The evolution of Pol Pot and his associates as persons and as a group and the evolution of their ideas led to the ideology that was the blueprint for genocide. They shared a framework and provided each other with support. Much study is required before we shall come to understand the childhood and later experiences that create a propensity to join or lead extreme movements. In the last part of the book we shall consider individual characteristics that prevent the acceptance or creation of destructive ideologies and the origins of these characteristics in socialization and experience.
One other person had great influence: Prince Sihanouk. His policies while ruling Cambodia have been viewed both as pragmatic and as opportunistic. He probably wanted a democratic capitalism in a neutral Cambodia. To protect neutrality, he attempted to balance the influence of the Western and Communist blocs. After his overthrow he did everything he could to regain power. Having fought the communists, he now joined them and continued to support them even after he saw that they were using him.63 His actions were not principled; his aim seems to have been to regain an important political role. This, presumably, led him to enter again into an alliance with the Khmer Rouge to recapture Cambodia after the Khmer Rouge were driven from the country by Vietnam.
Steps along the continuum of destruction
Starting in the mid-1960s, antigovernment violence and government violence followed each other with increasing intensity. During the civil war, there was the U.S. bombing, the invasion, and the communist violence against populations in the territories they occupied. The civil war was fought with great fury, and atrocities were committed on both sides. Government soldiers were known to disfigure captured Khmer Rouge soldiers or behead them, cut them open, and eat their livers.64
Instead of increasing violence inflicted by one group on another, Cambodia saw an increasing cycle of reciprocal violence between warring factions. As a result of the turmoil during their formative years, communist guidance, and their own experience in fighting, violence against “enemies” became integral to the identities of the young Khmer Rouge fighters.
The role of bystanders
There were few bystanders, internal or external, who could have exerted influence in Cambodia. As their power grew, the members of the Pol Pot group killed anyone who did not cooperate. China had continuing friendly relations with Cambodia and was the only country in a position to exert influence, but it did not. In the end, the North Vietnamese invasion stopped the killings.
The United States had no power to change Cambodian policies once the Pol Pot group took power. U.S. actions did a great deal to “destabilize” Cambodia. The 1970 invasion might be justified by the North Vietnamese use of Cambodia as a sanctuary, but it is difficult to see any justification for the extensive bombardment of heavily populated areas just because they were in the hands of the communists.
Within the United States we have institutions that protect human and civil rights. In contrast, neither the United States nor other nations have institutions concerned with actions by their governments against the citizens of other countries. Leaders have no direct accountability in this realm. International institutions have little power and therefore little influence. Lacking accountability, leaders are often guided by ideology, prejudice, and broad (and often unexamined) notions of national interest.
Cambodia also offers another lesson in the careless use of American power. The United States entered, destroyed lives, changed the circumstances, and, when the ship sank, left. Congress ordered President Nixon to stop the bombing on August 15, 1973. Under congressional pressures President Ford terminated the airlift that was bringing supplies to Phnom Penh as the city was near collapse, on April 14, 1975.
To be an effective bystanders, the United States must maintain friendly relations with other countries. To maintain our ability to exert influence, we must respect others’ independence and right to choose their ways of life. And we must intervene only when human considerations make this imperative (see Minimalism in the Relations of Nations in Chapter 16).
Another issue is the behavior of the United States and the world toward Pol Pot and his fellow leaders of “Democratic Cambodia” after their fall from power. The United States and China insisted that the Pol Pot government was the legitimate representative of Cambodia in the United Nations. It was regarded as preferable to the current government of Cambodia created by the Vietnamese. Ever since, the United States and China have supported groups fighting against the Vietnam-backed government. China has been supplying the Khmer Rouge with arms. In 1982 rebel groups led by Son Sann, a former prime minister of Cambodia, and Sihanouk officially joined in a common cause with the Khmer Rouge.
As Vietnam plans to withdraw from Cambodia, it is a real danger that the Khmer Rouge will regain power. It is the militarily strongest rebel group. Its actions, including its brutal treatment of Cambodians in refugee camps located in Thailand just outside Cambodia, demonstrate its essential continuity.
The United States has been exerting pressure on Vietnam to withdraw as a condition for normalizing relations between the two countries, without making prior efforts to stop the Khmer Rouge from regaining power. What values guided this U.S. policy? Was it the abstract ideal of freedom or national self-determination, which prevailed over valuing the lives the Khmer Rouge would be likely to destroy? Was it hostility toward Vietnam due to our military defeat by them? Was it antagonism toward the Soviet Union, the supporter of Vietnam?
As the Vietnamese withdrawal promised for September 1989 nears, fast-moving events offer hope that the Soviets and Chinese will agree on a policy, that the current government of Cambodia will join forces with the ever-present Prince Sihanouk, and that the Khmer Rouge will be stopped from regaining power.
a Sihanouk vacillated in his relationship to the United States; for example, at times he accepted,
