Meddling while Phnom Penh burned: The U.S. role in the Cambodian secession, June 1993

Abstract

In June 1993, less than two weeks after the United Nations carried off an election in Cambodia aimed at reconciling the civil war combatants, a secession led by the former incumbents, the Cambodian People's Party (CPP), threatened to return the country to conflict. Despite the calamity this threatened, the secession has received little attention outside peacekeeping texts and articles, which tend to view the incident narrowly, dismissing it simply as an example of CPP “intransigence.” Two other theories were developed in Cambodia to explain the secession. One theory argued that the CPP move was a typical pre-planned communist strategy developed for use in the event that the CPP lost the election. The other maintained that the secession was an ad hoc response that reflected CPP dissatisfaction with the conduct of the elections. This article explains why both theories are incomplete: they fail to take into consideration the impact of the deliberate, hostile, and partisan intervention of the U.S. Mission in Phnom Penh in the post-election period. The author argues that the U.S. “non-paper” released on 3 June 1993 aggravated the situation in Cambodia to the point that the CPP was forced to take disruptive and destabilizing actions. The U.S. Mission, therefore, bears considerable responsibility for the CPP secession in June 1993.