The Long-Drawn Endgame

‘Wars are easy to start and hard to end’, as Stephen Walt observed.1 How did the other ASEAN countries envisage the Cambodia problem would end? Based on their words and actions throughout the decade, it is reasonable to conclude that their thinking did not deviate far from Singapore’s. Singapore did not envisage an eventual military solution to the Kampuchean problem. As Nathan said, it was a political, rather than a military, war which was being waged in Kampuchea.2 Defence Minister Goh Keng Swee made a similar point. The Vietnamese, he said, would have to seek a political settlement in Cambodia.3 The biggest problem was how to prevent civil war and banditry as all the Cambodian factions had large military forces. Minister for Foreign Affairs S. Rajaratnam explained that ‘all wars must end and end through a political act. The political warfare in Kampuchea needed to be maintained. The Vietnamese would only give up the fight when they were convinced that they were not winning the war, and it would be a matter of time before losing it.4 Nathan believed that an international conference on Cambodia was the only solution to the conflict, but in his words, ‘one had to drift towards it … Each party, particularly Vietnam, had first to feel the cost of the war.’5 All very prescient indeed.

A political settlement, the late Michael Leifer (often considered as the most astute scholar of the international politics of Southeast Asia) opined, might be expected to come about in two ways – one side prevailing conclusively in battle (which did not look like a likely scenario in the case of the Cambodian conflict) or a ‘military stalemate’, which would impose ‘unacceptable costs on one or other of the warring parties’, thus opening the possibility of a political settlement.6 The latter alternative was a view shared by Henry Kissinger, who wrote in a different context that ‘stalemate is the most propitious condition for settlement’.7 This is referred to as ‘ripeness theory’ in the field of conflict studies, describing a situation ‘when the conflict’s escalation leaves the belligerents with little choice but working out a solution together’.

In a November 1982 lecture (given to the Royal Society for Asian Affairs) about the Indochina Conflict, Leifer prognosticated that ‘the interlocking pattern of conflict in Indochina makes the early prospect of political settlement seem unlikely’. As the conflict entered its fourth dry season, ‘the struggle is no nearer resolution’. ‘An ideal settlement’, according to Leifer, ‘would take the form of the political reconstitution of the government in Kampuchea in such a manner that it would be acceptable to Vietnam and to China and Thailand. To pose a solution in these terms is to beg the question because one has done no more than identify the central, and so far, insuperable problem.’9 Emory Swank (US ambassador to Cambodia, 1970–1973, who visited Vietnam in early 1983 when he was head of the Cleveland Council of World Affairs) wrote: ‘Because I admire the non-communists in the coalition, I deeply regret that I must conclude, following a recent study mission to Vietnam and Cambodia, that their aspirations to achieve a broadened government in Phnom Penh and a timetable for withdrawal of Vietnamese forces are probably illusory.’ Swank, in his conversations with Vietnamese and Khmer leaders, found them intransigent and unwilling or unable to contemplate any compromise.10 Deng reportedly said in 1984 that he did not understand why some people were calling for the removal of Pol Pot. In his view, while Pol Pot ‘made some mistakes in the past’, he was now ‘leading the fight against the Vietnamese aggressors’.11 Hu Yaobang (general secretary of the CCP) apparently told a Bulgarian diplomat, Stanko Todorov, in 1985 that the claim that the Pol Pot regime had killed several million people was ‘nothing but a lie’ and that the Vietnamese were killing more people than the number killed in the period between 1975 and 1978.12 Thailand’s foreign minister described Pol Pot’s deputy, Son Sen, as a ‘very good man’. 

Writing in 1984, David Chandler predicted that it would be ‘more of the same for Cambodia’ in 1985. He also did not think the CGDK, ‘separated by chasms of animosity for more than 20 years, will make their marriage of convenience more durable in 1985’.14 Indeed, British sources noted that ‘coordination between the three CGDK factions … remained poor in 1986’.15 Also in 1985, US Secretary of State George Schulz advised ASEAN diplomats ‘to be careful in drafting peace proposals or the Vietnamese might accept them’.

This is perhaps an appropriate place to turn our attention to the PRK perspective on the developments during this period, which we know much less than those of the other protagonists in the conflict. From the limited sources and mostly recounted by Cambodian cadre historians, the PRK’s account of the war during this period was that during the rainy season of 1984 (from mid-May to October), both the CGDK and the PAVN were ‘locked in a stalemate with both sides unable to launch major operations’.17 During the 1984-1985 dry season (October–April), in fact as soon as the rain stopped, to the surprise of many analysts the Vietnamese, supported by troops from the Vietnamese-installed PRK, launched the ‘16-Camps Campaign’ – a series of offensives against the CGDK bases which succeeded in pushing the CGDK forces into Thailand,18 but they were not decisive in the war.19 The PRK history described the ‘16-Camps Campaign’ as a ‘turning point’ for all four factions in the Cambodian civil war as well as the Vietnamese. The Khmer Rouge ‘returned to its traditional guerrilla tactics’, the KPNLF and FUNCINPEC ‘also switched to guerrilla tactics’, as well as increasing their cooperation’, and the Vietnamese ‘found it timely to transfer responsibilities’ to the PRK forces (the KPRP).20 Vietnam apparently realised that its army could not stay in Cambodia for much longer and wanted to meet with China and the ASEAN states to resolve the Cambodian issue. In March 1985, Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze, on the other hand, proposed a meeting between Hun Sen and Sihanouk, which made the former ‘very happy’ because that would ‘put him on an equal footing’ with the prince. Hanoi, however, ‘did not want’ Hun Sen (who had just been promoted to prime minister in January 1985) to meet with Sihanouk for fear that Hun Sen ‘would not be able to resist Prince Sihanouk’. Washington and Beijing also ‘vehemently opposed any peace talks’. 

Ben Kiernan described the situation in 1986: ‘While 140,000 Vietnamese troops remained in-country, there was little chance of the PRK regime being overthrown. But 30,000 Khmer Rouge troops remained, and they were making a sustained effort to de-stabilise the PRK with massive Chinese support.’22 Resistance against the Vietnamese was dependent on the Khmer Rouge.

As for the other partners of the CGDK, there had been a serious rift within Son Sann’s KPNLF since mid-1985, leading to the creation of a splinter group led by Suk Sutsakhon (commander-in-chief of the KPNLF) who wanted to oust Son Sann from his leadership role.23 The royalist party, FUNCINPEC, did not have a credible fighting force and its relations with the KPNLF was also tenuous.

