The armed confrontations between Vietnam and Cambodia are a monstrous development. They also constitute a paradox. This is true because Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia (Kampuchea) were caught up in an unparalleled region-wide revolutionary process, and in no other such struggle did objective solidarity play a more direct and essential role in the fight against imperialism and the bourgeoisie.
Moreover, this objective collaboration occurred twice. In each of the two Indochina conflicts, the unity in struggle of the various battlefronts of the liberation war was solemnly proclaimed.
Furthermore, the Vietnamese, Laotian, and Cambodian communist movements all have the same origin-the Indochinese Communist Party. It was only dissolved, to make way for the emergence of separate national Communist Parties, in 1951. But all this common experience has not prevented new flare-ups along the border between Kampuchea and Vietnam.
Why such a conflict was possible cannot be understood without looking back into the history of the international workers movement over the past fifty years. Were it not for the victory of Stalinism in the USSR and the degeneration of the Third International, were it not for the abandonment of internationalist traditions and the rise of national chauvinism in the world Communist movement, were it not for the sharpness of the Sino-Soviet conflict and its transformation into an interbureaucratic struggle conducted in the spirit of the triumphant ideology of "socialism in one country," a minor border conflict between two regimes adhering to Marxism- Leninism could never have degenerated into a very grave political and military confrontation.
A Political Conflict
The border dispute is a minor one, at least if we are to believe the official statements of the Vietnamese and Cambodian governments. Both Pnompenh and Hanoi claim to recognize the boundary lines drawn during the colonial period and those laid down by the accords signed in 1967 by the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam and the government of Prince Sihanouk. The maps published by both sides, insofar as these are an indication, are generally the same.
The only important dispute concerns the off-shore limit. Vietnam, for example, would like to have Khmer territorial wa-
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New York Times ters, which closely surround the island of Phu Quoc, moved back from its coasts. Pnompenh seems opposed to this. But in any case, the problem of the offshore limit could not by itself explain such a violent clash between the Vietnamese and Cambodian states. In order to understand it, you have to look for deeper causes.
In fact, it is not sufficient to explain that such a conflict was made possible by the general evolution of the international workers movement and the Indochinese regimes. It is also necessary to try to explain why this clash actually came about in such an extreme form and so quickly after the combined victories of 1975. This task obviously is made difficult by the total monopoly of information exercised by the leaderships of the Communist parties in power in Vietnam and Cambodia and by the use of secret diplomacy by Hanoi and Pnompenh.
Attempts to explain this conflict therefore tend to rely on supposition and remains open to discussion. Nonetheless, it is possible to pursue such an investigation by considering the chronology of the conflict as it emerges from a comparison of Pnompenh's and Hanoi's statements, the orientations being followed in Vietnam and Kampuchea, the origin of the political dispute between the leaders of the Vietnamese and Cambodian CPs, and the present impact of the Sino-Soviet conflict on the Indochinese peninsula.
The dispute between the Vietnamese and Cambodian regimes is political rather than territorial. The statements of both sides leave no doubt about this. In essence, Pnompenh accuses Hanoi of wanting to impose by force an "Indochinese Federation" that would be under its tutelage. The Vietnamese Communist Party denies that it has such a plan. The federation perspective was officially abandoned in the 1930s.
But, on the other hand, the Vietnamese CP says that it is in the interests of the Indochinese peoples that "special relations" be maintained between Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. It denounces the role played by the leadership of the Cambodian CP, which it claims is fanning "national hatreds" and destroying the tradition of solidarity forged during the common struggle against imperialism.!
The political dispute does not involve only the nature of the relationships that should be established in the region following the victories of 1975. It is much more general. Pnompenh and Hanoi often made opposite political choices in domestic policy. For the Vietnamese, the line of the Khmer CP exhibits an "infantile communism," "ultrachauvinism," a "brutal peasant egalitarianism."2 For the Cambodian militants, on the other hand, the line of the Vietnamese CP amounts to "begging rice from the imperialists," or even selling the labor power of its workers to the foreign capitalists, that is, to an abandonment of *a policy of independence and national dignity." In their international alliances, these two states have chosen no less opposing lines. Pnompenh relies almost exclusively on Peking, with which Hanoi's relations are growing steadily chillier.
