Cambodia and the Prince

...If he offers something less than the full benefit of those reflections in War & Hope, it is because the book is in part a self-serving political manifesto explaining Sihanouk's obviously sincere belief that he holds out the only remaining hope for his country...

...It was his country, after all, that was transformed by the Khmer Rouge victory into what he calls " a vast gulag, an immense slaughterhouse worthy of Auschwitz...

...It is perhaps still too soon to expect a reconsideration of the anti-war position in the West, since too many people have a political stake in defending the anti-war view, add moreover the Communist victory has not affected them personally...

...Shawcross attributed the incursion to the desire of Nixon and Kissinger to show their toughness...

...His final argument is that a Chinese "show of force" might persuade Hanoi to open up talks, "considering that Vietnam is more sensitive to military than friendly persuasion...

...He feels that both Lon Nol and Pol Potwere wrong to have taken a more confrontationist course with Vietnam, though he never demonstrates that appeasement wassuccessful either, at least not the way he played the game...

...itted that he fell because his policy toward Vietnam failed...

...N o n e t h e l e s s , the odds against his return to power are prohibitive...

...Unfortunately, Sihanouk is still too much THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR SEPTEMBER 1980 15 the cunning politician with his eye on the future, when what is needed from him is an honest assessment of the past...

...Our strategic interests in the Persian Gulf are great and our strategic position at the moment is delicate...

...In a postscript to the book, he writes that "Soviet-backed Vietnamese expansionism, if left unchecked, may well trigger a Third World War...

...Reports from refugees fleeing Cambodia in 1973 indicate that the Khmer Rouge began to implement their revolutionary idea in areas under their control as early as 1971...

...At one time or anfther over the years he has been able to cooperate with virtually every p a r t y to the Indochinese conflict, including not just the regional and global Communist powers but the Americans as well...

...When he promises that his Cambodia would be completely neutral (which he distinguishes from being "nonaligned"), giving no power cause for intervention, he can be taken at his word...

...But even he seems to know that this is wishful thinking, for he speaks elsewhere of Hanoi's "land-hungry and hegemonic intentions toward Cambodia...

...Sisk is professor of English at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington...

...Conceivably, then, Carnegie might improve their morale to the point where they will be able to employ his techniques in selling themselves more effectively to us, so that Carnegie will indeed have come home to roost...

...Car/Gershman is Resident Scholar a t Freedom House...

...Sihanouk thinks that Hanoi might be induced to withdraw from Cambodia in exchange for massive American economic aid...

...In fact, he was overthrown by the Cambodian army (without American connivance) because he had allowed the North Vietnamese into Camb.odia and couldn't get them out, even though he had sanctioned American "hot pursuit" ground raids and B-52 bombing missions to clear out the sanctuaries...

...After all, they are ~n the same fix that we are: Their days of moral clarity and firmness of purpose are behind them...

...Yet earlier in the book he notes that Vietnam's inability to manage its economy is actually a reflection of its devotion to war...

...Shawcross writes in the introduction that Sihano~k was "too quick" to join up with the Communists since his name gave them " i n s t a n t and widespread legitimacy at home...

...He still speaks of the " j u s t c a u s e " of the Vietnamese Communists against "the American imperialists" and praises Hanoi for providing a-' 'heroic s h i e l d " during t h e early part of the Cambodian war which "allowed the fledgling Khmer Rouge armed forces to develop and grow stronge r . " But it was this very "heroic shield" and "our joint anti-American undertaking" that allowed "the incorrigible assassins of the Khmer, nation, and r a c e " to take power...

...They seemed to love watching the mice run around in circles, desperately and hopelessly looking for a way out, then die in the flames...

...His loyalty to Cambodia is beyond dispute...

...But this is about as far as he is prepared to go in criticizing Sihanouk...

...As Francois Ponchaud later pointed out in his book Cambodia: Year Zero, the motivation behind these policies was ideological...

...Indeed, Chou told him that if he resigned his position, "the Cambodian people will stop fighting and Lon Nol and the Americans will win...

...The current r u l e r , Heng Samrin, is just a puppet of Hanoi who won't even allow international food and medical relief to reach the starving Khmer people...