The consensus among those who closely followed the conflict was that ‘the reality on the ground … the essential political facts in Cambodia have changed little since the Khmer Rouge was ousted in 1979’.24 The stalemate over Cambodia would last till around 1986–1987, when there was a flurry of political and diplomatic activities aimed at finding a political solution to end the war. There were, however, small but uncoordinated tell-tale signs of change in the air as early as 1984–1985, despite the fighting, which became clearer on hindsight.

Indeed, from about late 1984, the Hanoi leadership was beginning to feel the grind of its occupation of Cambodia and was beginning to search for an exit strategy. The veteran journalist Robert Shaplen, who visited Vietnam and Cambodia in September 1984, detected ‘a beginning interest in reaching a compromise on the Cambodian question’. Shaplen recalled that in the spring of 1984 (after years of ‘repeated requests for a visa … being ignored or rejected’), with the assistance of the Permanent Mission to the Number in New York, he received permission to travel to Hanoi via Bangkok. To his ‘pleasant surprise’ on arrival in Hanoi, he was allowed to remain in Vietnam for five weeks and spend week in Cambodia, where ‘virtually all my requests to see people and visit places were met’, including ‘an illuminating four-hour talk with Le Duc Tho’. Shaplen’s visit could not have been coincidental as ‘the Poltiburo was just beginning to rethink the Vietnamese role in Cambodia and … the abysmal failures of the national economy and half-hearted attempts at reform finally led to an effort to set things right’. In his conversation with Le Duc Tho, which he described as ‘long and frank’, Shaplen noted that Tho was ‘tolerant and almost forgiving’ when speaking about the Chinese, and ‘careful, as Le Duan has been in expressing criticism of the Soviet Union’.25 In February 1985, in a speech marking the 55th anniversary of the founding of the VCP, Le Duan declared that he was ‘firmly convinced’ that friendship between China and Vietnam will have to be restored.

This cannot be otherwise It is worth remembering that almost a decade previously, Le Duan had described China as Vietnam’s principal enemy. Nguyen Co Thach also wrote to his Chinese counterpart Wu Xueqian, thanking the Chinese for their help in the past and suggested ‘secret talks in order to restore our friendship’. Also in February 1985, Le Duc Tho attended the French Communist Party Congress in Paris, which was unprecedented, and it was believed that he had secretly met with the Chinese while there. Notably, Le Duc Tho’s speech at the congress did not malign China but instead called for ‘all parties concerned to sit down together to seek a peaceful solution to the problems concerning the three Indochinese countries’. There was no official response from the Chinese side, but at the fortieth anniversary of Vietnam’s independence in September 1985, Beijing did send a congratulatory message which expressed hopes for the normalisation of relations. Beijing was evidently adopting a wait-and-see attitude. In November that year, the Vietnamese attended an international trade fair in Beijing. This was described to Shaplen by a Vietnamese official as comparable to the ‘Ping-Pong diplomacy’, a reference to the beginning of the thaw in Sino-US relations in the 1970s. Robert Shaplen further reported that when he met the Vietnamese delegation at the United Nations in 1985, he found them ‘more willing, if not eager, to reach a political solution prior to 1990’.  

The view was that the sooner they (the Vietnamese) could extricate from Cambodia, the sooner they could ‘concentrate on our own economic development’. The Vietnamese officials at the Number believed that in Vietnam ‘the conditions for a political solution are ripening’ and that ‘there is now agreement on the broad principles’.  Kosal Path’s recent research (which we referred to in Chapter 2) revealed that after four years of military mobilisation and confrontation, in Vietnam the ‘economic-firsters’ gradually came back into the forefront. From 1983, the economic threat facing Vietnam ‘loomed even larger than the military one’. The old guard were gradually persuaded of the need ‘to reconsider the costs of the two-front war’.

and change the course of Vietnam’s foreign policy’. Hanoi was compelled to reduce the costs of its occupation of Cambodia as well as abandon ‘the idea of Vietnam-led economic regionalism in Indochina’, which it was no longer able to finance by 1985. This led to the Doi Moi (renovation) policy adopted at the 6th Party Congress in December 1986, which marked ‘the most transformative transition in Vietnam’s modern political history from the Marxist central planning model to a market-oriented economy’.  By August 1985, it was public knowledge that Hanoi intended to withdraw their troops from Cambodia by the end of 1990,29 although ASEAN and others did not believe it.

Sihanouk was willing ‘to talk without preconditions’ but acknowledged (in an October 1985 conversation) the difficulty of getting the ‘various sponsors … to agree … The Chinese and the Thais are still more interested in having the war continue, in relying on us, the coalition forces, to bleed the Vietnamese.

Meanwhile, Sino-Soviet relations were also showing signs of morphing, dating back to early 1982 and culminating in the summit between Deng Xiaoping and Mikhail Gorbachev in 1989.  But the starting point most relevant to this study is perhaps Soviet First Deputy Premier Ivan Arkhipov’s visit to China in December 1984 - January 1985. This was the highest-level visit by a Soviet official since the border clash in 1969 which brought both countries to the brink of war. Described as an ‘old friend’ of China dating back to the 1950s, the visit was ‘unexpectedly warm and friendly’, although it did not mean the Sino-Soviet relation turned the corner. But the relations were clearly thawing. As David Bonavia observed, ‘the past year (1984) has seen great atmospheric improvements in Sino-Soviet relations, and progress in trade links, but no fundamental solutions of the big foreign policy issues that divide the two countries’. Worth noting also was the very much reduced tension on the Sino-Soviet border, which was a ‘sharp contrast to the situation on the Sino-Vietnamese border, where there are daily shoot-outs and prisoners are taken if rival patrols meet in the ill-defined frontier zone. Beijing continued to insist that any meaningful improvement of Sino-Soviet relations would require overcoming the ‘three major barriers’: Soviet troops withdrawing from both Afghanistan and the Chinese border and Moscow ceasing its support of Vietnam’s occupation of Cambodia. Hanoi was, in the words of Richard Nations, ‘apparently under no illusion that the long-term trend of Sino-Soviet normalization can only leave it isolated and weakened’. Hanoi was reportedly told that the Arkhipov visit would go ahead in 1985 ‘regardless of the level of hostility on the Sino-Vietnamese border’. 

here is where we must introduce Mikhail Gorbachev, who became the general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in March 1985. Whereas US initiatives dominated the first half the 1980s and Soviet policies were mostly reactive, a consequence of the three successive deaths of Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov, and Konstantin Chernenko between November 1982 and March 1985, ‘the final years of the Cold War … were dominated by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’.36 There is consensus that Gorbachev’s rise to power was critical in bringing the Third Indochina War to an end.  Gorbachev’s ascension to power, in the words of Richard H. Solomon (assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, 1989–1992), ‘led to a fundamental shift in Soviet foreign policy, away from the expansionist initiatives of the Khrushchev and Brezhnev eras toward normalisation relations with the United States and China’. Qian Qichen recalled that in the effort to unfreeze Sino-Soviet relations, all three Soviet leaders (Brezhnev, Andropov and Chernenko) had avoided ‘the three major barriers’, dwelling instead on the ‘trivial’ (developing trade and economic cooperation), until Gorbachev took over. Initially, Gorbachev also showed no inclination of removing the ‘three barriers . 