In September 1977, the Cambodian leadership equated the Vietnamese regime, which it accused of having annexationist inclinations, with the Hitler government.3 When the conflict between the two coun tries became public on December 31, 1977, the Vietnamese leadership began slowly to drop its official reserve, and by January 20 went so far as to characterize the Khmer "authorities" as "reactionaries," in an editorial in the party daily Nhan Dan.
To understand the violence of the
1. Unless specifically indicated, the quotations are from the documents disseminated by the Vietnamese and Cambodian press services.
French
This accusation the text).
was reaffirmed-explicitly this time, in the December 31 statement by the government.
Vietnamese-Cambodian split, it is necessary to go back to the origin of the present Khmer leadership. The dissolution of the old Indochinese Communist Party, and later the breakup of what was known as the "Indochinese Revolutionary Front," have underlying causes that we will have to come back to. But the head-on confrontation between the Vietnamese and Cambodian leaderships was not inevitable, as is attested by the example of the quite different relations between the Vietnamese and Laotians.
Pol Pot, the premier of Kampuchea and general secretary of the Khmer CP, does not hide the fact that the political conflict between the two parties goes far back. In fact, he dates the first important dispute with the Vietnamese from 1965, that is, well before any territorial questions were immediately on the agenda.*
Origins of the Dispute
The political split began with the balance sheets that both sides drew from the 1954 Geneva Accords. In Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, the price that the liberation movements had to pay as a result of the Soviet and Chinese policy of peaceful coexistence was very high. The period between the Geneva Accords and the re sumption of the armed struggle in South Vietnam (in 1959-60) was marked by severe political tensions and obvious hesitation on the part of the various CPs as to the line to follow.
In Vietnam and Laos, the continuity of the leaderships and the organizations was maintained. In Cambodia, however, the history of the Khmer CP is distinguished by both a political and organizational break. This seems to be at the root of the nationalist regression of the Khmer Communists, which has no equivalent in the other two Indochinese countries.
All three Communist parties in the region combine in their line important elements inherited from their Stalinist education and the lessons they drew from their struggle. In so doing, they adapted programmatically to the specific conditions in which they had to operate for thirty years. These conditions derived from the dilemma of national liberation movements having to wage prolonged resistance to imperialist intervention without any direct support from a revolutionary workers movement in the developed capitalist countries.
The failure of the revolutionary upsurge in Europe between the two wars and the degeneration of the Third International had profound consequences for the Indochinese colony. For example, a certain internationalist spirit had prevailed in the united front collaboration between independent Marxists, Trotskyists, and CP
members on the Saigon journal La Lutte. It was wiped out, not to rise again.
It is quite significant from this point of view that one of the few questions on which the Vietnamese Communist Party has been ready to break openly with its own orthodox canon is on the national question. The politically dominant view today in the Vietnamese CP is that the Vietnamese nation is the product of a long process of development, which goes back 4,000 years, that is, into prehistory.
Similarly significant is the way in which the Vietnamese past, including the period of the legendary kings, has been consistently referred to in order to inspire nationalist feelings. The reaffirmation of a cultural and historic Vietnamese identity was obviously indispensable and inevitable in the advance of anticolonial and antiimperialist struggle. The Vietnamese CP leadership, moreover, showed that it was capable of utilizing even the cultural heritage of the Montagnard minority peoples.
The difficulty was an objective one. It was necessary both to support the revival of the Vietnamese national identity, which had been denied by the colonialists, and to fight against nationalist ideology. But history as it is presented today in Vietnam has a deep nationalist imprint, and in the present context this can have grave consequences.
However, as regards nationalism the evolution of the Vietnamese and Cambodian CPs has been profoundly different. In view of the weight of the imperialist intervention it faced, the Vietnamese leadership had to continually expand the range of its political activity internationally in order to meet the needs of the national liberation struggle. This largely explains its special position in the world Communist movement and its orientation combining a predominant "national point of view" with a genuine international concern.
