Between meetings about Sihanouk, the standing committee met to discuss Vietnam, whose troops still occupied Cambodian territory in the northeast. The party’s leaders were distressed by these incursions, not because of legal implications about the frontiers (which the Vietnamese claimed had been drawn by the “imperialists”), but because the Vietnamese habitually violated Cambodian territory. The Lao precedent (“Vietnam controlled the Lao revolution and has taken Lao land; we have learned many lessons from the Lao”) was discouraging to the Khmer, but for the time being, a fragile peace prevailed. 54

At this meeting a speaker remarked that Sihanouk had become entangled with France, the United States, and China and had been “unable to pull out” (doh min ruoc). The same situation applied to Cambodia after liberation (“We have not yet pulled out”), although the entangling patron (probably Vietnam) was not named. The solution, the speaker said, was for Cambodia to seek clients of its own, “in Africa, for example. In a short while, we will be much stronger, and the revolution in Southeast Asia will be much stronger. We can solve the issue [of Vietnam]. If the revolution in Southeast Asia succeeds, we can compete [for leadership?]. Our friends understand us thoroughly. They assist us. If we proceed correctly, we will have an influence over countries that lack our Party’s achievements.” The “friends” in this fantasy were those in China and North Korea advocating accelerated, autonomous revolutionary wars in Thailand, Burma, and Malaysia. If they were victorious, as Sar believed they would be, Vietnam would be surrounded. The alternative was for Vietnam to dominate the region. Happily, “at the moment,” Saloth Sar said, “Vietnam is very confused,” and so Cambodia was “proceeding more quickly” along the revolutionary path than Vietnam. Sar’s optimism about other Communist movements in Southeast Asia shows how narrow a band of information he and his colleagues were receiving. What passed through to them was Communist-generated material suggesting that all of Southeast Asia, like the rest of the world, was on the march. In fact, the Communist movements whose support Saloth Sar seems to have expected were weak, disorganized, and marginalized by the armed forces of the regimes they forlornly hoped to overturn.

The Emergence of Pol Pot

A few days before these discussions, the Central Committee had met to discuss the elections scheduled for the People’s Representative Assembly. Saloth Sar noted that the elections, although modeled on capitalist ones, were being held primarily so that “our enemies can’t take advantage of us.” The elections were for overseas consumption. No benefits accruing to the people from the elections, or from the assembly, were mentioned.55