In October 1985, Deng Xiaoping conveyed through the Romanian President Nicolae Ceaușescu, who was visiting China, an oral message to Gorbachev that normalisation of Sino-Soviet relations ‘depended on the removal of the three barriers, and that  this should start with the withdrawal of Vietnamese troops from Cambodia. Once this issue was resolved, the other disputes would be easier to settle.’ Deng proposed a meeting at the highest level between the two countries and was even willing to travel to meet Gorbachev to reach an understanding on getting Vietnamese troops to withdraw from Cambodia. In November 1985, Moscow replied that the oral message was received and that ‘the time was ripe for holding a Sino-Soviet meeting at the highest level and for normalizing relations. 

On 28 July 1986, Gorbachev delivered what is famously known as the ‘Vladivostok speech’ (because it was delivered in the port city of Vladivostok on the far eastern part of the Soviet Union). It was a very long speech but most relevant to this study is what Gorbachev said about the Third Indochina War – that it was an issue between China and Vietnam and depended on the normalisation of Sino-Vietnam relations, and that all Moscow could do was hope that China and Vietnam would resume their dialogue and reach an amicable settlement. The future of Cambodia should be decided by Cambodians. Qian Qichen (China’s foreign minister from 1988 to 1998) recalled that after the Vladivostok speech, the special envoys of China and the Soviet Union no longer avoided the topic of Cambodia in their political consultation. As Ken Berry noted, although Gorbachev’s statement on the Cambodia issue ‘looked fairly thin and (in hindsight) little more than a statement of the obvious fact’, the statement ‘broke the international ice to the extent that Cambodia was thereafter used as the reason for subsequent meetings between China and the Soviet Union, between Thailand and Vietnam, and eventually between China and Vietnam, rather than as before, a motive for not talking’. Gorbachev’s statement ‘may also have given Vietnam and Cambodia at least pause to consider that they would not always be able to call upon the Soviet Union for unquestioning support’.43 Relations between Hanoi and Moscow have indeed cooled considerably since Gorbachev took power in March 1985. It is no wonder that in Vietnam, Gorbachev ‘remains a divisive figure’. Apparently, the VCP ‘hated’.

Gorbachev and considered him ‘a traitor’. There were some – ‘the more modern-minded party members’ – who wanted to follow the Gorbachev path to bring ‘democracy and liberal spirit’ to Vietnam, but they were too weak and were ‘cracked down by the Vietnamese communist Party’. Gorbachev’s policies ‘forced Vietnam to reform because he took away aid. 

It is worth noting here that Le Duan, who as general secretary of the VCP oversaw the breakdown of Vietnam-Cambodia-China relations, died on 10 July 1986. Lee Kuan Yew, according to Sinanouk, hoped that with the death of Le Duan and the older generation of leaders such as Truong Chinh and Pham Van Dong getting older, there would appear a new and younger generation of leaders capable of seeing the dangers of overdependence on the Soviet Union and the 'happiness, prosperity, the development of ASEAN nations', think of the future of Vietnam and the benefits of cooperating with countries such as the ASEAN states. Truong Chinh died in September 1988. Sihanouk, however, did not expect the younger generation of Vietnamese leaders ‘to be more reasonable, less tough, or less ambitious than the older generation in Hanoi.

"The veteran Thai journalist Kavi Chongkittavorn, then a young reporter, was at Vladivostok on 26 July 1986 to report on Gorbachev’s major foreign policy speech. He described Gorbachev as 'the game changer in bringing an end to the Cambodian conflict'.

He believed that Southeast Asia ‘owed him for giving peace a chance’, and that historians have to revisit Gorbachev's legacy in Southeast Asia, particularly ‘the crucial years of 1987–1988’ when the Vladivostok speech gradually took hold and impacted developments on the ground’. Kavi recalled that during the 1980s, news about the Soviet Union often dominated the front pages of regional newspapers but they mostly covered the threats posed by communism and linked that to Moscow. The Gorbachev era also saw the gradual decline of the Soviet military presence in the region as Moscow turned its attention towards its domestic affairs. Soviet-US relations were also experiencing a thaw, beginning with the Geneva"

 Summit on 19–20 November 1985 between Reagan and Gorbachev, the first summit between the two superpowers in more than six years. Despite not producing any tangible results, the Geneva Summit has been described as 'a breakthrough point for American-Soviet relations'... largely predicated on the personal connection forged between Gorbachev and Reagan'. The two leaders had three more summit meetings between 1986 and 1988 where they progressively reached agreements on a wide-ranging set of issues, although it should be said that none dealt directly with the Cambodia issue since it was never a priority issue for Washington in their relations with Moscow. Kavi further recalled Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze's very first visit to Bangkok in March 1987 which excited the Thai authorities for they knew that ‘there would be some dramatic policy shifts in the internecine Cambodian conflict’. Unfortunately, the Soviets did not live up to expectations, although Gorbachev’s Vladivostok speech was significant, the Americans and Thais, in their encounters with Shevardnadze, concluded that while Moscow ‘appeared to be re-examining their policy ... they have reached no conclusions, nor come up with new ideas. They seemed to recognize that their involvement in Vietnam was not doing them any good, except for their naval facilities in Cam Ranh Bay.’ While in Bangkok, Shevardnadze ‘had nothing new to say’. The feeling in some quarters (the UK, US, Thailand, and Singapore) was that there was little change in either Vietnamese or Soviet policies on Cambodia. Lee Kuan Yew’s analysis was that the Soviets wanted to keep their naval and air bases in Vietnam while seeing Vietnam exit Cambodia. But for the time being, Moscow was not prepared to loosen its hold on Vietnam and lose their access to the bases. 

