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Vietnam Laos and Cambodia
In 1987 Vietnam's relationships with Laos and Cambodia did
not differ substantially from their historic patterns.
Contemporary Vietnamese attitudes reflected the conviction of
cultural and political superiority that had prevailed during the
nineteenth century when weaker monarchs in Laos and Cambodia had
paid tribute to the Vietnamese court in a system modeled on
Vietnam's own relationship to China
(see
The Chinese Millennium;
Nine Centuries of Independence
, ch. 1). In the 1980s, Laos and
Cambodia had once more become Vietnam's client states. Laos, with
a communist party long nurtured by the Vietnamese, entered the
relationship with docility; Cambodia, however, under a ruthless,
but anti-Vietnamese dictatorship of its own, resisted being drawn
into the Vietnamese orbit. Tension between the two states
escalated into open warfare and, in 1978, Hanoi launched an
invasion that toppled the Pol Pot regime in Phnom Penh. In 1987
Cambodia remained a state governed precariously by a regime
installed by Hanoi, its activities constrained by the presence of
a substantial Vietnamese occupation force and a tenacious
insurgency in the countryside. Repeated Vietnamese assurances
that Hanoi would withdraw its troops from the beleaguered country
by 1990 were received with skepticism by some observers.
The communist victory in Vietnam in 1975 was accompanied by
similar communist successes in Laos and Cambodia. The impression
of the noncommunist world at the time was that the three
Indochinese communist parties, having seized control in their
respective countries, would logically work together, through the
fraternal bond of a single ideology, to achieve common
objectives. What appeared to be a surprising deterioration in
relations, however, was actually the resurfacing of historical
conflict that ideological commonality could not override
(see Early History
, ch. 1). The victories of the Vietnamese communists
and the Cambodian communist
Khmer Rouge (see Glossary) in 1975
did not bring peace. Relations between the two parties had been
strained since the close of the First Indochina War. The Geneva
Agreements had failed to secure for the Khmer communists, as part
of the first Cambodian national liberation organization, the
United Issarak Front, a legitimate place in Cambodian politics.
Some Khmer Communist and Issarak leaders subsequently went to
Hanoi, but among those who stayed behind, Pol Pot and his
faction, who later gained control of the Khmer (Kampuchean)
Communist party, blamed Vietnam for having betrayed this party at
Geneva. Pol Pot never lost his antipathy for Vietnam. Under his
leadership, the Khmer Rouge adhered for years to a radical,
chauvinistic, and bitterly anti-Vietnamese political line.
Skirmishes broke out on the Cambodian-Vietnamese border almost
immediately following the communist victories in Saigon and Phnom
Penh, and in less than four years Vietnam was again at war, this
time with Cambodia. Vietnam offensive forces crossing the
Cambodia border in December 1978 the took less than a month, to
occupy Phnom Penh amd most of the country.
When tensions between Cambodia and Vietnam broke into the
open, the reason was ostensibly Cambodian demands that Hanoi
return territory conquered by the Vietnamese centuries earlier.
Vietnam's offers to negotiate the territorial issue were
rejected, however, because of more urgent Khmer concerns that
Hanoi intended to dominate Cambodia by forming an
Indochina
Federation (see Glossary) or "special relationship." In any
event, Vietnamese interest in resolving the situation peacefully
clearly came to an end once the decisison was made to invade
Cambodia.
The invasion and the subsequent establishment of a puppet
regime in Phnom Penh were costly to Hanoi, further isolating it
from the international community. Vietnam's relations with a
number of countries and with the United Nations (UN)
deteriorated. The UN General Assembly refused to recognize the
Vietnamese-supported government in Phnom Penh and demanded a
total Vietnamese withdrawal followed by internationally
supervised free elections. The ASEAN nations were unified in
opposing Vietnam's action. Urged by Thailand's example, they
provided support for the anti-Phnom Penh resistance. In February
1979, China was moved to retaliate against Vietnam across their
mutual border
(see China
, this ch.).
