The State of the Khmer Kingdom Today

The often overlooked Kingdom of Cambodia was in the news recently as the pliant Supreme Court ruled to ban the primary opposition party in the country, clearing the way for the ruling Prime Minister Hun Sen of the Cambodian People's Party to sail to (another) easy victory in upcoming elections. I tend to think that many monarchists pay too little attention to Cambodia, thinking that since the monarchy was restored, the important job was done and we could move on. The truth, as usual, is not so simple and I am particularly sensitive to this case. I have personal ties to the Khmer kingdom that make it impossible for me to gloss over. I have family who were involved in the war there, both the U.S. and Vietnamese interventions, a Cambodian cousin (by marriage) and another cousin who moved there with her family last year. If you know what the situation is like 'on the ground' you will know that Cambodia is nothing like its official description as a run-of-the-mill "constitutional monarchy". It is effectively a socialist dictatorship using the monarchy for cover.

A Khmer Rouge King

As usual, to understand the situation, one has to look back at the recent history of the Kingdom of Cambodia. Prior to World War II the country was effectively a colony as part of French Indochina. In 1941, thinking he would be easier to work with, the French authorities influenced the Crown Council to choose Norodom Sihanouk to succeed his grandfather as King. He remained in power during the Japanese occupation, declared independence from France at their prompting and essentially held power in the country ever since 1941 (he did abdicate for a time in favor of his father but still held control of the government during that time). He became extremely popular but as communist subversion increased in the country, King Norodom Sihanouk tried to play both sides of the fence between the French and later the Americans on one side and the communists, particularly China, on the other. Ultimately, anti-communist/anti-Vietnamese uprising resulted in the King being deposed in 1970 while he was out of the country and replaced by General Lon Nol. This caused King Sihanouk to do an 'about face' and urge his people to go to the jungle and join the communist Khmer Rouge.

When the U.S. pulled out of Indochina, the Khmer Rouge seized power in 1975 and enacted a puritanical, fanatical, communist makeover of the country with the King as their 'front man' on the world stage. This has led to some lasting controversy given that the Khmer Rouge butchered about a third of the entire population during their time in power. They were not removed until the ruling dictator, Pol Pot, insanely launched an attack on the neighboring Socialist Republic of Vietnam. He may have expected that his forces and China would crush the Vietnamese between them but he learned the hard way what the Americans, French and others, including the Chinese themselves, could have told him; fighting the Vietnamese is not something to take lightly. The Vietnamese basically wiped the floor with Pol Pot's forces, took over the country and installed their own government in 1979. One of the figures they put in power was a former Khmer Rouge cadre leader named (you guessed it) Hun Sen who had fled to Vietnam several years earlier. The Chinese did not approve of this, having backed the Khmer Rouge and because the Vietnamese were backed by Soviet Russia with whom China had a very tense relationship. However, King Sihanouk refused to go along with any pro-Khmer Rouge at this point, being glad to finally be free of them.

Prince Ranariddh

Under various titles, Hun Sen has effectively been dictator of Cambodia ever since the Vietnamese installed him after overthrowing Pol Pot. The UN finally got involved, held elections and the people voted to restore the monarchy so King Norodom Sihanouk was back but Hun Sen was going nowhere. He was forced to join in a nominal coalition government with the royalist party FUNCINPEC, an opposition party founded by the King and led by his second son Prince Norodom Ranariddh. It seemed like a basically normal constitutional monarchy from the outside but such appearances were deceiving. Hun Sen still had the strongest position and in 1997 carried out a coup against Prince Ranariddh when the Prince started to publicly complain about Hun Sen have more than half the power he was supposed to have. In the next elections, and practically every election in Cambodia has been deemed highly suspect, Hun Sen became sole Prime Minister and immediately began building up a cult of personality around himself as the "strong man" leader of Cambodia. King Norodom Sihanouk, who had more political experience than anyone, had his number from day one, famously referring to Hun Sen as the "one eyed lackey of the Vietnamese". However, Hun Sen still had opposition parties to deal with and the very revered King to at least hinder him if not stop him from doing whatever he wants.

The opposition parties were not terribly difficult to deal with. Hun Sen could always find an excuse to arrest opposition figures, suspend their rights or in some way make sure that his party came first in every subsequent election. A favorite tactic of his, used more than once, was to take advantage of the long-standing dispute between Thailand and Cambodia over the exact location of their border. Whenever an election was coming up, Hun Sen would send military forces to the border, the Thais would respond by sending their own troops to the border and this was used as justification for Hun Sen to declare a state of emergency and martial law, putting the army on the ground to make sure people voted for the CCP, and then backing off when the elections were over. The only one with the prestige to challenge Hun Sen was King Sihanouk who, while his actual powers were extremely limited, could be a major problem for the prime minister due to his widespread popularity. King Sihanouk could force Hun Sen to back down by threatening to abdicate and the King still had considerable support from China, though many Chinese communists wondered why they spent so much money on a foreigner and a monarch.

King Sihamoni w/ King Sihanouk

When King Sihanouk died, in Peking, in 2012 the largest obstacle to Hun Sen was removed. In my opinion, I think King Sihanouk wanted Prince Norodom Ranariddh to succeed him but, and again this is only my opinion, the Crown Council chose Norodom Sihamoni to be the next monarch. Prince Ranariddh had his problems, whether genuine or arranged by his enemies in the ruling party, who can say, but it seems to me that the Crown Council was influenced by Hun Sen to choose Prince Norodom Sihamoni because he wanted someone who would not pose a political threat to his hold on power and not be as difficult and opinionated as King Sihanouk had been. King Sihamoni seems a very nice man and all Cambodians should be loyal to him, however, it just seems to me that when your choice for king is a gay ballerina from France, you are probably choosing someone who does not fit the bill of a king likely to stand up to a dictatorial prime minister. The royalist opposition has been divided with Prince Ranariddh forming his own party for a time and it is anyone's guess if this was a legitimate internal dispute or not. Personally, I suspect the CCP of being involved in breaking up their biggest rival but I may just be paranoid. Anyway, the bottom line is that there is no longer a monarch with the experience, international support and local prestige to stand up to Hun Sen, the royalists have been troubled by scandal and division and now the primary opposition party has been banned and, it is no coincidence, just before national elections.

Cambodia still has ties to Communist China but the reality that people need to understand is that the country is a dictatorship under Hun Sen with a figurehead monarch. If you want to know who is really in control, it is not that difficult if you take a broad view and not get bogged down in the local political squabbles that often do not amount to munch (even the royalists have long been accused of being what Americans would call 'controlled opposition'). Remember that the communist Vietnamese "founding father" Ho Chi Minh had originally founded the Indochinese Communist Party and he expected and planned to become the communist dictator of all of what had been French Indochina, not just his native Vietnam. Keeping that in mind, recall that Laos is effectively under Vietnamese occupation to this day and that Hun Sen was first put in power in Cambodia by the Communist Vietnamese and has remained in power ever since. If you ever go to Cambodia you will also notice that the army officers all speak Vietnamese. That should be a huge, huge clue as to who is really in charge in Cambodia and who is pulling the strings of Prime Minister Hun Sen. The King is still there but Cambodia is still in need of a true royal restoration.

Cambodia in World War II

The Second World War came to Cambodia at the end of the reign of King Sisowath Monivong when the country was under the colonial rule of France as part of French Indochina. King Sisowath Monivong had given the French little cause for complaint, he had even been quite helpful to the French cause in the First World War and held rank in the French army. With the outbreak of war in Europe, there seemed to be no immediate cause for alarm in Cambodia, however as France was defeated and largely occupied by Nazi Germany, the worsening situation for France meant that Indochina was a tempting target for neighboring enemies. In 1940 the Kingdom of Thailand, under the dictator Plaek Pibulsonggram (Phibun), decided to take advantage of French misfortune and attack Indochina in order to gain certain border territories that Thailand had long thought should belong to them. The French colonial forces were outmatched in every way and quickly driven from Laos though they put up more determined resistance in Cambodia. In 1941 the Empire of Japan intervened, using their alliance with Nazi Germany to exert pressure on the Vichy regime in unoccupied France. The French, Japanese and Thais met in Saigon and arranged a peace that was favorable to Thailand, giving the Thais control of the territories they wanted, most of which were in Cambodia.

King Monivong

That same year, in August, the Japanese occupied Cambodia with about 8,000 troops. The Vichy regime had, under pressure from Germany, allowed Japan to occupy Indochina and establish bases there. The immediate reason for this was to cut off supplies going to the nationalist forces in China that Japan had been in an undeclared war with for many years. Before the year was out, however, they would be used to launch attacks on all neighboring countries. At the outset, and for most of the war, the Japanese allowed the French colonial regime to remain in place. King Monivong, however, was increasingly distressed by the course of events unfolding around him. In the French colonial empire, things had been stable for the monarchy and Cambodia had progressed in technical areas while suffering relatively little unrest. The increasingly dominant position of the Japanese worried the King as their intervention had cost his country a great deal of territory. Their support helped ensure that Thailand would not oppose the Japanese invasion of their own country and the use of Thailand in attacking Malaysia, however, for the King of Cambodia it had certainly not been beneficial and could result in the loss of his throne if the Japanese were to go further in supporting historic Thai claims over Laos and Cambodia.