...He is confident he would win such an open contest, and he undoubtedly would...

...When he writes that Vietnam will negoti.ate with him out of gratitude, "seeing how much I sacrificed for them, including the Khmer monarchy," he is grasping at straws...

...The time when Cambodia could be saved is now long gone...

...Ed.] THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR SEPTEMBER 1980 13 conflict was North Vietnamese imperialism, not American intervention...

...For the present, the most that can be done is to care for the survivors of the holocaust and try to understand why Cambodia died...

...For example, during, his visit to the United States recently he conceded that the Cambodian army was r i g h t to have deposed him "because I was wrong" in sid-ing.with Hanoi...

...According to Sihanouk, the Khmer Rouge 14 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR SEPTEMBER 1980 leaders told him that "we will be the first nation to create a completely communist society without wasting time on intermediate steps...

...The real culprit, of course, is the United States...

...It is hard to see, then, why he takes comfort in this particular disability of his neighbor...

...This kind of candor is missing from War & Hope where Sihanouk tries too hard to justify himself and to adopt fashionable positions...

...For years their chief entertainment had been the physical suffering of men and a n i m a l s . " Sihanouk notes that while he was under house arrest in 1976 his guards "took great pleasure in catching mice, shutting them in a cage, and setting fire m it...

...Gershman in September, 1979...

...with the evidence of his own experience...

...But Sihanouk remarks that before the Lon Nol coup the sanctuaries were "limited to a few outlying and uninhabited sectors along the Cambodia-Viemam borderline" (emphasis added).~ Another pillar of the Shawcross argumerit is that the United States unilaterally brought Cambodia into the war as a bell i g e r e n t with its ground assault on the sanctuaries beginning on April 30, 1970...

...Shawcross himself admitted recently at a forum organized by the I n s t i t u t e for Policy Studies t h a t he r e f u s e d to believe the reports of Communist atrocities at f i r s t (after April 17, 1975, that is) because he didn't think a "left-wing" movement could be capable of doing such things...

...What one expects from the Russians is something like Pravda's recent attack on that ethos as it is displayed in California, a "classic textbook example" of the "moral and social bankruptcy of bourgeois society" at the end of the twentieth century...

...His chief opponent, the ousted Pol Pot, is the most notorious butcher since Hitler and Stalin, having managed in the course of 45 months to liquidate over a quarter of the country's population Both are tied to opposing Com*Pantheon, $10.95...

...William Shawcross, in the second introduction to War & Hope, writes that the "terrible mistakes" of Sihanouk's that led tohis undoing had to do with his neglect of domestic concerns...

...True, the United States supports Sihanouk's position...

...Sfince 1936, when How To Win FHends And Influence Pe;ople first appeared, millions of Americans have either read Carnegie or taken his self-improvement courses or both...

...He writes, for example, that the Khmer Rouge c r e a t e d a strong army only a f t e r "several years of persistent indoctrination and harsh training...

...They recruited, he explains, exclusively from among the poorest p e a s a n t s in the most remote villages, using "clever propaganda" to fill "their hearts with a seething, unquenchab!e hatred for tile 'upper classes.' " They c o n c e n t r a t e d on r e c r u i t i n g 12-year-old children who were the most easily indoctrinated and who enjoyed "the tantalizing p~'ospect of playing war" and "having the power of life and death over all categories of s l a v e s . " The training of these new recruits emphasized "cruel games" such as " k i l l i n g dogs, cats, and o t h e r edible animals with clubs or bayonets...

...In the course of such training, they became "addicted to torture...

...All of this Shawcross neglected to mention in Sides~sow...

...How many others who are convinced that he is the summation of all that is evil in American capitalism have 16 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR SEPTEMBER 1980...

...To dismiss the legal arguments against our a t t e m p t to r e l e a s e our diplomats in Iran by force is not of course the same as arguing that we should land the Marines and proceed...

...Despite Sihanouk's well-known anti-militarism, which Western liberals find so appealing, he seems well aware that in the end the Vietnamese Communists understand only force and will not be brought to terms if it is not used against them...

...fictions of childhood...