"The Indians, who had close connections with both Moscow and Hanoi, had a different view. According to the Indian side, the Vietnamese were genuinely interested in a resolution; for example, they now did not insist on Heng Samrin as being the sole representative of the Cambodians and other ‘representatives’ could"

"play a role. Nguyen Co Thach has asked the Indians to convey that to the ASEAN countries. Jakarta agreed that represented a shift in the Vietnamese position; however, Bangkok and Singapore did not think so. Also, after a ‘fifteen-year silence’, Sihanouk contacted the Indian government and informed New Delhi that Vietnam told him that they would wish India to be one of the ‘guarantors of any international settlement on Cambodia’. According to Indian Deputy Foreign Minister Natwar Singh, ‘the Vietnamese … were sending signals of flexibility … The Vietnamese wanted the war to end; it was expensive, unpopular, and causing their isolation in the international community. The crucial figure in ASEAN was Dr. Mochtar. If he could be convinced of Vietnamese flexibility, he could probably carry his ASEAN colleagues.’ As for Moscow, Natwar Singh was of the view that ‘the West should not overestimate Russian influence in Vietnam’. Singh recounted how, when he visited other communist countries, ‘within five minutes of his arrival, he would hear praises of the Russians; the Vietnamese, by contrast, never mentioned them’. The Russians had been encouraging the Vietnamese to improve their relations with China ‘but had achieved little; the Vietnamese were in no hurry to do this’. That was as much as Moscow was prepared to do. The Russians ‘would not take any initiative vis-à-vis the Vietnamese’. 

"A ‘bargaining space’, to borrow H. E. Goemans’ phrase, which is a ‘necessary condition for war termination’, appeared to be opening, albeit very slowly. To briefly recap, the Third Indochina conflict can be broadly broken down into four interconnected components: (1) mutual threat perceptions of Vietnam and Cambodia, which would require reaching agreements between Heng Samrin’s PRK and the components of the CGDK, particularly the Khmer Rouge; (2) Sino-Vietnamese relations; (3) mutual threat perceptions of Vietnam and Thailand/ASEAN, which would require agreements between Vietnam, the PRK, and the ASEAN states; and (4) superpower rivalries, particularly between China and the Soviet Union, which would require an improvement in Beijing–Moscow and Moscow–Washington relations.

We have noted that for (3), there has been movements in improving relations. Sino-Vietnam relations, however, had not kept up with the pace of improvement in Sino-Soviet and US-Soviet relations. Finally, both Hanoi and Sihanouk were still feeling for a way forwards. Sihanouk was somewhat pessimistic in 1986 when he said he did not expect the Cambodian problem to be resolved in his lifetime, ‘though this would not diminish his determination’. The following account reconstructs how the pieces came together, culminating in the Paris Peace Accords of 1991."

"There was no shortage of initiatives to solve the conflict. Rather than going through all the failed plans, it is perhaps more useful to explain why these initiatives – such as the Malaysian proposal of ‘proximity talks’ (April 1985), CGDK’s ‘Eight-point Plan’ (March 1986), and Indonesia’s ‘cocktail party’ (July 1987) — were nonetheless from the beginning. Any plan or proposal that could imply recognition of the PRK and/or the Cambodia conflict as merely as civil war (rather than Vietnamese aggression) would be rejected by those who opposed the Vietnamese invasion. Any plan or proposal that suggested Vietnam act on behalf of the PRK and/or which involved the Khmer Rouge as a negotiating party would be rejected by Vietnam and her supporters. Over the years (until 1987), the Vietnamese position had remained substantially unchanged: ‘the resistance group (without Pol Pot) should reach an accommodation with the PRK’ before anything else.

What eventually moved the dial? There was no one single event that led to a change of tack but rather several developments, which began in 1984–1985 (described earlier) but crystallised and/or accelerated after Gorbachev’s July 1986 Vladivostok speech and eventually coalesced together over the next few years."

"One critical development was a reassessment of Hun Sen, once a junior Khmer Rouge commander in the Eastern Zone, who escaped to Vietnam in June 1977 and in January 1985 became the prime minister of the PRK at the age of thirty-three. He was seen, rightly or wrongly, as a Vietnamese ‘puppet’. In his meeting with Robert Shaplen in late 1984, Hun Sen told him that ‘we need the Vietnamese forces here only to help us defend ourselves until we are strong enough ourselves. If we don’t need them, we’ll tell them to go, and they’ll withdraw. All foreign forces should withdraw from Southeast Asia, including the Americans in the Philippines.’ Hun Sen described Sihanouk as ‘temperamentally like a cloud after a rain’, although both he and the Vietnamese would come round to accept the indispensability of Sihanouk. In the PRK official history, Hun Sen revealed that he had attempted to hold secret talks with Sihanouk in 1984 but failed ‘[b]ecause of the opposition from China and the Khmer Rouge’.

"According to Shaplen, other than Pol Pot specifically and his immediate associates, Hun Sen ‘seemed to leave the door open for reconciliation with other ranking members of the Khmer Rouge and for them to be included in talks’, including Khieu Samphan, which eventually happened in October 1987 when the PRK put forth its five-point peace proposal and showed its willingness to enter into talks with Khieu Samphan, the nominal head of the Khmer Rouge and foreign minister of the CGDK.

In March 1985, Bill Hayden (Australia’s minister for foreign affairs and trade) met Hun Sen secretly in Ho Chi Minh City. Over a two-hour meeting, Hayden ‘made up his mind that Hun Sen was a genuine Cambodian patriot, not a puppet’. By 1986, the PRK, while it had not brought prosperity to Cambodia, had survived and ‘established some identity of its own’ and was seen in some quarters as a ‘feasible alternative’ to the Khmer Rouge, with or without Pol Pot. Whether others agreed with Hayden or not is perhaps not important, but it is worth noting that one of the critical concessions made by the CGDK in its ‘Eight-Point Plan’ of 17 March 1986 was "accepting the participation of the Heng Samrin regime in the interim quadripartite government, which meant having to negotiate with the ‘tough’ and ‘brash’ Prime Minister Hun Sen. Indeed, in April 1987, The Economist stated in an editorial that the only possibility for Cambodians to live in peace was for ‘expatriates led by Sihanouk to swallow hard and talks to Cambodians under Hun Sen’.

Hun Sen also had to temper his hard line attitude towards Sihanouk and the CGDK. As prime minister, he had to oversee the economic reforms in Cambodia, which had so far been linked to Hanoi and Moscow. Vietnam was already beginning to implement its ‘renovation’ policy in 1986 ahead of watershed Sixth Party Congress (15-18 December 1986). The one term that captured the major themes running through the Congress was the word ‘renovation’. As Kosal Path noted, ‘Cambodia’s economic reforms were largely influenced by a combination of external pressures and learning from the reforms taking place in Vietnam and the Soviet Union’. Hanoi had counselled the PRK to pursue economic reform, especially when Moscow ‘curtailed its aid commitment to the PRK, pushing the regime to think about economic self-sufficiency and a political solution to the Cambodian conflict’. The Sixth Party Congress, however, had little to say with regard to foreign policy. The political report repeated the standard view, which was that Vietnam would welcome a settlement of the Cambodian conflict on the condition that it excluded the Pol Pot clique and that negotiations must be with the PRK.

