Conflict and Regional Order in Southeast Asia 9789814377072

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ADELPHI PAPER NO. 162 This Paper was written for a special conference held in Singapore in Spring 1980 in conjunction with the Singapore Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. The author is particularly grateful for the contributions made by the participants at that conference. Dr Michael Leifer is Reader in International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science. The views expressed in this Paper are the author's own and should not be taken to represent the views of the Institute or its members.

First published Winter 1980 ISBN 0 86079 043 6 ISSN 0567-932X

" The International Institute for Strategic Studies I 980 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the International Imtitute for Strategic Studies.

The International Institute for Strategic Studies was founded in 1958 as a centre for the provision of information on and research into the problems of international security, defence and arms control in the nuclear age. It is international in its Council and staff, and its membership is drawn from over fifty countries. It is independent of governments and is not the advocate of any particular interest. The Institute is concerned with strategic questions- not just with the military aspects of security but with the social and economic sources and political and moral implications of the use and existence of armed force: in other words, with the basic problems of peace. The Institute's publications are intended for a much wider audience than its own membership and are available to the general public on subscription or singly.

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CONTENTS INTRODUCTION I. THE PREVAILING PATTERN OF CONFLICT

II. SOURCES OF REGIONAL CONFLICT ... Issues of State Identity Historical Antagonisms Legacies of the Transfers of Sovereignty

4 4

11 12

III. THE INTERESTS AND ROLES OF EXTERNAL POWERS The People's Republic of China The United States of America Japan The Soviet Union IV. THE INTERESTS AND ROLES OF REGIONAL STATES Vietnam . . . . . . . . . . .............. Thailand Indonesia .............. Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines

v.

THE PROSPECTS FOR REGIONAL ORDER

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............ .......... ................

13 13 16 18 20 23 24 28 30 32 33

CONCLUSION

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NOTES

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Conflict and Regional Order in South-east Asia INTRODUCTION This Paper sets out to consider the relationship between conflict and regional order within Southeast Asia, with particular reference to the major revival of conflict in Indochina which occurred at the turn of the decade. To this end, the Paper examines the constituent elements of regional I.

conflict, the attendant interests and roles of states outside and within the region and, in their light, the prospects for a viable system of regional order. As background it begins with a review of the prevailing pattern of conflict within Southeast Asia since August 1945.

THE PREY AILING PATTERN OF CONFLICT

Since the Armed Forces of Japan shattered the edifice of colonialism in South-east Asia, the region comprising those states situated to the east of the Indian sub-continent, south of China and to the north of Australia has not enjoyed a stable pattern of power. From the onset of decolonisation, this region has been beset by interrelated domestic and international conflicts which have turned on the acceptability of internal political rule. Challenges posed to authorities established in capital cities since the transfers of sovereignty have revealed social and political diversities which have threatened the identities and bounds of successor states. Such conflicts have been of more than domestic significance. Confrontations of this kind, between revolutionary and conservative forces, rarely have been self-contained; their incidence and outcomes have been of competitive concern not only to other regional states but also to external powers. In fact throughout postcolonial South-east Asia there has never been a time when the internal exercise of political power has been universally regarded as acceptable or legitimate or when external states with competing interests have not been attempting in some way to shape a regional balance deemed to have global significance. Such imputation of global significance has been determined by the extent to which major external powers have incorporated the region within their strategic perspectives and the prospect and consequences of decisive internal political changes have been judged accordingly.

In this respect, the most recent phase of major conflict in South-east Asia, which has centred on the political identity and prevailing external affiliations of Kampuchea, has been similar in its significance and impact to those earlier phases of conflict which centred on Vietnam, although the roles of the antagonists have somewhat altered. For over a quarter of a century after the end of the Pacific War (December 1941-August 1945) the dominant source of conflict within South-east Asia was doctrinal. It turned on the question of the most appropriate mode of economic development, and on the corresponding social and political structures to be established within the states of the region. Internal parties attracting external support favoured competing models of economic and social change which entailed not only alternative types of state system but also alternative external affiliations. And it was the refusal by governments of the United States to be reconciled to an internal transfer of power throughout Vietnam to international Communist advantage which led to the protracted and costly military intervention which came to an inglorious end in April1975. The actual pattern of conflict within the region became more complex with the onset of open Sino-Soviet antagonism from the early 1960s. For the United States the issue of global credibility arising from the extent of her commitment in Vietnam had become by that time the overriding basis for progressive military intervention, while

