61 Other than a speech by US Secretary of State Alexander Haig, the Americans ‘played virtually no public part and absented themselves from both Working and the later small Drafting Group’, essentially deferring to the Chinese.62 There was the view (and concern) among the ASEAN leaders that Washington was disposed to go along with Beijing on the Cambodia issue because they wanted to appease the Chinese over US provision of arms to Taiwan, and that the ‘Taiwan problem’ had constrained the US ability to influence Beijing on other issues as well.63 The ASEAN states, particularly Indonesia and Malaysia (which we mentioned earlier) were ‘vocal in warning Washington to be cautious, to exercise scepticism about some aspects of Chinese policy, and to avoid providing US support for the PRC, for instance on the Indochina question, just because China is taking an anti-Soviet position’.64 The Carter administration (1977–1981) was more prone to playing the ‘China card’. ASEAN’s concern was much lessened during the Reagan administration, which adopted a policy of ‘greater realism’ towards China. 

As the British diplomat Derek Tonkin opined, the solution was for ASEAN ‘to oust the DK from the UN’, but it was clear that the ASEAN countries could not or would not take this step.66 The Chinese gave preferential treatment to the Khmer Rouge such as that Thai Premier Prem Tinsulanonda had to urge Beijing to provide more aid to the non-communist partners of the coalition to ensure that the CGDK remained united (which the Chinese said they were prepared to do). Beijing also took ‘great pains’ to explain to the ASEAN leaders that they would limit their support for communist parties in the ASEAN countries ‘to the political and moral’.

It is perhaps useful to end this account with the words of Sihanouk. In an interview in late 1984, Sihanouk said:

We have to put aside things of the past. We have to put aside the Khmer Rouge case and concentrate on fighting against the Vietnamese. Otherwise, one day there will be five million Vietnamese in Cambodia. Cambodia will be lost to the Cambodians, and Cambodia will be a colony of Vietnam. So we have to fight. If we are not with the Khmer Rouge, we have no means to fight as nationalists, because China would not provide munitions, weapons, or financial aid. ASEAN would provide nothing, would give nothing to the nationalists, because we would just be rebels … That is the reason why ASEAN told Son Sann and his followers, told Sihanouk and his followers, please enter the legal framework of Democratic Kampuchea so that we can help you. Then, we can help not rebels, but a legal state recognised by the United Nations.

Sihanouk, however, continued to hold the view that so long as China and others continued to support the Khmer Rouge, the latter would ‘always be a major obstacle to a negotiated solution to the Kampuchean problem’. He believed that ‘only Sihanouk can negotiate with the Vietnamese’.69 According to Julio A. Jeldres (senior private secretary to Sihanouk), despite agreeing to join the CGDK and head the coalition, Sihanouk’s ‘main objective remained to reach a political compromise with Vietnam through an international conference, a process which would allow Vietnam not to lose face’.

Although public statements by the Vietnamese and their supporters dismissed the significance of the coalition, according to Sarasin Viraphol, ‘privately, Vietnamese leaders have shown far greater concern at this political move by ASEAN, which amongst other things, is likely to ensure continued ASEAN success at maintaining the ‘Democratic Kampuchea seat in the United Nations while enhancing the critical voice against Vietnam in the international arena’.71 Indeed, at the United Nations in October 1982, the number of countries voting in favour of the CGDK credentials increased to ninety countries from seventy-seven (who had voted in favour of Democratic Kampuchea’s credentials) in the previous year, and 105 countries compared to 100 in 1981 voted in favour of the resolution co-sponsored by ASEAN and several other countries calling for the withdrawal of all foreign forces from Cambodia. 

When all is said and done, the CGDK was but a ‘loose’ coalition and the Khmer Rouge remained the key military element in the anti-Vietnamese struggle.