"Turning to Sihanouk, from very early in the conflict he had advocated a peace proposal which involved (1) the disarming of all Cambodian warring factions; (2) a UN peacekeeping force to ensure peace in Cambodia; and (3) a general election supervised by the UN. In August 1980, Sihanouk invited US Congressman Stephen Solarz to Pyongyang where he was then residing to discuss his proposal. He gave Solarz a copy of his proposal (written in French). Julio Jeldres met Sihanouk for the first time, also in Pyongyang, and before he left, Sihanouk asked him to help translate the proposal for a peace settlement from French to English and, ‘if possible, pass it on to government officials in Australia; which Jeldres eventually did through a retired Australian ambassador to Chile, Noel Deschamps. Sihanouk was not able to gain the support of China or ASEAN. We may recall that the Chinese were of the view that Sihanouk’s proposal, while sound, was premature. Sihanouk was subsequently persuaded to lead the CGDK, but he remained ‘unconvinced’ by the Khmer Rouge/CGDK preconditions. Sihanouk’s ‘main objective’, Jeldres recalled, ‘remained to reach a political compromise with Vietnam through an international conference, a process which would allow Vietnam not to lose face. At the same time, he insisted that the very survival in the international jungle of 20th century world demanded two things: internal unity and external neutrality. Any breach of either would pose mortal threat to Cambodia.’ In February 1981, Sihanouk met François Mitterrand, then leader of the French Socialist Party, who was visiting Pyongyang. Sihanouk called for the urgent convening of an international conference, preferably hosted by Paris. Mitterrand was supportive of Sihanouk’s solution to end the conflict and promised that if he were elected president, he would work towards organising an international conference."

"Sihanouk continued to promote his proposal whenever he had the opportunity to do so. He felt hemmed in by China and his coalition partners. Apparently, Hanoi had signalled its interest to talk with Sihanouk, and Hun Sen had been trying to meet Sihanouk to discuss the modalities to end the conflict since 1984. But his coalition partners and backers rejected all negotiations with Phnom Penh unless the Vietnamese troops withdrew completely from Cambodia, ‘a posture’ which Sihanouk felt was ‘too rigid’. In the later part of 1987, Sihanouk found an opportunity to act more independently in his endeavour to resolve the Cambodia conflict, which troubled ASEAN, and Thailand in particular, ‘which continued to regard Sihanouk as the pivotal figure in its Cambodia strategy, but was frustrated by its inability to control the prince.

The situation from late 1987 was very fluid. Each of the players appeared to be shifting positions but there was no evidence of any substantial change. The next two years witnessed much posturing. "among the various protagonists, with everyone trying to extract the maximum possible advantage prior to any settlement. Whereas, in the recent past, the parties were adamantly unwilling to negotiate, with each other unless their respective preconditions were met, we begin to see a series of talks taking place without preconditions. An exploratory phase was evidently underway.

Most notable and significant was the series of bilateral meetings between Sihanouk and Hun Sen, the first on 2–4 December 1987, which was ‘the first, albeit small indication of flexibility among the major protagonists’, but substantive negotiations was expected to be a long way off. The significance of this first meeting was that Sihanouk and Hun Sen had emerged as co-equals of any future agreements. Sihanouk had broken off from the ASEAN leash. The CGDK had been sidelined and both the KPNLF and the Khmer Rouge were left with ‘the stark choice of joining Sihanouk or waging a struggle on their own’. The PRK had established its legitimacy. As most of the protagonists accepted the talks, ASEAN had little option but to support it as well. Their main concern was that the Vietnamese were not given a free pass."

In PRK history, 2 December is a significant date. It was the day the KPNLF was formed in 1978. It was (and we do not know if this was deliberate or a coincidence) also the first day of the ‘first peace talks’ between Hun Sen and Sihanouk in Fere-en-Tardenois. In the view of Hun Sen, ‘without December 2, 1987, there would have been no Paris Peace Agreement of October 23, 1991’. Indeed, the agreement reached at this meeting would serve as the framework for subsequent negotiations. The main issues of contention were over (1) dismantling the Khmer Rouge military structure (which Sihanouk refused) and the PRK structure (which Hun Sen refused) prior to the general elections; and (2) whether a coalition government should be formed before the elections (which Sihanouk wanted) or after the elections (which Hun Sen preferred). The twists and turns, and the minute details of the bargaining, need not delay us here, except to say that whatever decisions Sihanouk made at his meeting with Hun Sen, he had to be able to consider the  views and get the support of Son Sann and Khieu Samphan. The December meeting was followed by a second in January 1988 in Saint Germain-en-Laye which Sihanouk described as a ‘very small step in a very long road’. At this second meeting, Hun Sen proposed the creation of a ‘high-level national unification council’. This proposal was discussed again at the first JIM in July 1988. Although no agreement was reached, the proposal would eventually materialise as the Supreme National Council (SNC) in 1990. Meanwhile, a third meeting between Hun Sen and Sihanouk, initially scheduled for the end of April 1988 in Pyongyang, was postponed till November 1988.

The third Sihanouk-Hun Sen meeting was followed by a fourth in May 1989, shortly before the International Conference on Cambodia in Paris (30 July–30 August 1989). The main issue which Sihanouk and Hun Sen had to resolve was the nature of the provisional quadripartite government, and tied to how to prevent a return of the Khmer Rouge. As Stephen Chee noted, the crux of the Kampuchean problem lay in the internal aspects, that is power sharing among the four contending factions and the mechanism for policing the peace after a settlement. Despite world abhorrence over the Pol Pot regime and consensus that the clique should not be allowed to return to power, it seemed unrealistic that the 30,000–40,000 Khmer Rouge force could be denied participation in a transitional national reconciliation government without a civil war.

Singapore’s Foreign Minister S. Rajaratnam’s advice to Son Sann is worth recalling. He told Son Sann that for the first ten years, mobilisation of support on the Cambodian question focused on Vietnam. However, in the second decade, negotiations would need to involve the question of the Khmer Rouge. This, he said, ‘would complicate the whole game’. The new task for the CGDK, he advised Son Sann, would be to create a coalition of patriotic forces including the PRK, otherwise civil war would soon break out. Rajaratnam admitted that he did not know how this could be done. However, he was optimistic, as both the Soviet Union and China, having decided to settle the Cambodian problem, wanted a peaceful Cambodia so that they could concentrate their resources on development within their own countries. The time had come to envisage and prepare an overall plan. Lee Kuan Yew advised Son Sann to consider three points: (1) whether Son Sann could work together with Sihanouk or even Ranariddh; (2) whether Son Sann could work from returning to power; and (3) to try to familiarise himself with the PRK structure and determine which elements he might be able to win over from the PRK’s ranks.