In contrast, after its break with the tradition of the Indochinese Communist movement was consummated, the Cambodian leadership has retreated further and further into narrow nationalism. This is what emerges clearly from the history of the Khmer CP as recounted by Pol Pot in his anniversary speech on September 30, 1977.
In the early 1950s, most of the Khmer CP leaders who became known in the 1960s and 1970s were in France, either in contact with the French Communist Party or members in it. To them it seemed that the setback in Geneva, which resulted in "the evaporation" of the "revolutionary gains" made in the struggle against the French was related to the lack of a "correct line" in the Khmer CP. The old leadership had followed "a line copied from that of others" (i.e., the Vietnamese). Henceforth it would be necessary to adopt "a position of independence and sovereignty"; it would be necessary to "rely on our own strength."
This maxim has acquired a very particular meaning in Cambodia. In 1960, the team trained in Paris returned to the country and took over the leadership of the Khmer CP. In 1965, frictions between the Khmer party and its Vietnamese counterpart seem to have ensued. It is impossible to assess today the positions defended at the time by one side or the other. But it is. clear what was at stake. It was whether or not a common strategy should be adopted. This year was marked by the beginning of the escalation of American imperialist aggression against Laos and Vietnam.
If there was a conflict at this time between the Vietnamese and Khmer CPs, it must have concerned the establishment of a new unity in Indochina. In 1967, the Khmer CP considered that the situation in the country was ripe for generalized armed struggle. It is possible that at that time a dispute arose over the advisability of opening a new front in Indochina, in view of the special position of the Sihanouk regime.
Finally, in 1972-73, the Khmers Rouges refused to bring their policy into line with that of the Laotians and the Vietnamese, who were preparing to sign the Paris and Vientiane accords. At that time they accused the Vietnamese of compromising with the enemy instead of carrying the struggle through uncompromisingly to its conclusion. In these conditions, the "Indochinese Revolutionary Front," seems, at least as far as Cambodia and Vietnam are concerned, to have been reduced to a temporary military alliance. The rejection of the tradition of the Indochinese Communist Party went very far. The official history, which was set down by Pol Pot's speech on the seventeenth anniversary of the Khmer CP, said nothing about the role played by the Vietnamese and Laotian liberation forces in the victory of the resistance in Cambodia (and vice-versa).
Likewise, it passed over in silence-with the exception of some allusions-the very existence of the Khmer CP before 1960 and the role of the Indochinese Communist Party in introducing Marxism in Cambodia. This stands in complete contrast to the kind of statements being made in Hanoi and Vientiane, which never fail to recall the past solidarity in struggle and the common history of the Communist movements in the region.
Cambodia and Laos Take Different Roads
In the absence of any solid information on the subject, we cannot make any judgment about the disputes that arose between the Vietnamese and Khmer CPs in 1965, 1967, and 1972-73. However, we cannot underestimate either the importance of the far-reaching retreat into nationalism carried out by the Cambodian leadership.
Kampuchea and Laos are in fact both distinguished by the backwardness of their economic and social development. The working class is very weak. The agricultural proletariat is generally of Vietnamese origin. The crisis of agriculture was late in developing and was more limited than in Vietnam. The chances for a process of permanent revolution developing in these two countries thus depend largely on their being integrated into an Indochina-wide revolutionary process.
In such conditions, Cambodia's shutting itself in on itself after the victory could only have grave consequences. In the name of national independence, in fact, the leadership put itself in a position where it could not appeal for international aid and turn to Vietnam and its network of alliances. It then had to try to make up for the weakness of its base by an adventurist policy at home.
In fact, in 1973, a new course seems to have been adopted, contrasting with the prudent policy that had prevailed heretofore in the FUNK [Front Uni National de Kampuchéa-National United Front of Cambodia]. The "Sihanoukites" were isolated, and a vast cooperative movement was launched in the countryside.