the regional and global significance of SinoSoviet rivalry did not find practical expression in American policy in Asia until Dr Kissinger first visited Peking in July 1971. The strategic importance of South-east Asia, if not its residual link with global credibility, was then downgraded for the United States. The revision of strategic priorities expressed in the accommodation with China meant that the demonology of the Dulles era had been discarded and that the raison d'etre of the alliance system which he had inspired for South-easi Asia in September 1954 had been undermined. Nonetheless, the prevailing play of external forces in the region was not amended until the conclusion of the Second Indochina War in 1975. As long as that war continued - despite the propensity for detente with the United States shown both by China and th~ Soviet Union - the need for rival Communist powers to sustain in competition the military superiority of the Vietnamese Communists meant that Sino-Soviet contention was expressed in support of the same client against the client of the United States, rather than in favour of separate contending internal or regional ones. This situation changed in a fundamental sense following the Communist victories in Indochina in 1975 which brought to power throughout neighbouring Vietnam and Kampuchea parties and governments whose ideological affinities were insufficient to overcome differences of political identity and interest which were historically and culturally rooted. The resolution of military conflict in Indochina in 1975 put an end to the long-standing competition between radically opposed models of economic and social change within its three states. Subsequent conflict of an inter-state kind between successor Communist governments has not derived in essence from doctrinal differences, having its source in classical raison d'etat. Yet it has assumed an extra-regional dimension in a similar manner to the experience of the First and Second Indochina Wars (1946-54 and 1960-75). Thus the Soviet Union and China became engaged progressively as the external patrons of Vietnam and Kampuchea respectively. The long-standing interest of the Soviet Union in promoting her own version of the containment of China, and the determined Chinese intention to resist such encirclement, have given the confrontation between neighbouring Indochinese states a

2

similar character to those earlier phases of conflict which engaged the strategic interests of the United States. Paradoxically, the engagement of the competing interests of the Soviet Union and China in Indochina has served elsewhere in South-east Asia to restrict the involvement of external powers in internal conflicts which still retain a doctrinal basis. Although internal conflicts between revolutionary and conservative forces in the remainder of the region have never attracted anything like the measure of external support which has been extended in the case of Indochina, both the Soviet Union and China in their competition for the political affections of non-Communist governments have stressed government-to-government relations at the expense of party-to-party ties. The end of the Second Indochina War did give rise initially to a measure of acceptability for the new political configuration - or pattern of power - within the region. Unlike her situation after the First Indochina War in 1954, the United States was in neither a mood nor a position to try to reverse the outcome of a conflict from which she had disengaged militarily more than two years before its conclusion. And on its morrow, the Soviet Union and China had both endorsed the radical political changes in Indochina even if something resembling a pattern of external competitive alignment in respect of Vietnam and Kampuchea was already indicated. In addition, although the conservative governments of the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) were alarmed by the speed and scope of revolutionary Communist success, they were also not in a position to contemplate a challenge to the pattern of power in Indochina established by force majeure. The ASEAN governments responded to the political polarization of Southeast Asia into Communist and non-Communist sectors by articulating publicly their common political identity and interests, and also by offering as an instrument of regional accommodation a treaty of amity and cooperation designed to serve as a code for interstate conduct. This initiative represented an adjustment to circumstances. This opening by ASEAN was ignored by Vietnam, who also repudiated the Association's symbolic aspiration for a Zone of Peace, Freedom and Neutrality for South-east Asia. As the

