The Real Issue for the U.S. in Cambodia
MORGENTHAU, HANS J.
WEIGHING THE ALTERNATIVES The Real Issue for the U.S. in Cambodia BY HANS J. MORGENTHAU In his letter of February 25 to the Speaker of the House, Representative Carl Albert (D.-Okla.),...
...In both instances, Tokyo's reaction would be based on specific circumstances of the situation, not precedent...
...It will realize that an American decision to support or not to support it will depend upon the evaluation of a number of factors: the interest and power of the United States...
...It follows from these premises that it would be morally repugnant for the United States to abandon a "small Asian nation"-the illegitimate Lon Nol regime being identified as a nation, just as the civil war sustained, if not created, by U.S...
...Countries around the world who depend on us for support-as well as their foes-will judge our performance...
...Hence the relative unpredictability of politics as against the comparative order imposed by the narrow rational limits of the judicial process...
...There is something exceedingly odd in the spectacle of a nation as strong, and in many respects meritorious, as the United States trembling at the possibility of having to admit failure not vis-a-vis Japan, Germany or the Soviet Union, but vis-a-vis Vietnam and Cambodia...
...In truth, of course, the President is not distressed by what may happen in Cambodia per se, but by its effect upon the American position in the world...
...Enjoying a measure of discretion the judge lacks, the political figure can determine each case on its merits as he sees them...
...had a moral obligation to assist it in that undertaking...
...It would behoove us to ask, instead, what we might think of ourselves if we do not find the inner strength to liquidate as quickly and cleanly as possible an enterprise we should never have begun, and which has now clearly failed...
...Anyone reading the President's communication in complete ignorance of recent events would have to assume that the legitimate government in Phnom Penh, supported by a loyal people, was trying to defend Cambodia from foreign invasion, and that the U.S...
...If the Congress does not provide for continued deliveries of rice and other essential supplies, millions of innocent people will suffer-people who depend on us for their bare survival...
...Implicit in the President's argument is the assumption that established governments under outside attack in Southeast Asia have asked us to come to their support...
...These rhetorical questions point to still another fallacy in the Administration's reasoning...
...5. "Our national security and the integrity of our alliances depend upon our reputation as a reliable partner...
...Must we really reopen these wounds and keep them open by stubbornly refusing to heed the lessons of the past...
...To oversimplify the issue, would a patriotic government prefer its nation to be dead rather than Red...
...It is that fear that got us into Vietnam (Kennedy: "We cannot have another Bay of Pigs") and kept us there (Johnson: "I shall not be the first President of the United States to lose a war...
...It is, however, an historic fact that the Cambodian people were spared these sufferings and threats as long as Prince Sihanouk was allowed to pursue his neutralist policies...
...Yet when one looks at the history of our role in Vietnam and Cambodia, one cannot help concluding that we have set up or at the minimum maintained their governments to enable them to ask for our help...
...President Ford justified his request for an additional appropriation in support of Cambodia with five arguments: 1. "An independent Cambodia cannot survive" without "supplemental military and economic assistance...
...Continuing involvement means persistence in failure...
...Hans J. Morgenthau, Leonard Davis Distinguished Professor of Political Science at the City University of New York, often analyzes international affairs in these pages...
...A policy of continuing involvement will tell the world that we have been unable to learn from our mistakes...
...While it is an open question whether we aided and abetted that coup, three facts relevant to the current situation are clear: the legitimacy of Prince Sihanouk's rule is generally recognized...
...Thus Cambodia is converted from a special historical event into a test case of universal significance...
...We are mired in unfounded worry about what other nations might think of us if we stop supporting the Lon Nol regime...
...Which of our allies and enemies, so the argument runs, will rely on us in the future if we prove unreliable in the present case...
...marveling at its longevity, one approaches the task of demolishing it again in a mood of intellectual disgust and political despair...
...We might give up on the Marshall and still be trusted by Japan, or we might continue to back him and not be trusted by Japan...
...3. "It has been a basic policy of this government to give material support to friends and allies who are willing and able to carry the burden of their own self-defense...
...The rediscovery of the true sources of our strength-moral, political, military-would assign Cambodia to its appropriate place in the scale of American concerns: a faint echo of the Vietnam debacle to be silenced without delay...
...Let us say for the sake of argument that we have rescued South Vietnam and Cambodia from "aggression," "Communism," or whatever name our rhetoric may apply to the evil we stand ready to protect other nations from...
