Cambodia Between East and West

...a new turn was given to the situation...

...But Nehru's own moderation under extreme provocation has allayed nascent alarm and maintained the friendly euphoria characteristic of this small but independent-minded country...

...Prince Sihanouk announced Cambodia's diplomatic recognition of Communist China at embassy level, and soon thereafter set out on a visit to Peking—his second in two years...

...The "Five Principles" of peaceful coexistence—the product of Indian moderation and Chinese astuteness— have provided Cambodia with a framework within which it may develop its own policy of friendship with all the great powers in such a way that it is impossible for either of its traditional enemies to destroy its new-found independence...

...But Cambodia has, as yet, nothing at all to grumble about in its relations with Peking...

...There is, however, a definite danger in Prince Sihanouk's not entirely unjustified belief that his neutrality, while welcomed and respected by the Russians and the Chinese (who see in it an advantage to themselves) is not really trusted by the U.S...

...Modern Cambodia is all that is left of a once-powerful empire which from about the 10th to the 13th centuries of the Christian era extended throughout most of the area of the Indochinese peninsula...

...An interesting link between the old Khmers and the American aid engineers is the present rehabilitation and development of the old irrigation system of the Baray Occidental at Angkor...

...Today, Thailand, a proud monarchy which has never been under European colonial rule, historically contemptuous of the Cambodians—and yet owing to Cambodia a great deal of its cultural heritage—is a friend of the West, a member of the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization and strongly anti-Communist...

...The Cambodian Prime Minister, Prince Norodom Sihanouk, architect of Cambodia's neutrality, is one of the most controversial figures in Asian politics...

...But not unreasonably he hopes that aggression against his frontiers will be made impossible by the UN...

...It is important to note that there have been no official Cambodian expressions of sympathy for Prince Souphannouvong and the pro-Communist Neo Lao Hak Sat...

...Last November Prince Sihanouk made official visits to the United Arab Republic and Yugoslavia...

...By Michael Field CAMBODIA BETWEEN EAST AND WEST 'Royal Socialist' leader follows policy of non-alignment, even with other neutrals PHNOM PENH THE KINGDOM of Cambodia is today perhaps the only state in Southeast Asia still dedicated without reservation to a policy of absolute neutrality...

...In spite, therefore, of his friendly regard for UAR President Gamal Abdel Nasser, Marshal Tito and Nehru...

...But it is a friendship offered on the understanding that the only contribution to world peace which his small country can make is that of remaining utterly detached from everybody's quarrels, everywhere...

...American feeling in particular has run high from time to time about Cambodia since its Government has steadily pursued a policy little to the State Department's taste and regarded by it as liable to increase the Communist danger in Indochina...

...Nehru's role as the advocate of neutrality and peaceful coexistence is greatly respected...

...Neither is the aid which Cambodia receives in less, but still considerable, quantity from Russia and China...

...The Khmer empire and its great capital were gradually eroded by invasions from the West by the more warlike Thais (formerly known as the Siamese) who, themselves under pressure from the Mongol invaders of China, had irrupted into the peninsula from the Yunnan in the 13th century, and by the highly Sinicized Vietnamese (formerly known as the Annamites) who, having exterminated the once powerful Hindu-ized state of Champa on the coast of the South China Sea, fell upon the weakened Khmers and further reduced them...

...A justifiable pride in their ancestors' achievements is too often overlooked by unsympathetic observers...

...for what he considers to be its mistaken policy of military anti-Communist alliances in Asia and for its refusal (or inability) to prevent plots from being hatched against him from Vietnamese or Thai soil, he also does not mince words about Communism...

...They feared that Prince Sihanouk was about to sign a secret military agreement with Peking and that hotheaded action by the Vietnamese or the Thais would actually lead to Chinese military intervention on Cambodia's side...

...Attacks on him (from both East and West) are necessarily interpreted as attacks on neutrality...

...but Cambodia, basing itself on Franco-Siamese treaties from the days of the French Protectorate, claims that it is legally Cambodian...

...Unfortunately, there has been a tendency for Western journalists to portray him in grotesque colors as an Oriental hedonist who, sipping champagne in the sybaritic luxury of his palace, is leading his country to the verge of an abyss by his dalliance with the Communist powers...

