Cambodia 1970: Sirik Matak

POD 1970.

A coup overthrows Cambodia's mercurial King Sihanouk. Though intelligent, energetic, patriotic, and an adept diplomat, Sihanouk is also a vain, selfish autocrat who regards his people as children and dissent as treason. His absolutist concentration of power to himself has annoyed the country's elites. Worse, he has mismanaged Cambodia'seconomy; trade and industry stagnate, corruption flourishes, and money flees the country. His foreign policy -- mildly hostile to the US, Thailand, and South Vietnam; allowing the North Vietnamese free passage through the country in return for their not supporting Cambodian Communists -- is intelligent but unpopular.

So, the coup. Sihanouk foolishly leaves the country for several months, for one of his periodic vacations in Paris. The coup is thus bloodless. The key players are Prince Sirik Matak, a royal cousin, and Prime Minister Lon Nol. Matak is the brains behind the coup; Nol, previously a Sihanouk loyalist, will be its public face.

It all goes so well at first. Lon Nol declares the Khmer Republic. The economy is liberalized, relations with the US are restored (Sihanouk had severed them in 1967), trade booms. Nationalist feeling is strong, and supports the new government. Lon Nol tells the North Vietnamese in no uncertain terms to get out, /out/, of Cambodia!

And then it all goes to hell. Nationalist feeling overflows, resulting in a massacre of the country's Vietnamese minority. The North Vietnamese seize a third of the country; the Americans counter-invade; soon much of Cambodia is burning in someone else's war. Corruption explodes as the country's elites scramble for wealth and power.

The US, already committed to withdrawing from Indochina, proves a half-hearted ally; the Americans are willing to throw money at Cambodia, but not to risk further American lives. Once the 1970 incursion is over, they leave, never to be seen again. They do give hundreds of millions of dollars in aid money, but this simply throws oil on the raging fires of corruption.

Lon Nol turns out to be worse than useless. After a republican start, he soon turns out to be even more autocratic than Sihanouk, much more isolated, and much, much less intelligent and competent. He surrounds himself with sycophants and Rasputin-like Buddhist mystics. Dissenting voices are first excluded, then actively persecuted. By 1972 he's almost completely cut off rom reality.

Prince Sirik Matak struggles to keep the Khmer Republic going, but -- as Lon Nol's only credible rival -- he's steadily sidelined. By 1973 he's out of power and under house arrest. In 1975 he will be taken out and killed by the Khmers Rouges.

So, the WI: Sirik Matak instead of Lon Nol. Sirik was far smarter, more practical, more honest, and much better connected to reality. He also had much more of what the British call "bottom". When the Khmers Rouges were storming the capital? Lon Nol, weeping and hysterical, fled Phnom Penh in an American helicopter, clutching a briefcase full of cash. Sirik was offered the same option. He wrote a bitter but dignified note saying that he could not abandon his country, and walked out of the Embassy to certain death at the hands of the Khmers Rouges.

Sirik Matak wasn't very charismatic, but then, neither was Nol. He could certainly have become PM, and he probably would have made a better job of it.

Of course, "better" is a relative term. Arguably Sirik would only have been able to rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic. The key question is whether he could keep Cambodia from being sucked into the fourth and fifth acts of the Vietnam War.

OTL Lon Nol's decision to spit in Hanoi's eye was widely popular. It was also incredibly stupid. The Cambodian Army was a rag-tag force with almost no ability to fight the battle-hardened North Vietnamese. The Americans and South Vietnamese drove them out once, in 1970; but after that, they never came again, and by 1973 more than half the country was in North Vietnamese hands. The Americans responded with massive bombing campaigns, which drove hundreds of thousands of peasants out of the countryside, recruited thousands more to the Khmers Rouges (who had been a small and marginal group in 1970) and helped further devastate the country's crippled economy.

Can Sirik avoid this?

I think he can. While any post-Sihanouk regime would be more nationalist and more pro-American, picking a fight with North Vietnam was an obviously bad idea. So say Sirik dodges this bullet; and further, that he manages to avoid the massacre of the Vietnamese minority. (Aside from being genocidally evil, this was also economic folly -- the Vietnamese made up most of the country's small businessmen and traders -- and a PR disaster of the first water, permanently damaging the Khmer Republic's reputation
abroad.)

Now what?

I have a sinking feeling that Cambodia is still screwed. Sihanouk had signed secret treaties with the North Vietnamese, not only allowing them free passage through Cambodia but letting them set up bases. (OTL, Lon Nol's foreign minister went to Hanoi in 1970 to protest the NV incursions, and was appalled when the NVese presented him with secret protocols signed by Sihanouk allowing them to do just that.)

Between nationalist sentiment and American pressure, Sirik will have a hard time holding to these agreements; but if he doesn't, he's likely to find himself at war with North Vietnam. On t'other hand, even if he does, can he really trust Hanoi? Or, once South Vietnam is falling, will the victorious North Vietnamese claim Cambodia as spoils too? It's hard to see why they wouldn't.

Is there anything Sirik can plausibly do? Or is a Communist victory in Cambodia overdetermined -- and if so, is it likely to be the Khmers Rouges horror of OTL?

Thoughts?


Doug M.
 

Hnau

Banned
Great idea and thread. I'll try to do some research on the subject, but I don't know if I'll come up with anything useful. Otherwise: bump! :)
 
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