...A policy of disengagement might restore our reputation for wisdom, or at least practicality...
...Can it be assumed that a country threatened by such an evil would welcome being saved in the manner that they were...
...Disengagement is tantamount to an open admission of failure...
...Cambodia is such an ally...
...No one, for example, has seriously suggested that Japan would doubt U.S...
...Which course is more likely to damage our prestige and endanger our material interests...
...the viability of the government to be supported...
...Falter in Cambodia, and you will be expected to falter elsewhere...
...Nor will any foreign government, unless it is utterly devoid of political judgment, arrive at a different conclusion...
...intervention has been transformed into defense against foreign aggression...
...These are the same arguments that were used for more than a decade to justify our intervention in Vietnam, and neither time nor geographic extension have made them any more persuasive than they were originally...
...Then, despite all the evidence to the contrary, he declares Cambodia to be such an ally...
...It might also restore our reputation for decency...
...We made those governments the chosen instruments of our policy of intervention, and this is the essential reason why successive administrations in Washington have supported them...
...He starts from the assumption that it is a basic principle of our foreign policy to come to the aid of friends and allies who are willing and able to defend themselves...
...backing in a future emergency if we stopped aiding Lon Nol...
...If American prestige is so brittle as to be really in danger of damage by an admission of failure in Cambodia, the continuation of that defeated policy certainly would not preserve it...
...One thought that it had been demolished 10 years ago...
...There is something fundamentally weak and unmanly-in a profound sense un-American-in the willingness, as a matter of routine, to go on sponsoring the devastation of two small countries, and the decimation of their hapless populations, for no earthly purpose other than to avoid a fictitious injury to American prestige...
...That is to say, the actor on the political stage is not bound by previous findings...
...First of all, history does not, like the Supreme Court, operate by stare decisis...
...the relationship between prospective risks and benefits...
...the interest and power of other friendly and hostile nations...
...That we have failed, and that our failure is due to a fundamental misconception of a revolutionary world and our power with regard to it, is known to everyone...
...That is the heart of his argument...
...See it through in Cambodia, and you will be relied upon to see it through elsewhere...
...In other words, if the President's primary concern is the misery of the Cambodian people, he need merely stop fueling this Southeast Asian civil war by shoring up the losing side...
...But this ideological approach cannot cover up the real rationale of our Cambodian policy: the prestige of the United States...
...has bombed and invaded actual and presumed North Vietnamese positions in Cambodia and thrown its full support behind Lon Nol...
...4. We must face squarely the moral question: "Are we to deliberately abandon a small country in the midst of its life and death struggle...
...The country became a battlefield when the United States bombed and invaded it, and it has remained one because America has supported the otherwise doomed Lon Nol regime...
...The Indochina war has been a deeply wounding experience for many of us...
...A rational examination of the benefits, risks and liabilities of alternative policies ought not to be limited to examining only the likely consequences of disengagement, but ought to compare these with the consequences of following our present path...
...An American decision to call a halt to further support for the Lon Nol regime, therefore, would not preclude continuing or initiating support for other nations...
...Substitute Vietnam for Cambodia, and you have one of the standard arguments used to justify the Vietnam war...
...It is that very same fear that got us into Cambodia and threatens to keep us there...
...His request for $222 million in supplemental military and economic assistance flies in the face of his expressed humanitarian concern: The aid can only serve to prolong the agony it is supposed to alleviate...
...That evaluation may produce one decision here, an opposite one there, and the nature of the latter cannot be predicted from the nature of the former...
...The President's letter makes it appear that the sufferings of "millions of innocent people," the threats to their very survival, are a result of actions taken by the enemies of the Cambodian government and can only be relieved through the continuation of American aid...
...Such a reader could not know from the Ford letter that in March 1970, Marshal Lon Nol took advantage of Prince Norodom Sihanouk's absence from the country to depose him as Chief of State...
...2. "The Cambodian people are totally dependent on us for their only means of resistance to aggression...
...Our insistence upon repeating former mistakes is the illegitimate child of our fear to appear weak...
...and the U.S...
...Lon Nol's regime has been opposed by large segments of the Cambodian people with the backing of North Vietnam...
...Second, the President's clinching argument implies that our allies and friends consider American assistance of the kind we have given in Southeast Asia as a benefit eagerly looked forward to...
Vol. 58 • March 1975 • No. 6
