Behind the conflict between Kampuchea and Vietnam and their governing communist parties lie differences so profound that each revolution stands as an implicit critique of the other. That the existence of each revolutionary model challenges the basic premises of the other is the result of a complex interaction of history, politics and geography. For two such different neighbors to avoid conflict would require extraordinary good will and a mutual commitment to cooperation and compromise. Such elements have not characterized the relationships between the two parties or the states they rule. Furthermore, historically and presently, the question of how closely the two parties and states will work together has been a key source of tension. This, perhaps more than any other, is the irresolvable issue at the core of today's fighting. An examination of the contrasting histories of the two parties and of the different situations of the two states reveals why this is so.

The radical differences in domestic and international policies separating the Kampuchean and Vietnamese governments, which deeply color each side's view of the other and make even simple coexistence difficult, were shaped by the settings in which the two parties carried out their revolutions. Perhaps most significant was the nature of the forces against which they fought. The Vietnamese revolutionaries faced a foreign enemy, while the Kampucheans sought to overthrow a neo-colonial but indigenous regime. Consequently, for the Vietnamese, the primary focus of the revolution during its formative years was not an attack on tradition or feudal class relations, but a nationalist struggle against foreign domination, which drew in a wide spectrum of the population. Class struggle and the establishment of a socialist society remained key components of the revolutionary program, but they were overshadowed for long periods by the struggle for national independence. For the Kampucheans, on the other hand, the enemy was a feudal-bureaucratic state clad in nationalist trappings. Its overthrow demanded a strategy based on radical class struggle coupled with nationalist claims even stronger than those of this state.

In Vietnam, the communist movement, while retaining its commitment to socialist revolution, early became the virtually unrivaled representative of Vietnamese nationalism. A series of competitors-the Bao Dai, Diem and Thieu regimes– conspicuously relied on foreign support for their survival. In addition, the French colonialists had helped prevent the emergence of an alternative nationalist leadership by undermining the political importance of the Vietnamese court without establishing an indigenous commercial-capitalist political regime in its place. In this setting, the party came to emphasize continuity with pre-modern traditions of gentry-led peasant opposition to foreign rule rather than class conflict and class struggle.

With the liberation of the north and partition of the country in 1954, this tendency took on a new dimension, for it was essential that socialist construction in the north not disrupt the united front for national liberation in the south. Hence, the transformation to socialism in the north had to take place cautiously and with a minimum of provocative class conflict to avoid frightening elements of the southern population who wanted to expel the Americans and destroy the regimes dependent on them but did not support socialism. Such conditions injected into the theory and practice of the Vietnamese revolution relatively high degrees of class caution and traditionalism. In practice, this is manifested in a preference for administrative measures rather than relatively violent mass movements in resolving social contradictions. In theory, it is manifested in an emphasis on the forces of production (i.e., science and technology) rather than the relations of production (i.e., class struggle and conflict) in the post-liberation stage of socialist construction.

The setting in which the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK) launched its revolutionary movement was quite different and pushed it in a much more radical direction. The party was founded in 1960, and it launched its armed struggle to take power in 1968. Hence, its theory and practice-and much of its current leadership-were developed not during the period of French colonial rule or of the U.S.-backed Lon Nol regime but during the Sihanouk era. This meant that the party had to direct its revolution against a highly nationalistic autocracy which enjoyed diplomatic, economic and military support from the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, the National Liberation Front, the Soviet Union and China. Coopting many nationalist and anti-imperialist themes, the Sihanouk regime enjoyed a progressive image abroad, while its vaguely anti-capitalist ideology allowed it to proclaim its commitment to certain types of social reform as well. But in reality, Sihanouk's internal policies were viciously repressive and failed to resolve any of the major socio-economic problems in the countryside. Furthermore, in contrast to Vietnam, French colonial rule had strengthened the Kampuchean monarchy. After independence, the royal house was reinforced and stabilized and a repressive colonial bureaucracy modernized by aid first from the United States, then from the Soviet Union and China.

In launching a revolutionary movement against such a state, the Communists could not rely on simple nationalist and reformist themes to build up a popular base. Rather, they had to emphasize class struggle against a deeply rooted indigenous enemy with strong nationalist credentials, and the CPK's nationalist line had to outdo Sihanouk's. These tendencies toward radical class struggle and nationalism became integral elements of the Kampuchean communist movement in the period before 1970, particularly as armed struggle against the Sihanouk state expanded from a handful of armed guards for CPK cadre in 1968 to a peasant guerrilla army of 5,000-10,000 persons in 1970. These forces became the nucleus of the party and full-sized revolutionary army after the March 1970 coup which deposed Sihanouk.

The coup unexpectedly catapulted Sihanouk and members of his personal political entourage into a united front with the CPK. It did not, however, weaken the CPK's class emphasis or its extraordinarily strong nationalism. On the contrary, the party was forced to develop even more radical class and nationalist standpoints to set itself apart from the nationalist and reformist monarchism displayed by Sihanouk in his united front role. As head of state, Sihanouk had repressed the Kampuchean Communists with ferocious brutality, and the party could not allow the united front to become a means of protecting Sihanouk's political power, which drew strength from his popular image as the embodiment of Kampuchean nationalism. Hence, the very formation of the united front would require an eventual intense and violent class struggle against those elements within it which represented the social bases of the monarchy and bureaucracy. As a result, the theory and practice of the Communist Party of Kampuchea have come to reflect systematically the class and nationalist radicalism forged during this period. In its practice the CPK relies on disruptive and even violent mass-based struggles to resolve social contradictions, including such fundamental ones as those between city and countryside and between mental and manual labor. The party's theory of socialist construction stresses the absolute primacy of mass mobilization, subjective resolution and learning through practical work over technology and theoretical sophistication.