 The JIMs, of which there were two, commonly abbreviated as JIM and JIM II, were held in July 1988, and February 1989 respectively. Spearheaded by Indonesia, which had always wanted to pursue a regional solution to resolving the conflict rather than let extra-regional powers call all the shots, the JIMs are often cited as one of the most, if not the most significant ASEAN initiative to end the Cambodia war. Foreign Minister Ali Alatas positioned the JIM as a ‘preparatory meeting for an eventual international conference.’ The JIM brought together, for the first time since the invasion of Kampuchea, representatives of the CGDK and PRK into an ‘intra-Kampuchean discussion’ essentially to unpack the components of the framework of a political settlement (particularly preventing the return of the Khmer Rouge) and to decouple that as much as possible from the ‘external issue of the Vietnamese invasion in 1979’ – the subject of the second stage of the meeting which brought together all parties, including Vietnam, Laos, and ASEAN. 

Looking at the glass as half-empty, JIM failed to achieve any substantial breakthrough, which was unsurprising. As Sihanouk said, ‘such a complex issue could not be resolved at a first meeting’. At the very least, everyone involved agreed that only negotiations could bring an end to the conflict. Although not directly connected, it is worth assessing the JIM initiative alongside the Sihanouk-Hun Sen meetings described earlier, coming as it did after two Sihanouk-Hun Sen meetings (December 1987 and January 1988) which were inconclusive and a third initially scheduled for the end of April 1988. that had to be postponed. Sihanouk did not attend the JIM, although he was in Jakarta as a guest of President Suharto. However, everyone knew that he was deeply involved behind the scenes. There was no communiqué issued at the end of the JIM, but it was agreed that a working group of senior officials would continue to examine the issues for a subsequent meeting. In the view of Ali Alatas, the very fact that all the parties involved in the conflict participated in the ‘unprecedented talks were itself a success’, and although no agreement was reached, ‘there was a remarkable convergence of views on the key issues and basic principles of a political settlement.

The JIM also showed up the differences within ASEAN, particularly Jakarta and Bangkok. As the JIM was an Indonesian-led ASEAN initiative, ASEAN member states were obliged to partake in the JIM process. Bangkok, and to an extent Singapore, was unhappy that Indonesia appeared to have bent backwards to accommodate the Vietnamese. We may recall that Jakarta had been sympathetic to Vietnam all along. Some in Indonesian policy-making circles were concerned that Indonesian interests would be sacrificed by an informal Sino-Thai alliance, and Singapore believed that Suharto would still give priority to ASEAN interests. Thailand, on the other hand, felt that Jakarta was usurping its lead role (as ASEAN’s frontline state) in resolving the Cambodia conflict and would not accept any solution that did not remove the Vietnamese threat to Thailand. Bangkok was also critical of Sihanouk’s approach, rather than leading to a political settlement, would only split the CGDK, legitimise the PRK, and deflect international pressure on Vietnam. 

"JIM II took place in February 1989 (shortly after the third Sihanouk-Hun Sen meeting in November 1988, which also failed to achieve any breakthrough), even though the CGDK as well as some ASEAN member states were not enthusiastic about holding it, preferring the meeting to be postponed. Jakarta persisted and everybody went along, albeit half-heartedly. The chairman’s statement issued at the end of the meeting described a framework for poliical settlement which was seen as very artial to the Vietnamese and the PRK.

JIM II was also complicated by developments in Thailand. We may recall that there was a long-running debate in Thai circles on the approach to managing the Cambodia conflict which would best serve Thai national interest. There was an ongoing rivalry between Chatchai Choonhavan (who became prime minister in August 1988 after his Thai Nation Party won the 1988 Thai general election) and his advisers and Foreign Minister Siddhi and the Foreign Ministry for control of Thai policy towards Indochina. The new pro-business, democratically elected civilian government led by Chatichai Jittipat Poonkham noted, this ‘significantly redefined the framing of Thailand’s national interest’. It in turn deemphasized national security to affirm Thailand’s status as an aspiring regional economic power. Kraiskak Choonhavan, who served as an adviser to his father the prime minister, and who had been placed in charge of negotiations with Cambodia, said that Thailand should stop supporting the Khmer Rouge. In his words, ‘Thailand must take the initiative if China doesn’t change its stand toward the Khmer Rouge’. Changes were also afoot in the Thai military when General Chaovalit Yongchaiyuth, on two occasions, described the Cambodian dispute as an internal conflict or civil war, and that Vietnam did not constitute a threat to Thailand. Thai–Soviet relations were also changing, with Foreign Minister Siddhi Savetsila’s visit to Moscow in May 1987.

 In January 1989, Prime Minister Choonhavan received Hun Sen in Bangkok, much to the unhappiness of the CGDK as well as certain quarters in Bangkok. The meeting, though presented as a private visit, had all the semblances of a working visit by a head of state, marking the ‘first concrete step’ towards the realisation of his goal ‘to turn Indochina from a battlefield into a trading market’. It is worth noting that Chatchai’s policy was not confined to Cambodia but included Laos and Burma (now Myanmar). Also worth noting is that Hun Sen, during his first meeting with Sihanouk at Fere-en-Tradenois in December 1987, told Sihanouk that he was more concerned about Thailand, given their unresolved territorial issues (specifically Preah Vihear) than Vietnam. In his words, 'the danger of the territory isn’t from Vietnam, but Thailand' Chatchai’s new policy had 'disturbing consequences for ASEAN ... Although Chatchai has reiterated that ASEAN remains the "cornerstone" of Thai foreign policy, his initiatives and his ideas seem to point in another direction.'^90 More importantly, the visit also deviated from the agreement to focus on the ASEAN-initiated JIM process (which was very much driven by Indonesia) reached at the fifth meeting of the ASEAN Senior Officials Meeting Working Group on the Kampuchean Problem. Singapore’s S. Rajaratnam (one of ASEAN’s founding fathers) expressed concern that the Chatchai’s move would negatively impact ASEAN’s credibility. Those who opposed the new Thai approach within Thailand included, most prominently, Foreign Minister Siddhi Savetsila and another founding father of ASEAN, Thanat Khomani. Tej Bunnag recalled: ‘By that time Air Chief Marshal Siddhi was really out on a limb. He was not representing the mainstream of government policy, and not long afterwards, he was no longer Foreign Minister. 