Reports came to the King from the border provinces of Cambodians being oppressed and mistreated by the Thais and Japanese but King Monivong was powerless to do anything about it. The French were still in control but the Japanese were effectively in control of them and the French were not about to do anything to anger Japan and risk being treated like every other European population in the Japanese-occupied territories. Full of sorrow and frustration for the state of his country, King Monivong washed his hands of his mostly ceremonial position in government and retired to Kampot. Not long after, he died on April 24, 1941 in Bokor. He was supposed to be succeeded by his son Prince Sisowath Monireth but the French thought that Prince Norodom Sihanouk would be more loyal to their interests and enthroned him instead as the new King of Cambodia on May 3, 1941. For the next few years, Cambodia was relatively calm though, like the rest of Indochina, it had to bear a double burden with the French and Japanese to support. The young King Norodom Sihanouk spent most of his time on sporting activities with the occasional tour of the countryside, waiting for events to unfold.

King Sihanouk

Unlike neighboring Vietnam, which saw a potential for gain in these years of Japanese triumph, Laos and Cambodia saw only that what they had lost due to the Japanese-Thai alliance. While a Japanese victory could mean the reunification of Vietnam, it would make permanent the territorial losses to Thailand by Laos and Cambodia. The way the French and Japanese cooperated with each other also made them reluctant to believe the Japanese racial rhetoric of “Asia for the Asians” and more susceptible to the views put out by the small but growing communist movement that both the French and the Japanese were their enemies. Yet, the relationship between the French and Japanese was never cordial and the superior status taken by the Japanese encouraged dissent toward the French. During the occupation, a Buddhist monk named Hem Chieu began preaching nationalist, anti-French sermons to troops of the French colonial army in Cambodia. The French suspected the monk of being supported by the Japanese and they had him arrested. This, in turn, sparked a large anti-French demonstration in Phnom Penh led by Pach Chhoeun who was arrested and exiled.

Also among the prominent demonstrators was Son Ngoc Thanh who would have a long history as a republican rebel in Cambodia. He was an admirer of Japan and the pan-Asian movement with a long history of supporting what he termed “National Socialism”. When the demonstration was broken up, he fled to Japan but would be back in due time as a long-standing enemy of King Sihanouk. Of course, after the initial offensive in late 1941 and early 1942, things went from bad to worse for the Empire of Japan. The year 1942 saw the Imperial Japanese Navy suffer a crippling defeat at the Battle of Midway followed by the horrific defeat at the Battle of Guadalcanal. Allied counter-offensives throughout 1943 were fiercely resisted but everywhere victorious and 1944 saw the Japanese invasion of India end in total failure and the near collapse of Japanese forces in the region. The British-led offensive into Burma made steady progress so that the fall of Thailand and Indochina seemed to be inevitable. By 1945 the Allies had taken or were in the process of taking Borneo, The Philippines and were approaching the Japanese home islands. The situation was desperate and Japan tried to make a last-minute effort to gain more local support by sponsoring declarations of independence for the occupied countries of French Indochina.

Kingdom of Kampuchea flag

By this time, the Vichy regime in France had collapsed and the Governor-General of Indochina, Admiral Jean Decoux, had transferred his allegiance to the provisional government of the French Republic. Starting in March of 1945 the Imperial Japanese Army began moving troops into position near French garrison towns and barracks. On March 9, they struck, surrounding the French troops and ordering them to lay down their weapons or be killed. Most surrendered, those that did not (as well as some who did) were massacred. Most of the French commanders were massacred with two top colonial generals in Saigon being beheaded when they refused to sign the surrender. A little under 6,000 French colonial troops managed to make their way to China to join the nationalists and these were the only ones to escape. All other French survivors, military and civilian, were put in concentration camps while the local leaders in Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam were “informed” that the time had come to declare independence.

King Sihanouk decided to cooperate and seize this opportunity to assert Khmer independence, even though the Japanese did not entirely trust him as he was thought to be too friendly with the French. Perhaps in an effort to keep the King in check, the Japanese brought Son Ngoc Thanh back from Japan and installed him as Minister of Foreign Affairs and then a couple of months later as Prime Minister. The Latin-style written version of the Khmer language was abolished in favor of the old script and the country was renamed from the Kingdom of Cambodia to the Kingdom of Kampuchea. However, the regime did not have long to live as the war situation was rapidly worsening for Japan. In August of 1945 the Empire of Japan surrendered to the Allies and the collapse of the Kingdom of Kampuchea was only a matter of time. That time officially ran out in October as Allied forces (mostly British-Indian troops) moved in to disarm the Japanese and take their surrender. With the Allied victory the French in Indochina were liberated and returned to power (at least in those areas where the British rather than the Chinese oversaw the Japanese surrender). The French Far East Expeditionary Corps, formed to fight the Japanese, arrived too late to fight Japan but served to restore French authority in the region.

Son Ngoc Thanh

Some Cambodians who wanted to carry on the fight for independence fled to the northwest provinces that had been ceded to Thailand to carry on a guerilla war against the French with Thai support. However, they splintered due to internal disagreements and ultimately proved to be of little consequence. The territories that had been ceded to Thailand from Cambodia and Laos because of the Franco-Thai War were ultimately returned after France threatened to block the entry of Thailand into the United Nations unless the provinces were given back. Son Ngoc Thanh was arrested by the French for collaborating with the Japanese and exiled to France under house arrest. However, he later returned after his nemesis, King Sihanouk, was deposed in an anti-communist military coup that established a republican government in Cambodia, becoming Prime Minister for a short time starting in 1972. Following the American withdrawal from South Vietnam and the communist takeover in 1975 he was executed by the Khmer Rouge.

King Norodom Sihanouk mastered the events of World War II quite adeptly. He had gone along with the Japanese declaration of independence but never burned his bridges with the French. However, he used his position at the end of the war, when the Japanese were returning home, to extract considerable concessions from the French to make the return of the colonial regime go more smoothly. The result was that the French agreed to autonomy for Cambodia within the French Union. While Vietnam descended into division and civil war, life in Cambodia remained relatively stable and a period of bountiful rice harvests after the war led to a time of prosperity that was attributed to the semi-divine status of King Sihanouk who became more popular than ever, particularly after the granting of total independence from France for the Kingdom of Cambodia after the end of the French Indochina War. Despite being, briefly but officially, on the losing side in World War II, King Sihanouk had emerged from the conflict as a clear winner.

The Monarchist Vietnam War

Thai military unit given honors by US forces

The war against communism in Vietnam, and more broadly across Indochina, is almost universally considered an “American war”. This is not due to America shouldering the largest burden in the fight against communism in Indochina but more because of a sort of obsession with the United States by the hyper-patriot “Yankee Doodle” types on one hand and the anti-American hysterics on the other, both of whom see the United States as the center of the world and the driving force behind everything that happens in it. However, it may surprise some to know that the United States was not the only country involved in fighting the expansion of communism in Southeast Asia and, more to our point, of the coalition of countries that were involved fully half of them were monarchies. It is rather unfortunate that their contribution and their sacrifices are often forgotten (though some seem to prefer it that way) because, while their contribution in numbers was not immense, they played a critical part in several key areas of the conflict. If one were to look at the war more broadly, in the larger sense of the struggle against the communist domination of Southeast Asia, monarchies played a still larger part.

British SAS in the Malaya Emergency

As in Europe, the roots of the Cold War go back to World War II with foreign invasions upsetting the political status quo and giving rise to the first internal conflicts between pro- and anti-communist forces. This was seen in Malaysia where largely communist dominated Chinese guerilla groups formed to fight the Japanese occupation. Likewise, in Vietnam, the communist revolutionary Ho Chi Minh organized the Vietminh to oppose the Japanese and the short-lived Japanese-sponsored Empire of Vietnam as well as the return of French colonial rule. The Allies, because of the war situation, gave support to such groups but they became extremely problematic as soon as the war was over. From 1948 to 1960 an all-monarchist war against communism raged in Malaysia between the forces of the British Empire and Commonwealth Realms against a communist insurgency backed by China, Indonesia and the Soviet Union. It was a much more small-scale conflict than that in Indochina, but no less intense and ultimately it was the monarchist side that prevailed which is why the monarchial federation of Malaysia exists today as a prosperous, independent Commonwealth country. If things had gone the other way, if the communists had prevailed, all the Malaysian monarchies would have been lost.

In Indochina, it was thanks to the forces of the British Empire that the communists did not seize control of the whole of Vietnam in the August Revolution of 1945. They took power in the north and central thirds of the country but in the south the British refused to allow this and even re-armed the surrendered Japanese forces to prevent a communist takeover before the French authorities could resume control. This was all the more controversial considering that, in other parts of the country, some Japanese had joined with the Vietnamese communists, perhaps out of shared support for communism or, as is more likely, simply out of a racist desire to fight non-Asians no matter what the underlying political cause. It was also controversial as the United States, under President Roosevelt, had made no secret of the fact that it opposed the restoration of French colonial rule in Indochina. That attitude, however, changed with the communist victory in China and the oncoming tidal wave of communist aggression from Korea to Malaysia. It is also worth noting that the areas of Indochina where the communists were the least successful were those areas where monarchist sentiment was strongest such as in Laos and Cambodia.

