Sihanouk's
non-aligned foreign policy, which emerged in the months following the Geneva Conference, cannot be understood without reference to Cambodia's history of foreign subjugation and its very uncertain prospects for survival as the
war between North Vietnam and South Vietnam intensified. Soon after the 1954 Geneva Conference, Sihanouk expressed some interest in integrating Cambodia into the framework of the
Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), which included Cambodia, Laos, and South Vietnam within the "treaty area", although none of these states was a signatory. But meetings in late 1954 with India's Prime Minister
Jawaharlal Nehru and
Burma's Premier
U Nu made him receptive to the appeal of nonalignment. Moreover, the prince was somewhat uneasy about a United States-dominated alliance that included one old enemy,
Thailand, and encompassed another, South Vietnam, each of which offered sanctuary to anti-Sihanouk dissidents. At the
Bandung Conference in April 1955, Sihanouk held private meetings with Premier
Zhou Enlai of China and Foreign Minister
Phạm Văn Đồng of
North Vietnam. Both assured him that their countries would respect Cambodia's independence and territorial integrity. His experience with the French, first as a client, then as the self-proclaimed leader of the "royal crusade for independence", apparently led him to conclude that the United States, like France, would eventually be forced to leave Southeast Asia. From this perspective, the Western presence in Indochina was only a temporary interruption of the dynamics of the region—continued Vietnamese (and perhaps even Thai) expansion at Cambodia's expense. Accommodation with North Vietnam and friendly ties with China during the late 1950s and the 1960s were tactics designed to counteract these dynamics. China accepted Sihanouk's overtures and became a valuable counterweight to growing Vietnamese and Thai pressure on Cambodia. Cambodia's relations with China were based on mutual interests. Sihanouk hoped that China would restrain the Vietnamese and the Thai from acting to Cambodia's detriment. The Chinese, in turn, viewed Cambodia's nonalignment as vital in order to prevent the encirclement of their country by the United States and its allies. When Premier Zhou Enlai visited Phnom Penh in 1956, he asked the country's Chinese minority, numbering about 300,000, to cooperate in Cambodia's development, to stay out of politics, and to consider adopting Cambodian citizenship. This gesture helped to resolve a sensitive issue—the loyalty of Cambodian Chinese—that had troubled the relationship between Phnom Penh and
Beijing. In 1960 the two countries signed a Treaty of Friendship and Nonaggression. After the Sino-Soviet rift Sihanouk's ardent friendship with China contributed to generally cooler ties with Moscow. China was not the only large power to which Sihanouk looked for patronage. Cambodia's quest for security and nation-building assistance impelled the prince to search beyond Asia and to accept help from all donors as long as there was no impingement upon his country's sovereignty. With this end in mind, Sihanouk turned to the United States in 1955 and negotiated a military aid agreement that secured funds and equipment for the Royal Khmer Armed Forces (Forces Armées Royales Khmères—FARK). A United States Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG) was established in Phnom Penh to supervise the delivery and the use of equipment that began to arrive from the United States. By the early 1960s, aid from Washington constituted 30% of Cambodia's defense budget and 14% of total budget inflows (
First Indochina War). and
Sihanouk in 1959 Relations with the United States proved to be stormy. United States officials both in Washington and in Phnom Penh frequently underestimated the prince and considered him to be an erratic figure with minimal understanding of the threat posed by Asian
communism. Sihanouk easily reciprocated this mistrust because several developments aroused his suspicion of United States intentions toward his country. One of these developments was the growing United States influence within the
Cambodian armed forces. The processing of equipment deliveries and the training of Cambodian personnel had forged close ties between United States military advisers and their Cambodian counterparts. Military officers of both nations also shared apprehensions about the spread of communism in Southeast Asia. Sihanouk considered FARK to be Washington's most powerful constituency in his country. The prince also feared that a number of high-ranking, rightist FARK officers led by Lon Nol were becoming too powerful and that, by association with these officers, United States influence in Cambodia was becoming too deeply rooted. A second development included the repetition of overflights by United States and South Vietnamese military aircraft within Cambodian airspace and border incursions by South Vietnamese troops in hot pursuit of
Viet Cong insurgents who crossed into Cambodian territory when military pressure upon them became too sustained. As the early 1960s wore on, this increasingly sensitive issue contributed to the deterioration of relations between Phnom Penh and Washington. A third development was Sihanouk's own belief that he had been targeted by United States intelligence agencies for replacement by a more pro-Western leader. Evidence to support this suspicion came to light in 1959 when the government discovered a plot to overthrow Sihanouk. The conspiracy, often known as the "
Bangkok Plot", involved several Khmer leaders suspected of American connections. Among them were
Sam Sary, a leader of right-wing
Khmer Serei troops in South Vietnam;
Son Ngoc Thanh, the early nationalist leader once exiled into Thailand; and
Dap Chhuon, the military governor of
Siem Reap Province. Another alleged plot involved Dap Chuon's establishment of a "free" state that would have included Siem Reap Province and
Kampong Thum (Kampong Thom) Province and the southern areas of Laos that were controlled by the rightist Laotian prince,
Boun Oum. These developments, magnified by Sihanouk's abiding suspicions, eventually undermined Phnom Penh's relations with Washington. In November 1963, the prince charged that the United States was continuing to support the subversive activities of the