squabble between the ASEAN governments and a Vietnam supported by Laos developed over the appropriate formula which might serve as a basis for a system of regional order, conflict between Vietnam and Kampuchea gathered momentum. In the process the question of an acceptable pattern of power in Indochina was reopened, engaging the interests of the ASEAN states as well as those of external powers. Although differences of strategic perspective over the measure of external threat posed, respectively, by Vietnam and China, still concerned Bangkok and other ASEAN capitals, the emergence of an independent, if Communist, Kampuchea had served to mitigate the profound sense of alarm generated in April 1975. Negotiations between Thai and Kampuchean ministers in Bangkok in October 1975, sponsored through Chinese diplomacy, indicated the strong likelihood that a monolithic Indochinese Communism with its locus in Hanoi could be denied. For Thailand, in particular, the prospect of an inter-Communist balance of power was attractive politically, while ASEAN as a corporate entity could contemplate the prospect of a structure of regional relations based on a limitation of Vietnam dominance within Indochina. Open conflict between Kampuchea and Vietnam was manifested on the last day of 1977 when the government in Phnom Penh announced a temporary suspension of diplomatic relations with its counterpart in Hanoi. This initiative was taken pointedly in the Chinese capital. Differences between the Communist parties of Kampuchea and China had been resolved the previous September, when Party Secretarygeneral Pol Pot paid a visit to Peking, presumably moved by growing military pressure from Vietnam. Military confrontation between the neighbouring Indochinese Communist states early in 1978 attracted the competing interests of China and the Soviet Union whose involvement widened the scope and added to the significance of the conflict. For the non-Communist states of South-east Asia - especially those of ASEAN any satisfaction derived from the absence of harmony within a Communist Indochina was offset by the involvement of the major Communist powers, and the prospect of the region reliving its past experience of intervention. Central to the revival of conflict was the political identity and prevailing external

affiliations of Kampuchea. The significance of this did not turn on the respective merits of doctrinal orthodoxies: at issue was the junction between an internal structure of power in Kampuchea and its perceived relevance in Hanoi to the regional balance. The Vietnamese government had sought without success to promote the same special relationship with Kampuchea as it had established with Laos. In the event, it was not prepared to tolerate any longer the offensive recalcitrance of its counterpart in Phnom Penh, regarded by 1978 as a party to an insidious design by China to bring Vietnam under her dominance. Buffered, so it was assumed, by a Treaty of Friendship with the Soviet Union which incorporated a security clause, the Vietnamese Army invaded Kampuchea on 25 December 1978. It entered Phnom Penh on 7 January 1979, where it installed a new government more to its liking, with which a Treaty of Peace and Friendship was concluded on 18 February. Vietnam's attempt to revise the pattern of power within Kampuchea and Indochina was welcomed only by her close political associates and benefactors, especially Laos and the Soviet Union. Within the region, concerted diplomatic opposition to the internal transfer of power within Kampuchea by external force of arms was expressed by the governments of ASEAN and also by that of Burma. China was totally unreconciled to the Vietnamese action, which she sought to counter, in part, with a punitive military intervention in Northern Vietnam in February 1979. Japan also indicated her opposition, if in more equivocal form, while the United States became more directly part of the anti-Vietnamese alignment because of concern at the advantage that might be secured by Vietnam's Soviet patron and because of the threat to Thailand, with whom she has enjoyed a residual quasi-alliance relationship. The conflict which has centred on Kampuchea without resolution has been different in one major respect from those which centred on Vietnam. That difference is the role of doctrine. However, a fundamental element of continuity does link the three central conflicts which have been experienced by South-east Asia since the end of the Pacific War in August 1945. The common feature has been the critical relationship between contending regional and extra-regional interests. Thus, if expressed initially in doctrinal terms 3

between revolutionary and conservative forces with corresponding external backers, the pattern of conflict in the region has retained its critical extra-regional dimension with doctrine giving

II.

SOURCES OF REGIONAL CONFLICT

It is possible to identify three general sources of either internal or inter-state conflict within Southeast Asia, although they are not necessarily mutually exclusive. In this analysis internal conflict is not differentiated from inter -state conflict as a factor relevant to the problem of regional order because, in its various forms, it has long been of major importance in attracting not only the interests of regional states but also the competitive involvement of external powers. The three sources of regional conflict may be described as: issues of state identity; historical antagonisms; and legacies of the transfers of sovereignty.