Emp. Bao Dai with French General de Lattre

The First Indochina War, seen by most as simply a clash between the French Republic on one side and the Vietnamese communists on the other, was actually a monarchist war as well. The non-communist Vietnamese were organized into the State of Vietnam which was not officially a republic but not a traditional monarchy either. It was rather like Francoist Spain prior to 1947 or Manchukuo from 1932-1934. Officially it was simply a “State” but the Chief of State was the legitimate monarch and it was effectively a monarchy. We know from history that the French defeat doomed the Vietnamese former-Emperor turned “Chief of State” Bao Dai but what is less well known is that it would have doomed the monarchies of Laos and Cambodia as well had not other factors intervened. Both countries had communist revolutionary movements and both had originally been established under the guidance of the Vietnamese communist leaders. In fact, when the United States first began to take the situation in Indochina seriously, the greatest concern was not South Vietnam where President Ngo Dinh Diem seemed to be holding his own but rather the Kingdom of Laos which was more fractured and seemed less stable and in greater peril than any other country in the region.

On the Lao front there were basically two warring factions and one faction which tried to remain above the fray. The Royal Lao Army of King Sisavang Vatthana, wanted more than anything to keep the Cold War from spreading to Laos, then there were the communists who fought a vicious guerilla war to gain power for themselves and the anti-communist forces that opposed them which consisted to a large extent of Hmong warriors backed, not-so-secretly, by the United States. The Kingdom of Thailand also played a critical part in the war in Laos as many Thai mercenaries fought on behalf of the anti-communist forces with the, again, not-so-secret blessing of the Thai royal government. The United States sent considerable military assistance to the Kingdom of Laos to aid in combating the communist Pathet-Lao and, at the time, the Kingdom of Laos received more U.S. foreign aid than any other country. Fellow monarchies such as Japan, Thailand and Australia also provided valuable assistance to the struggling royalists of Laos. The Pathet Lao had mostly Vietnamese advisors along with a few Soviet and a number of Chinese who were hoping that Laos could be secured, its monarchy abolished and made into a puppet-state through which China would have an open road to attack the Kingdom of Thailand.

King Savang Vatthana of Laos

For more than a decade the hard fighting Hmong, Thai and Lao royalists backed up by American air support fought a grueling and heroic struggle against communist domination for the preservation of the Kingdom of Laos. American President Kennedy landed a force of US Marines in Thailand to stand ready to intervene in Laos if the communists gained the upper hand. However, he quickly agreed to a proposal by the Soviets to withdraw forces and keep Laos neutral. Despite having ignored a similar, previous agreement, Kennedy went along and pulled the Marines out of Thailand and ordered the US ambassador to back the neutral faction. Meanwhile, the Soviets had no intention of doing the same and merely channeled their support through North Vietnam so that large sections of Laos effectively came under the control of the communist Vietnamese. The war in Laos went on but cooled from a boil to a simmer as both sides seemed to realize that all would depend on the fate of Vietnam.

In the war in Vietnam, while the South Vietnamese and United States obviously supplied the vast majority of the fighting forces, monarchist participants on the side of South Vietnam included Australia, New Zealand, Thailand and Laos. Monarchies not directly involved but which were supportive of the South Vietnamese struggle included Canada, Spain, the United Kingdom and the Empire of Iran. During the course of the war more than 60,000 Australians served in the war in Vietnam losing 521 killed and over 3,000 wounded. They gave heroic service in numerous operations, one of the most famous being the Battle of Long Tan in Phuoc Tuy where 108 Australians defeated about 2,000 North Vietnamese regular army troops. Likewise, 3,500 New Zealanders served in the Vietnam War with losses of 37 killed and 187 wounded. The Kingdom of Thailand, as well as supplying troops to the war for Laos, dispatched the “Queen’s Cobra” battalion to South Vietnam where it served from 1965 to 1971. Thailand also supplied bases for American air forces and support centers for American and other allied personnel. The Australians had a particularly good combat record and more than a few have commented since that the American high command could have profited by adopted Australian methods of counter-insurgency operations.

Troops of the Royal Australian Regiment in Vietnam

For the monarchist cause in each of the Indochinese countries each had a unique set of circumstances and must be dealt with separately. Starting with Vietnam, it had the disadvantage of losing its monarchy first when the August Revolution brought down the Japanese-backed Empire of Vietnam in 1945. That was really the end of the traditional Vietnamese monarchy. However, with the creation of the French-backed State of Vietnam (also recognized by the US, UK & others as the legitimate Vietnamese government) there was hope that a more modern sort of monarchy could survive. That it did not was due to the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu after which France washed its hands of Vietnam and left the anti-communist cause in Indochina in the hands of the United States. The biggest blow to the monarchy-in-all-but-name State of Vietnam, at least as far as the monarchy was concerned, came after the appointment of the American-backed Catholic nationalist Ngo Dinh Diem as Prime Minister. He set about breaking up the system of patronage that the former Emperor Bao Dai ruled through and so aroused the opposition of many.

The best chance for removing Diem was probably the attempted coup launched by General Nguyen Van Hinh, a Bao Dai loyalist, but Diem stood firm and Bao Dai blinked, recalling General Hinh who left for France and never saw Vietnam again. When Bao Dai finally summoned Diem to France to dismiss him it was too late and Diem organized a referendum in 1955 that saw the State of Vietnam become the Republic of Vietnam with Diem as president. Most regard that as the effective end of all monarchist hopes in Vietnam, however, that may not be the case. Ngo Dinh Diem had, as a young mandarin, been hand-picked by Emperor Bao Dai and promoted rapidly in government. He was known as a monarchist as well as a nationalist and came from a Catholic family that was close to the imperial court. His father, Nguyen Van Kha, had been a high-ranking official under Emperor Thanh Thai and had left public service in protest when the French deposed Thanh Thai. Diem had been aided in his career and had family ties with the staunch monarchist Nguyen Huu Bai, probably the most prominent Catholic in the imperial government at the time. His famous sister-in-law, best known as Madame Nhu, was a great-granddaughter of Emperor Dong Khanh, grandfather of the last Emperor Bao Dai. So the ties between Ngo Dinh Diem and the monarchy were numerous and far reaching.

President Ngo Dinh Diem

As such, and considering that Diem acted against the former Emperor only when his own position was under threat, it may have been possible to have effected a restoration of the monarchy under Diem. When the administration of President Kennedy turned against Diem, if they had been more realistic and far-sighted, they could have arranged a sort of compromise that, under the circumstances, Diem may well have accepted. The proposal could have been for a restoration of the Emperor or perhaps even the elevation of the Prince Imperiale Bao Long for a fresh start, with Diem reverting back to a more limited role as prime minister or perhaps stepping down completely on the understanding that he could come back at some point when the situation had changed. It is speculative but given the personal history of Diem and his family, I cannot help but think that there was some glimmer of hope for a monarchist revival up until Diem was assassinated in 1963. There were still many members of the Imperial Family in the country, the Emperor’s mother still lived in the Forbidden City in fact but after the death of Diem there would never be anyone in power in Saigon with such a monarchist past or so many connections again.

In Laos, it is strange considering how widely criticized Vietnamese Emperor Bao Dai was for his cooperation with the French, that the leaders of the royal house did not face the same situation despite being even more pro-French than Bao Dai was. During World War II both King Sisavang Vong and the Crown Prince refused to collaborate with the Japanese and remained supportive of France. Prince Phetsarath led the Japanese-allied pro-independence forces and gained widespread public adoration but that never put him at odds with the rest of the family and the King was eventually reconciled with him. If there was one man who probably could have saved Laos from all of the troubles it was to endure in the course of the Second Indochina War it was Prince Phetsarath. Even decades of communist oppression has not managed to destroy his popularity amongst the Lao people. Unfortunately, Prince Phetsarath died in 1959 of a brain hemorrhage and the country soon began to fracture as discussed above.

Prince Sihanouk at Khmer Rouge rally

The Kingdom of Cambodia easily represents the most difficult case and it will always be one that few, if any, monarchists can look at without being troubled. Unlike Vietnam and Laos, Cambodia entered the era of the Vietnam War in probably better shape than any other Indochinese country. King Norodom Sihanouk had successfully navigated the French and the Japanese, cooperating with both, turning on both and escaping with his throne intact and independence for his country. An especially bountiful crop at the right time caused his popularity to soar to near godlike status and Cambodia under King Sihanouk seemed more united, prosperous and happy than any other country in the region. Unfortunately, the cancer that was the communist Khmer Rouge was in place, waiting for an opportunity to exploit.

King Sihanouk proclaimed neutrality in the Cold War but seemed to enjoy ‘dancing along the Demilitarized Zone’ as it were. He looked the other way as the communist terrorist group, the Viet Cong, established bases in Cambodia from which to attack South Vietnam, refusing offers of American support to remove them. The anti-communist forces became increasingly frustrated with Sihanouk and when he left on a friendship tour to Communist China, North Korea and the Soviet Union it was taken by everyone as a clear indication of where he stood (though in all probability it was likely an effort at playing both sides of the fence, hedging his bets as it were). While he was out of the country, in 1970 there was a military coup led by General Lon Nol, a man known as a right-wing monarchist but also a staunch anti-communist who was eager to take action against the Vietnamese presence in Cambodia. Lon Nol declared Prince Sihanouk deposed and himself President of the new Khmer Republic. Today, the most widely repeated story is that the coup was backed by the American CIA to get rid of King Sihanouk with Lon Nol as the willing traitor. However, though widely assumed, there has never been any actual evidence of CIA involvement and Lon Nol was actually extremely reluctant to remove Sihanouk as Head of State. In fact, he finally did so only at actual gunpoint.

