The U.S. strategy was really a gamble on Sihanouk, who was widely believed to retain a significant base of popularity in the country as well as a unique international acceptance among all the interested powers.  The United States sought a political deal because in ceasefire conditions the NCR's military weakness would be less decisive and Sihanouk's international and domestic prestige would turn into greater political leverage against both Hanoi and the Khmer Rouge.  The flow of outside weapons--from the Soviets to Phnom Penh and from the Chinese to the Khmer Rouge--would be halted only in conditions of a political deal.  Neither Moscow nor Beijing would cut off its client unless the other did the same; each was apparently willing to do so (or to reduce aid substantially) if the other did, because in their pursuit of rapprochement they were willing to put the Cambodian issue on ice on some fair basis.  The key diplomatically was to get the Phnom Penh regime to turn over a substantial share of power--not to the Khmer Rouge, but in effect to Sihanouk (who all agreed would preside over whatever compromise structure emerged).

A U.S. tilt toward Hanoi before a political deal would not stop the Khmer Rouge; on the contrary, it would guarantee continuation of the war and of Chinese aid to the Khmer Rouge (as well as Soviet aid to Phnom Penh).  After a political deal, it was highly likely that Sihanouk, a master political balancer, would tilt toward Hanoi sufficiently to outmaneuver the Khmer Rouge (and in the opposite direction, if he needed to keep Hanoi at bay).  Sihanouk had lost several members of his family to the Khmer Rouge genocide; he needed no instruction in what they represented.  Yet he (and we) understood that the best hope for the survival of the noncommunists was to stop the war and turn the military contest into a political one in which the noncommunists could compete on the basis of their maximum strength.  Aid to the noncommunist resistance would never turn it into a military tiger, but it would strengthen its political clout--as well as assure its survival while the war continued.

What the administration's critics proposed--siding with Phnom Penh against the Khmer Rouge--was a formula for torpedoing the diplomacy and prolonging the war, with no assurance of a decent outcome.  The Phnom Penh regime was a weak reed, lacking legitimacy (many of its leaders being former Khmer Rouge themselves).  The critics' idea may have been well intended, but it was not an effective formula either for a political solution or for stopping the Khmer Rouge.

The Bush administration stuck to its guns on the diplomatic track, which took some courage, and it went even further: in 1989 it made an unprecedented bid for congressional support for lethal military aid to the NCR, and nearly got it.

Because of the courage and persistence of Solarz (and Republican Representative Bill McCollum of Florida), the House passed a bill authorizing lethal aid.  But the Senate was a hotbed of active opposition.  Liberals like Senators Byrd, Cranston, Kerry, and Pell were urging less, not more, support for the NCR.  Yet in July 1989, Senator Robb of Virginia submitted an amendment that would put the Senate too on record as supporting lethal aid.

The prospects were not good.  The administration hesitated to spend political capital.  Yet the bill passed--by the remarkable margin of 59-39--after an impassioned late-night debate on July 20.  Much of the credit goes to Vice President Quayle, the principal repository in the administration of ideological commitment to anticommunist resistance movements, who encouraged Robb and spent much of the night of the Senate vote in intense floor lobbying of his former colleagues.

With both houses of Congress now on record, that should have been sufficient for the Intelligence Committees to give a green light to a program along these lines.  But not so.  There was a further congressional hurdle: where reprogramming of funds is needed, permission of the appropriations committees is required.  The chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee was Robert Byrd--a passionate opponent of aid for the Cambodians.  There it sat.

Disappointment in Paris

With the Vietnamese scheduled to be out of Cambodia by September 1989, French President Mitterrand proposed a peace conference in Paris for the end of July.  On the surface it seemed an appropriate moment for an initiative.  In reality, the French had no plan.  The moment when diplomatic movement was likely would be after the Vietnamese withdrawal was completed--when the parties had had a chance to test the new balance of forces on the ground.  Before then, none of the parties could be expected to take big steps or risks.  The conference was thus more a product of French vanity than of any strategy.

The Paris Conference of July-August 1989 produced no significant result, which was no surprise to the American delegation.  In fact, the Americans were satisfied that they had kept the need for a "comprehensive" settlement high on the agenda, that is, insisting on a political change in Phnom Penh as well as on Vietnamese troop withdrawal.  Secretary Baker made a forceful speech in Paris and the point was reflected in the communique.

