Hamas vs IDF, Khmer Rouge vs Vietnam

From: Balazs Szalontai via Vsg <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Sent: Friday, May 10, 2024 5:19 AM
To: Hoang Vu <hmv23@cornell.edu>; Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: [Vsg] Hamas vs IDF, Khmer Rouge vs Vietnam

Dear Hoang Vu,

these differences are indeed significant. Concerning the issue of sanctions and divestment, another peculiar difference is that the U.S. and the EU, having designated Hamas as a terrorist organization, showed no willingness to impose sanctions on the Israeli authorities (the recent sanctions on some extremist settlers may be regarded as exceptional and of a symbolic importance: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/19/extremist-israeli-settlers-sanctions-eu-us ), but at the same time the EU has been the largest aid donor for the Palestinian population, more significant than the Arab states combined. In Indochina, such a blurring of alliance boundaries occurred only in Laos, which, though closely allied with Vietnam, managed to get both Western and Soviet bloc aid during the years when Vietnam and the PRK were sanctioned.

Cheers,

Balazs Szalontai

Korea University, Department of Saola Studies

From: Hoang Vu via Vsg <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Sent: Friday, May 10, 2024 4:43 AM
To: Balazs Szalontai <aoverl@yahoo.co.uk>
Cc: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: [Vsg] Hamas vs IDF, Khmer Rouge vs Vietnam

Dear Balazs,

I'd like to begin by stating categorically that I greatly admire your work and appreciate your views, and I am glad you are staying on list to discuss further. I agree that there are some important similarities between the Third Indochina War and the present-day Gaza War, particularly that they are both wars driven in large part by irredentism over a lost historical territory and will be difficult to resolve. There are, however, some key differences also:

First, as you rightly noted, the Khmer Rouge was responsible for the greatest losses of life in Cambodia (between 1-2 million or 20-30% of the population between 1975-1979). The Vietnamese invasion and occupation of Cambodia, while far from a purely altruistic and casualty-free operation (Kosal Path and Erin Lin have both recently written great books about the damage done by Vietnamese land mines and political purges), looking at the bigger picture the Vietnamese invasion still had the effect of ending the worst of the communal violence and famine, rebuilding the country socially and economically, and preventing the Khmer Rouge from returning to power throughout the 1980s, which likely saved many lives given that even in the 2010s trials, the surviving Khmer Rouge leaders still expressed no remorse. The situation in Gaza today is reversed: whereas the Hamas administration of Gaza since 2006 has been authoritarian and fascist and deserves no admiration or support, it did not bring about the massive destruction of civilian life and infrastructure on the scale as is currently being waged by the Israeli war machine. The damage is likely to grow far greater if they follow through with a ground assault on Rafah. This also answers other people's earlier "whataboutism" on whether we would devolve down a slippery slope where countries need to divest from all authoritarian regimes in the world. There is a clear difference in urgency of international action when facing Hamas and Hun Sen running authoritarian states on the one hand, and Israel conducting a military operation with such a great human and material price that the ICJ has to issue warnings about genocidal conduct and the ICC has to prepare arrest warrants on the other.

Second, as you also alluded to, the international response to the Third Indochina War was also entirely reversed. Every Western country that had re-established relations and trade with the Indochinese countries after the 1973 Paris Peace Agreements, with the notable exception of Sweden and later on Australia, did indeed cut off all trade and aid while Vietnam occupied Cambodia, and even after Vietnam unilaterally withdrew in 1989 (the U.S. only lifted its embargo in 1994!) The People's Republic of Kampuchea representatives weren't even allowed to sit in on the U.N., Non-Aligned Movement, or Mekong Commission meetings. If Western countries today do unto Israel even a fraction of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions that Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia experienced in the 1980s and -90s, I daresay all the students in all the campuses would declare triumphal victory and decamp this afternoon!

Hoang Minh Vu

Columbia & Fulbright University Vietnam

From: Balazs Szalontai via Vsg <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Sent: Thursday, May 9, 2024 5:13 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: [Vsg] Hamas vs IDF, Khmer Rouge vs Vietnam

Dear All,

I wonder if the following Indochinese analogy may be of some help to illuminate why the present conflict poses a serious dilemma to those who are equally committed to the principles of peace, democracy, and non-domination:

Following the victory of Communist forces in the three Indochinese countries, the long-simmering antipathies between the VCP and Khmer Rouge leaders came to the fore. While Hanoi sought to persuade the Khmer Rouge to participate in a trilateral Indochinese alliance (in which Vietnam, being far stronger than Laos and Cambodia, was to play a dominant role), the Khmer Rouge fiercely insisted on its political independence, and raised territorial claims against Vietnam on the grounds that the disputed areas had been taken by force by the pre-colonial Vietnamese state, and the French administrative boundaries (which Hanoi considered definitive) effectively recognized these conquests. In 1975-1976, the Cambodian leaders refused to cooperate with Vietnam and Laos against Thailand, yet when the frustrated Vietnamese and Lao leaders opted for a rapprochement with Thailand, the Khmer Rouge felt as much threatened by the prospect of a Vietnamese-Thai reconciliation at their expense as by the prospect of a Vietnamese-Thai conflict on their soil. They lashed out, and launched border raids, first against both Vietnam and Thailand, and later mainly against Vietnam, as they sought to normalize their relations with ASEAN to counter Hanoi's own ASEAN diplomacy. Unable to rein in Cambodia or at least dissuade it from its violent border raids, the frustrated VCP leaders eventually invaded Cambodia, and continued to occupy it until 1988. In the face of the Vietnamese occupation, many foreign governments insisted that the exiled Khmer Rouge government, rather than the Vietnamese-imposed PRK government, was the legitimate representative of Cambodia in the UN and the Non-Aligned Movement. Needless to say, the Cambodian population underwent a horrendous ordeal during these decades, first under U.S. bombing, then under Khmer Rouge demo- and genocide, and finally under Vietnamese occupation and the ongoing Khmer Rouge guerrilla war. One can hardly argue either that it was a wise strategy for the Khmer Rouge to deliberately provoke an armed conflict with a far stronger opponent or that it was bad for the Cambodian population that the Pol Pot regime was forcibly removed., but one also needs to recognize that Vietnam's domineering aspirations played a major role in the conflict, and that the international community was understandably reluctant to recognize a seemingly interminable military occupation of a much smaller and weaker country now ruled by a Vietnamese-imposed, non-democratic regime.

To be sure, Hamas' rule over the Gaza population, repressive as it has been, cannot be likened to the Khmer Rouge's reign of terror in Cambodia. In other respects, however, the analogy may be valid. In 2023, Hamas, frustrated as it was by Israel's long-standing economic stranglehold over Gaza (which in turn reflected the long political stalemate between Hamas and Israel, with Hamas rejecting the Oslo Accords and what they stood for, and Israel refusing to recognize the elected Hamas government), lashed out, and launched violent raids which were tactically successful but which ultimately had no chance to inflict a military defeat on an opponent as much stronger than Hamas as Vietnam had been stronger than Cambodia. Instead, the brutal violence that the raids used against Israeli civilians triggered a massive Israeli response, which in turn caused immense suffering to the civilian population in Gaza. In effect, a fatal cycle of violence was created, because after the massacres of October, the Israeli government became more determined than ever to eliminate Hamas, yet by subjecting Gaza to massive bombing, it made the local population more disinclined than ever to reject Hamas in favor of an Oslo-style deal with Israel. One can hardly see a way out of this cruel trap.

I hope that this post may be accepted as thematically relevant.

Cheers,

Balazs Szalontai

Korea University, Department of Saola Studies