Lee Kuan Yew’s view was that Chatchai’s actions led Hanoi to drag out the Paris Peace Talks for another three years until 1991.^92 Lee may be right. China, the US, and some ASEAN countries were indeed concerned that the new Thai policy would make it easier for Hanoi to retain its control of Cambodia.^93 Although the third round of Sihanouk-Hun talks in November 1988 did not reach any agreement, the sense was that Hun Sen was just intransigent in hopes of extracting the maximum possible advantage before agreeing to a settlement. It was anticipated that there would be tough bargaining ahead, but it was only a matter of time before a resolution would be reached. It was not just the ASEAN member states that were upset; China and the US were also not supportive of Chatchai’s new policy direction. Tej Bunnag, who was then Thai ambassador to China, recalled that he 'had a difficult time explaining to the Chinese that we had changed our policy'.^94 The Chinese made it clear that they would not support any regional development schemes until the Vietnamese withdrew from Cambodia.

JIM I would be remembered for, at the very least, bringing together all the regional parties for the first time, but JIM II is simply forgettable, overshadowed by both regional and extra-regional developments, the latter of which we now turn to.

Before doing so, it is worth summarising the observations of Claude Martin (director for Asia and the Pacific, Quasi d’Orsay) following his visit to the region, which gives a good picture of the situation and the thinking of the key protagonists in 1987-1988.^98 Martin was struck by the extent of economic decline in Vietnam after a hiatus of nine years. It was clear to him that the country was ‘getting steadily poorer’ and there was ‘no end in sight’ - ‘Everyone talked about reform, but nobody did anything about it’. The Vietnamese leaders still did not understand the need for and the nuts and bolts of economic reform but they recognised that ‘a withdrawal from Cambodia was crucial’, ‘they wanted the PRK to remain in place and they also feared a return of the Khmer Rouge’. Martin had the impression from his conversation with Nguyen Co Thach that the Vietnamese would move back into western Cambodia if the Khmer Rouge returned, particularly if they threatened Phnom Penh. Martin also believed that Hanoi attended the JIM ‘only under pressure from the Soviet Union’ - ‘they did not have the will to negotiate seriously’. Nguyen Co Thach maintained that being present would be ‘sufficient to establish Vietnamese and PRK goodwill’. There was a consensus that Sihanouk was key to any settlement. Martin was of the view that Sihanouk ‘would want power and would not be content with being a figurehead’, but Hun Sen had his ‘sensitivities’. In his conversation with Sihanouk, Martin noted that Sihanouk was furious that the Khmer Rouge, in their effort to shore up their position before any settlement, were attacking the non-communist resistance, particularly Armée Nationale Sihanoukiste.

(ANS) troops. Regarding Sihanouk’s resignation as president of the CGDK, seen as a ‘tactical’ move, the prince explained that he judged that he should distance himself from the CGDK, especially from the Khmer Rouge, before the JIM started. Sihanouk knew that Beijing ‘had used him in the past as their political card just as they have used the Khmer Rouge as their military card’.^97 He hoped that his resignation would put pressure on the Thais and Chinese to sever their links with the Khmer Rouge. The British (Robin McLaren) shared that the Chinese were still not ready to abandon the Khmer Rouge but seemed to understand that Pol Pot and his close associates were unacceptable to the West. Martin agreed that there had been a shift in the Chinese position. Beijing did not want to be held responsible for the Khmer Rouge blocking an agreement and they had consequently ‘pushed them to attend the JIM’. Martin also said that the Thais were also aware but ‘they claimed that Khmer Rouge resistance was still necessary’ and Bangkok also did not want to offend China. McLaren said that ‘the UK was not a leading player and looked to Paris, given France’s historical role in the region .

London was however 'keen to do what we could to help'. Both agreed that it would be necessary to convene an international conference at some point. In the words of McLaren, 'the JIM had brought the parties together for the first time. Once they agreed on the basic elements of a solution, we could consider whether a conference was appropriate and, if so, what sort.' Both Martin and McLaren concurred that the JIM was 'a step in the right direction'. With regard to the elements of a Cambodian settlement, both concurred that a coalition of all four Cambodian factions was preferable to a two-party coalition. However, they had doubts as to whether the Khmer Rouge would accept a prominent role for the Sihanoukist, and while Hun Sen would probably be prepared to share power with Sihanouk this was unlikely to be on 'an equal footing'. As for a two-party coalition, a bilateral agreement between Hun Sen and Sihanouk was viewed as 'unrealistic'. Much as both the French and British (McLaren said that if the UK backed a settlement which included the Khmer Rouge, 'it would be difficult to defend') felt that 'it would be easier ... if Pol Pot and his close associates were excluded', it was 'unrealistic to try to exclude the Khmer Rouge altogether'. Finally, we come to the point that would lead to the dead section of this narrative: Sihanouk, having ‘been framed by the Khmer Rouge once’, would therefore want ‘political and military guarantees that he would be in charge if he went back to Phnom Penh’, thus ‘guarantees were the key’. The major questions hanging over any internal settlement were ‘how the Khmer Rouge can be accommodated or excluded and how their longer-term objective of regaining sole control can be circumscribed’.^98 Both Martin and McLaren agreed that Moscow kept Vietnam under control and the Chinese (and Thais) were the ones who could influence the Khmer Rouge by starving them of weapons. It was important for France, the UK, the US, and others to put combined pressure on the Chinese. Martin also expected to see ‘further Soviet following the Sino-Soviet bilateral meeting in August’. On at least one point, Moscow, Hanoi, and some Western countries had a ‘coincidence of interest’ - the Soviets’ profess deep concern about the danger that a Vietnamese withdrawal will let Pol Pot and his cronies back in’. The Chinese clearly held the key.

IV

In its annual review of 1988, the British Foreign Office noted that the Cambodian factions were ‘in danger of being overtaken by outside events’. China and Moscow had ‘bigger fish to fry’ and unless the Cambodians agreed to a compromise, the Soviets and the Chinese might strike a deal. The consequence would be ‘civil war, and a possible return of Khmer Rouge influence’. That said, in 1988, ‘the external players have not yet narrowed their differences sufficiently to impose an agreed settlement package’. British officials were, however, somewhat hopeful that ‘the accelerating rapprochement’ between and among the external powers ‘may induce the Cambodian factions to display greater flexibility’. At the same time, there was also the ‘distinct danger that any settlement would, like previous Indochinese agreements of 1954, 1962 and 1973, be contrived to meet the interests of external players, without assuaging the conflict between the local forces. 

