I was recently reading an article about the Sino-Vietnamese was in 1979. Evidently it was Hanoi’s invasion of Cambodia that caused the Chinese to invade (or gave them the pretext to invade. Why did Vietnam invade Cambodia? Was there some altruistic motive to stop the killing or did they just want to extend their influence? Had the Khmer Rouge attack Vietnam? Just curious about an situation I know almost nothing about.
An earlier thread on the subject:
BTW, the search engine is pretty unreliable when it comes to searching for keywords. I got this by searching on threads started by the OP.
The Vietnamese and Cambodian Communists had a long enmity dating back at least to when the Viet Minh and Khmer Rouge were rival guerrillas fighting the French, and the Khmers thought the Viet Minh sold them out at the Geneva peace conference. During the Vietnam War, the Viet Cong actually preferred for Cambodia to remain neutral under Prince Sihanouk; it kept the Ho Chi Minh trail safer from Western attack. As long as Sihanouk remained in power, the VC refused to cooperate with, and in some cases actively obstructed, the Khmer Rouge.
As the Sino-Soviet split deepened, China and the Soviet Union were happy to pour oil on troubled waters by backing rival sides. The Soviets backed Vietnam as a counterweight to China, and China backed the Khmer Rouge as a counter-counterweight.
After the Communists consolidated their rule in Vietnam and Cambodia in 1975, matters got worse. The other thread hits some of the highlights–Cambodia accused Vietnam of fomenting insurrection among ethnic Vietnamese in Cambodia, and retaliated with cross-border raids. Vietnam finally invaded just because they could; the Cambodian regime was so obnoxious that the rest of the world (except for China) made half-hearted protests at best. China did launch a brief punitive invasion, but was deterred by the Soviet Union from doing anything more substantive.
It should also be pointed out that ethnic Vietnamese who lived in Cambodia were targeted for extinction in Cambodia under Pol Pot.
And, for that matter, that the US State Dept eventually decided to tilt toward the KR :eek: :smack: as a counterweight against the Vietnamese.
If anyone meets Mr. Kissinger at one of those swanky society parties he frequents, I’d suggest that as cocktail conversation.