...While the religious architecture of the Khmers has long been recognized as of extraordinarily high artistic quality, experts are only now coming to realize an even more remarkable feature of ancient Angkor: the achievement of its water engineers, who built an irrigation system on a scale and of an efficiency certainly never developed in medieval Europe...

...Prince Sihanouk took his step well within the classical neutral framework...

...For it is in the increasing validity of international action that Cambodia seeks protection...

...Thailand has been in de jacto possession of this place since 1947...

...It is also generally true that the plight of Tibetan Lamaism has caused little harm in Southeast Asia, since the Theravada, or Southern School of Buddhism, which flourishes here has about as much regard for the Tibetan variety as extreme Protestants had for the Catholic Church during the Reformation...

...Cambodian neutrality has often been regarded by Americans working here as gross ingratitude for the very substantial aid—about $200 million since 1955—-which the country is receiving...

...Neither the harsh suppression of the Tibetan revolt nor Communist China's inimical moves along the Indian border have affected its outlook...

...Apparently convinced that the Americans would like to see him ousted and that they are behind recent efforts based in Saigon and Bangkok to achieve this, Prince Sihanouk frequently issues a warning that if bullying "Hitlerian" action is taken against Cambodia by Vietnam or Thailand, his people would prefer to become Communists than suffer under the rule of their neighbors...

...He regards his particular brand of "royal" socialism, allied with a strictly neutral foreign policy, as the proper path for Cambodian Buddhists...

...as a bastion against Communism, tends to look upon Cambodia as a tiny fly in the anti-Communist ointment...

...But any wishful thinking by the West that the present quarrel between India and China will influence Cambodia to reorient its policies westward is doomed to disappointment...

...He believes that had his ancestors followed "a policy of grand alliances," Cambodia would have been spared dismemberment at Thai and Vietnamese hands...

...American "disappointment," occasionally expressed locally by diplomats and International Cooperation Administration officials, has been interpreted by the Cambodians as a sign that the aid is offered only as a bribe to win Cambodia over to the West...

...Those were agonizing days for Western diplomats in Phnom Penh...

...Tibet is too far away from here for the chronicle of its sufferings to mean anything to the Cambodian rice farmer or rubber tapper...

...Respectful of Laos' sovereignty, Cambodian comment limited itself to emitting the opinion that the Laotian Government might be well advised to follow a more neutral policy which would not expose it to so much censure from the Communist side...

...In the East, the Republic of Vietnam, built up by the U.S...

...The only "alliance" Cambodia accepts is with the United Nations...

...The attitude of the Cambodian Government today, therefore, is not simply a reaction to the present world situation...

...American aid is given in the belief that it will contribute to preventing Cambodia from going Communist...

...Too much space has been devoted to his private musical pastimes and not enough to his political ideas, which he has worked out very carefully and which he pursues with seriousness and tenacity...

...After last year's incident along its border with South Vietnam, when Cambodia announced that Vietnamese army units had violated its frontier in the jungle area of Bo Kheo...

...But it in no way brought about any change of attitude...

...Even more remarkable is the effect upon opinions here of the recent MICHAEL FIELD, a correspondent for the London Daily Telegraph, specializes in Southeast Asian affairs...

...While little space is being given to this in the Western press, there can be no doubt that the situation is being closely followed by Peking...

...Friendship with everyone" is his mol to...

...These are facts which have gained a new significance today in forming the outlook of 20th-century Cambodians...

...crisis in Laos...

...In the columns of the Phnom Penh weekly, Realites Cambodgiennes, he has frequently expatiated on the tragic history of his country...

...The fundamental American apprehension that Cambodia, while accepting a great deal of American aid, is in fact inevitably sliding into the Communists' arms, has tended to vitiate the smooth development of Cambodian-American relations...

...It was the establishment of French imperial power that saved Cambodia from extinction at the hands of its neighbors and, somewhat ironically, laid the foundations of the present independent slate...

...This conception of a Cambodia, independent and neutral, suspended, as it were, between the two great magnetic forces of the age, is something that has been worked out by Prince Sihanouk strictly in accordance with the historical evolution of his country...

...Here, in fact, is the origin of the much-debated policy of the Sangkum Reastr Niyum (Popular Socialist Community), Prince Sihanouk's political grouping which reunites all but a handful of Communists and an even smaller handful of right-wing republicans...

