The United States and Cambodia: The Limits of Compromise and Intervention

Abstract

The modalities of fighting while talking with the enemy ? the strategem that bedevilled America's course in the Vietnam war and confronts it again in Nicaragua ? are also catching up with the United States in the Cambodian con flict. On 19 January 1985, in the midst of the most intense Vietnamese offensive against Cambodian rebels thus far, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and the Pacific, Paul Wolfowitz, declared after discussions with Thai security officials in Bangkok that the United States would not provide any military aid to the Cambodian rebels. The reason, Wolfowitz said, was that such U.S. aid would set back efforts to reach a political solution in the Cambodian conflict, and hence the role of providing rebel assistance should best be taken by others.1 On 25 April 1985, however, in a letter to the chairmen of the foreign relations committees of the U.S. House and Senate, Assistant Secretary William Ball III declared that the Reagan Administration now welcomed a proposal approved by the House Foreign Affairs Committee on 20 March 1985 to extend US$5 million in military aid to the two non-communist Cambodian rebel factions. Ball said, however, that the Administration's agreement was contingent on the United States retaining con trol over the aid through the U.S. Military Assistance Program.2 It had taken more than a month for the Administration to endorse the House Committee's action and the Reagan Administration reportedly had been reluctant to support any programme of military aid to the Cambodian rebels.3 The idea of granting such aid was first formally suggested by the House Foreign Affairs Committee's Chairman, Representative Stephen J. Solarz (D.-N.Y.). Solarz's journey to Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia during the last week of December 1984 had led him to conclude, inter alia, that not only was Vietnam as yet unwilling to engage in any serious discussions to end the Cambodian conflict, but that, indeed, Hanoi seemed intent on driving a wedge between the Cambodian rebels and their supporters, namely, the People's Republic of China and ASEAN (the Association of Southeast Asian Nations).4 Even when on 11 February 1985, ASEAN Foreign Ministers, after a special meeting in Bangkok called to consider the implications of Vietnam's widening offensive in Cambodia, issued an international appeal urging all countries to pro vide military aid to the Cambodian rebels in their struggle, there had been no public