...Perhaps Carnegie can help them recapture the pristine Marxist vision in which such a gap is unthinkable...

...Even a f t e r the Khmer Rouge had eliminated Sihanouk's supporters in 1973 he continued to promote their cause...

...For example, in Sideshow Shawcross opened his attack against U.S...

...It is particularly ironic that he should take this view, since presumably one of the book's major concerns, as Gerard Briss6 writes in his introduction, "is to demonstrate the absurdity of any attempts to solve Indochinese problems by forcible means...

...Sihanouk himself is enslaved to these myths, even as he refutes them...

...They remained in Cambodia even after the Frenchwithdrew in November, 1953, indicating their future intentions by bringing 5,000 Khmers to Hanoi for what Sihanouk calls "pro-Communist brainwashing...

...If anyone is a symbol of the ethos of a bourgeois, profitoriented society it is Carnegie, whom Sinclair Lewis called the Bard of Babbittry...

...Armed force is being used to keep our diplomats prisoner...

...Nevertheless, he reveals that the main issue for himself (as well as.for Lon Nol and Pol Pot) was always Vietnam's "hegem0nic i n t e n t i o n s . " He had been trying to hold off Hanoi, in fact, ever since Ho Chi Minh opened up a second front in Cambodia during the war against the French from 1947-1954...

...attacked Base Area 704 in southern Cambodia where 1,640 Cambodians were living...

...12 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR SEPTEMBER 1980 He thinks that the Vietnamese and the Khmer Rouge forces of Pol Pot "should be allowed to keep killing each o t h e r o f f " since this would weaken Hanoi and undermine its ability to "colonize" his country...

...The attempt to create " a new concept of society" was " a perfect example of the application of an ideology pushed to the farthest limit of its internal logic...

...Shawcross, in his introduction to War & Hope, writes that Sihanouk is "cautious" in his criticism of the United States...

...Sihanouk himself has taken this view, but in War & Hope he refutes the whole argument...

...Carnegie never doubted that moral idealism and national aspiration could go together, any more than he doubted his capacity to give advice to married people...

...Perhaps the editors of Pravda should have remembered that over 50 years ago their predecessors championed, against considerable opposition, the publication of Henry Ford's My Life and Work...

...Even if he were to accept the view that the Communists behaved brutally because their ideology demanded it, he could still fall back on his final anti-American argument, which is that the United States enabled the Khmer Rouge to grow by creating a situation where they gained legitimacy as the leaders of a popular antiimperialist resistance...

...In fact, what Sihanouk reveals in War & Hope is that his posture of neutralism and conciliation was never intended to be a realistic policy for all of Indochina but is r a t h e r a Cambodian policy for survival against its powerful Vietnamese neighbor...

...So he remained in Peking as the titular head of the pro-Communist forces and their most effective propaganda weapon...

...But caution doesn't explain Sihanouk's failure to adopt the Shawcross view of the conflict...

...Somewhere toward the end of IVar & Hope: The Case f o r Cambodia," Prince Norodom Sihanouk comments that during the period between his overthrow by Lon Nol in 1970 and Hanoi's victory over the Pol Pot regime nine years l a t e r he had ample time to r e f l e c t upon his own past mistakes and the "indescribable horror" that has befallen the Khmer people...

...This, of course, is precisely what they tried to do, killing three million people in the process...

...In other words, the Communist forces (with Sihanouk's cooperation) had organized themselves for a full-scale attack on Cambodia which was already well underway before the U.S.South Vietnamese ground incursion...

...If Carnegie had any doubts about California, he kept them to himself...

...Sihanouk, on the other hand, is a genuine nationalist and a conciliator by nature...

...He says only that he was overthrown by Lon Nol and Nixon because he had "leaned slightly toward revolutionary Vietnam...

...That is how the weak must behave...

...But Sihanouk himself has adm...

...The fact that ideology was at the root of the Khmer Rouge crimes and that it was applied so early in the war shows how contemptibly absurd the notion is that the Communists became brutal only after five years of war against the American-backed forces...

...Ford was himself a showinan who, like Carnegie, had learned how to make the cash registers ring, and the Russians seem always to have been impressed with this kind of showmanship insofar as it represented a maximum exploitation of the material means of production...