Post-Revolutionary Crisis

Emerging from such contrasting experiences, the Vietnamese and Kampuchean communist parties took power in 1975 in equally different post-revolutionary situations. The nature of the post-liberation crisis confronting each party further widened the gulf between them. As has been the case in most other revolutionary situations, the victorious parties faced an immediate need to consolidate their power and protect themselves against their enemies. Typically in such a situation, a radical and often violent campaign is directed against potential enemies of the revolution, who may include former members of a united front or even factions within the party. But the threats confronting the Vietnamese and Kampuchean communist parties in 1975 were not on the same scale.

The Vietnamese communists came to power in the south in far more secure circumstances than those surrounding the CPK victory in Kampuchea. Not only had the Thieu regime and its forces disintegrated in a complete rout, but the existence of a consolidated socialist state in the north provided a major source of strength to the new government in the south. The Vietnamese party had in fact passed through its initial post-liberation crisis in 1956 during the radical land reform campaign in the north, an episode generally recognized as the most violent in Vietnamese revolutionary history.* This struggle against reactionary social groups was marked by serious internal party strife. Eventually the struggle was moderated and its violence partially repudiated, to be followed by a period of relative social calm. In the south, a full-scale post-revolutionary crisis has not yet occurred, although the attack on bourgeois trade in Ho Chi Minh City may be a harbinger or a first step. The delay in attacking potential enemies and the step by step pace of social and economic transformation in the south are possible because, with socialist rule well established in the north, there is no apparent threat of a counterattack which might successfully overturn or subvert the revolution.

In Kampuchea, however, the post-victory crisis was acute. The final battle between the forces of Lon Nol and those of the revolutionary army had been the biggest and bloodiest of the war, and it had left the revolutionary army badly battered. In Kampuchea, there was no socialist state in another part of the country to guarantee the fruits of victory, and both the Communists and their enemies realized that there was a real possibility that the victories won in war might be sabotaged in post-war strife. Without experience in administering major urban areas and faced with a desperate food shortage in the newly-captured cities, the Communist Party of Kampuchea moved swiftly and drastically to consolidate its position. The evacuation of the cities-strictly implemented despite what must have been serious opposition from within the united front and from many urban residents-dissipated the immediate security problem by dispersing the CPK's enemies. It also provided a means of dealing with the food emergency. But it was not only the pressing needs of the moment which persuaded the party leadership to choose this particular form of struggle. The evacuation and subsequent integration of war refugees and native city dwellers into the rural cooperative system was a radical step toward resolving the contradiction between city and countryside, a resolution which history had made a high priority for the CPK.

Another historical factor has pushed the two revolutionary states in contrasting directions. Vietnamese revolutionaries have held state power in the north for nearly a quarter of a century. Hence in a pattern typical of governing revolutionary parties, the routinizing requirements of running a state have gradually transformed their revolutionary exuberance into either administrative efficiency or administrative stagnation. This tendency toward bureaucratization has strongly influenced even the southern cadre who moved directly from guerrilla warfare to state administration. In Kampuchea, on the other hand, the primary experience of all cadre is with quite recent and intense military and class conflict. Their administrative experience is limited, and administration remains ad hoc, with revolutionary zeal the overwhelming administrative theme. Experiment and chaos rather than efficiency or stagnation appear to be the outstanding characteristics of the new Kampuchean state.
 

The Economic Choices

Just as their contrasting political histories shaped the Vietnamese and Kampuchean communist parties in sharply different ways, so too the economic conditions they inherited presented them with different opportunities and limitations for the post-war reconstruction period. Although both countries' economies are relatively backward and characterized by scarcity, they are far from identical. In both its rural and urban sectors, the south Vietnamese economy in 1975 was significantly more "modern"-i.e. more highly industrialized and commercialized-than the Kampuchean. Similarly, the economy of socialist north Vietnam was more advanced than that of the Kampuchean liberated zones. Yet at the same time overpopulation and land pressure in Vietnam made the situation of scarcity there fundamentally more serious than in underpopulated and relatively land-rich Kampuchea. This contrast was heightened, because both north Vietnam, which is very densely populated, and the liberated zones in the south, which covered only limited areas, had to import rice, while the liberated zones of Kampuchea, which extended over large territories, produced a rice surplus. The double contrast between Vietnamese economic modernity coupled with rice deficit and Kampuchean economic backwardness coupled with rice surplus helps explain the divergent paths taken by each government in post-war revolutionary transformation and reconstruction.

In Vietnam, analysis of the various elements of the existing economic system suggested a strategy of transformation in the south which would attempt the conversion of modern, productive facilities into components of a state socialist system. Relatively advanced commercial networks, urban infrastructure and industrial or semi-industrial complexes were already available in both south and north. Drawing managerial and in some cases material resources from the north, it was possible simply to take over components of the old southern economy, supply them with new socialist management (or socialist supervision of the old capitalist management) and integrate them into a state socialist planning system. Highlighting the value of inherited economic resources was the underlying situation of general scarcity, which had probably conditioned the Vietnamese Communists to be cautious in considering disruptive or radical measures for economic transformation. At the same time, there appeared to be relatively little political risk in allowing old capitalists to continue to function within the limits imposed by a state socialist economy, because their close association with foreign economic interests had left them with little domestic political base. Thus, in order to break their political power it appeared sufficient to nationalize their interests and draw their enterprises into the state economy.

