America Abroad

By Strobe Talbott

The consequences of U.S. intervention in Kampuchea have made a mockery of American intentions before, and they could do so again. The emergence of Pol Pot's ultra-Maoist Khmer Rouge was partly a result of misguided American policy 20 years ago. Richard Nixon's secret bombing of Kampuchea in 1969 and the CIA's support for a coup by a feckless military junta the following spring contributed to the chaos in which the Khmer Rouge thrived. In 1975 Pol Pot seized power and unleashed a holocaust.

Four years and nearly 2 million deaths later, the Vietnamese invaded and installed their own regime in Phnom Penh. To much of the world, Hanoi's aggression against a neighbor mattered more than Pol Pot's atrocities against his own people. After all, Viet Nam was expanding not only its own influence but also that of its backer, the Soviet Union.

The Khmer Rouge, whom the arch-moralist Jimmy Carter called "the worst % violators of human rights in the world," became an instrument to drive the Vietnamese out of Kampuchea.

"I encouraged the Chinese to support Pol Pot," recalled Zbigniew Brzezinski, Carter's National Security Adviser, in 1981. "Pol Pot was an abomination. We could never support him. But China could." The U.S., he added, "winked semipublicly" as the Chinese funneled arms to the Khmer Rouge, using Thailand as a conduit.

Throughout the Reagan Administration, the Khmer Rouge have been part of a loose and unholy alliance of anti-Vietnamese guerrilla groups that the U.S. helped create. Pol Pot has lurked in the shadows of the Reagan Doctrine.

In the past year the U.S. has grown increasingly concerned that the Khmer Rouge might fill a vacuum left by a Vietnamese retreat from Kampuchea. As part of Mikhail Gorbachev's overall policy of defusing Third World conflicts, Moscow has been pressuring Viet Nam to end its occupation. Hanoi has agreed to pull out all its troops by September. In response, China seems willing to cut off support to the Khmer Rouge once the Vietnamese complete their withdrawal.

But defanging the Khmer Rouge will require more. As Pol Pot's mentor Mao Zedong once said, "Power comes from the barrel of a gun," and thanks to years of Chinese-Thai assistance, with tacit American blessing, the Khmer Rouge have more guns than the two non-Communist guerrilla groups that the U.S. has been aiding directly. The CIA estimates that the Khmer Rouge have enough materiel to fight on for an additional two years against their erstwhile allies.

To avert that catastrophe, the U.S. should use its influence with China and Thailand not just to cut off arms to the Khmer Rouge but also to shut down their base camps on the Thai side of the Kampuchean border, ferret out and seize their arms caches, round up their most villainous leaders and arrange for their peaceful retirement to, say, rural North Korea.

For a decade, the No. 1 American objective in Kampuchea has been to get the Vietnamese out. No. 2 has been to squeeze the Vietnamese-installed rulers out of a new coalition in Phnom Penh. Until recently, preventing the Khmer Rouge from butchering their way back into dominance has been a distant No. 3.

Now those priorities must be reversed. Blocking the return of the Khmer Rouge should take precedence, even if it means a slower Vietnamese withdrawal and a larger role for the pro-Vietnamese faction in the new government. And no more winking at abominations.