...I t is a useful warning, but it is unlikely to be heeded in the West until the myths about the war in Vietnam are dispelled...

...There was a method to this madness and it was conceived by the Sorbonne-educated "Parisian Communists" who directed the Khmer Rouge...

...proclaimed Khmer Republic" (emphasis added...

...an}" way qualified the right of sovereign states to defend themselves against major breaches of international law that could not be remedied by diplomacy, arbitration, or litigation...

...In the event, the draftsmen of the Charter compromised with Article 51...

...Perhaps their, interest in Ford and Carnegie should be interpreted as a hankering after something they were denied: a capitalist phase in which the desire to make it big through the manipulation of other people would have John t...

...That is an "armed attack" on the sovereignty of the United States under any definition of the term...

...Kenneth M. Quinn, a Foreign Service Officer, prepared a detailed report on the totalitarian practices of the Khmer Rouge in t h e s e areas which was based entirely on data collected between 1972 and 1974, mostly from r e f u g e e s . These practices were identical to those followed after April 17, 1975, throughout Cambodia: the forcible relocation of the population, collectivized hard labor, the destruction of the family and religious institutions...

...I note that 43 years after it was a bestseller in America, Dale Carnegie's How To Make Friends And Influence People has been serialized, as edited by Russian censors, in a Soviet magazine for managers...

...The other reasons he gives for believing his plan is feasible are no more convincing...

...Surely no one else could cbnceivably restore peace and independence to the country...

...Where was it, in fact, when Pol Pot was carrying out his horrid revolution...

...A t the heart of the anti-American argument is the unwillingness of those who opposed the war to come to terms honestly with the consequences of their views...

...That is why reading Carnegie today is like revisiting the pastora...

...They were determined to close Cambodia off to me so that they could consolidate their own power and prevent me from holding swayover the Khmer people at some future date...

...His three-point plan for a solution to the conflict calls for the abolition of both the Heng Samrin government and t h e Pol Pot resistance, a new international conference on Indochina, and free elections in which the Khmer people themselves can freely choose their leaders from among competing political parties...

...If that is the case, the Russians have managed to disguise the hankering by presenting their Carnegie in humanitarian terms: as an aid to the manager's obligation to supervise people so as not "to leave in his wake a series of mutilated human lives...

...He spoke more realistically during his visit to the United States when he explained that he had sided with the Vietcong against America in the 1960s "to get [Hanoi's] g r a t i t u d e for the f u t u r e . . . [but] they were very ungrateful...

...But he had other documents in-his possession, one of which was released to him under the Freedom of Information Act, which correctly labeled Base Area 740 as the targeted sanctuary and, in addition, described in great detail the elaborate North Vietnamese troop concentrations in the area, along with anti-aircraft, field artillery, rocket and mortar positions, storage areas, road networks, bridges, and so forth...

...The reason is simply that Sihanouk can't conceal his understanding that the root of the tReviewed in these pages by Mr...

...Whether the captors of our diplomats ate considered officers of the Iranian state or members of a private army the Iranian state cannot control is immaterial...

...California was the habitat of showmen, and showmen, he observed, "are ringing the cash registers...

...The cultural contradictions of capitalism that bother latter-day observers like Daniel Bell and Robert Heilbroner no more bothered him than the cultural contradictions of Marxism bothered the young British literary critic Christopher Caudwell...

...In War & Hope, Sihanouk writes that Hanoi's military positions inside Cambodia " v i s i b l y expanded and swelled in size shortly after Lon Nol's coup d'6tat...

...Carl Gershman CAMBODIA AND THE PRINCE Sihanouk remembers what anti-war apologists choose to forget...

...Every peaceful remedy has been tried and has failed Both the doctrines of international law and the pattern of state practice fully support the legality of our attempt to rescue our diplomats...

...He notes also that this offensive coincided with the formation of a "brandnew military alliance of the North Vietnamese, the Sihanouk supporters, and the Khmer Rouge" which was "made official in Canton in April, 1970, with the blessing of Prime Minister Chou En.lai, the enthusiastic host of the Summit Conference of Indochinese Peoples...