Kampuchea in 1975, however, possessed little that could be usefully and productively converted directly and immediately into components of a modern socialist economic system. Kampuchea had remained an undeveloped colonial backwater while French modernization efforts focused on Vietnam. Later, the Sihanouk regime had neither attracted foreign investment nor successfully mobilized the population for economic achievements. Although the country had received some industrial plants from the Soviet Union and China and had constructed some elements of a modern infrastructure, these had been heavily damaged during the war-which was even more destructive in Kampuchea than in Vietnam. With such a small modern sector, it was possible for the Kampuchean Communists to choose a reconstruction strategy which would rapidly rehabilitate those facilities considered salvageable and useful while ignoring some of the previously advanced sectors, most of which were unproductive and damaged. Furthermore, in considering the food crisis at the end of war and the highly favorable ratio of land to population, the new government was encouraged to concentrate its reconstruction efforts on the rapid transformation and expansion of agricultural production without fear of the temporary losses in production which might result from a radically disruptive policy. From a political perspective, the decision to discard much of the old regime's economically advanced sector was made more attractive because the facilities and networks in question were part of the old political power structure. Many had been part of Sihanouk's state capitalist system-and few were tainted by direct association with foreign capital. Thus with Sihanouk in the united front, there was real fear that the resurrection of these sectors as part of a socialist state enterprise system might only restore the political influence of Sihanouk's state capitalists. This fear was heightened by the fact that the economy of the liberated zones was entirely agricultural, offering no socialist industry as a counterweight to the economic power of the old industrial sector. Hence, unlike the situation in Vietnam, simple nationalization and direct conversion of the existing economic structure to a socialist system were not adequate to break the power of the revolution's long-standing enemies.
 

The Implicit Mutual Critique

Taken together, all these factors acted to push the Kampuchean and Vietnamese communist parties in strikingly different directions, particularly after they had seized power throughout their respective countries. Each revolutionary model points out the real or imaginable shortcomings of the other and thereby questions its legitimacy. In addition to the implicit nutual critique contained in the contrasting practice and theory of the two parties, their differing positions on the question of revisionism in the communist movement-an issue arising with powerful insistence out of the Sino-Soviet split-strengthened the theoretical basis for their criticism and suspicion of each other.

The Vietnamese party was already well established when the debate began. While it criticized as "revisionist" Khrushchev's refusal to fully support Vietnam against the United States in the early 1960s, it did not join the debate over the proper internal policies of ruling communist parties or launch an insistent or violent campaign against "revisionism" within its own ranks. This complacency about internal revisionism dovetailed with the Vietnamese party's de-emphasis on class struggle. By consistently deploring the break between the Soviet Union and China, it downplayed the substantive issues that divided the communist giants. The Kampuchean Communist Party, on the other hand, was born and grew up in the midst of the debate. Like most other non-ruling Asian communist parties in the 1960s, it took the issue of revisionism very seriously, quickly taking a staunch and vigilant anti-revisionist position. The CPK's struggle against revisionism fit well with its radical classist tendencies.

With so many points of difference between them, even mere coexistence as neighbors became difficult. Two revolutionary leaderships dedicated to bridging the gaps between them might have been able to overcome their differences under favorable circumstances. Instead, the inherent tension between the Vietnamese and Kampuchean Communists were exacerbated by serious disagreements over foreign policy, a history of antagonistic relations between the two countries, and mutual suspicion bred by their experience of forced cooperation during the war against the United States. The irresolvable conflict hinged around the degree to which the two parties would work together after the war, for the interaction of all these factors made it impossible that this question could be resolved to the full satisfaction of both sides.
 

Approaches for Foreign Policy

As communists and nationalists, Vietnamese and Kampucheans approach the outside world very differently. Their differences, conditioned by geography, history, and culture, have created forms of nationalism which are not only divergent but incompatible. As a result, the basic premises and goals of Vietnamese and Kampuchean foreign policy are often in conflict, particularly on such issues as international activism versus radical self-reliance, and cooperation within the socialist bloc.

A glance at the map reveals a basic reason for opposing assumptions about relations with other countries. Vietnam's long, essentially indefensible coastline, dotted with major towns, faces one of the world's more important maritime routes. Despite the traumatic nature of most of Vietnam's interactions with foreign powers, such interactions have been made unavoidable by the constant commercial and military traffic off its coast, traffic which makes Vietnam strategically important. Hence, Vietnam has had to learn to turn outside interest to its own advantage, dealing with external threats by balancing and manipulating foreign groups, even while allowing them a fairly substantial presence in Vietnam. Simple exclusion and an isolationist stance have never been feasible possibilities. Kampuchea, on the other hand, is a primarily inland country with a short coastline, conspicuously lacking the overgrown port city typical of former colonies. (Saigon provided Kampuchea's outlet for colonial exports and Kompong Som, the only port, was developed during the Sihanouk era to reduce dependence on Vietnam.) Furthermore, only traffic between Vietnam and Thailand passes along the Kampuchean coast. Hence, Kampuchea has a potential Vietnam lacks for using isolationism as a general means for dealing with foreign threats. Like the current regime in Burma, the only other Southeast Asian country to possess similar geographical conditions, the government of Kampuchea has sharply restricted foreign contacts.

It is also possible to hypothesize-very tentatively, because the evidence is impressionistic-that the distinctive interactions between two elements in Kampuchean and Vietnamese cultural psychology reinforce the tendencies stemming from geographical conditions. While the modern elites in both countries have articulated presumably mass-based fears of national extinction and pride in their respective histories, the treatment of these themes has not been the same. It is quite likely that the variations reflect fundamental cultural-psychological configurations which directly influence patterns of foreign policy and nationalism. The fear of extinction has been expressed with far more intensity in Kampuchea than in Vietnam. This of course reflects the historical diminution of Kampuchean territory in the face of a series of successful Vietnamese (and Thai) annexations and invasions. Practically every analysis of Kampuchean history or commentary on modern Kampuchean politics written by a Kampuchean repeatedly and ominously raises the specter of the disappearance of the Kampuchean race, culture and nation. There is frequent reference to the fate of the Kingdom of Champa, which once ruled most of peninsular Southeast Asia but ceased to function as a coherent political entity in the 15th century, leaving its people, the Chams, at the mercy of foreign states.