...The fact is, of course, that it is not...

...While Prince Sihanouk rarely loses an opportunity to castigate the U.S...

...Communist aid is given in the hope that it will help bring Cambodia into the Communist orbit...

...Independent once more since 1953, Cambodia has inherited the double burden of its ancestors: a none too friendly attitude on the part of its Western and Eastern neighbors...

...En route to Peking, he stopped in New Delhi and Rangoon for conversations with Nehru and Burma's former Prime Minister U Nu...

...French archaeologists have, since the early days of this century, done a brilliant job of clearance and restoration at Angkor, and much of the "mystery" surrounding the place is the invention of the tourist trade...

...He is conscious that too many of the younger generation of Cambodian students are coming under the influence of Communist mentors during their formative years in Paris...

...which, it must be admitted, has so far behaved with exemplary correctness toward Cambodia...

...This step has been violently resented in Bangkok and relations between the two countries are again extremely bad...

...A half-brother of Prince Souvanna Phouma, former Prime Minister of Laos, and of the pro-Communist Prince Souphannouvong, Pethsarath was at one time regarded as "the neutral hope" of Laos...

...After the dramatic failure of negotiations in Bangkok last year, Cambodia has now taken the matter to the International Court of Justice at The Hague...

...It derives from a historical awareness of the precarious position in which this nation of approximately five million finds itself...

...Most revealing of the Cambodian attitude toward its northern neighbor was the cordial message of condolence sent on the occasion of the recent death of Prince Pethsarath, Viceroy of Laos, who, in his politically active days, was always associated with a policy of neutrality and non-alignment...

...The seriousness of the situation in Laos is well understood by the Cambodian Government...

...The Cambodians are aware of this...

...Each of these bastions of "positive neutrality" has, like India, its particular quarrel with China...

...It was hinted in some press dispatches last August that Cambodia's moves to improve relations with its pro-Western neighbors, Thailand and South Vietnam, were motivated by fear of a renewal of the Communist military drive in Asia...

...In a recent speech to Cambodian students in Paris, Prince Sihanouk expressed his Government's position with remarkable clarity and with a frankness which has sometimes, quite wrongly, been interpreted as cynicism by both East and West: "If we value so highly the friendship and (why not admit it) the aid of both blocs, it is simply because the two influences neutralize and cancel each other out...

...This possibility—however remote it may seem—gives a more serious note to the seemingly rather petty squabble between Cambodia and Thailand about the ownership of Preah Vihear, a 12th-century temple ruin in the Dangrek mountains, on the border between the two countries...

...Chinese insults to Indian Prime Minister Nehru have not gone down well...

...Prince Sihanouk is a prolific journalist and master of an elegant French prose style...

...In fact, stone tablets bearing inscriptions in Sanskrit and Khmer have revealed much about the foundation and development of the city up to its abandonment in the 15th century—probably under the pressure of economic collapse and of Thai invasions from the West...

...propaganda (held in check, like the propaganda of other powers, by strictly neutral regulations) has failed to convince the Cambodians that the aid is disinterested...

...The reason for this is not far to seek, and it should throw light on the possible evolution of foreign policy in this small, but strategically situated, country, when China brings more pressure to bear upon Southeast Asia...

...By the beginning of the 19th century, Cambodia was nothing but a rump state acting as a buffer between the bellicose Thais and Vietnamese who alternately imposed their tutelage upon it...

...Prince Sihanouk's conception of neutrality is that it should be absolute and should preclude any suggestion of alignment—even with other neutrals...

...Tourists who visit the ruins of Angkor today are spellbound by the beauty and architectural grandeur of the vast temples built by the Khmers...

...Prince Sihanouk has admitted that his policy may change in changed world circumstances...

...Prince Sihanouk undoubtedly sets greater store by China's continuing approval and good will than by any particular solidarity with the "great neutrals...

...However, in spite of his very friendly feeling for Red China...

...There would probably be no shortage of "volunteers" should Cambodia ask for help...

...The Cambodian or Khmer—the names are interchangeablee—kings, imbued with religious and cultural ideas largely of Indian origin, ruled in their fabulous capital city of Angkor and commanded vast armies which kept the peace from the South China Sea to the shores of present-day Burma...