Qian Qichen recalled that it was only in the late 1980s that Moscow ‘began to show a flexible attitude toward the key issues that had hampered the normalization of Sino-Soviet relations’—the Soviets no longer avoided discussions of Cambodia.^101 However, while Moscow acknowledged that the withdrawal of Vietnamese troops from Cambodia was a key factor, they did not commit to ensuring that the Vietnamese troops would pull out, only that ‘it would do what it could to promote the process of solving the issue of Cambodia’. The Chinese reading of the meetings was that Moscow’s ‘new attitude was more positive than the old one’ and that the Soviets intended to first pull out of Afghanistan and then resolve the Cambodia issue as soon as possible. The Soviets began their troop withdrawal from Afghanistan on 15 May 1988, a process which was completed on 15 February 1989. Qian met with his Soviet counterpart, Eduard Shevardnadze, in June 1988 in New York. Shevardnadze suggested that the Geneva agreement regarding Afghanistan could serve as a template for Cambodia. Qian said that ‘the withdrawal of the Soviet Union from Afghanistan was a good thing, and therefore welcome. But China was more concerned about Cambodia’.

Moscow subsequently requested a special session on Cambodia, which took place from 27 August to 1 September 1988 in Beijing when the two vice-foreign ministers, Igor Rogachev and Tian Zengpei, reached ‘an internal understanding, having found some common ground and similar views’ regarding Cambodia. Although ‘disputes still persisted … the meetings indicated the Soviet side was showing flexibility on the issue of Vietnamese troops in Cambodia.

Qian met his Soviet counterpart Shevardnadze in Moscow from 1-3 December 1988; the objective of the visit was to lay the groundwork for a meeting of the heads of state of China and the Soviet Union Following up on the August 1988 meeting, Qian ‘pointed out emphatically that the Vietnamese troops must withdraw from Cambodia before the end of June 1989’. Qian emphasized that both Moscow and Beijing ‘should be on the same opinion on the limit for the withdrawal and make it happen’. After that, all external powers should stop supporting any party in the civil war. As for the internal issues of Cambodia, Qian briefly stated that China would support: (1) a four-party coalition government headed by Sihanouk; (2) the military forces of all parties being frozen, reduced, and eventually dissolved; (3) an international peacekeeping force that should be stationed in Cambodia; and (4) the institution of strict international surveillance and an international guarantee. It is evident from the discussion (and in other forums that the Chinese participated in) that China’s concern was not the Khmer Rouge but Vietnam’s continued presence in Cambodia. Beijing also did not expect or support Heng Samrin heading a future Cambodian government. However, they held that the Khmer Rouge should not be excessively weakened (yet) given the Vietnamese military presence in Cambodia. But the Khmer Rouge should also not be allowed to monopolise power. 

Chinese interest in the Khmer Rouge was never ideological but geopolitical linked to the Sino-Soviet dispute. Indeed, Singapore too noted that by the end of August 1988, the Chinese appeared to have decided on their position on Cambodia. For some time, they were uncertain how to respond to international pressures to dissociate themselves from the Khmer Rouge. Just as one should not overestimate Soviet influence over Vietnam, one should also not overestimate Chinese influence over the Khmer Rouge or Vietnam’s influence over the PRK, as in each set of relationships they needed each other.

In response to Qian, the Soviet side did not want to promise the time limit for the withdrawal of Vietnamese troops, arguing that Moscow ‘had no way to give orders to Vietnam’. However, they conveyed a message from the Vietnamese which said they wanted to discuss the timetable of withdrawal directly with the Chinese. Both the Soviets and the Chinese eventually reached agreement at the meeting that the complete withdrawal of Vietnamese troops should be set between June and December 1989. As for the other matters, the Soviets did not have any disagreement with the Chinese except that these matters ‘should be accompanied by a repudiation of the past policies of Cambodia [and the] realization of a dialogue between the countries of Indochina and ASEAN. And, after all parties in Cambodia had reached a political settlement, then all countries should immediately stop military aid to the various parties.

On 2 February 1989, Shevardnadze paid a return visit to China to prepare for the summit meeting, where he met Qian to continue the December 1988 discussion on Cambodia. Qian proposed to publicly announce the agreements reached in December on Cambodia alongside the date of the summit meeting as a ‘package agreement’, which the Soviets initially agreed. Shortly after, the Soviet side ‘suddenly changed its mind and went back on its words’. It refused to publish any joint statement on Cambodia and agreed only to publishing the summit date. The Chinese side stood firm and eventually, on 6 February, both sides simultaneously announced the joint communiqué on Cambodia and the date of Gorbachev’s visit to China. Gorbachev visited China from 15 to 18 May 1989 (during the Tiananmen protests), bringing the Sino-Soviet rift to an end.

Soviet-US relations also improved — Washington, which had been mostly disinterested in the Cambodia problem, was willing to discuss the issue with the Moscow at the summit level — culminating in Presidents H. W. Bush and Gorbachev declaring the end of the Cold War in Malta on 3 December 1989, not long after the fall of the Berlin Wall on 10 November 1989. As Vladislav M. Zubok noted,

on 30 October 1986, Gorbachev said that the financial crisis ‘has clutched us by the throat’ … By 1987, the Soviet state had no other means to increase its revenues besides taxes and price increases … After 1988, Gorbachev was in a hurry to end the Cold War because he had a personal need to compensate for his declining prospects at home with breakthroughs in foreign policy. As a result, Gorbachev’s diplomacy often failed to win a better deal with the United States and its allies.

It is worth noting that in May 1988, Hanoi announced that it would withdraw 50,000 troops from Cambodia between June and December 1988, to be monitored by international observers. Available evidence suggested that by early December 1988, only about 15,000 Vietnamese troops had been withdrawn. Hanoi had announced a substantial troop withdrawal from mid-December 1988 and invited Western journalists to witness the event. Most observers were sceptical that Hanoi could achieve the 50,000 figures by the end of 1988. Under Soviet pressure, Hanoi declared that it would withdraw all its troops in 1990, and earlier if there was a political settlement. The deadline was revised to September 1989.^105 By late September 1989, the Vietnamese, according to US and Thai sources, had withdrawn most of their troops. Vietnamese troop withdrawal from Cambodia, while welcome, raised the concern that the Khmer Rouge might take power again, thus the imperative to disarm the Khmer Rouge as soon as possible.

1 Stephen M. Walt, ‘Why wars are easy to start and hard to end’, Foreign Policy, 29 August 2022, https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/08/29/war-military-quagmire-russia-ukraine/, accessed on 8 November 2022.

2 Notes of conversation between First Permanent Secretary and Edith Lenart, journalist for The Economist and Sunday Times (Paris), 18 December 1979 (Secret).