Similarly, the traditional Kampuchean celebration of the national construction aspect of historical Kampuchean glories has been more strongly pitched than that of the Vietnamese, who have traditionally emphasized their literary and martial achievements. The spectacular Kampuchean monuments of Angkor Vat provide a kind of concrete and irrefutable proof of a magnificent history of indigenous Kampuchean construction capabilities. This proof is absent in Vietnam. Extensive archeological excavations in Vietnam have produced nothing that can be compared to Angkor, despite the richness of other aspects of Vietnam's history. Kampuchean writings on Kampuchea have been permeated with the idea that Angkor Vat bears testimony to the infinite indigenous capabilities of the Kampuchean people in the field of national construction, while Vietnamese, when taking pride in their history, have traditionally emphasized their repeated successes in expelling foreign invaders and pride in their intellectual achievements. These include their original and creative syntheses of high Chinese culture with indigenous Vietnamese traditions.

Considering these indications of national consciousness, one can suggest that the combination of intense fear of racial and national extinction with Kampuchea's historically-based mythology of greatness in national construction is compatible with a national policy strongly emphasizing national exclusiveness and self-reliance, while Vietnam's cultural tradition, with its emphases on success against foreign aggression and on synthesizing intellectual achievement, is compatible with a national policy characterized by a self-confident attitude vis-a-vis foreigners and by interest in adopting-or adaptingforeign high technology.

Another factor affecting the relative level of nationalist feeling in the two countries is the difference in degree of regional variations within them. Although the populations of both Vietnam and Kampuchea are much more homogeneous than those of most Third World countries, the people of Kampuchea are more so than those of Vietnam. In both countries, about 85 percent of the population is composed of the dominant ethnic group, but there are more regional linguistic and cultural variations among Vietnamese than among Khmers. Both the French, who divided Vietnam into three regions, and the Americans, who supported and violently prolonged its partition into two zones, encouraged heightened consciousness of these differences. By contrast, the French in Kampuchea maintained cultural and political unity, even though they helped create an estranged Francophile elite. As a result, the residual and partially artificial elements of regionalism which complicate and weaken the potential for Vietnamese nationalism are almost totaliy lacking in Kampuchea..

Even during the Sihanouk era, when the bulk of the Kampuchean population lived in the countryside under stultifying quasi-feudal socio-economic conditions and relatively untouched by modern political institutions linking them to state politics, nationalism was obviously strong. With the introduction of communist political organizations to link ordinary people with the political leadership, and with a national mobilization for social, economic and military purposes, Kampuchean nationalism may well be automatically more intense and cohesive than Vietnamese nationalism. Furthermore, because it is only recently that this potential has been fully realized through a nation-wide organization of the population by a modern political apparatus, namely the CPK, the strength of Kampuchean nationalism therefore appears more surprising and so more disruptive-than that of Vietnam, which has become predictable and familiar.
 

Nationalism and Revolutionary Strategy

Just as the nature of the governments the two revolutionary movements opposed powerfully influenced the ways in which they approached class struggle, so too those governments affected the quality of the nationalism developed by each communist party. As we have already noted, the Vietnamese communist movement became the only legitimate vehicle of modern Vietnamese nationalism. Rival parties and political groups which tried to appear more nationalist than the Communists never won any mass following or succeeded in seriously challenging the party's nationalist credentials. The regimes against which the Communists fought were too clearly the creatures of the French or the Americans to win legitimacy. Thus for the Vietnamese Communists it was relatively easy to maintain their popularity as nationalists and make it seem that their enemies could not survive without massive imperialist support.

For the Kampuchean Communists, the situation was far more complex, because their original and most important enemy, the Sihanouk regime, had strong nationalist credentials. It emphasized some of the themes which inherently tend to emerge in Kampuchean foreign policy, including isolationism, national exclusiveness, and self-reliance. In fighting this regime. the Communists adopted an extremely strong nationalist line emphasizing these themes even more forcefully. Although they could not convincingly portray Sihanouk as the puppet of foreign masters, they noted that relatively small doses of imperialist aid helped significantly to maintain him in power. After 1970, they blamed the United States' CIA for instigating the right-wing coup which toppled Sihanouk, believing it had had the opportunity because of Sihanouk's decision to reopen relations with the U.S. in the last years of his rule. Consequently, the Kampuchean Communists developed a strong sense of threat from even a very limited imperialist presence in their country. The 1970 change of government in Phnom Penh did not free the Kampuchean Communists from the need to compete with the government for nationalist legitimacy, for even the Lon Nol regime had better nationalist credentials than the successive Saigon governments. Not only was the United States presence in Kampuchea less spectacular than in Vietnam-although the casualties caused by U.S. bombing were proportionately greater-but Lon Nol was able to use Vietnamese support of the Communists against them. Portrayed as the tools of Hanoi, the Kampuchean Communists had to prove their nationalism and independence, a challenge never faced by the Vietnamese party.

The general international outlooks of the Vietnamese and Kampuchean governments are also differently influenced by two factors derived from their positions in world politics. First, in any system or subsystem of states, ideologies of internationalism and interdependence tend to serve the interests of the larger and more powerful states within that system or subsystem. The smaller and weaker states find their interests better served by ideologies of nationalism and independence. The implications of this tendency are obvious for Vietnam and Kampuchea, with populations of 50 million and 8 million respectively, in their roles in peninsular Southeast Asia and within the socialist bloc. Second, their relationships to the foreign policy mythology of international communism have been and are distinct.

The Vietnamese Communists have been part of the traditional international communist movement since they formed their party in 1930. Although the movement was never a monolith, it was an ideal, articulated by the originators of Marxism and realized, however imperfectly, by Lenin and Stalin in the form of the Comintern. Ho Chi Minh, who worked for the Comintern as well as for his own country, and other leaders of Vietnamese communism have always shared the ideal with its implications of the need for proletarian internationalist cooperation and coordination among the parties in the socialist camp. When the Sino-Soviet split emerged, they refused to accept it as proof of the demise of this ideal, viewing it as a temporary disagreement within the movement rather than the irreversible splitting up of the movement. Throughout the 1960s and into the early 1970s, the Vietnamese saw themselves as senior members of the movement who could use their influence to mediate the dispute. Significant propaganda and material support from both the Soviet Union and China for their struggles to liberate the south encouraged the Vietnamese in this attitude, and no member of the socialist bloc ever seemed to be aiding an armed enemy of the Vietnamese revolution. Even now in the face of the split with China, the Vietnamese do not appear to have abandoned the ideal of communist unity. China has simply been excluded from the bloc, while Vietnam has linked itself more closely to it by joining COMECON.

