ABSTRACT
Ostensibly at least, neighbouring Cambodia was in a better position than Laos in the world of decolonisation and the Cold War. Under Sihanouk’s leadership, whatever constitutional form that took, it frequently asserted its neutrality, and, despite its pursuit of an active diplomacy, it was ready to seek a neutralisation that would have inhibited it. Sihanouk was ready to make a Laos-type agreement, but it was not available. Neutralisation involved not only a country’s declaration, but also the readiness of other powers to respond to it. Not all of them were ready to do so. Sihanouk’s neutralism was conceived in a Cold War context, but it was also conceived in the coincidental context of decolonisation. That, of course, was welcome to Sihanouk: his initial political triumph was to secure French recognition of his country’s independence in 1953. But decolonisation also revived a threat that colonisation had to some extent mitigated. Once a great state that had focused on Angkor, over the centuries Cambodia had lost control of vast territories to the Thai kingdom on the one hand, and to the Vietnamese on the other, many ‘Khmer Krom’ still in fact living in southern Vietnam, as Sihanouk’s delegate pointed out at Geneva.1 Playing one off against the other had been an inadequate remedy. Accepting French ‘protection’ in 1863 had been an alternative, though, of course, with its own costs, above all the loss of independence by incorporation into French Indo-China (FIC), and also the immigration of many Vietnamese across a now non-existent frontier. The dislodging of the colonial framework left Cambodia exposed to its former opponents. The Thais, reluctantly returning gains made during the Japanese occupation, nibbled at the frontiers; the Saigon government challenged Cambodia’s maritime frontier. It was, moreover, prepared to support Sihanouk’s critics, providing, for example, clandestine radio facilities. What was now to prevent their going further, finally swallowing Cambodia up? Other outside powers might again have to be called upon. But as French Indo-China receded into history, it appeared that the US, as part of its Cold War strategy in Southeast Asia, was becoming ally or patron of both the Kingdom of Thailand and the State (later Republic) of Vietnam. Would it restrain them or would it support them? Being neutral would be a sign of independence. A neutralist policy would also avoid Cambodia itself also coming under the patronage
of the Americans, and so depending entirely on them to restrain its neighbours from undermining its independence and territorial integrity and challenging frontiers that had mattered less under the FIC structure than they did in a nation-state structure. It would enable Cambodia to look to other powers, or to threaten to do so. Being neutralised, Laos-style, would be a further step: it would limit Cambodia’s exercise of full sovereignty. But it would bind all the powers to preserve the essence of the status quo. The extent of an agreement and of its implementation would, of course, be in question. The other powers to which Cambodia might appeal, if free to do so, could include the British, still active in the region, with a base in Singapore, and, as the Laos negotiations were to show, active in support of a post-imperial nation-state Southeast Asia, but also constrained by their ‘special relationship’ with the US. They could also include the French, concerned under the Fourth Republic to limit their commitments and focus on North Africa, but ready under de Gaulle’s Fifth Republic to question American leadership and carve out a new role, based on what would now be called ‘soft power’ rather than hard. Much more controversially, Cambodia could appeal to the PRC, which de Gaulle was to recognise, well after the UK, in 1964. Threatening to do so might limit the support the US gave to its neighbours, Thailand and the Republic of Vietnam, lest its whole position in the region should be undermined. The Cold War thus had its advantages as well as disadvantages. Looking to the PRC would also take account of a future in which it might come to dominate mainland Southeast Asia. The Americans, like the other Western powers, were likely at some point abandon a strategic role in the region. It would be necessary to appease China. Even more, perhaps, Cambodia might need it to restrain its neighbours. And that would mean not only Thailand but also what could well be a Vietnam reunited under the DRV leadership. Cambodia’s neutralism was, Sihanouk stressed, not a matter of ideals and ideologies, but, as he saw it, a political necessity. While the Cold War was sustained in Southeast Asia, it would enable what was left of a once great empire to survive. What would happen after that was uncertain. Though something of a prophet, he cannot have imagined the horrors that in the event the Khmers were to go through.