Issues of State Identity This subject comprises the basic values which inform the social and political character of the state. It will be discussed under three headings: revolutionary social challenge; separatism and irredentism; and nation-building and alien minorities.

Revolutionary Social Challenge Revolutionary social challenge has been a fundamental source of internal conflict, manifesting itself from the onset of decolonization. The circumstances of its expression have varied in each case of transfer of sovereignty and have depended, in part, on whether or not the colonial power in question was dogged or conciliatory in response to nationalist claims. The common feature of such conflict has been organized armed opposition to successor elites to colonialism by alternative elites who offer a radically different vision of modernity and social order. The appeals of such alternative elites are cast doctrinally in terms of the values of distributive justice and are designed to attract groups alienated by poverty, by gross disparities of private wealth and by the intolerance of a dominant culture. However, the prospect of adventure and a career is relevant to recruitment to revolutionary forces, as is resort to terror. 4

way to more crude balance of power considerations. It has also become very much more complex because of the structure of alignments involved.

In every case of relatively peaceful and negotiated transfer of sovereignty within Southeast Asia the authority of the successor government has been challenged by an insurgent Communist party which established a position of internal strength during the course of the Pacific War. The experience of Burma, Malay(si)a, Singapore and the Philippines may be cited in this respect, while Thailand, which was never subject to direct colonial domination, has shared that experience only during the past two decades. In Indonesia, where the colonial power used force in an attempt to deny nationalist claims, a Communist party enjoyed a tense co-existence within the mainstream of the nationalist movement until September 1948, when it became implicated in an abortive rebellion against the Republican government in Yogyakarta. After independence this party was rehabilitated, and it pursued its political goals within the framework of succeeding political systems. In October 1965 it was again implicated in an abortive coup whose outcome served to outlaw it. Although the Indonesian Communist Party has ceased to function as an active political force, remnants of its leadership reside in exile in China and the USSR and it remains, in principle, in a state of armed uprising against the government in Jakarta. In the special case of Indochina, where the colonial power also resisted nationalist claims, the Indochinese Communist Party - with a patrimonial political role in Laos and Kampuchea - was able to assume the leadership of Vietnamese nationalism. Indeed, it was the only Communist party in the region to attain this position, and this had a decisive effect on the course of the struggle against the French in the First Indochina War. In Vietnam the Communist Party succeeded to power only North of the 17th Parallel, with the conclusion of the Geneva Conference on Indochina in July 1954. Internal conflict, as such, was resolved only in part. Armed opposition revived South of the 17th Parallel in the late 1950s against an American-

backed government in Saigon, as it did in Laos, where the Pathet Lao revolutionary movement exercised de facto control of two provinces bordering North Vietnam. It was not to revive, in any substantive sense, in Kampuchea until after the deposition of Prince Norodom Sihanouk in March 1970. From this point all of nonCommunist Indochina was beset by a revolutionary challenge, which was successful in 1975. Conflicts which result from revolutionary challenges to internal social and political orders tend not to stay self-contained. Whether a particular challenge is incipient or fully fledged it gives rise to a form of civil war, and the dynamics of this bitter activity - especially where ideological issues are involved - encourage contending internal parties to seek access to external support. The regional significance of revolutionary challenge to an incumbent regime will depend on the extent to which, and how, the attendant internal conflict engages the interests and involvements of other regional governments and revolutionary parties, as well as of external powers. In terms of geographic scale, such outside involvement in support of internal revolutionary challenge within South-east Asia has not been widespread in any substantial sense. For example, internal revolutionary challenge in Burma, Malay(si)a, Singapore, Indonesia and the Philippines has not been serviced significantly by regional parties or governments, if one represents China as external to South-east Asia although marching with it. External support has been more readily forthcoming for regimes subject to revolutionary threat. Although Vietnam's Prime Minister, Pham Van Dong, admitted his government's past support for revolutionary movements in Thailand and Malaysia during visits to those countries in 1978, decisive regional backing for such internal challenge has depended on facility of access and has obtained, primarily, in Indochina, where extra-regional interests have also been engaged heavily. The most striking example of such support was provided by the Vietnamese Communists during the course of the Second Indochina War. A client revolutionary movement in Laos was stiffened and sustained in order to ensure control of the eastern uplands of the country which provided logistical links between North and South Vietnam. A primary interest was the prosecution of the war South of the 17th

