There seems to be a new player in the game of international politics these days. When President Bush wanted international support for sending American troops to the Persian Gulf, who did he call? The United Nations Security Council. The council, as we know, responded with surprisingly eager support.
In the olden days (that is, five years ago), when the bloc system almost guaranteed that controversial efforts from either East or West would be blocked by the other, the Security Council was often merely another battlefield for the Cold War. But now the council -- and especially its five permanent members (the two superpowers, along with the Chinese, the British, and the French) -- has become a reliable ally for U.S. diplomatic efforts. Some have charged that it has the potential to become just another place where the Americans exercise their muscle as the preeminent global power.
A case in point might well be the latest developments in Cambodia. The United States has long played a destructive role in the civil war that has been waged there for 11 years, aiding and abetting the rebel coalition led by the murderous Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge followers. Now the Bush administration has thrown its weight behind a U.N. Security Council plan that could effectively dismantle the only force capable of withstanding Pol Pot's return to power: the government of Cambodia, backed by our old nemesis, Vietnam.
The history of America's role in Cambodia over the past two decades is a tragically ironic story. At the height of the Vietnam War, U.S. forces helped to overthrow Prince Norodom Sihanouk to install Lon Nol. While Richard Nixon was dropping a half-million tons of bombs in the "secret war" in Cambodia, Lon Nol was busy destroying much of the moderate leadership of the country. The vacuum created allowed the genocidal Khmer Rouge to come to power, a four-year reign of terror ended only by the Vietnamese invasion in late 1978.
Despite the horrors of the Khmer Rouge's rule, for many U.S. officials the Vietnamese presence in Cambodia was an only-too-vivid reminder of America's humiliating defeat in the Indochina war. Thus the Bush administration -- and Reagan beforehand -- has provided aid to the "non-communist" factions of the anti-Vietnam coalition, led by -- and here's another of history's cruel ironies -- the same Prince Sihanouk we had so unceremoniously discarded a decade before.
Sihanouk's alliance-of-expediency with the Khmer Rouge in its resistance coalition put the United States in an embarrassing position. An ABC News documentary last April revealed that U.S. aid to the coalition ended up helping the Khmer Rouge survive and prosper as a fighting force, one which has made ominous military advances since Vietnamese troops pulled out of Cambodia in September 1989. The prospect of a military victory by the Khmer Rouge made the U.S. support for the coalition (which allowed the Khmer Rouge to be seated as Cambodia's U.N. representative) increasingly untenable -- and this summer's reversal almost inevitable.
Bush's reversal, though, was far from a complete severing of ties from the Rouge-tainted coalition. Despite the fact that the U.N. plan calls for a cease-fire and an end of foreign aid to the combatants, the administration has attempted to keep "non-military" funds flowing. With reports that the Khmer Rouge is already developing jungle caches of weapons and personnel in anticipation of a cease-fire, continued "humanitarian" support is all that is needed to keep Pol Pot's legions alive as a fighting force.
IF THERE IS A GLIMMER of hope in the U.N. plan for Cambodia, it is that for the first time the major players are talking to one another. The divisions between the four factions in Cambodia -- three in the rebel coalition and the Vietnamese-backed government -- are exacerbated by racial and class tensions, as well as by decades of malice churned on the bloody fields of war. If negotiation replaces armed confrontation, the change could only be welcomed by the Cambodian people.
But theirs has been a destiny driven by outside powers. For the past two decades and more, many of the great world rivalries -- between the Chinese and the Vietnamese, the Americans and the Russians, and the Americans and the Vietnamese -- have played themselves out in the Cambodian countryside. That's why it is imperative that the world community make a genuine and committed attempt to end the carnage there. For some observers, however, the U.N. process is flawed -- perhaps fatally so -- by the inclusion of the Khmer Rouge. "The Khmer Rouge committed genocide," opined the current issue of The Indochina Newsletter. "They should return to Phnom Penh in chains, not to run in U.N. elections." The CIA has estimated that the Khmer Rouge are supported by almost 30 percent of the Cambodian people, a result of a successful campaign to claim the "hearts and minds" of the populace.
For some, the Khmer Rouge's participation in the process is merely a smokescreen, with their real goal being to prolong the negotiations as long as possible. "The longer they avoid a political settlement, the better off they are," explained David Merchant, Mennonite Central Committee's co-representative to neighboring Laos for the past five years, because it gives the Khmer Rouge guerrillas -- the most effective fighting force -- time to consolidate gains on the battlefield.
The plan involves thousands of U.N. bureaucrats effectively taking over the administration of the country until elections are held. Some fear that the U.N. forces, most of them unable to speak the native Khmer language, could become yet another foreign enemy against which the xenophobic Khmer Rouge could rally popular opinion.
Because of U.S. and Chinese aversion to the Vietnamese-instituted government of Hun Sen, the Security Council "permanent five" refused to sanction a Namibia-style approach -- where the United Nations simply oversaw the elections and left the running of the country to the Namibian government. Instead, Hun Sen's government, the only force capable of thwarting Pol Pot, could be dismantled -- and the Khmer Rouge forces left intact. U.N. troops would be virtually powerless to enforce the cessation of fighting -- or compel those who lose the election to lay down their arms and become the loyal opposition.
The United States should immediately end its economic and political boycott of Cambodia and cut off all aid to the rebel coalition. Until that happens, according to Merchant, the Cambodian people "will continue to be pawns in an international game of diplomatic intrigue."
But even that might not be enough to save Cambodia from a return to the killing fields. The inability of the United States to accept its defeat at the hands of Vietnam has led to policies that have inflicted untold anguish on a long-suffering people. Because of choices made by our country and others, there is no clear and easy way out of Cambodia's nightmare.
But one thing is clear. Millions died at the hands of Pol Pot once; it is unthinkable that the world would allow, for whatever reason, such a gruesome tragedy to happen again. If that means America must swallow its pride and stand beside its old enemy, Vietnam, in resolute and determined opposition to the Khmer Rouge, so be it. Such an act of contrition might go a long way toward healing our own national soul as well.
Jim Rice is editor of Sojourners.
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