Another issue between the two countries was Vietnam’s intentions toward “Indochina,” a term that always made Cambodians uneasy. Vietnam’s oftproclaimed “special relationship” with Laos, in place by 1976, smacked of hegemony to the Khmer. So did the “fraternal” relations that the Vietnamese Communists claimed to enjoy with their Lao and Cambodian comrades. Many Khmer found this friendship menacing, just as most Vietnamese were nervous about similar offers of intimacy from the Chinese. It is possible to exaggerate the psychological dimension of the conflict at the expense of its economic and political dimensions, but it seems clear that Pol Pot’s harping on independence-mastery was part of a doomed effort to escape Vietnamese patronage and advice. Feeling himself empowered (and knowing he was allied to China), he gave vent to his hatred of the Vietnamese and encouraged everyone else in Cambodia to do the same.38

Scattered, unpublicized skirmishes and incursions took place throughout 1975-1976 on both sides of the border. Chou Chet later wrote of Vietnamese “nibbling attacks ... along the border” in 1976 and of more substantial incursions into the northeast. Red Khmer authorities kept a close watch on these occurrences, as a telegram from the military commander in the east to “Brother Pol” in November 1975 indicates. By the middle of 1976, incidents became less frequent. Relations between Vietnam and Cambodia remained correct but cool, even as hostility toward Vietnam became a theme of Communist study sessions in 1977 and collusion with Vietnam the leitmotif of confessions extracted at S-21.39

By the end of 1976, it seems, Cambodia’s leaders had obtained assurances of increased military aid from China, without which they would have been unable and unwilling to mount offensive operations against Vietnam. This aid came because China’s leaders, after Mao’s death, renewed their interest in regional politics and because China’s own relations with Vietnam were deteriorating.

It is not certain when or why Cambodia—or Vietnam, for that matter—decided to step up the pace of hostilities. Evidence suggests that the first large-unit Cambodian attacks were instigated by the Red Khmer in the southwest. What the Vietnamese had in mind for Cambodia at this point is impossible to unravel. Analyzing the early stages of the war is made more difficult by the fact that before the closing days of 1977, neither side admitted publicly that a war was taking place.