President Lon Nol

However, big plans to drive out the Vietnamese communists and wipe out the native red elements proved unsuccessful. Lon Nol suffered a stroke the following year and while the Americans and South Vietnamese took care of the Vietnamese communist strongholds in the border areas, the deposed Sihanouk threw his considerable prestige behind the Khmer Rouge, urging people to flee to the jungle and join the guerillas. So Cambodia presented the world with an odd picture: a republic led by a monarchist which was struggling for survival against a communist insurgency that was notoriously anti-monarchist being backed by the former monarch. Even when acting under duress, Lon Nol felt so terrible about what he done to Prince Sihanouk that he bowed down in tears before the Queen Mother Kossamak to beg her forgiveness. For his part, Sihanouk lived in a palace in North Korea until the end of the Vietnam War when American support for the Khmer Republic was cut off and the Khmer Rouge seized power. He returned to Cambodia but was held prisoner by the fanatical communist regime and was only allowed to leave in order to argue the case of Democratic Kampuchea against Vietnam after which, rather than return, he relocated to China and North Korea until the eventual UN referendum saw him restored in a more limited constitutional monarchy.

That was a phenomenon that was unique and has never been repeated. For monarchists in Cambodia, there simply were no ideal options after 1970. Those who followed the King into the future dominated by Pol Pot came to regret it as the Khmer Rouge not only tossed aside the King after coming to power but went on to massacre about a third of the entire population in their drive to create a “pure” communist state. So, odd as it may seem, the best thing to do would have been to support Lon Nol and his republic. Given the depth of his attachment to the monarchy, I have no doubt that King Sihanouk could have easily returned to the throne, especially after Lon Nol was able to rid himself of the arch-republican Son Ngoc Thanh in 1972. There may have even been a restoration of the monarchy without Sihanouk if the republic had survived as the other major backer of the regime was Prince Sisowath Sirik Matak (a cousin of Sihanouk though opposed to him) who reportedly harbored hopes of his son becoming King of Cambodia. As it turned out, after the Khmer Rouge takeover in 1975 Lon Nol fled the country and Sirik Matak was executed.

Last of the King & Queen of Laos

So, all in all, a great deal hung in the balance for monarchists in the Vietnam War. The fate of the Kingdom of Laos was decided by the conflict, in almost any other case that of Cambodia would have been and even in Vietnam itself there remained at least room for hope prior to the communist takeover in 1975. The elderly Phan Khac Suu was briefly President of South Vietnam in 1964-65 (during the chaotic years after the assassination of Diem and before the administration of Nguyen Van Thieu) and he had, in the past, been known as a supporter of Emperor Bao Dai and was a member of the strange Cao Dai sect which had been supportive of the monarchy. If he had gained a greater following there may have been some chance for a restoration with the former Emperor still in France, ready to be restored if asked (and if he wished). What is important to remember is that the cause that those monarchists in Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam who fought against the communist takeover and those of Australia, New Zealand and Thailand who helped them in that struggle, was a noble one and one worth fighting for. It is unfortunate that it has come to be seen solely as an “American war” and thus something to oppose and condemn by those who follow the fashionable chattering class in being against absolutely anything the United States is for. It does a disservice to all those brave military forces of the Queen of Australia and New Zealand, the King of Thailand and the local monarchs who sacrificed a great deal to stand against the tide of communist expansion in Southeast Asia.

Royal News Special Report: Burying a King in Cambodia

Starting in the Far East, the biggest royal event this week was the funeral service for HM “King-Father” Norodom Sihanouk in Cambodia. HM Queen Monique followed the coffin of her late husband, supported of course by HM King Norodom Sihamoni and they were joined by thousands of mourning Cambodians as well as foreign dignitaries including the French and Thai prime ministers and HIH Prince Akishino of Japan. The death of King Sihanouk marks the end of an era and many observers are not optimistic about the long-term survival of the monarchy. King Sihamoni has, so far, not shown the same drive and combativeness of his late father and younger generations seem less connected to the monarchy. Prime Minister Hun Sen, who has held power ever since being put in place by the Vietnamese following their invasion and overthrow of the genocidal dictator Pol Pot, has not accorded the new King the powers that are constitutionally his and which his father enjoyed. Historian David Chandler said, “Sihamoni is childless. The royalist party is in shreds,” and added that the general public, “loved Sihanouk, to an extent, and I think elderly people like the idea of there being a king, but Hun Sen and the younger generations couldn’t care less,” which does not bode well for the institution.

King Norodom Sihanouk, despite the constitutional limitations on his power, was still able to wield some influence because of his popularity and his lifetime of experience in the rough-and-tumble world of southeast Asian politics. He was known for his threats to abdicate and his frequent extended absences in China or North Korea to get the government to go his way. King Norodom Sihanomi, on the other hand, has so far seemed content to simply confine himself to ceremonial duties and religious festivals. The real power in the country, pretty much ever since the fall of Pol Pot, has been Prime Minister Hun Sen. Leader of the Cambodian People’s Party, Hun Sen was originally a commander in the Khmer Rouge but fled to Vietnam during the purges carried out by Pol Pot. He was supported by the communist Vietnamese and returned with them when the Vietnamese People’s Army invaded Cambodia and took down the Khmer Rouge regime. He originally served as Foreign Minister in the Vietnamese-installed government before becoming Prime Minister in 1985 with Vietnamese support. He has remained in power ever since with many accusations of brutality and human rights abuses surrounding him. A common tactic of his has been to provoke the neighboring Kingdom of Thailand around election time in order to call out the army to intimidate opposition groups.

FUNCINPEC, the royalist party, has been a frequent target of Hun Sen and his thug tactics (as has virtually every major party) but royal intervention has ensured that the royalist party has usually held some positions in what have officially been “power-sharing” coalition governments though, do not be fooled, it is always PM Hun Sen who has the final word on things. Given his background, it should come as no surprise that, while he has paid lip-service to the value of the monarchy in the past, he is a career politician with Marxist roots who is not a true monarchist at all. Hun Sen, and this is my opinion to take or leave as you see fit, is really a puppet for the powers-that-be in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. They are the ones he ran to in his time of crisis, they are the ones who put him in power in the first place and I have no doubt that he has remained in power thanks to their good graces. This is something that is not often talked about, mostly, I think, because it has become so fashionable to dismiss the whole “Vietnam conflict” as something unimportant and easily shrugged off. In fact, the situation that exists today is almost exactly what the Vietnamese communist leader Ho Chi Minh first envisioned decades ago and it should go without saying that monarchs have no place in that vision.

When Ho Chi Minh (as he would later be known) first came back to what was then French Indochina, his goal was instigate a communist revolution just as he had learned from his time with the French Communist Party (and their subterfuge would play a part in the undermining of the French war effort in Vietnam in the 50’s). However, he had, like all communists, grand ambitions. He did not intend for his communist dictatorship to include only the three reunited regions of Vietnam (Tonkin, Annam and Cochinchina) but the whole of Indochina with Laos and Cambodia being under Vietnamese communist rule as well. He got rid of the Vietnamese monarchy in 1945, got the French out and solidified his rule in the north by 1955 and by 1975 (though Ho Chi Minh had died by then) his successors saw off the United States and were supporting the communist takeover in Laos by the Pathet Lao and in Cambodia by the Khmer Rouge. The King of Laos went down with the ship and ended up being killed in a communist prison camp. The King of Cambodia, Norodom Sihanouk, was ousted with the support of the United States by his Prime Minister [the U.S. also more or less invented the Viet Cong; the O.S.S. (forerunner of the C.I.A.) actually armed and trained Ho Chi Minh’s guerillas in the 40’s to fight the Japanese. This hard core later became the Viet Minh which later became the Viet Cong -good job there Uncle Sam] and so was forced into the camp of the Khmer Rouge.

At that time, not everyone knew that Pol Pot was really the man in charge (he was a very secretive figure) and of course he eventually turned on the King and on the Vietnamese as well. Vietnam was also at odds with Maoist China, preferring the more safely distant U.S.S.R. for their support and so Pol Pot naturally allied with China against the Vietnamese. His nightmarish rule, which took the lives of five of the children of King Sihanouk, might have gone on much longer had Pol Pot not foolishly decided, in his unmatched paranoia, to actually attack Vietnam. This sparked a war across the whole region which ended in triumph for the Vietnamese. China invaded Vietnam, took a bloody nose and then declared “mission accomplished” and retreated back into China and the Vietnamese invaded Cambodia, drove out Pol Pot and took over. Hun Sen was basically their stooge and has remained in power ever since and I am sure he would not still be there if he could not be counted on to do the bidding of the politburo in Hanoi. Laos, likewise, was forced to sign a treaty allowing Vietnamese troops to occupy the country and effectively made themselves a protectorate of Vietnam. I am sure the leaders in Hanoi were not happy about the referendum that saw King Norodom Sihanouk restored to his throne in a constitutional monarchy (especially given how friendly he was with China) but the result has been effectively what Ho Chi Minh dreamed of decades ago. Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam all ruled (in fact if not in name) by communist dictators who take their marching orders from Hanoi.

