Cold War PoliticsĪfter being deposed by Lon Nol, Prince Sihanouk went into exile in China. Listen to our podcast series Never Again…Again – The Ongoing History of Genocide.Ĭivil War enveloped Cambodia for the next five years as the Khmer Rouge allied with Prince Sihanouk fought Lon Nol for control of the country. The alliance with Prince Sihanouk swelled the ranks of the Khmer Rouge from 6,000 to 50,000 fighters, mainly supporters of the king and not the Marxist ideology of the Khmer Rouge. Sihanouk and the Khmer Rouge allied to fight against Lon Nol in a move that defied their political philosophies but seemed temporarily expedient. Prince Norodom Sihanouk (in the dark tunic) went to Peking in 1965 for discussions with Chairman Mao Tse-tung (left). Judging that relations with China were important to Cambodia’s fragile neutrality. Lon Nol was supported by the national assembly and renamed Cambodia the Khmer Republic. In 1970, Cambodia’s ruling monarch Prince Norodom Sihanouk was removed by the right-leaning Premier Lon Nol. The Khmer Rouge’s ability to take advantage of the deteriorating political situation in Cambodia combined with instability produced by the major powers who used Cambodia as an instrument of Cold War politics both worked to the Khmer Rouge’s advantage in their pursuit of power in Cambodia. The law of unintended consequences facilitated the rise of the Khmer Rouge and the subsequent brutal destruction of the people of Cambodia. That lack of popular support meant the Khmer Rouge lacked the strength to conquer the country. The Khmer Rouge lacked support among the population, especially in the cities. Left to their own devices, the Khmer Rouge would probably never have conquered Cambodia. The Cambodian genocide is a story of political madmen, Cold War politics, and human depravity seldom matched in the stories of modern history. As a percentage of a country’s population, this was one of the most devastating genocides in history. More than 2 million Cambodians, one-quarter of the country, were killed in the Cambodian genocide. Under the leadership of Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge carried out a revolutionary Marxist plan that became the Cambodian genocide. In 1975 a communist group known as the Khmer Rouge took control of the small nation of Cambodia.
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