Cables detail China-Vietnam strains in ’75 Cambodia
The seeds of China and Vietnam’s bloody rivalry for influence in Cambodia were already apparent to foreign observers in the weeks and months after the April 1975 fall of Phnom Penh, Australian diplomatic cables given last month to the Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC-Cam) show.
Born of centuries-old nationalist frictions, as well as Vietnam’s loyalty to the Soviet Union as China subverted the superpower, strains between the fraternal socialist nations would crack in 1979, producing Cambodia’s second civil war after Vietnam ousted the pro-China Pol Pot regime.
Yet the potential for China and Vietnam’s competing ambitions to come to blows in Cambodia was clear to then-U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger five months after Phnom Penh’s fall, according to a declassified cable sent to Canberra from the Australian Embassy in Washington.