This is a serious time for monarchies in Southeast Asia (or at least other than Malaysia which seems quite strong). The power, economic and otherwise, and influence of China is growing ever stronger. Whether Cambodia will be more influenced in the future by Peking or Hanoi makes little difference as far as the monarchy goes as neither one could ever be supportive of the institution. The current King seems unable or unwilling to stand up to Hun Sen as his father did at times and many are now wondering if the monarchy will endure at all in Cambodia. Added to that is the fact that the beloved King of Thailand, Bhumibol Adulyadej the Great, is quite elderly and ailing while the Crown Prince is not so widely respected as his father which has caused many to wonder about the future of the monarchy in that country as well. Once upon a time, support for the monarchy could be taken for granted, but not so anymore it seems. One need only look at the number of supporters there are for the red shirts or the new lady prime minister of Thailand to see that respect for the monarchy is not so widely held as it once was.

Opinion on King Sihanouk is certainly divided in the monarchist community. He certainly did some things that were regrettable, though I try to keep in mind that it would be hard for anyone to survive in the times that he did without some such “compromises” and he did manage the almost impossible in actually restoring a fallen monarchy. Some, I know, will never forgive him. However, all monarchists should take his passing seriously. His loss is not a good thing for the cause of traditional authority around the world. I am worried about what is yet to come for both Cambodia and Thailand and we should not overlook the power of trends. Every time a monarchy falls, anywhere in the world, it makes things that much more difficult for those that remain just as it makes republicanism seem all the more inevitable and universal. I would hope that all monarchists would rally to the support of King Norodom Sihamoni and the Crown Prince of Thailand when his time comes, not because of their own persons, but because of what they represent which is what monarchy is supposed to be all about anyway. Let us hope that the grim predictions prove false and that historians do not one day look back at the burial of King Norodom Sihanouk as the day monarchy in the Indochinese region itself began to come to an end.

Royal News Roundup

The first of the two biggest royal news stories this week came from the Far East where HM the “King-Father” Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia died in a hospital in Peking after years of deteriorating health. The King presided over Cambodian independence from France before trying to remain neutral in the war engulfing Vietnam. Overthrown in a US-backed coup by one his generals (while out of the country) the King was kept under house arrest for the most part during Pol Pot’s reign of terror. In the aftermath of the Vietnamese invasion that expelled the dictator the King was restored in a UN-backed referendum. He was the only Southeast Asian royal to regain his throne once it was lost and the last surviving leader from the decades of conflict that gripped Indochina. The body of the late King was escorted to the Royal Palace with all of the pomp and ceremony Cambodia could muster and will remain there for the next three months before his burial ceremony. King Bhumibol Adulyadej the Great of neighboring Thailand, himself in increasingly poor health, sent his condolences to the Cambodian people on this sad occasion. Virtually no one in Cambodia has known a world without King Sihanouk in it.

Happier news prevailed in India with a low-key royal wedding by a couple better known for their celebrity status than royal origins. On Tuesday HH Prince Saif Ali Khan of Pataudi married his girlfriend of five years Kareena Kapoor in Bombay. It is the second marriage for Prince Khan who inherited the title of Nawab of Pataudi upon the death of his father (a famous cricket champion) last year. Kapoor may not be from a princely family but she is from ‘Bollywood royalty’ with a family that has long been famous in the film and entertainment industry.

Finally, in Europe, the biggest royal story of the week was also the best kind; a happy royal romance with the wedding of HRH Hereditary Grand Duke Guillaume of Luxembourg and Countess Stephanie de Lannoy. It was a fairly casual and low key affair, starting at the Grand Ducal Palace and then, in a small but smart procession the dashing duke and his cute countess moved on to the Grande Threatre de la Ville de Luxembourg for their civil wedding ceremony. Among the royal guests besides the immediate Grand Ducal family of Luxembourg were Her Majesty Queen Fabiola of Belgium, still serene and stately even in a wheelchair, along with other royals from Belgium, The Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Liechtenstein, Denmark, Romania. Britain was represented by Prince Edward and Countess Sophie and there were royals from beyond European shores from Morocco, Jordan, Japan and elsewhere further afield. With the wedding made official, the Hereditary Grand Duke became the last European royal heir to marry and the Countess became Hereditary Grand Duchess Stephanie of Luxembourg, becoming a citizen of Luxembourg as well as her native Belgium. We join all those loyal subjects of the Grand Duke and all the other fans of the House of Luxembourg in sending congratulations to the happy couple and wishing them all the best in their life together. The religious ceremony is being held this morning and there will be many more celebrations, fireworks and all the best that Luxembourg can boast on this most happy occasion.

King-Father Norodom Sihanouk 1922-2012

The former monarch and "King-Father" of Cambodia, His Majesty Norodom Sihanouk, died on Sunday, October 14, 2012 in Peking at the age of 89. No other figure was more dominant, more controversial or more constantly involved in Cambodian national life for the last hundred years than this late King. Today, some still hold him responsible for the many horrors Cambodia endured during the Khmer Rouge regime, others hold him blameless but more see him as the one national figure who, whether he made the right or wrong decisions, was always looking out for the welfare of his country rather than himself. It can certainly be said that no other Cambodian monarch has had a reign to match his and he certainly proved himself to be a tenacious survivor and the author of the greatest political 'come-back' story of modern Southeast Asia.

Monarchies Clash in Indochina

The soldiers of the kingdoms of Cambodia and Thailand have exchanged fire in an on-going territorial dispute over a mountain-top temple (Preah Vihear) on the disputed border between the two countries, a temple which has been named as a World Heritage Site by the UN. We have reported on this dispute previously in 2009 and things are heating up again. In the past the situation was worsened by the presence of ousted Thai PM and media mogul Thaksin Shinawatra in Cambodia. The underlying problem here; the border dispute, is a very, very old one and has been the focus of hostilities for the Kingdom of Thailand and the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia, the colonial government of French Indochina and previous clashes between the Siamese and the Cambodians and the old Vietnamese emperors. It is unfortunate that two members of an endangered species (monarchies) are engaged in hostilities but it should also be kept in mind that the two monarchs have nothing to do with this.

The King of Thailand, because of his infirmity, remains largely unseen under close medical care and observation. The King of Cambodia (and his father) have little if anything to do with state policy in Cambodia which has been under the rule of the communist Hun Sen ever since the Vietnamese invasion that drove Pol Pot from power. In some ways this is the front line of the still lingering "cold war" in East Asia as Thailand is more closely allied with the United States whereas Cambodia (like Laos) remains under the primary 'watch' of Communist Vietnam and is also closely allied with Communist China and North Korea. Shots have been exchanged for several days now and there are reports from at least one side that the temple at the center of this has been damaged though that report came only from the Cambodian side who naturally accuse Thailand, specifically Thai artillery, of being responsible for the damage. There are also wider issues behind this tension such as the aforementioned position given to the convicted criminal and former Thai PM Thaksin Shinawatra in Cambodia. His "red shirts" have been the cause of considerable unrest in Thailand and the fact that he was harbored by the pro-communist regime of Hun Sen in Cambodia held a significance not lost on the government of Thailand who have accused Cambodia of being complicent in the unrest in Thailand with the "red shirts".

Hun Sen has also used this on-going tension to maintain his hold on power, using it as a ready-made excuse to heat things up in order to justify deploying troops at election time to ensure his victory (he has won every election since the foundation of the constitutional monarchy) and recently has also used it as a way to raise the prestige of his son who Hun Sen recently promoted to general and top commander of the Cambodian army. Given that, there seems little hope that this situation will be settled since it serves the purposes of those in power in Cambodia to keep a little bit of trouble brewing on the sidelines.

Enemy of Monarchy: Pol Pot

The man known to history as Pol Pot was born Saloth Sar in or around 1928 to a relatively prosperous middle class family. As a boy his family sent him to high school in Phnom Penh where his cousin was a dancer at the royal ballet. It is important to note that with the young Saloth Sar his hatred of monarchy came first and all of his later revolutionary, genocidal policies grew out of his anti-monarchism. Because of his cousin he saw the royal court and developed a very negative view of the Cambodian monarchy. Disregarding all of the circumstances the embittered youth did not see a beautiful cultural, historical institution that had been the political and spiritual heart of Cambodia for centuries (as well as providing work and an artistic outlet for people like his cousin) and instead chose to see only corrupt and idle royals doing the bidding of their French colonial masters. It was a point of view he would never really lose throughout his long life.

Saloth Sar got together with other young revolutionary enemies of the monarchy and was later sent to continue his education in France where he joined the colonial wing of the French communist party. Saloth Sar wrote his first piece of propaganda as a communist against the Cambodian monarchy, calling it a “malodorous running sore”. However, his education in Paris was a total failure and, finally giving up, he returned to Cambodia in 1954 to be a history teacher. However, he lost none of his political ardor and soon joined the Vietnamese-led Indochinese Communist Party. However, he soon became suspicious of the Vietnamese Communists who he believed (correctly) wished to unite all of French Indochina under their rule. He split off with his own faction and when France granted independence it was done through King Norodom Sihanouk; only increasing the hatred of the monarchy already held by Saloth Sar who started going under the name Pol Pot.

