For a time, the embargo was imposed to punish Vietnam for yet another crime: its assault against Pol Pot in response to murderous Khmer Rouge attacks on Vietnamese border areas. The US had striven to normalize relations despite Vietnam's cruel treatment of us, Barbara Crossette reports under the heading "Indochina's Missing: An Issue That Refused to Die." But, she continues, "President Carter's efforts to open links to Hanoi were thwarted by Vietnam's invasion of Cambodia in 1978." Naturally, the saintly moralist could not overlook unprovoked aggression; had George Bush been in charge, he doubtless would have sent Stormin' Norman to crush the aggressor (at least, if there had been a guarantee that no one would shoot back).²⁷

Carter's deep feelings about the war crime of aggression had been demonstrated for all to see by his reaction to Indonesia's invasion of East Timor -- in this case, not terminating a murderous assault on the population but initiating a comparable one. As Indonesian violence approached genocidal levels in 1978 and its military supplies were running low, the Carter Administration sharply stepped up the flow of arms to its Indonesian ally, also sending jets via the Israeli connection to evade congressional restrictions; 90 percent of Indonesian arms were US-supplied, on the strict condition that they be used only for defensive purposes. From his moral pinnacle, Carter surveyed the Vietnamese crime of aggression and reluctantly terminated his efforts to bring Vietnam into the community of civilized nations, so we are instructed. The principled US opposition to the use of force in international affairs was revealed again through the1980s; for example, by Washington's decisive support for Israel's invasion of Lebanon and the accompanying slaughter, the government-media reaction to the World Court judgment in 1986 ordering the US to desist from its "unlawful use of force" against Nicaragua, Bush's invasion of Panama to celebrate the fall of the Berlin wall and the end of the Cold War, and much else.²⁸

According to the USG-Times version, Washington "refused to normalize relations as long as a Vietnamese-backed Government in Cambodia resisted a negotiated settlement to its civil war" (Steven Greenhouse); that is, the conflict with the Khmer Rouge, supplied by China and Thailand (and, indirectly, the US and its allies), and attacking Cambodian rural areas from their Thai sanctuaries.²⁹

The reality is a bit different. The Carter Administration "[chose] not to accept the Vietnamese offer to reestablish relations," Raymond Garthoff observes, impelled primarily by its early 1978 "tilt towards China" and, accordingly, toward China's Khmer Rouge ally, well before Vietnam invaded Cambodia. Pol Pot proceeded to carry out the worst atrocities of his reign, concealed by the CIA in its later demographic study, presumably because of the US connection. Unlike many European countries, the US did not abstain at the UN on the "legitimate" government of Cambodia after the Khmer Rouge were expelled by the Vietnamese, but "joined China in supporting the Khmer Rouge" (Garthoff). The US backed China's invasion to "punish Vietnam," and turned to supporting the Thai-based coalition in which the Khmer Rouge was the major military element. The US "encouraged the Chinese to support Pol Pot," as Carter's National Security Adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, later commented. Deng Xiaoping, a particular favorite of the Reagan-Bush Administrations, elaborated: "It is wise to force the Vietnamese to stay in Kampuchea because they will suffer more and will not be able to extend their hand to Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore," which they no doubt would have proceeded to conquer had they not been stopped in time. After helping to reconstruct Pol Pot's shattered forces, the US-China-Thailand coalition (and the West generally) lent its diplomatic support to Pol Pot; imposed an embargo on Cambodia and blocked aid from other sources, including humanitarian aid; and undermined any moves toward a negotiated settlement that did not offer the Khmer Rouge an influential role. The US even threatened Thailand with loss of trade privileges if it refused to support the Khmer Rouge, the Far Eastern Economic Review reported in 1989.

It was under the pressure of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council that "the Cambodians were forced...to accept the return of the Khmer Rouge," Sihanouk pointed out in his first speech after his triumphant return to Cambodia in November 1991. A year earlier, he had informed US journalist T.D. Allman that "To save Cambodia...all you had to do [in 1979] was to let Pol Pot die. Pol Pot was dying and you brought him back to life."³⁰

A more accurate rendering of Times-speak, then, is that Vietnam's efforts to restore relations were thwarted by the Carter Administration's turn towards China and the Khmer Rouge, that the US exploited the pretext of the invasion to punish the people of Vietnam and Cambodia as severely as possible, and that Washington refused to allow any diplomatic settlement that did not guarantee the Khmer Rouge a leading role.

By expelling this tacit US ally from Cambodia, bringing to an end atrocities that peaked after Carter's "tilt toward China" (hence toward Pol Pot), and then keeping him at bay, Vietnam "may have earned the thanks of most Cambodians," Globe editor H.D.S. Greenway writes. But these actions "earned it the opprobrium of most of the rest of the world" -- notably, those parts of the world that follow US whims. But Vietnam's withdrawal from Cambodia eliminated this pretext for the embargo, leaving only Vietnam's mistreatment of us on the MIA issue. This continuing crime, US moralists in press and government explain, requires that we keep the embargo in force, thus depriving Vietnam of loans and investments from the international financial institutions that the US controls and the Europeans and Japanese, wary of stepping on the toes of their powerful and relentless ally.³¹

²⁷ Barbara Crossette, NYT, Aug. 14, 1992.

²⁸ See ch. 5, n. 18. On media coverage of Pol Pot and Timor atrocities, see PEHR. On the illuminating reaction to these exposures, see MC, 6.2.8; NI, app. I. sec 1.

²⁹ Greenhouse, NYT, Oct. 24, 1991.

³⁰ See MC, 6.2.7, and sources cited. Garthoff, Détente, 701, 751. Sihanouk cited by Ben Kiernan, Broadside (Sydney, Australia), June 3, 1992; Allman, Vanity Fair, April 1990, cited by Michael Vickery, "Cambodia After the `Peace'" (ch. 7, n. 24). For a review and update, see Kiernan, "Cambodia's Missed Chance: Superpower obstruction of a viable path to peace," Indochina Newsletter, Nov.-Dec. 1991, citing FEER. See also Kiernan, Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, Vol. 21, 2-4, 1989; Vol. 24, 2, 1992. For extensive background, see Vickery, Cambodia, and Chandler, Cambodia.

³¹ Greenway, BG, Dec. 13; Uli Schmetzer, CT, Sept. 2, 1991. Susumu Awanohara, FEER, April 30, 1992.