ABSTRACT
Since April 1975, the central problem of international politics in Southeast Asia has been to devise structures to accommodate and mediate competitive interests between the regional noncommunist states grouped in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)* and the Indochinese communist states led by the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV). The critical issues of regional coexistence between the two groupings are now encapsulated in the contest over the internal political order in Kampuchea (Cambodia) pitting ASEAN against Vietnam. The political and diplomatic lines are clearly drawn: either a tacit acceptance of Vietnam’s fait accompli, the People’s Republic of Kampuchea (PRK), or a new act of Kampuchean self-determination. All of the parties to the conflict, with the exception of China and the Khmer Rouge, have explicitly ruled out the possibility of a return to the Pol Pot dominated status quo ante bellum.