Two months before the taking of power, a decision was made to empty Pnompenh of all its population once victory was won. One of the principal arguments that weighed in the balance was the fear of not being able to control the Cambodian capital. In April 1975, a kind of peasant "war communism" was decreed.
Money was to abolished outright. Commerce was banned, to be replaced by barter and an administrative distribution of goods. All energies were to be concentrated in agriculture and in the production of necessities in plants and small shops. Giant mobile work teams were established to carry out big tasks such as irrigation and forced collectivization.
It has to be taken into consideration that a big international hysteria campaign was whipped up against Cambodia in 1975. But the human and political cost of the Khmer CP's orientation could not but be very high. It was particularly onerous for the urban population, which was sent to work in the countryside in conditions that were often very unhealthy and where there was not medicine or medical care. Unlike Vietnam, the repressive measures taken were certainly very severe and very grave.
This orientation seems to have put severe pressure on the unity of the Khmer leadership. Pnompenh recognized today that there were several grave crises, which it claims were the result of "plots" hatched by the "agents" of the Vietnamese CP. Nothing has been heard of the majority of the leaders who were known at the time of the FUNK. It is impossible to know what has become of them.
The orientation adopted in Pnompenh following the victory contrasted not only with the one applied in Vietnam but also with that in Laos. In the latter country, notably, choosing a "Cambodian road" was inconceivable. It is far from enjoying the agricultural wealth of Kampuchea, which has the benefit of good land and an extraordinary natural regulator of the flow of water, Lake Tonle Sap.
Unlike Cambodia, also, Laos has no access to the sea, and so long as the Laos- Vietnam highway is not ready for traffic it remains largely dependent on the good will of Thailand for its supplies. The new government had, moreover, to face dangerous opposition by a section of the Meo tribes, which were armed by the CIA and backed by Bangkok.
The Laotian leadership saw the path to developing its country as involving association with Vietnam. This option seems to have been reinforced after the discovery in December 1976 of a rightist plot to overthrow the new regime.
In an interview, Laotian Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Khamphay Boupha stressed the renewed importance of cooperation among the Indochinese countries, saying that it was "even more necessary" now that victory has been won than it was during the liberation struggle."
On July 18, 1977, a twenty-five-year renewable treaty was signed between Vietnam and Laos. It stated the need for "developing socialist cooperation in all fields." An agreement in principle was also signed drawing the frontier between the two countries, after two years of apparently difficult negotiations. Vietnamese forces have participated in joint operations with the Laotian forces against the rightist guerrillas and against the incursions of commandos coming in from Thailand.
Vietnam has granted Laos aid in rice and other commodities, as well as financial aid totaling 400 million dongs (about US $155 million). Half of this financial assistance is to go to pay the many Vietnamese soldiers and workers sent to Laos to take part in road and bridge construction, according to the journalist Nayan Chanda.?
The Question of a Federation
Does this mean that Vietnamese Laotian cooperation is exemplary? No! The twentyfive-year treaty is important in that it stresses the vital need of the Indochinese peoples to step up their solidarity and regional cooperation. But it also points up the programmatic limitations that the Vietnamese and Laotian leaderships are apparently unable to overcome as a result of their historic origins and bureaucratic deformations that weigh them down.
There is no perspective of federation in the "treaty" or in the Vietnamese-Laotiar: "joint declaration," even though these documents deal with long-term relations between the two countries. They do not go beyond stressing the need for increasing cooperation between sovereign national states, never calling for the establishment of a federative political superstructure.
However, a federation, which obviously can only come when the peoples concerned want it, is essential for three reasons. Only such a union would make it possible to develop a real common economic plan giving priority to the more socially and economically backward country and marshaling the necessary resources to achieve this objective.
Only a federation would provide a political framework in which the peoples of the two big countries could decide jointly on the main lines of economic development and foreign policy. Only this would make it possible to wage a continuing struggle against any resurgence of nationalist feelings by offering a real perspective for superseding the national frontiers, which, moreover, were often drawn in an arbitrary way.