For the Kampuchean Communist Party, born in 1960 when the Sino-Soviet split was already serious, the Comintern was nothing more than a historical curiosity. It evidently did not attend the last world congress of Communist Parties, held amid acrimonious Sino-Soviet recriminations at the end of 1960. Throughout the 1960s it was publicly shunned by all other communist parties. Rather than providing it with propaganda or material aid, the Soviet Union and China both supported the Sihanouk regime. In fact, Soviet diplomats in Phnom Penh denounced the CPK in 1967, and China shipped a large amount of military aid to Sihanouk in 1968, just as the Communists were about to launch an armed struggle against his government. After 1970, the Soviet Union openly and materially supported Lon Nol, maintaining a diplomatic presence in Phnom Penh until its liberation in 1975. While China supported the CPK with both military aid and propaganda against Lon Nol, it was already embarking upon rapprochement with the United States, which was engaged in the destruction of Kampuchea. With such experiences, it is hardly surprising that the Kampuchean Communists have little faith in the reliability of aid from or alliances with fellow communist parties. Hence they reject the concept of a socialist bloc and eschew membership in it, while often seeming to pay little more than lip service to the duties of proletarian internationalism, which have never had much practical import for the CPK.

Thus a reinforcing constellation of factors ranging from geography to experience with the mythology of communist internationalism operate to shape the foreign policy outlooks of the Vietnamese and Kampuchean revolutions differently. For the Vietnamese, the logical path suggested by all these factors is one of relatively mild nationalism and moderate self-reliance. Their foreign policy is characterized by international activism and emphasis upon the concepts of proletarian internationalism and the socialist bloc, with close cooperation between communist parties. The Kampuchean Communists, on the other hand, are pushed toward more intense nationalism and radical self-reliance. Their foreign policy is marked by isolationism, rejection of the concept of the socialist bloc and little attachment to the ideal of proletarian internationalism. They place strong limits on cooperation with other communist parties. Such significant disjunctures between the foreign policy outlooks of the two revolutions make the adoption of joint policies difficult. Added to the contrasting domestic tendencies of the two revolutionary movements, they become mutually negative judgments of the other's line and practice.
 

Tensions in State Relationships

Not only are the Vietnamese and Kampuchean revolutions fundamentally different-and in many ways incompatible-for the complex reasons already described. Because the two countries are neighbors, a number of factors push them specifically to clash directly with each other. These stem from the nature of relationships between the two nations, regardless of what kind of government is in power, and from the concrete experiences of the two communist parties in interactions often marked by severe conflicts of interest.

The sheer imbalance of power between the two countries creates serious tension. which could probably only be resolved by the effective abrogation of Kampuchean national sovereignty and Kampuchean inclusion in a Vietnamese or Thai sphere of influence. The refusal of the Kampucheans to play such a subordinate role keeps the tension alive, while the disparity of the threat the two countries pose to each other profoundly influences the way each views the other. For a Vietnamese regime, relations with Kampuchea are crucial to national defense but have little effect on its internal stability and political popularity. By itself, Kampuchea can never be a major threat to Vietnam, but a hostile Kampuchean regime can seriously undermine Vietnam's ability to defend itself from attacks along its long and vulnerable coast or from China. Beyond such defense-related concerns, relations with Kampuchea per se have never been an overriding domestic issue in Vietnam, nor has there ever been acute popular concern with the precise location or the possibility of readjustment of the frontier with Kampuchea. Thus, a Vietnamese regime can conduct its policies toward Kampuchea relatively free of domestic political constraints.

For a Kampuchean regime, however, relations with Vietnam strongly affect its domestic legitimacy. Even in isolation, Vietnam always poses a potentially serious military threat to Kampuchea, while Kampucheans alone see themselves as no real danger to Vietnam. Moreover, the events of the 1830s and 1840s (see box) as well as the subsequent propaganda of the French and the Sihanouk regime have made relations with Vietnam an extremely delicate and important domestic political issue with inevitable repercussions on the popular legitimacy and the cohesion and stability of any Kampuchean regime. Friendship with Vietnam appears to entail certain dangers for any Kampuchean government, since such friendship exposes it to possible charges of selling out Kampuchean interests to Vietnam. Such charges can appear more or less spontaneously at the mass level and undermine the regime's nationalist credentials among the population. At the top, a government's friendship with Vietnam can provide an issue for subordinate or rival factions which want to challenge the ruling group. A Vietnamese regime does not face this problem. For Vietnamese leaders, friendship with Kampuchea is domestically costless.

Thus Kampuchean political leaders have much less domestic political maneuvering room available in their relations with Vietnam than do their Vietnamese counterparts, who face no such political risks or sacrifices in entering close bilateral relations. If the risks and sacrifices appear worthwhile for other reasons, it may be possible for all concerned to gloss over the importance of domestic Kampuchean political constraints. Such an effort might be justified by the prospect of still greater risks and sacrifices in other quarters or of great benefits and security as compensation. Without such compelling considerations, the domestic implications of Kampuchean friendship with Vietnam are more prominent and obvious. Under such circumstances, what are known in diplomatic parlance as "correct" relations may be the maximum that are in the domestic political interests of a Kampuchean leadership.

