Cambodia: Drift to the Left

Prince Norodom Sihanouk has long demanded that Britain and the U.S. come up with a plan to guarantee Cambodia's neutrality and safeguard its frontiers from archenemies Thailand and South Viet Nam. But when no proposal met his approval, Sihanouk became convinced of a Western plot to partition his nation. Last week, Sihanouk's obsessive suspicion of the West cued a violent riot in Pnompenh which resulted in the sacking of the British and U.S. embassies and spotlighted Cambodia's alarming drift toward Communism.

The riot began slowly. Outside the two embassies, Cambodian police and government officials stood idly by as 10,000 hooligans were marshaled into position by a Ministry of Information soundtruck, which led the chant: "Yankee Go Home." Then, under a barrage of rocks and bricks, the rioters broke through police lines and stormed the U.S. embassy. They overturned and burned cars, tore down the U.S. flag, replaced it with the Cambodian emblem. As embassy personnel huddled behind tear-gas-armed Marine guards on the third floor, the demonstrators ransacked ground-floor offices, destroying papers and smashing equipment. At the British embassy, the whole process was repeated, even to painting "Down with the Americans" on the walls. Said one Brit on: "That was the final indignity."

Though the Cambodian government promised to pay for the damages, Sihanouk called the riot "inexcusable but comprehensible," said that the mob was goaded by "the repeated humiliations inflicted on their country by the Anglo-Saxon powers" (total U.S. aid to Cambodia since 1954: $340 million). In a calculated slap at the West, Sihanouk went on to discuss neighboring Laos in a way that all but recognized the Communist Pathet Lao as its real government, also announced that he would soon send a delegation to Hanoi to negotiate a border-demarcation agreement with Communist North Viet Nam. Since South Viet Nam—and not North —borders on Cambodia, any such treaty implied recognition of Hanoi as the government of all Viet Nam.

Sihanouk's drift to the left is based on his conviction that all southern Asia will one day be dominated by Communist China. By cozying up to the Reds now, he hopes to get the best terms possible if and when Cambodia is finally forced to become a Chinese satellite. "I see things as they are," he says, "not as I would like them to be."