Quora Answer: Why Does Singapore Say Vietnam Invaded Cambodia?

The following is my answer to a Quora question: “Why does Singapore say that Vietnam invaded Cambodia?  How many countries support the Khmer Rouge?”

When the Prime Minister of Singapore, Lee Hsien Loong, said that Vietnam invaded Cambodia in 1979, it is factually correct.  In 1979, Vietnam invaded Cambodia, ostensibly to overthrow the Khmer Rouge regime.  ASEAN’s condemnation of Vietnam’s invasion should not be viewed as support for the Khmer Rouge regime, since those are two separate issues.

On one hand, we can say that ASEAN could have come out stronger against the Khmer Rouge regime, but that is a simplistic view of history.  The Khmer Rouge were a Chinese proxy, and ASEAN was not in a position to do so without risking antagonising China.  We forget, that in 1979, ASEAN was just over a decade old.  ASEAN’s first summit meeting was in 1976, in Bali.  It consisted of Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand.  The US had just pulled out of South Vietnam in defeat, in 1976, and there was a very real fear of Communist expansion.

The rise of the Khmer Rouge was at Chinese sponsorship.  This was at the height of the tripartite Cold War with three main belligerents: the US, the USSR and Communist China.  The Chinese, and Soviets, had just fought a border war a decade earlier.  Mao Zedong’s China was the belligerent, whereas Khrushchev had a policy of rapprochement with the West.  ASEAN, as the leaders of the Non-Aligned Movement, were in a difficult place.  The Khmer Rouge were involved in an internal conflict, killing their own people.  But Vietnam was an ascendant military power with Soviet backing, with the stated goal of expanding the Communist revolution throughout Southeast Asia.

Accordingly, ASEAN took the calculated risk of opposing Vietnam, and leading world condemnation of their invasion.  The fear was that Vietnam would not stop at Cambodia, but continue east.  We must also remember that the fight between Vietnam and the Khmer Rouge was a proxy war between the Soviets and the Chinese Communists, both nuclear powers.  Had China decided to intervene then, the USSR would have reignited the Sino-Soviet Border War.  There were almost 50 light divisions of the PLA confronting almost 40 full divisions of the Soviet military along the border still.  As early as 1969, the Nixon Administration took the unusual step of warning Khrushchev that a unilateral Soviet attack on Chinese nuclear facilities would lead to World War III.  So, even the American were wary of the split between the Communist bloc.

When Vietnam invaded, ASEAN was thrust into the forefront of the Cold War, and they realised that they were hilariously outgunned by the Vietnamese military.  Amid an American pullout, Thailand alone was in no position to confront the Vietnamese war machine, with its hundreds of thousands of war veterans, fresh from defeating a superpower.

Accordingly, ASEAN lead the diplomatic efforts to isolate Vietnam to strangle its trade and economy to starve that military.  ASEAN, particularly Singapore, poured millions into supporting any group fighting the Vietnamese to bog them down into the very stalemate they did with the Americans.  They had learned the lessons of the Vietnam War, and the shoe was on the other foot.  In the meantime, Singapore sought diplomatic relations with China, on behalf of ASEAN, so that they had another card to play should the Vietnamese still win.  This also reaped economic benefits under Deng Xiaoping later.

When seen in context, these were difficult decisions to make, but it underlines the practical diplomacy that Singapore undertook to preserve our sovereignty, and the safety of the region.  As a small nation, a new nation then, we did not have the military and economic strength then, so we had to make some sacrifices and play the long game.  This is a testament to the calibre of our policymakers and diplomatic corps, and we make no apologies for it.