The issue of Kampuchea's border with Vietnam concentrates and focuses the constraints on relations between the two countries. Indeed, since the Sihanouk era, when an intense public education effort focused on the history and problems of Kampuchea's frontiers, the border issue has consistently been for Kampucheans the key barometer of the state of Vietnamese-Kampuchean relations. Even more important than assessing Vietnam's true attitude toward Kampuchea, this standard has been used as a popular measure of a Kampuchean ruling group's fidelity to Kampuchean national interests. Concessions on the border issue entail even greater and more certain risks and sacrifices than friendship with Vietnam, since even the appearance of concession can be destabilizing, perhaps inviting a coup by those who would renounce or reverse the apparent concession. These implications of the border issue reduce the potential for flexibility of any Kampuchean regime almost to the vanishing point. The Vietnamese, however, may be insensitive to the difficulties experienced by the Kampucheans on this score, failing to realize that what would be reasonable in terms of Vietnamese domestic politics is provocative and even treasonable in Kampuchea.
 

The Party Relations

Much more than these lasting national tensions bedevil the bilateral relations between the Vietnamese and Kampuchean communist parties, however. Their histories, both before and after the constitution of an independent Communist Party of Kampuchea in 1960, have been marked by frequent and often deep conflicts of interest revolving around the separate needs of the revolutionary movement in each country. Inevitably, these conflicts reflected the relative strength of the two nations, as well as the differing views of the two parties on what was required to drive first the French and then the Americans out of Indochina as a whole. This history does much to explain the CPK's hostility toward Vietnam.

In 1930, the newly founded Indochinese Communist Party (ICP), led by Ho Chi Minh, took on the task of establishing itself as the communist movement in both Laos and Kampuchea. Until 1945, however, little was accomplished in Kampuchea other than the recruitment of Vietnamese residents there. After World War II, the ICP helped encourage and provide with cadres a Kampuchean independence movement which was communist and integrated into the ICP. However, since so little had been achieved during the 1930s, the organizational work had to begin virtually from scratch, and non-communist groups succeeded in declaring Kampuchean independence first in 1945. Returning to Kampuchea, the French dissolved the independence government, and its supporters fled to Vietnamese and Thai frontier areas, where ICP cadres tried to recruit them. In Vietnam, recruiting efforts were hampered by conflicts between Vietnamese and Kampucheans in 1946 over the degree of autonomy to be granted to the larger ethnic Khmer community in south Vietnam and by successful French military operations against Viet Minh bases. In Thailand, where a left-wing government had provided a haven for the communists, a right-wing military coup disrupted ICP recruitment in 1947.

Deprived of their frontier bases, the Vietnamese supported a communist-led resistance movement in three relatively autonomous zones within Kampuchea. Rivalry and discord between these zones apparently weakened the movement and prevented the consolidation of its communist leadership. A further handicap arose because the Vietnamese, by their very presence as advisors and instructors, often provoked Kampuchean anti-Vietnamese nationalism. King Sihanouk, an increasingly dynamic figure, exploited the divisions among the communists to win support for his rival strategy for achieving Kampuchean independence without armed struggle or significant social reform. As a result of such problems, the communist movement which emerged in Kampuchea was characterized by internal conflict and high-level defections, and it was never formally constituted as a communist party. The Vietnamese supervised the foundation of an entity known as the Khmer People's Party in 1951, when the ICP became the Vietnam Worker's Party (VWP), but this organization was a united front apparatus apparently designed as a preliminary to a communist party.

Between 1954 and 1960 from the Geneva Conference to the founding of the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK) the Kampuchean communists suffered a series of disasters, many of which they blamed on their Vietnamese mentors. Under pressure from the Soviets and Chinese, the Vietnamese had acquiesced in the seating of Sihanouk at Geneva as the representative of Kampuchea. In the final Geneva agreement, Vietnamese communists were allowed to consolidate their power in the north, while Kampuchea was granted independence under Sihanouk's rule with no recognition of the communists.

After Geneva, it appears that the Vietnam Workers Party, now holding state power in north Vietnam, advised the Kampucheans to dissolve their resistance organizations and fall back on parliamentary and journalistic struggles. Facing a situation similar to that of VWP cadres in south Vietnam, the Kampuchean communists were confronted with a choice between exile in north Vietnam, where they would be cut off from their society and its politics, or repression at home, where they had few or no means to defend themselves effectively. Much of the leadership of the Kampuchean communist movement chose the relative safety of exile. As the exile dragged into years, showing increasing signs of becoming permanent, they suffered severe demoralization and lost touch with the realities at home. Many of those at home, on the other hand, were little more than the victims of those realities.

As was the case in southern Vietnam, the sacrifices made at Geneva to win peace and ensure the establishment of a socialist state in north Vietnam had been followed by much worse: after partial withdrawal into exile and almost total disarmament came repression and decimation. Parliaments, newspapers and journals, legal activities, international opinion and organizations, and the strong rear base in north Vietnam all proved to have little protective value. After a few years of repression, all that was left of the pre-Geneva communist movement in many parts of Kampuchea was a handful of embittered cadres. What had been achieved with Vietnamese aid and advice up to 1954 had been lost. The losses could credibly be blamed upon what the Vietnamese had done at and since Geneva.

During this period, the developing vacuum in the Kampuchear. communist movement was filled in part from new sources, the most important of which were French universities. Beginning in 1953, when a young Kampuchean who would later adopt the name Pol Pot returned from France to join the maquis, and continuing until 1959, when Khieu Samphan came home, the communist movement was invigorated with Kampucheans who did not come out of the ICP tradition. In this period after the division of the ICP into three national movements and after the Geneva settlement, these cadres could not be formally associated with the Vietnam Worker's Party.

As a result, when the Kampuchean communists held their first national congress in September 1960 to found the Communist Party of Kampuchea, there were many among them whose feelings toward the VWP were either bitter or indifferent. Although there were undoubtedly some ex-ICP cadres who remained loyal to the "ICP tradition" despite what had happened, others preferred to forget. it. For many of the Kampuchean communists who had been students in France, the tradition was simply irrelevant or the object of scorn.
 