Mere cooperation between states that are in fact independent cannot accomplish such tasks, and in the long run could only favor the more powerful state. On the other hand, establishing the practice of making supranational decisions without forming a federation could only increase the role of the ruling parties in substituting for the masses; it could only reinforce the power of the bureaucracy against the masses.
In this connection, it can be said that real respect for the national rights of the minority peoples requires the withering away of nation states, and the fight for genuine internationalism must go hand in hand with the fight for socialist democracy.
However, in view of their programs, their international position, and the bureaucratic character of the regimes whose birth they have presided over, neither the Vietnamese leadership nor the Laotian one can advance this dual perspective of internationalism and socialist democracy.
The Facts About the Conflict
The Vietnamese-Cambodian conflict is thus revealing of the problems the Indochinese revolution faces today, less than three years after the combined victories of 1975. The problems are on different levels. The orientation and the programs of the Vietnamese CP and the Laotian party, as well as the bureaucratic character of the Vietnamese and Laotian regimes, make it impossible to set up a genuine democratic federation in Indochina. The course followed by the Cambodian leadership explains why the Vietnamese-Khmer tensions rapidly degenerated into a series of armed confrontations, contrasting vio lently with the evolution of Vietnamese- Laotian relations (although it should not be thought that the course of these relations was always smooth either).
A comparison of the Vietnamese and Cambodian statements and an analysis of the events that transpired between April and the beginning of 1978 make it possible to draw three conclusions, at least tentatively.
First, the initiative in the military and polemical escalation of the conflict between Vietnam and Kampuchea seems to have come in most cases from Pnompenh. This is particularly clear in May-June 1975 and at the end of 1977.
We can try to understand why. As a result of the adventurist policy represented by the "radical measures" taken in the wake of the seizure of power, the leadership is obliged to whip up nationalism as the indispensable ideological cement of the regime. In this context, friction on the frontier could only increase and heat up. A flood of Cambodian refugees into Vietnam alone could cause this.
The Vietnamese-Khmer border is a still more sensitive region because the presence of an important pocket of opposition has been noted in the Vietnamese highlands. In this area, forces from the old puppet army are reportedly carrying on guerrilla warfare. It is possible that elements of the Khmer Krom (Khmers from Cochin China [the southern part of Vietnam]) are involved.
Between 1975 and 1977, the Khmer CP went through several grave crises. It is probable that bulwarks of opposition developed in certain frontier areas, where Vietnamese troops were present during the war. In view of the measures of social repression taken by the Khmer CP, it is reasonable to think that an appeal for a national mobilization against the "foreign enemy" could have been useful from its point of view. Finally, in reviving the historical national hatreds that have so long torn Indochina apart, the Vietnamese-Khmer conflict could only tend to become more and more envenomed.
As for Hanoi, on the other hand, it is hard to see why an increase in tensions on the frontier would have been desirable from its point of view. It is clear that the Vietnamese CP would like to see a change in leadership in Kampuchea. It is also true that Hanoi's support for the Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia, based on arguments similar to those of the Cubans, constitutes a very grave political precedent.
The attitude the Vietnamese leadership took at that time shows that in fact it might one day consider that the only possible "solution" left was a military one. This is why it must be reaffirmed that there is no acceptable military solution, either for the frontier dispute or for the political conflict between the Hanoi and Pnompenh regimes.
However, an analysis of the orientation adopted by Vietnam in the aftermath of victory makes it quite unlikely that Hanoi took the initiative in escalating the conflict. The present state of semiwar in fact endangers the accomplishment of vital objectives in a whole number of areas. From the economic standpoint, it is an obstacle to opening up the virgin lands in western Cochin China. From the financial standpoint, it is an obstacle to getting international loans and investments. Politically, it is an obstacle to Hanoi's attempt to prevent a breakdown in its relations with Peking. From a diplomatic angle, it obstructs, in particular, the Vietnamese regime's effort to normalize its relations with the countries of Southeast Asia.