...It is a policy of appeasement, p u r e and simple...

...But one expects something more from Sih~inouk than what is presented in War & Hope...

...In a letter to NBC News (October 10, 1979), he acknowledged that it was.actually Base Area 740 in northeastern Cambodia that was attacked...

...But Whatever the advisability of our using force in Iran at this time, our decision should not be affected by doubts about its legality...

...Here again, though, Sihanouk offers a completely different interpretation...

...been allowed free rein...

...But he conveniently neglected to mention the North Vietnamese offensive against Cambodian military positions and civilian locations which was launched more than a month before the inaursion and which t h r e a t e n e d the survival of the Phnom Penh government...

...As Sihanouk admitted earlier this year during a visit to the-United S t a t e s ; even France, Cambodia's ruler until 1954, will not support his proposal for an international conference since it "does not want bad relations with my enemies," the Soviet Union and Vietnam (the Washington Star, February 25, 1980...

...Responding to the charge that he .was a coward for staying in Peking while the war was going on, he explains that he was held there against his will: The t r u t h is t h a t t h e Sihanouk name a l o n e helped [the Khmer Rouge] recruit cannon fodder more easily and win the rural and urban population away froth Lon Nol...

...Yet in this book, if not e l s e w h e r e , he is not p r e p a r e d to admit that he made any mistakes...

...G • f a l l the contentions made in Sideshow, none is more essential to the book's main argument than the charge that America is ultimately responsible for the bestial crimes of the Khmer Rouge...

...It wasnecessary to "harden the hearts and minds" o f the Communist cadres, for only if they were e n t i r e l y devoid of all human sensibility could they carry through the total revolution desired by the ideologues at the top...

...I am .a chauvinistic enough nat i o n a l i s t , " he writes, " t o have risked humiliation in order to seek Vietnam's friendship and respect...

...In War & Hope .he offers no honest assessment of his pro-Hanoi policy during the 1960s...

...But there may be more than this in the Russians' attraction to Carnegie...

...But they wanted this support to come to them from Peking or Pyongyang...

...munist camps, the former to Moscow and the latter to Peking, which means that the venomous Sino-Soviet rivalry is now superimposed on the ancient enmity between Vietnam and Cambodia...

...A solution on either Heng Samrin's or Pol Pot's terms is thus impossible, even if the hands of both were not dripping with blood...

...Shawcro~s contends that the Khmer Rouge became brutal because they were brutalized by the United States during the course of the war...

...t h e n they spread through the whole of the self~Shawcross has now withdrawn his charge that the U.S...

...To suggest that the U.S...

...Now he knows that the reports were true, but he continues to shift the blame by holding the United States ultimately responsible for the destruction of Cambodia...

...He made many of us feel good about ourselves, all of a piece, and surely the Russians, tormented as they seem to be by the gap between public rhetoric and private fact, have the same need to feel good about themselves...

...It declares that nothing in the C h a r t e r qualifies "the inherent right" of individual or collective self-defense--but it seems to limit that right to situations of "armed a t t a c k " Article 51 has been one of the most controversial provisions of the Charter, but the controversies which swirl about the words and ideas of Article 51 do not affect the legal right of the United States to use whatever force is necessary to obtain the r e l e a s e of its diplomats from t h e i r captivity in Iran...

...But the time is long past when the United States was in a position to exercise any significant influence over events in Southeast Asia...

...In addition to " t h e i r armed p e n e t r a t i o n , even at t h a t early date, into Cambodia," Sihanouk writes, the Communists undertook " a n energetic subversion campaign" aimed at Cambodian peasants, workers, and Buddhist monks and also tried to organize a "Khmer popular u p r i s i n g " against the monarchy...

...brought Cambodia into the war is, therefore, a blatant and disgraceful distortion of the t r u t h , for by Sihanouk's own admission Hanoi and its allies were the aggressors...

...Chou asked him not t.o make his decision public since this might "demoralize the Khmer people" who "were fighting for Sihanouk...

...But no one seriously entertains the 'thought that such elections will ever be held...

...Sihanouk probably understands this, but instead of speaking the truth he offers himself as a palliative for the conscience of the Left and as a conciliator in a conflict that has already been settled...