Khmer Serei in Thailand and in South Vietnam, and he announced the immediate termination of Washington's aid program to Cambodia. Relations continued to deteriorate, and the final break came in May 1965 amid increasing indications of airspace violations by South Vietnamese and by United States aircraft and of ground fighting between
Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) troops and Viet Cong insurgents in the Cambodian border areas. and Prince
Sihanouk in New York, 1961 In the meantime, Cambodia's relations with North Vietnam and with South Vietnam, as well as the rupture with Washington, reflected Sihanouk's efforts to adjust to geopolitical realities in Southeast Asia and to keep his country out of the escalating war in neighboring South Vietnam. In the early-to-mid-1960s, this effort required a tilt toward
Hanoi because the government in
Saigon tottered on the brink of anarchy. In the cities, the administration of
Ngo Dinh Diem and the military regimes that succeeded it had become increasingly ineffectual and unstable, while in the countryside the government forces were steadily losing ground to the Hanoi-backed insurgents. To observers in Phnom Penh, South Vietnam's short-term viability was seriously in doubt, and this compelled a new tack in Cambodian foreign policy. First, Cambodia severed diplomatic ties with Saigon in August 1963. The following March, Sihanouk announced plans to establish diplomatic relations with North Vietnam and to negotiate a border settlement directly with Hanoi. These plans were not implemented quickly, however, because the North Vietnamese told the prince that any problem concerning Cambodia's border with South Vietnam would have to be negotiated directly with the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam (NFLSVN). Cambodia opened border talks with the front in mid-1966, and the latter recognized the inviolability of Cambodia's borders a year later. North Vietnam quickly followed suit. Cambodia was the first foreign government to recognize the NFLSVN's Provisional Revolutionary Government after it was established in June 1969. Sihanouk was the only foreign head of state to attend the funeral of
Ho Chi Minh, North Vietnam's deceased leader, in Hanoi three months later. In 1965, Sihanouk negotiated a deal with China and North Vietnam. Whereas before Viet Cong and North Vietnamese forces had temporarily moved into Cambodian territory, the deal allowed them to build permanent military facilities on Cambodian soil. Cambodia also opened its ports to shipments of military supplies from China and the Soviet Union to the Vietnamese. In exchange for these concessions, large amounts of money passed into the hands of the Cambodian elite. In particular, deals were made where China would purchase rice at inflated prices from the Cambodian government. While Sihanouk talked neutrality in public, he had effectively pushed Cambodia directly into the Vietnam War. After making friends with North Vietnam and China, Sihanouk turned politically to the right and unleashed a wave of repression throughout the country. The repression drove most of the political left in the country underground. While Sihanouk's deal with China and Vietnam in the short term kept both countries from arming the Cambodian left, it did not prevent the Cambodian left from launching an unsupported rebellion on its own. In the late 1960s, while preserving relations with China and with North Vietnam, Sihanouk sought to restore a measure of equilibrium by improving Cambodia's ties with the West. This shift in course by the prince represented another adjustment to prevailing conditions in Asia. The
Cultural Revolution had made the Chinese very difficult with which to carry on relations. The increasing North Vietnamese presence in Eastern Cambodia was destabilizing Cambodia politically and economically. When the Cambodian left went underground in the late 1960s, Sihanouk made concessions to the right since he did not have any force that he could play against them. Cambodia served as the southern terminus of the
Ho Chi Minh Trail, the logistical resupply route of the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong. The use by these forces of sanctuaries in Cambodia put Cambodian neutrality in jeopardy. China, preoccupied with its Cultural Revolution, did not intercede with Hanoi. On Cambodia's eastern border, even in the face of the communist
Tet Offensive in 1968, South Vietnam surprisingly had not collapsed and President
Nguyễn Văn Thiệu's government was bringing a measure of stability to that war-ravaged country. As the government in Phnom Penh began to feel keenly the loss of economic and military aid from the United States, which had totaled about US$400 million between 1955 and 1963, it began to have second thoughts about the break with Washington. The unavailability of American equipment and spare parts were exacerbated by the small amount and poor quality of
Soviet, Chinese, and French substitutes. In late 1967 and in early 1968, Sihanouk signaled that he would raise no objection to hot pursuit of communist forces by South Vietnamese or by United States troops into Cambodian territory. Washington, in the meantime, accepted the recommendation of the United States
Military Assistance Command--Vietnam (MACV) and, beginning in March 1969, ordered a series of airstrikes (dubbed the
Menu series) against Cambodian sanctuaries used by the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong. Whether or not these bombing missions were authorized aroused considerable controversy, and assertions by the
Nixon administration that Sihanouk had "allowed" or even "encouraged" them were disputed by critics such as British journalist
William Shawcross. But in retrospect, Sihanouk allowing US bombing as a counter-weight to his previous decision to allow the Vietnamese to establish base areas seems consistent with his policy strategy in that US was the only force he could use as a counter-weight to the Vietnamese presence in Cambodia. On a diplomatic level, however, the Menu airstrikes did not impede bilateral relations from moving forward. In April 1969, Nixon sent a note to the prince affirming that the United States recognized and respected "the sovereignty, neutrality and territorial integrity of the Kingdom of Cambodia with its present frontiers." Shortly thereafter, in June 1969, full diplomatic relations were restored between Phnom Penh and Washington. ==Early phases of the Cambodian Left==