The organization Pol Pot led was very communist, very paranoid and thus very secretive. The people who knew of the leadership knew them only by their code names. Pol Pot was simply “Brother #1”, for most a faceless, ghost-like voice giving orders over a radio set. He envisioned a utopian society which he would create by wiping out absolutely all inequalities, destroying all foreign influences, emptying the cities and returning the entire population to the simple agrarian life of the villages. Yet, his communist propaganda earned him fairly few followers. An economic upturn and good crops brought a period of prosperity and the people gave the credit to the semi-divine intervention of their king; Norodom Sihanouk, whom Pol Pot hated more with each passing day. The King played the feuding parties against each other and tried to juggle neutrality with maintaining good relations with both the western democracies and the communist bloc. He was not entirely successful.

When U.S. forces intervened in Cambodia to wipe out communist Vietnamese bases, which King Sihanouk had unofficially allowed to be established, the Cold War came to Cambodia. King Sihanouk went off to make friends with Communist China, North Korea and the USSR and in his absence the U.S. supported a coup by General Lon Nol against him. This was a golden opportunity for Pol Pot. He now had a foreign-backed capitalist regime to wage his revolution against and a sure source of popular support in the person of the deposed monarch who had no other ally to turn to. In a blatant lie he promised Sihanouk he would restore him to his throne once his forces were victorious. Sihanouk backed the Khmer Rouge (though not Pol Pot who he never met and indeed had no idea was the one actually running the organization) and urged the people to go to the jungles and join the communist guerillas. The king’s godlike status among the faithful peasantry ensured the success of the Khmer Rouge.

Following the U.S. withdrawal from South Vietnam the republican regime in Cambodia lost its primary support and quickly collapsed. On April 17, 1975 the Khmer Rouge occupied Phnom Penh. Pol Pot declared it “Year Zero”, the start of a new era and renamed Cambodia “Democratic Kampuchea”. Despite his promise he did not restore King Norodom Sihanouk but instead placed him under house arrest. Unlike other communist dictators, there was no cult of personality around Pol Pot. Most still had no idea who he was and in the initial government organization he made one of his subordinates ‘head of state’ while taking the post of prime minister for himself. He also played no favorites, some of his closest relatives had been brutalized in vicious labor camps before seeing a photo or poster and realizing that their new dictator was their own Saloth Sar.

King Sihanouk was placed under house arrest, a number of the royal family were killed and Pol Pot unleashed a reign of terror unsurpassed even amongst the most brutal of communists dictators around the world. Anyone with any foreign ties was killed, anyone displaying overt religious devotion was killed. The disabled were killed. Anyone with any ties to a previous government was killed. Everyone was made absolutely equal and any deviation from the new norm was punishable by death. Families were abolished since words like “mother” and “father” were hierarchical and considered superior to children so everyone became “brother” and “sister”. Anyone who referred to their parents as such were killed, a woman who referred to her husband as such was killed, anyone who used any traditional form of address was liable to be killed. The educated class was wiped out, since they would be held as superior to the uneducated and even those wearing glasses would be killed as this was taken as a symbol of intellectualism. Currency was abolished and the cities were emptied as everyone was sent to work on the communal rice fields; essentially vast slave labor camps where many city dwellers who had no experience growing their own food quickly died. Hordes of people died of starvation and hundreds of thousands were executed.

Over the years Pol Pot became more paranoid and had many of his own allies, even lifelong supporters put to death as well. The notorious prison, essentially a massive torture chamber, S-21 or Tuol Sleng was set up for anyone accused of being an enemy of the regime or an agent of the CIA. People were tortured, often by electrocution, to give up names of accomplices, most of whom had never heard of the CIA or had the slightest idea what the initials meant. However, people would give any number of names to make the torture stop and these people then were arrested and given similar treatment. To save bullets most of those executed were taken to the countryside, beaten to death and buried in mass graves. It is estimated that as many as 2 million Cambodians died during Pol Pot’s reign of terror. The rest of the world was outraged at the reports that emerged from the secretive, nightmarish hell on earth that was “Democratic Kampuchea”. However, many governments in the west gave subtle support to the regime of Pol Pot and even King Sihanouk, despite being constantly kicked around by the Khmer Rouge, stuck up for them in the UN.

This was, again, all about Vietnam at the end of the day. Pol Pot had originally been part of the Vietnamese-organized “Indochinese Communist Party” but he left because he was very paranoid about the Vietnamese, even the Reds, wanting to dominate Cambodia. In this he happened to be mostly right. Vietnam’s original communist dictator, Ho Chi Minh, made no secret of the fact that his long-term goal was a communist Indochina that would include Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. So the Khmer Rouge was quick to ally with China against the Vietnamese. The reason people like King Sihanouk and governments like the United States gave some tacit support to Pol Pot was because they viewed him as the only thing stopping Cambodia from being dominated by the Vietnamese. Just after the United States pulled out of Southeast Asia the Red Chinese even invaded North Vietnam because of their antagonism with Cambodia. However, the Vietnamese gave the People’s Liberation Army a bloody nose after which they declared “mission accomplished” and beat a hasty retreat back to China, leaving Vietnam free to deal with Cambodia.

Pol Pot made his greatest political blunder when he jumped the gun and attacked the Vietnamese. This was all the excuse Hanoi needed. In 1976 they forced a treaty on the communist regime in Laos which effectively put the country under Vietnamese domination and after increasing hostilities between the two countries the Vietnamese invaded Cambodia in 1978. The Cambodian army was soundly beaten, Pol Pot fled to the Thai border and Vietnam set up their own puppet administration. By 1979 the Vietnamese had totally driven the Khmer Rouge from power and forced them to retreat into remote strongholds in the jungle where they were mostly ineffective. The international community refused to recognize the Vietnamese imposed government and this eventually led to the United Nations taking control of the situation and this finally resulted in the restoration of King Norodom Sihanouk in a constitutional monarchy but with Hun Sen (who was supported by Vietnam) as the prime minister. Hun Sen has remained in power ever since.

His regime destroyed and country lost Pol Pot fled to Thailand where he lived for six years. When the Vietnamese army withdrew in 1989 the Khmer Rouge could set up new strongholds and Pol Pot returned home, refusing to recognize any of the succeeding administrations and nominally presiding over the guerilla war his forces continued to wage in the jungles against the ruling government. When his life-long deputy and designated successor, Son Sen, tried to negotiate a settlement with the government Pol Pot had him executed along with eleven members of his family. Some things never change. Khmer Rouge military commander Ta Mok arrested Pol Pot for this, held a show trial for him and placed him under house arrest. He died in his bed on April 15, 1998. Like most genocidal communist dictators he had escaped justice for his innumerable crimes but his memory haunts Cambodia to this day. Even alongside the likes of Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong, in terms of the size of the Cambodian population, Pol Pot surpasses them all. By some estimates his rule led to the death of one third of the entire population of his country.

Remember that all of this started with the obsessive anti-royalist sentiment of Pol Pot. In many ways he was the ideal communist and his case should be looked to by anyone wanting to see the true face of what revolutionary communism is all about. What others only talked about doing eventually Pol Pot actually put into effect, there was no build-up, no step-by-step process, it was full, complete communism all at once. It grew out of his class-hatred and his original, life-long opposition to the Cambodian monarchy. There are still many, many people and regimes around the world that advocate the same basic principles that the Khmer Rouge under Pol Pot advocated. They should look to his example to see the unwashed, horrific truth of what those principles cause when taken to their full, logical conclusion.

MM Video: King Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia

Favorite Royal Images: Princess Bopha Devi

HRH Princess Norodom Bopha Devi of Cambodia is the daughter of HM King Norodom Sihanouk and the half-sister of HM King Norodom Sihamoni. She entered the Royal Ballet at an early age and became a famous dancer. She also served as Minister of Culture and Fine Arts.

Globe Trotting Royals

HRH Hereditary Grand Duke Guillaume of Luxembourg (above) will be visiting the U.S. cities of Los Angeles, Phoenix, Seattle and San Francisco as part of a delegation to meet with the heads of companies with a history of doing business with Luxembourg and to encourage more businesses to move or open new branches there (many businesses are fleeing California in particular these days) and likewise to meet with those companies interested in the opportunities Luxembourg offers.

HRH the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall have been on a tour of Eastern Europe and have just finished their visit to Poland where the Duchess had to take a break from the activities of the day due to back pain. The royal couple will next be visiting Hungary. The Prince of Wales hopes to strengthen ties with the eastern countries that have recently been coming into the European Union. Just after his arrival in Poland the Prince of Wales visited the grave of Father Jerzy Popieluszko, a priest murdered by the communists who the Vatican is set to beatify next year this summer. The couple have also met with the Polish President and First Lady and visited a group of Muslim Tatars on the Belarussian border.

Last week HM King Norodom Sihamoni of Cambodia visited France to accept his place in the French Academy of Inscriptions and Belles-lettres. The King formerly lived in France and in his acceptance speech talked about the veneration of the Khmer people for their ancient temples and of the great work done by his father, Senior King Norodom Sihanouk. Cambodia became a French protectorate in 1863 and became independent in 1953 under King Sihanouk.