The ensuing conflict in Cambodia pitted Vietnamese troops,
assisted by forces of the new Phnom Penh government--the People's
Republic of Kampuchea (PRK)--against a coalition of communist and
noncommunist resistance elements. Of these elements, the
government displaced from Phnom Penh by the Vietnamese, Pol Pot's
communist Khmer Rouge (which had established the government known
as Democratic Kampuchea in Cambodia in 1975), was the strongest
and most effective military force, mainly because of support from
the Chinese. The extremism and brutality of the Khmer Rouge's
brief reign in Phnom Penh, where it may have been responsible for
as many as 2 million deaths, made it infamous. ASEAN's concern
that the reputation of the Khmer Rouge would lessen the
international appeal of the anti-Vietnamese cause led it to press
the Khmer Rouge and noncommunist resistance elements into forming
a coalition that would appear to diminish the Khmer Rouge's
political role. The tripartite Coalition Government of Democratic
Kampuchea (CGDK) was formed on June 22, 1982. In addition to the
Khmer Rouge, it comprised a noncommunist resistance force called
the Kampuchean People's National Liberation Front (KPNLF)--under
the leadership of a former official of Prince Norodom Sihanouk's
government, Son Sann--and Sihanouk's own noncommunist force (the
Armee Nationale Sihanoukiste-- ANS). The Cambodian government in
exile needed the added legitimacy that noncommunist factions and
the prestige of Sihanouk's name could contribute. The Chinese
were reluctant to withdraw their support from the Khmer Rouge,
which they viewed as the only effective anti-Vietnamese fighting
force among the three coalition members. They were persuaded,
however, to support the coalition and eventually began supplying
arms to Son Sann and Sihanouk as well as Pol Pot.
Despite an extensive record of internal squabbling, the
coalition government in 1987 provided the international community
with an acceptable alternative to the Vietnamese-supported Heng
Samrin regime in Phnom Penh. From 1982 to 1987, the coalition
survived annual Vietnamese dry-season campaigns against its base
camps along the Thai-Cambodian border, and, by changing its
tactics in 1986 to emphasize long-term operations deep in the
Cambodian interior, increased its military effectiveness. The
coalition's military operations prevented the Vietnamese from
securing all of Cambodia and helped create a stalemate.
In 1987 the situation remained deadlocked. Despite the costs,
Vietnam's negotiating position remained inflexible. Hanoi
apparently perceived itself to have gained enormously in terms of
national security. The "special relationship" it had futilely
sought with Pol Pot was effected almost immediately with the new
Phnom Penh government when, in February 1979, a Treaty of
Friendship and Cooperation was signed. In 1982 and 1983 a
substantial number of Vietnamese reportedly settled in Cambodia,
although Vietnam did not seem to be making a concerted effort to
colonize the country. Instead, Hanoi appeared to be striving to
build an indigenous regime that would be responsive to general
Vietnamese direction and become part of an Indochinese community
under Vietnamese hegemony.
In contrast to its relationship with Cambodia, Vietnam's
relations with communist Laos have been fairly stable.
Historically, the ethnic tribes comprising present-day Laos had
been less resistant to Vietnamese subjugation, and relations had
never reached the level of animosity characteristic of the
Vietnam-Cambodia relationship.
Although Hanoi was a signatory to the Geneva Agreement of
1962 that upheld the neutrality of Laos, it has failed to observe
the agreement in practice. During the
Second Indochina War (see Glossary), for example, the
North Vietnamese obtained the
cooperation of the Lao People's Revolutionary Party (Pathet Lao)
in constructing and maintaining the
Ho Chi Minh Trail (see Glossary), an unauthorized road
communications network that
passed through the length of Laos. Thousands of Vietnamese troops
were stationed in Laos to maintain the road network and provide
for its security. Vietnamese military personnel also fought
beside the Pathet Lao in its struggle to overthrow Laos'
neutralist government. Cooperation persisted after the war and
the Lao communist victory. In 1976, agreements on cooperation in
cultural, economic, scientific, and technical fields were signed
between the two countries, followed in 1977 by a twenty-five-year
Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation. The treaty was intended to
strengthen ties as well as sanction Vietnam's military presence
in, and military assistance to, Laos. Following Vietnam's
invasion of Cambodia, Laos established links with the Vietnamese-
supported PRK in Phnom Penh. Meanwhile, Hanoi maintained 40,000
to 60,000 troops in Laos. In 1985 the three governments discussed
coordinating their 1986-90 five-year plans, and Vietnam assumed a
larger role in developing Lao natural resources by agreeing to
joint exploitation of Laotian forests and iron ore deposits.
Nevertheless, such growth in cooperation prompted some debate on
the Lao side over the country's growing dependence on Vietnam.
Data as of December 1987
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