Introduction

“You should also tell the Cambodians that we will be friends with them. They are murderous thugs, but we won’t let that stand in our way. We are prepared to improve relations with them.” Here U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was addressing the Thai Foreign Minister, Chatichai Choonhavan. They were meeting in Washington on November 26, 1975, seven months after the Khmer Rouge regime had taken over Cambodia, Thailand’s neighbor. ¹ The closest Khmer Rouge ally was Mao’s China, and U.S. President Gerald Ford was about to leave for a visit to Beijing. Afterwards Ford and Kissinger went to Jakarta to meet Indonesia’s President, General Suharto, on December 6. There Ford told Suharto that in China, “we made it clear that we are opposed to the expansion of any nation.” He added: “The unification of Vietnam has come more quickly than we anticipated. There is, however, resistance in Cambodia to the influence of Hanoi. We are willing to move slowly in our relations with Cambodia, hoping perhaps to slow down the North Vietnamese influence although we find the Cambodian government very difficult.” Kissinger then explained Beijing’s similar strategy: “the Chinese want to use Cambodia to balance off Vietnam.… We don’t like Cambodia, for the government in many ways is worse than Vietnam, but we would like it to be independent. We don’t discourage Thailand or China from drawing closer to Cambodia.” ²