King Norodom Sihanouk: The Ultimate Survivor of Southeast Asia

Alongside his fellow monarch King Bhumibol Adulyadej, Rama IX, of Thailand; the most constant name in politics on the Indochinese peninsula has been King Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia. Throughout his long career he has played the roles of divine king, politician, communist front man and constitutional monarch. No other figure in the nations of the former French Union of Indochina can match him in longevity, popularity and sheer ability to play the dirty game of politics and survive. Throughout his life he has survived numerous wars, he has been overthrown, he has been sentenced to death, he has been a nominal guerilla, a prisoner in his own country and at various times has symbolized an ancient, traditional, Cambodia, a bloody communist slave state and a, nominal at least, democracy. He holds the world record for politicians with the most numerous positions in government and to this day is the senior monarch of the Kingdom of Cambodia; father figure to the only southeast Asian monarchy to have been restored after falling in the communist takeover after World War II. This is the story of the admired, condemned, always controversial and certainly unique King Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia.

He was born on October 31, 1922, Halloween, appropriately enough for someone as adept at being in costume, to King Norodom Suramarit and Queen Sisowath Kosawak of Cambodia. He was educated in the best traditions of French colonialism in the Khmer capitol of Phnom Penh and Saigon as well as having some military training in France later on. Contrary to popular opinion, Cambodia fared rather well under French control and the royal family actually enjoyed a greater income than their nominal superiors in the imperial family of neighboring Vietnam. When Sihanouk was only 19 his grandfather, King Sisowath Monivong died and he was named King of Cambodia in 1941. This, of course, was during World War II and the rising dominance of the Empire of Japan in East Asia. The young King Sihanouk, though always something of a Francophile, became more nationalistic and called for Cambodian independence from France, which went hand in hand with the state interests of Japan which occupied Indochina after the fall of France in Europe. A declaration of independence was even issued in 1945, under Japanese auspices, but this ended with the defeat of Japan soon after as it did elsewhere in Indochina. That same year the Emperor of Vietnam abdicated in favor of the communists and Laos seemed ready to fall to because of the loyalty that monarch felt to France. King Sihanouk, however, stuck by his nationalist guns and went into exile in Thailand in May of 1953, proclaiming that he would not return until France granted Cambodia her independence.

France granted this request in November and King Sihanouk returned but did not remain long on the throne. Having tasted some of the political spotlight, he wanted more, and decided to abdicate so as to play a more active role in politics. He surrendered his throne to his father, King Norodom Suramarit and became the prime minister of the newly independent Cambodian kingdom in 1955. When his father died in 1960 he was elected head of state but remained still simply Prince Norodom Sihanouk, though three years later he changed the constitution to make himself head of state for life. Of course, during this time conflict was already raging in neighboring Laos and Vietnam, but Cambodia remained officially neutral, at peace and prosperous. Sihanouk was extremely popular among the rural peasants of his country, mostly very religious people who treated him almost like a god, giving him credit for everything from the prevailing peace to the good weather and high rice production. However, they had the benefit of being uninformed as to his rather irregular private life.

In his younger days Sihanouk had quite a playboy reputation. He had seven wives during his life, legal and illegal. He lived in rather extravagant luxury and was known to entertain foreign dignitaries with extremely raunchy pornographic films from France. He made some movies himself, which he wrote, directed and starred in and all of which were focused on the glorification of Cambodia. He kept up all of the mystical pomp and ceremony of his office and yet in person, with his public, he was quite informal, even familial and could seem quite humble. Along with the role of mystical god king he was able to play the part of familiar, paternal, monarch. Whether this was genuine or simply the act of an extremely astute politician we will probably never know. His political activities were not always prudent but they always seemed to work out, for him at least, in the end. He was, for instance, a very early and vocal critic of the U.S. involvement in Vietnam. Also, despite his royal position, he crossed ideological lines in his foreign relations. The former nationalist made friendly overtures to the conservative President Charles DeGaulle of France and was even a close friend of the murderous Chairman Mao Zedong of communist China. He visited the Soviet Union, establishing at least good relations there and often spent time as a guest of the notoriously oppressive communist regime in North Korea. He seemed adept at identifying those players who held strong cards and cozying up to them.

These ties with international communism would prove important as it was also during this period that the Cambodian communists, which he named the Khmer Rouge, began recruiting support from unhappy peasants in the countryside. They grew slowly but steadily although the vast majority of rural Cambodia remained devoutly loyal to Prince Sihanouk. The prince did not think too much of them at the time but continued to play the delicate balancing game of a neutral power in a region surrounded by nations with civil wars. He also kept up his own style of public relations with the United States. In 1967 the glamorous First Lady Jackie Kennedy visited Cambodia, at the invitation of Sihanouk, and he eagerly played host to her while still denouncing what he called American aggression in Vietnam. The U.S. was interfering with the right of self determination in Vietnam, according to Sihanouk, by aiding the South Vietnamese in fighting off the communist forces.

In 1969 U.S. President Richard Nixon launched secret B-52 bombing raids on Viet Cong and North Vietnamese army posts in Cambodia. Sihanouk was not informed but neither were the many in the American military or the Congress. Contacts also began to be made with more American friendly figures in Cambodia who opposed the neutrality of the Sihanouk regime and the blinking at the presence of communist Vietnamese forces in their country. To many it did not seem that Prince Sihanouk was neutral at all but was passively favoring the communist forces in Southeast Asia. This attitude was further supported when it was learned that King Sihanouk had actually agreed to the establishment of communist Vietnamese bases in his country and to allow communist China to move supplies through Cambodia in support of the North Vietnamese operating against the U.S. and South Vietnam.

There were riots in Phnom Penh against the Vietnamese presents and people claiming to support the United States. When Sihanouk was questioned on this he dismissed their sincerity. According to him these people were only seeking money from the United States and did not care about the future of their country. As he put it, these people were, “more patriots for dollars than for Cambodia”. Nonetheless, it was a very serious situation. When Sihanouk went on vacation to Europe, the Soviet Union and China in 1970 his enemies in Phnom Penh decided to act. Former Prime Minister General Lon Nol seized power in a coup; declared Norodom Sihanouk deposed and sentenced him to death in absentia. He did not change the form of government though, in fact his Deputy Prime Minister was a prince of the royal family, and promised to take a hard line against the communists. Immediately he began receiving secret U.S. aid which would increase and turn into public support in the future.

During this time, Sihanouk was still in China visiting Chairman Mao. He naturally denounced the actions of Lon Nol and pledged to resist his new regime at any cost. The King became chief of state of a government in exile in Beijing and in one of his most crucial moves, one that would have lasting consequences for his country, went on the radio and told his people to go to the jungle and join the Khmer Rouge. This gave a huge boost to the communist guerilla movement and they soon stepped up their attacks. Lon Nol retaliated as best he could with his military expanding rapidly with American support and atrocities were committed by both sides. The outside war also spilled into the country as the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam) launched raids into Cambodia against the communist strongholds there. In a very controversial move President Nixon also authorized an American incursion into Cambodia to attack VC and NVA bases along the frontier. King Sihanouk, still in China, denounced all of these actions and promised to fight to the last until his throne was recovered.

In October of 1970 Lon Nol took the final symbolic step of abolishing the ancient Cambodian monarchy. The prosperity and peace of the early reign of Sihanouk was gone and the economy was in shambles. The army of the Cambodian republic was strong though, if rather amateurish, thanks to American financial support and there was real support for the republic among those who opposed the Khmer Rouge, the presence of the Vietnamese communists in their country and those who felt that solidarity with America would be to the great benefit of the Cambodian people. However, the countryside was still full of devoted adherents of King Sihanouk and even in the cities slogan supporting him were often scrawled on the walls. With the arrival of the Lon Nol republic, war also became a reality. In 1971 North Vietnamese forces hit Phnom Penh for the first time, wiping out the small Cambodian air force.

The United States stepped up with more support for Lon Nol and in many ways it was only American air support and American dollars that was keeping him in power and his government functioning. By early 1971 when South Vietnamese forces launched an ultimately unsuccessful attack the Ho Chi Minh Trail in the neutral Kingdom of Laos it seemed that all Indochina was officially at war and third options were disappearing. One was either with the communists or with the Americans. Corruption among the Cambodian army also cost the United States dearly with inflated supply requests and fake soldiers. At the height of its existence roughly a quarter of the entire Cambodian military existed only on paper with dishonest officers pocketing the American money sent to pay these imaginary troops.

In 1973 their communist opponents got another big boost when, for the first time, King Sihanouk returned to Cambodia and entered the Khmer Rouge territory in the deep jungle. Around the world communist media showed the video of the chief of state in exile embracing the leaders of the Khmer Rouge, including one not many thought significant at that time, one Saloth Sar who later became known to the world as Pol Pot. However, Norodom Sihanouk was under no illusions about the flattery and obeisance given to him by the Khmer Rouge. He understood their politics perfectly and knew that he was only a figurehead. He once admitted that, “when they gain power, they will spit me out like a cherry stone”. Still, he intended to use them as they used him but given his knowledge of the situation, one wonders what he was using them for. The Khmer Rouge leaders also understood the situation perfectly and trained party members and the cadre leadership that they should not believe in King Sihanouk. They knew the people believed in him and that is why it was necessary to keep him as the front man, but the party leadership could not believe in him because, as they stressed, at heart the revolution and Sihanouk are enemies that cannot be reconciled. Their tactic of using the King was working well. Thanks to the support of King Sihanouk the Khmer Rouge grew from 3,000 to 60,000 members in three years. This would prove crucial later on as many confess on both sides that the Khmer Rouge could never have succeeded without King Sihanouk backing them.