New Grievances

The foundation of the Communist Party of Kampuchea might nevertheless have opened a new era of relative warmth and friendship between Kampuchean and Vietnamese communists. By adopting a line of combined political struggle and armed self-defense, the new communist party eliminated one of the major causes of bitterness in the post-Geneva period: exclusive reliance on peaceful political struggle in a context of repression. But a process of healing past wounds and erasing past wrongs soon became impossible. Sihanouk responded to the formation of the CPK by escalating his anti-communist campaign, while the Vietnamese Worker's Party found itself unable or unwilling to provide material or even propaganda support to the Kampuchean Communists. Worse, the Vietnamese Communists were becom-ing friendly with the Sihanouk regime. Indeed, precisely as Sihanouk's intensifying repression made it harder and harder to carry out united front activities, organize legal opposition and do underground work in the cities and towns, relations between the VWP and Sihanouk became warmer and warmer. For the Vietnamese, the need to protect the flank of their struggle to liberate the south — launched in 1960 — had become the compelling priority, making correct and even intimate relations with Sihanouk vitally important. Accordingly, they felt that the Kampuchean Communists should find some expedient way to build up their own strength while simultaneously cooperating with and supporting Sihanouk's anti-imperialist foreign policy. This the CPK was unable or unwilling to do, and relations between the two communist parties were increasingly marked by conflict of interest and suspicion rather than warmth and friendship. A political crisis in Phnom Penh early in 1963 resulted in the CPK transferring the bulk of its efforts to the countryside, where it engaged in organizing peasants against Sihanouk and abandoned all pretense of a united front strategy in support of his anti-imperialism. Sihanouk meanwhile, looking for support against the U.S.-supported south Vietnamese and Thai regimes, took a harder line against the United States, renouncing all U.S. economic and military aid late in the year. As the U.S. stepped up its intervention against the Vietnamese revolution in the south, the need to support and encourage Sihanouk's anti-imperialism and prevent the establishment of U.S. bases in Kampuchea became more urgent for the Vietnamese Com-munists—just as the CPK felt itself forced to resort to complete opposition to Sihanouk if it was to survive. To the CPK it appeared that Sihanouk's anti-communism would ultimately not only outweigh his anti-imperialism but actually destroy the strongest anti-imperialist forces in Kampuchea. The last strong link between the old ICP and the new CPK had been broken in 1962, when Sihanouk's agents killed Tofich Samouth, an ex-ICP cadre who had been elected CPK party secretary in 1960. The CPK was now almost fully in the hands of former students in France, who formed a nucleus around which probably crystallized a good number of ex-ICP cadres who agreed with their ideas about the situation in Kampuchea, including the near impossibility of working with Sihanouk and the unreliability of the Vietnamese. The CPK plotted an independent course which its leadership considered appropriate to the realities of the Sihanouk regime and the socio-economic situation in Kampuchea. But this course was at best oblivious and at worst damaging to what the Vietnamese believed were the essential and immediate requirements of the liberation and reunification of Vietnam. With most of its work now done in the countryside, the CPK had become a threat to the stability of the Sihanouk regime, which the Vietnamese were cultivating as a bulwark of progressive bourgeois anti-imperialism. In theory, the contradiction should have been resolvable by proper implementation of united front tactics within Kampuchea by the CPK. In practice, these were not forthcoming to the satisfaction of the VWP, and they probably were not available, given the intensity of Sihanouk's anti-communist repression, to which the Vietnamese appeared indifferent. Each year the contradiction—and with it the conflicts and suspicions—grew deeper. In 1965, Sihanouk severed diplomatic relations with the U.S., and the full-scale U.S. military attack on Vietnam forced Vietnamese military personnel to seek refuge in Kampuchean territory, first with the CPK's permission and then with Sihanouk's acquiescence. At this point, ex-ICP cadres from Kampuchea began to return home from their Vietnamese exile. However, rather than leading to rapprochement between the two parties, these returnees only generated more problems. At an earlier point they might have been warmly welcomed. Now they were suspected as infiltrators sent to turn the CPK toward greater cooperation with Sihanouk. After 1967, the basis for CPK-VWP solidarity diminished even further. In that year the CPK declared total war on the Sihanouk regime, and the war situation in Vietnam made Kampuchean territory an irreplaceable sanctuary rather than merely a convenient refuge for Vietnamese troops. In northwestern Kampuchea, peasants reacted to forced rice collection by Sihanouk's armed forces by launching a spontaneous revolt. Blaming the uprising on the Communists, Sihanouk moved to eliminate the left entirely from legitimate Kampuchean political life and drove the CPK's remaining legal cadres into the countryside. These events convinced the CPK's leadership that it was necessary to begin final preparations for full-scale armed struggle against Sihanouk. Meanwhile, the Vietnamese were preparing for the 1968 Tet offensive, in which the use of Kampuchean territory as a sanctuary and supply route was critical. Hence, they moved even closer to the Sihanouk regime. Thus, when the CPK founded a revolutionary army and began all-out warfare against Sihanouk in January 1968, it found its decision opposed by the Vietnamese, who did not change their position until the March 1970 coup which overthrew Sihanouk. During this period, the CPK learned to work completely independently of the Vietnamese and discovered that such an independent stance was viable. In contrast to the disaster, bitterness and decimation of the late 1960s, 1968-70 was for the CPK a period of isolated defiance, self-confidence and success. 
 

Uneasy Alliance

When the March 1970 coup forced them to work closely together, relations between the Kampuchean and Vietnamese parties were probably worse than they had ever been. Each party was most likely deeply convinced that the other had consistently proved itself incapable of thinking of anyone's interests but its own. More specifically, the CPK probably be!ieved that the VWP had showed itself unable to understand the revolutionary situation in Kampuchea, and that its foreign policy, in particular its policy toward the CPK, was governed more by Vietnamese national interests than by consideration for the needs of the Kampuchean revolution. To the VWP, the CPK's program for revolution in Kampuchea must have appeared to be little more than a blind and hopeless offensive against the Sihanouk regime, while the CPK seemed willfully oblivious to the disasters its struggle might bring upon the struggle to liberate south Vietnam and all of Indochina. 

