ABSTRACT
On October 23, 1991, an agreement was signed in Paris establishing terms for peace in Cambodia that promised to end the protracted civil war in that country. The Cambodian conflict was a focal point of US-Soviet, Sino-Soviet, and regional differences. Both regional and global powers moderated longtime policies to take more accommodating stances that facilitated progress toward a Cambodian peace accord. US policymakers disagreed on steps necessary to strike a balance between ensuring that Vietnam withdraw from Cambodia and preventing a power vacuum that might be filled by the reviled Khmer Rouge. The internal US policy debate did not stop with the signing of the October 1991 peace agreement. A December 3, 1991, letter to President George Bush signed by half the Congress warned that US support for the United Nations peace plan was in jeopardy if the plan was seen as playing into the hands of the Khmer Rouge.