But the Paris Conference turned out nonetheless to be a disaster.  It demoralized the American government, doomed any chance of lethal aid for the NCR, and revived with new vigor opponents' charges that U.S. policy was objectively supporting the Khmer Rouge.

At the Paris Conference, American officials had to suffer Sihanouk at his worst.  They came away suffering from "Snooky Shock."  He publicly flaunted his tactical alliance with the Khmer Rouge, blocking, for example, Phnom Penh's efforts to insert a condemnation of "genocide" into the conference documents.  It was a public relations disaster, to put it mildly.  U.S. officials came home depressed and disillusioned with the temperamental prince on whom our diplomatic strategy had rested.

It was easier for those of us sitting in Washington a few thousand miles away, not having to witness Sihanouk's performance at close hand, to see the method in his madness.  In his eyes, the tactical necessity was to continue to squeeze Hanoi and Phnom Penh; he (and we) had to resist rising to the bait of an untimely battle with the Khmer Rouge, letting Hanoi off the hook.  In Sihanouk's calculation, the confrontation with the Khmer Rouge was bound to come in due time--but preferably after a political settlement in which the two communist forces were cut off from arms supplies and the noncommunists were put in a more pivotal position.

Nevertheless, the failure of the Paris Conference was trumpeted in the media.  It was unfairly seen as a failure of our policy (when in fact its convening had no part in our strategy) and it was seen to discredit Sihanouk, on whom our policy did indeed depend.  Congressional and media pressures mounted on the administration to change its policy.  The administration did not yet bend, but it lost heart.  It made no further effort to salvage lethal aid for the NCR.

In January 1990, diplomacy took a more positive turn.  The Australian foreign minister, Gareth Evans, proposed that the United Nations organize elections in Cambodia and oversee the country's administration in the interim.  Opposing military forces would be regrouped, then disarmed and demobilized.  This proposal was accepted by all five permanent members of the Security Council (the "Perm 5").

It was a much more attractive concept than sharing power with the Khmer Rouge.  It calmed the congressional pressures for a time.  The Soviet and Chinese endorsement of such a scheme seemed an especially hopeful sign.  Yet the difference between this and our earlier negotiating position was not as great as it seemed.  No such interim arrangement could possibly come into effect until the four Cambodian parties reached some understanding and modus vivendi among themselves, including an acceptance of the balance of forces among them.  Thus it would require a quadripartite deal--including the Khmer Rouge--just as the administration's previous policy had.  (This is more or less what was to happen in the summer of 1991.)

The obstacles remained the same: continuing fear of the Khmer Rouge and Phnom Penh's unwillingness to cede real power to anybody--even the United Nations.  But pressures for a settlement were also growing.  The bankrupt Soviets clearly signaled to Vietnam their inability to afford subsidizing a war that was going nowhere.  Vietnam and China, both now pariahs in the international community (Vietnam because of its Cambodia aggression, China because of Tiananmen), had an increasing incentive to cut a deal to reduce the international pressures on them.

The good news was that these developments among the Communist powers were pushing Cambodia closer to a political solution.  The bad news was that the noncommunists' voice in all this was feeble.  What kind of an outcome was such a "red solution" likely to be, with all the Communists cutting a deal among themselves?

U.S. policy risked weakening the noncommunists even further.  In the spring and summer of 1990, Khmer Rouge forces seemed to be making headway on the ground (which turned out, as usual, to be exaggerated).  Congressional fears and pressures grew again.  A tendentious ABC News documentary railed against alleged American collusion with the Khmer Rouge.  In July 1990, yielding to these pressures, the State Department tilted in the direction of Phnom Penh--agreeing for the first time to talk directly to it and to withdraw support for the coalition's UN seat (which had been thought to legitimize the status of the Khmer Rouge).  Secretary Baker confirmed the policy shift while in a joint news conference with Soviet Foreign Minister Shevardnadze.  Our ASEAN allies, who learned of the shift from press reports, were upset at what they saw as an untimely tilt toward Phnom Penh when it was still firmly resisting power-sharing.  administration officials privately expressed the hope that the move--including the (unintended) appearance of U.S.-Soviet collusion--would scare the Chinese into reining in the Khmer Rouge, which would in turn reassure everyone else.  In any case, congressional funding for the NCR might well have been cut off if the administration had not made some such shift.

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