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We had as yet given no military aid, no intelligence support, and had only formalistic contacts with the new government. The coup itself had come without warning; its consequences threatened not only the freedom of Cambodia but our entire position in Viet Nam. We would, if the Lon Nol government collapsed, confront all of Cambodia as a Communist base, stretching 600 miles along the border of South Viet Nam. Vietnamization and American withdrawal would then come unstuck. So we were being driven toward support of Lon Nol hesitantly, reluctantly, in response to circumstances in Cambodia that we could neither forecast nor control.
The record leaves no doubt that the North Vietnamese, also caught by surprise by the March coup, bear the heaviest responsibility for events in Cambodia. Their illegal and arrogant occupation of Cambodian territory had torn apart Sihanouk's neutralist country; they created the Khmer Rouge as a force against Sihanouk well before his overthrow. It was they, not we, who had decided on a fight to the finish on the bleeding body of a people that wanted only to be left alone.
Revisionist history has painted a picture of a peaceful, neutral Cambodia wantonly assaulted by American forces and plunged into a civil war that could have been avoided but for the American obsession with military solutions. The facts are different. By April 21 we had a stark choice. We could permit North Viet Nam to overrun the whole of Cambodia. Or we could resist Cambodia's absorption, supporting the independence of a government recognized by the United Nations and most other nations, including the Soviet Union.
Curiously enough, one of the most implacable critics* of our policy in Cambodia presents the same analysis of what our choices were: "Back in March and April the Administration had had freedom of choice in reacting to events in Cambodia. If it had decided not to encourage, let alone to arm Lon Nol, it could have compelled either the return of Sihanouk or, at least, an attempt, by Lon Nol, to preserve the country's flawed neutrality. This would probably have meant a government dominated by Hanoi and at the very least it would have allowed the Communists continued use of [the port of] Sihanoukville and the sanctuaries."
This passage combines all the misconceptions about events in Cambodia in 1970. We did not encourage Lon Nol or even begin to arm him for weeks after North Vietnamese troops were ravaging a neutral country. The option of Lon Nol's restoring Cambodia's neutrality did not exist; it had been explicitly rejected by Le Duc Tho on April 4, 1970. And by then Sihanouk was no longer in a position to be neutralist. The real prospect before us, therefore, was exactly what the quoted paragraph describes as the most likely outcome: the reopening of Sihanoukville, a government in Phnom-Penh dominated by Hanoi and reopened sanctuaries now comprising all of eastern Cambodia. Where I differ sharply from the paragraph is in its assertion that we had "freedom of choice." This is precisely what we did not have, for the prospect it describes would have meant an overwhelming, insurmountable and decisive menace to the survival of South Viet Nam.
No Middle Ground