...I t is obviously very hard for those who, in Solzhenitsyn's words, are "enslaved to progressive quirks" to ackriowle.dge the role of revolutionary Communist ideology in the Cambodian holocaust...

...It is difficult to quarrel with Sihanouk's main contention, that his return to power is in Cambodia's best interests...

...He also maintains that Vietnam will not "be able to defy international opinion ind e f i n i t e l y " by continuing to colonize another country...

...and a generalized policy of terror that included executions for minor infringements of discipline...

...All that optimism and confidence, that absdnce of alienation, can be, even now, a bracing experience, if only briefly...

...In fact, if Sihanouk were to remain consistent with his observations about Vietnam he would have to recognize that the American p r e s e n c e in Indochina was necessary to r e s t r a i n Hanoi, just as he wants China to play the same role today...

...He does so unintentionally in the course of apologizing for his own role during the war...

...But where is the "coalition of countries of good will" which is pressuring Vietnam to withdraw...

...It is, in fact, his only loyalty, which accounts for his ideological opportunism and his promiscuous taste in political allies...

...He writes that he became "humiliated and exasperated by such treatment" as early as April, 1970, when he informed Chou En-lai that he intended to step down as the head of the "resistance" after the war was won...

...Shawcross attributed his erroneous charge to a clerical error in a Defense Department public statement...

...He also thinks that Vietnam's growing economic problems at home mean t h a t it won't have the resources " t o gain a lasting hold over Cambodia...

...As an experienced practitioner of small-power realpolitik ( i . e . , appeasement), Sihanouk surely knows that Cambodia could not survive without a balance of force which contained Hanoi...

...There are many other respects in which War & Hope offers evidence which conflicts with the views of Shawcross and others, who nevertheless use Sihanouk in d e f e n s e of t h e i r anti-war position...

...And as we have see n , he played no small role in their victory...

...A l l this is useful background for a reading of Shawcross's now famous book, Sideshow: Nixon, Kissinger and the Destruction of Cambodia,~ where events in Cambodia are treated as if they were entirely unrelated to North Vietnam's "hegemonic intentions," and America is accused of dragging Cambodia into the war...

...This is not by itself a criticism of Sihanouk, since he is correct in his fundamental estimate of Cambodia's weakness and Vietnam's strength and is therefore wise to prefer wily diplomacy to the use or threat of force...

...They ~ertainly needed my political and moral support...

...He would also have to acknowledge that his country was d e s t r o y e d not because America tried to counter Vietnam, which is the myth propagated by Shawcross and others, but because it failed to do so effectively...

...This is a startling development, though it might be less startling if we knew what the censors took out...

...Erazim Koh~ik, writing in a recent New Oxford Review, notes that the mainspring of historical Marxism was the alliance of moral idealism and national aspirations...

...But with 200,000 troops in Cambodia, Hanoi will probably be able to hold on indefinitely and is far more likely to strike f u r t h e r into Thailand than to withdraw from Cambodia...

...Nevertheless, the book is a good deal more than t h a t , for, whatever his i n t e n t i o n s , Sihanouk adds to the evidence discrediting the anti-war position...

...But this is clearly not a fair reading of the book...

...They splayed this game every day...

...Iran is r e s p o n s i b l e under e i t h e r hypothesis...

...o0oQmoImQ4QIIQQogII~iQmoIQQQ6I0i~QImQQgUQDgi080QQI~iQ6qgQ0IQQQQ0QIB0migI~QQOIi1Q0I0Qg~QQQ~joitq6Q6q~IQQoB~oIDQQQaQii0miIaa9QQgUOO8D0oQiQi000~GIggQ oQ John P. Sisk BEINGS OF GOOD CHEER What the human potential movement could learn from Dale Carnegie...

...He remains, therefore, a confused and confusing personality who is unable to salvage from the demise of his country the moral clarity which the world needs and which he, as the spokesman for his tortured people, could offer...

...policy with the charge that the so-called "menu" bombing raids against North Vietnamese sanctuaries hit areas where t h e r e were " s i z e - able" concentrations of Cambodian civilians...