The alliance forged in April 1970 did not erase these conceptions. Although cooperation again became possible and even necessary, they did not transform suspicion into trust or fundamental conflict of interest into harmony. Disagreements between the two parties again came to the fore in 1972-73, as the Vietnamese' negotiated the peace agreements with the U.S. When, after the terror bombings of Hanoi, the Vietnamese agreed to a cease-fire removing American forces from south Vietnam, the Kampucheans found the full strength of the U.S. Air Force turned against them. At the same time, they believed the Vietnamese were trying to pressure them into negotiations with the U.S. by reducing their provision of military supplies. Kampuchean uneasiness was intensified because the Vietnamese continued to negotiate with the U.S. for six months on the issue of reconstruction aid, which Kissinger insisted would be conditional on a cease-fire agreement in Kampuchea. * The Kampuchean Communists probably felt that if the Vietnamese had continued to tie down the Americans in direct combat while offering full logistical and material support to the CPK, their armed forces could soon have taken Phnom Penh and ended the war in Kampuchea. Instead, the nation was subjected to two more years of war, including the most concentrated bombing in history. Memories of Geneva, when Kampuchean interests were sacrificed, and of the late 1960s, when the Vietnamese refused to support their fight against the Sihanouk regime, were revived. Past suspicions were reconfirmed. Coop-eration with Vietnam appeared to be a path full of pitfalls, and the reliability of the Vietnamese as allies appeared to be low. The Vietnamese perception of this period must have been radi-cally different. These experiences are exacerbated by the general tendencies in domestic and international policies which drive the two revolutions apart as well as the great disparity in the threats the two countries pose to each other, which so strongly color their attitudes toward mutual relations. Overall, the Kampucheans view the Vietnamese as prone to make decisions in their own national interest without regard to the losses such decisions inflict on Kampuchea. From the Vietnamese perspective, however, the Kampucheans seem unable to recognize the requirements of the collective good. 
 

The Vietnamese Invasion

The differences in the two revolutions and the history of mistrust between the two parties set the parameters and tone of the present conflict. Within this context, the fundamental issue of conflict seems to be an irreconcilable difference over the extent to which the two revolutions are to cooperate with each other. This is reflected in contrasting propaganda themes. Kampuchea charges that Vietnam wants to impose an "Indochina Federation," while Vietnam protests that all it desires is a "special friendship." The first is probably an exaggeration; the second is probably a euphemism. Between the exaggeration and the euphemism lies a very concrete reality: the Vietnamese side wants more cooperation in more fields, both domestic and international, than the Kampuchean side is willing to accept. If the arguments presented here are correct, the Kampuchean side is in fact unable to accept more cooperation. 

Exactly how much the Vietnamese want is not clear, although some indications can be seen in the close relationship between Vietnam and Laos. For the present Kampuchean leadership, which has set itself on a course of total independence and radical self-reliance, the Vietnamese desire for closer relations is a threat, for history has made it unlikely that closer cooperation can be achieved unless that leadership is replaced. The border issue is at once secondary and crucial to the conflict. It is secondary, because it is only a symptom of wider disagreements and because only a relatively small area is in dispute, despite the propaganda charges made at times by both sides. It is crucial, however, because of its role as a barometer for the Kampucheans. The government uses it to gauge Vietnamese attitudes, and the population employs it to measure the regime's nationalist credentials. In addition, the presence of troops along the frontier transforms it into a military flashpoint. The Vietnamese refusal to withdraw from zones in dispute as a prelude to rather than as a result of negotiations in 1975-76 and their request for a readjustment of a maritime frontier the Kampucheans felt had been recognized by the National Liberation Front and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in 1967 resulted in a cut-off of negotiations by the Kampucheans. The escalatory rounds of armed clashes which eventually followed probably began when the Kampucheans attempted to drive Vietnamese forces out of disputes zones they felt had been illegally occupied by the Vietnamese between 1965 and 1975. Although the Kampucheans may have fired the first shots, they considered their action a response to de facto Vietnamese aggression by long-term occupation of Kampuchean land. They wanted to demonstrate that Vietnamese military superiority would not protect them from attack if they refused to withdraw from the disputed territory before negotiations began. By so doing, the Kampucheans hoped to convince the Vietnamese that it would be less costly to withdraw than to insist on negotiating from a position of strength. The Vietnamese, however, did not withdraw. In some instances, they may have counterattacked. By early 1977, some local Kampuchean commanders apparently resorted to artillery barrages and small-scale raids into what they recognized as Vietnamese territory. From their perspective, such raids were merely a response in kind to Vietnam's prolonged de facto aggression against Kampuchean territory. To the Viet-namese, however, the raids were a new escalation of Kampuchean aggression, and in April they sent several thousand troops into Kampuchean border zones in response. 4 In June, the two sides exchanged notes. The Vietnamese proposed a high-level meeting, and the Kampucheans replied by proposing that both sides pull their troops back 0.5 to one kilometer from the frontier.5 Since the Vietnamese ignored the proposal to disengage forces, the Kampucheans ignored the proposal to meet. Then, in mid-July 1977, the Eastern Region Committee of the Kampuchean administration decided to respond to any new Vietnamese attack with coordinated quick assaults across the frontier into Vietnamese territory. 6 Follow-ing incidents in late July and throughout August in which the Vietnamese apparently took the battlefield initiative, and which the Kampucheans saw as provocative,' such assaults were launched in late September. The intensity and scale of Vietnam's December retaliation finally led to an episode of full-scale war and the Kampuchean decision to break openly with Vietnam. Since then, large-scale fighting has flared occasionally, and the diplomatic situation has remained deadlocked. Each side has rejected the other's negotiating proposals. Meanwhile, the Vietnamese have begun to call openly for the overthrow of the Kampuchean regime. They appear to be gathering forces, including many Kampucheans, which could be used in such an attempt. This has probably ended any chance that remained of a limited rapprochement that would have settled some differences and overlooked the rest. The conflict is probably as permanent and deep as any in the world today.

Steve Heder - October 1978