The Vietnamese regime probably intended to wait until the ripening of conditions in Cambodia forced a change in orientation, or of leadership, in Pompenh.
It is hard to see, therefore, why Hanoi should have opened up a policy of military provocations against Kampuchea in 1975. On the other hand, what is certain is that, confronted with a deteriorating border conflict and sharpening political tension with the Cambodian regime, the Vietnamese leadership has responded with a combination of retaliatory measures, appeals for secret negotiations, and pressures through "friendly governments."
That is, the Vietnamese leadership operated in the framework of secret diplomacy and a strict monopoly of information in the hands of the CP Politburo. This once again points up the tragic consequences of the lack of a genuinely internationalist program and of a system of workers democracy in Vietnam. The use of secret diplomacy certainly helped to bring about a festering of the dispute with Kampuchea.
The role of China has emerged particularly clearly. In Peking's eyes, some years ago, Southeast Asia became one of the main areas of confrontation with "Soviet social imperialism." At the time of the military occupation of the Paracel Islands in 1975, it could be seen that the Chinese leadership does not use kid gloves in dealing with its Vietnamese "sister party."
The Vietnamese CP must have come to seem particularly dangerous in the eyes of Peking. Not only has the Vietnamese leadership refused to condemn Moscow, but the USSR proudly presents itself as Hanoi's main ally in the international arena. That Peking wants to weaken the Vietnamese regime as much as possible is no mystery to anyone. It is understandable, therefore, why the Chinese leadership has accorded the indispensable political cover to Pnompenh, even though the Cambodian leadership's domestic policy differs from the present line of the Chinese CP.
Such Chinese support was ostentatiously demonstrated in September 1977, on the occasion of Pol Pot's triumphant visit to
Peking. It was at that time, moreover, when the Vietnamese Khmer border dispute took an acute form, and the Cambodian leadership began clearly to compare the Hanoi regime with that of Hitler. Chinese support was extended again in when the conflict early January 1978, began to become definitely envenomed. Later in January, this backing was made spectacularly evident at the time of the visit to Pnompenh of Madame Teng Yingch'ao, Chou En-lai's widow.
The victory of the liberation struggles in April 1975 thus precipitated an explosion of the contradictions that undermined the defunct Indochinese Revolutionary Front. The consequences of the festering of the Khmer-Vietnamese conflict are grave.
In raising a hue and cry against a Vietnamese "invasion" on December 31, Pnompenh seems to have wanted to definitively bar the way to any internal opposition, since any that developed would immediately be branded as pro-Hanoi. Likewise, it seems to have wanted to make a spectacular display of its Chinese support and create a situation that would prevent any turning back and adopting a "moderate" line in Kampuchea.
In Hanoi, they seem more and more convinced that no solution can be found for the border dispute except in the framework of general political negotiations resulting in a change of orientation in Pnompenh. The Sino-Vietnamese conflict has just taken a sharp turn for the worse. There is a real danger that the Vietnamese-Khmer conflict will flare up again and take a still graver form.
Everything possible must be done to achieve a negotiated solution-in open and public negotiations—to the border dispute, and the use of arms must be excluded. More generally, it is important to reaffirm that the interest of the Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Laotian peoples demands the formation of a democratic federation linking these three countries. But such a federation can only come about as a result of the free choice of the peoples concerned, a free choice that requires the abandonment of the total political monopoly exercised by each Indochinese CP leadership in its own country.
The underlying political differences that divide the Vietnamese and Cambodian leaderships today must be publicly aired and freely debated.
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Notes
2. See the article by Nayan Chanda in the Far Eastern Economic Review of January 13, 1978.
3. In the speech delivered by Pol Pot September 30, on the occasion of the seventeenth anniversary of the founding of the Khmer CP (p. 61 in
4. In his September 30 speech.
5. Far Eastern Economic Review, August 26, 1977.
6. The texts of the Vietnam-Laos statement and the treaty were published in the September 1977 issue of Bulletin du Vietnam.
7. Far Eastern Economic Review, December 23, 1977.