In 1973 the U.S. stepped up the bombing campaign to counter the increasing communist activity by both the North Vietnamese and the Khmer Rouge. The Khmer Rouge used this to recruit more support for their war against Lon Nol, telling people that the U.S. meant to destroy the entire country. That July, the bombing campaign in Cambodia became public in the United States, four years after it had started. The Congress was outraged and the very first calls were made for the impeachment of President Nixon. The bombing campaign was halted and the Cambodian republic was left on its own to confront the Khmer Rouge who began their offensive against Phnom Penh with the new year of 1975. At the outset of the campaign they had 80,000 soldiers and besieged the city, firing rockets and artillery into the city on a daily basis, which was filled with some two million refugees who had fled there to escape the American bombs and Khmer Rouge attacks. As all roads and rail lines were cut, the city and the perimeter outposts began to starve.

To help the Cambodian people and get around Congressional restrictions the U.S. military chartered civilian planes to fly food and ammunition into Phnom Penh under heavy communist fire but supplies continued to run low. The Mekong River was also a lifeline, carrying both vital supplies and luxury items but by March most of the boats had been sunk by the Khmer Rouge and no further efforts were made. Khmer Rouge rocket attacks went on and on, day after day and conditions grew worse. In one area republican troops were forced to resort to cannibalism to survive. Casualty figures skyrocketed and the local medical facilities were overwhelmed; in fact the Cambodian army had less than 20 surgeons of its own. Disease and famine gripped the once abundant countryside and foreign doctors flew in voluntarily to help deal with the humanitarian crisis. On April 1, 1975 Lon Nol was advised to leave by the United States who hoped that this might enable them to come to terms with King Sihanouk. However, the monarch turned guerilla was not the one making the decisions and the Khmer Rouge were not about to start negotiating now when victory was already in sight.

Quite apart from any talk of peace, the Khmer Rouge took this as a sign that the Lon Nol regime was about to collapse and they boldly broadcast death lists of all those they considered traitors who would be killed once they were in power, all done, at this time, in the name of the beloved King Norodom Sihanouk. Their assumptions were correct and on April 12 the United States began evacuating all remaining American personnel by helicopter to a fleet in the Gulf of Thailand. Most of the native officials, however, refused to leave and knowingly or not sealed their fate. Less than a week later the airport was overrun by Khmer Rouge guerillas and the following day the communist forces moved into Phnom Penh. They tried to put on a benevolent front and appealed to all republican officials to meet with them so they could work in cooperation with the new regime. Those naïve enough to answer this call were slaughtered to the last man. Using the threat of an imminent American bombing campaign (which was a lie, the U.S. had no plan to bomb anyone in Cambodia) the Khmer Rouge frightened the public into evacuating Phnom Penh completely within two days. They had won the war, the country belonged to them and they prepared to put their fanatical policies into effect, yet they owed it all to King Norodom Sihanouk.

For the moment, King Sihanouk remained as head of state but Pol Pot was the man in charge and he set about on his campaign to remold Cambodia into a communist, rural utopia with disastrous consequences for the Khmer people. The name of the country was changed to Democratic Kampuchea and all government services were abolished as was the currency and all class distinctions. Pol Pot did not, like most communists, create a cult of personality around himself; he remained a shadowy and unseen figure, known only as Brother Number One. The cities were emptied at gunpoint and the entire populace was relocated to the countryside and forced to work in the rice fields. Pol Pot wanted a nation of peasant farmers with no distinctions of any kind. Buddhist monks were massacred; all educated people were massacred so that there would be no intellectual elite. Anyone who showed affection for a spouse or children or parents was executed; in the new state all men were brothers and all women were sisters. Anyone who wore glasses was killed, anyone critical of the regime or with any ties to the outside world was killed. The sick, disabled or retarded were all killed. All foreign minorities were killed. Many, many more starved to death or were worked to death in the countryside.

On April 4, 1976 King Sihanouk was officially removed as head of state, just as he had predicted and was placed under house arrest in the palace complex with the rest of the royal family. In light of what else was going on in the country they were lucky to even be left alive. Also in Phnom Penh the Khmer Rouge established its infamous torture prison at Toul Sleng, known as S-21 were hordes of Cambodians were tortured before being taken to the killing fields and beaten to death; many were buried alive. Pol Pot had created, in many ways, the most pure communist state of any revolutionary. Liberal intellectuals elsewhere commented that Pol Pot had gone so far to the left he had almost met up with the extreme right in his effort to revert Cambodia back to the agrarian Khmer empire it had once been with himself in the role of the old Hindu god kings. In any event, the result was one of the worst genocides in human history as upwards of two million Cambodians, roughly a third of the entire population, was killed or died of starvation or disease at the hands of the Khmer Rouge. King Sihanouk could only look on from captivity as his people were devastated by the very forces he had enabled to assume power.

The Khmer Rouge, an ally of Red China, was also an enemy of Communist Vietnam and eventually, with relations between China and Vietnam becoming openly hostile, the Vietnamese invaded Cambodia with the intention of overthrowing the Khmer Rouge slave state. The former King Sihanouk was sent by the Khmer Rouge government to New York to denounce the Vietnamese invasion before the UN. He did not, however, return but rather than going into exile in a free country opted instead to stay with his old friends in the communist dictatorships of Red China and North Korea. He tried to distance himself from the tormentors of his people, yet at the same time he again expressed his willingness to join with the Khmer Rouge to resist the Vietnamese invaders who soon occupied much of the country and forced the Khmer Rouge back into their old jungle strongholds.

In 1982 Sihanouk became president (not king) of the Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea in partnership with representatives of his own royalist party, Funcinpec, the Khmer National Liberation Front (later the Buddhist political party) and the Khmer Rouge. This group, unlike the forces with Pol Pot, engaged the international community and continued to denounce the Vietnamese occupation but expressed a willingness to allow other foreign forces into the country to restore the situation. Amidst increasing international pressure the Vietnamese withdrew in 1989, leaving behind former Khmer Rouge member and Vietnamese ally Hun Sen in power over a puppet government called the People’s Republic of Kampuchea. It did not take long for negotiations to begin between the coalition under Sihanouk and the government of Hun Sen who finally signed an agreement in 1991. That November Prince Sihanouk returned to Cambodia, now under UN direction to prepare for national elections to be held to determine the form of government the liberated Cambodia would take. Khmer Rouge forces under Pol Pot remained in the deep jungle, but aside from minor raids they had ceased to play any role in national life.

Elections brought the royalist party to power, but Hun Sen remained the most powerful force in the country thanks mostly to the influence of communist Vietnam. The elections restored Norodom Sihanouk to the throne as King of Cambodia in 1993 but Hun Sen soon began a long reign as prime minister. This was a new constitutional monarchy which everyone seemed able to live with. Most people felt comforted by the presence of Norodom Sihanouk on the throne, expressing his support for democracy, and the communists and their Vietnamese backers remained peaceful so long as Hun Sen continued to be the one holding actual power. Sihanouk began to suffer from failing health just as his reputation in the worldwide community started to mend. In his early days he had been a well regarded figure for his commitment to Cambodian independence and peaceful neutrality. He suffered when word got out of his secret agreements with the communists and his support of the Khmer Rouge. Their atrocities did a great deal of damage to his legacy but now he was able to be the face of a new, liberal and, supposedly, democratic Kingdom of Cambodia.

Due to his failing health, King Sihanouk was often in China undergoing medical treatment, but he still remained a very dominant figure in national life. Simple people who visited him at the palace were never turned away and never lift without a gift from the king. He jumped into the world wide web and still has the most popular website in Cambodia. Unlike western constitutional monarchs he is not shy about giving his opinions on various subjects. His political views carry weight but even some of his most devout supporters were shocked when he openly announced his support for homosexuals being given the right to marry, even though there had not been much demand for it in Buddhist Cambodia. He had often been at odds with the government and in 2004 went into exile in North Korea and later China in protest to the oppressive actions of the Hun Sen regime and the political infighting between the major parties. In October of that year he shocked his countrymen by announcing his abdication, which left Cambodian officials scrambling to find a replacement.

One week later the Crown Council voted his son, Prince Norodom Sihamoni, in as king but with his father retaining most of his government powers as senior king or, as it is most often translated, as King Father. He remains to this day a widely respected and revered figure in Cambodia, though as a constitutional monarch his significance had somewhat decreased among the upcoming generation of younger Cambodians. In the wider world he remains a controversial figure, admired by some and despised by others. No one, however, can deny his political talent, his ability to survive and his ability to weather the most terrible storms and always come out on top. Some attribute this to talent and foresight while others chalk it up to a total lack of real principles. Whatever is the case, he has been the dominant figure in Cambodian politics since the end of World War II and the most constant face in Southeast Asia from that time until the present. He has seen his country through good times and bad times and it will take some perspective after his death to look back and determine whether his influence was altogether benevolent or not. Certainly his support for the Khmer Rouge and the popularity his presence gave to them will cause a great many people to consider him a villain forever, but among his own people, his reputation will likely be as one of the great kings in their ancient history, whether deserved or not.

After a long period of worsening health, King-Father Norodom Sihanouk died in Beijing at the age of 89 on October 14, 2012, still the most controversial but most well known and ever-present figure in the last century of Cambodian national life.