Parallel, which took priority over any fraternal party obligations. Thus, in the case of Kampuchea, the Vietnamese Communists saw more practical advantage in reaching a working accommodation with the conservative and ostensibly neutral government of Prince Sihanouk rather than in promoting the political interests of the fledgling Kampuchean Communist Party. It was only when Prince Sihanouk was deposed in March 1970 by a rightwing coalition, which threatened Vietnamese Communist use of logistical and sanctuary facilities within Kampuchea, that support for this neighbouring revolutionary party was forthcoming. Then a Kampuchean Communist movement was nurtured and promoted in order to protect the Vietnamese Communists' territorial base of operations. The violent conflict which ensued within Kampuchea began as an extension of that which raged in Vietnam, and it also engaged corresponding extra-regional involvement. External support for internal revolutionary challenge has been bestowed also, primarily and with most effect, in Indochina. The geopolitical position of China has been most important in this respect. After October 1949 it was possible for the insurgent Vietnamese Communists to be assisted materially across a common border. And after July 1954 such material assistance was more easily conveyed, with access possible by sea as well as by land. China's provision for the Communist Party of Burma has also been of significance; but it has been of a limited order which has enabled that revolutionary party only to sustain itself militarily in the North-east of the country, and not to pose a decisive challenge to the government in Rangoon. With the intensification of Sino-Soviet conflict and the onset of China's attempt to rally Southeast Asian governments in a countervailing united front, its support for revolutionary challenge has become increasingly ritual in character, if sustained in principle. For example, in July 1979 the Chinese government is believed to have closed down the clandestine radio station of the Communist Party of Thailand, which operated from South-west China, because it had become unduly critical of the administration in Bangkok. Revolutionary social challenge to incumbent governments within South-east Asia has been a persistent feature of the region and a continuing source of internal instability. Nonetheless, its 5

ability to attract significant regional and extraregional support has been restricted in geographic scope and has depended, in great part, on facility of access. The radical Revolutionary Front for the Liberation of East Timor, which declared the establishment of an independent republic in the former Portuguese possession in November 1975, was speedily overthrown by Indonesian military intervention across a common border; it was beyond the reach of external assistance. Internal revolutionary challenge has only succeeded, so far, where such assistance has been forthcoming in a practical manner. In the main, substantive assistance has come from external forces and has been forthcoming where the outcome of internal conflict has been perceived to have importance beyond the bounds of the region. Indeed, it has been that very fact of external intervention which has been of major significance for regional conflict. In the future, of course, depending ::>n the disposition of Vietnam, substantial support for internal revolutionary challenge could well be provided from within South-east Asia; Thailand would be the most vulnerable target because of ease of access. One incentive for Vietnam could well be a desire to supplant Chinese influence within the Communist Party of Thailand, apart from more obvious motivation. The local issue in any such exercise would be that of state identity, namely, what should be the values which should determine social order, political priorities and, in consequence, influence the balance of external affiliations? It remains the central issue of security where revolutionary social challenge poses a threat to regional governments. Co-operative regional responses to conflict arising from such internal challenge have assumed three primary forms: ad hoc military cooperation; political and economic co-operation; and formal alliances with external powers. (1) Specific ad hoc bilateral military cooperation has been undertaken among ASEAN states with the object of striking at centres of insurgent activity along common borders. Such co-operation between the armed forces of Thailand and Malaysia, and also between those of Malaysia and Indonesia, has been conducted outside the formal framework of regional organization. It has taken the form also of maritime surveillance (which is equally relevant to the control of piracy and smuggling), of 6

combined military exercises and of a measure of standardization of equipment and operational procedures, as well as exchanges of intelligence. (2) A regional organization like ASEAN does not have a military function. Nonetheless, the five member governments share a sense of common predicament in relation to internal security: indeed it is their primary security concern. An assumption on which political and economic cooperation is based is that the management and mitigation of intra-mural tensions within ASEAN will enable more effective individual attention to be paid to internal revolutionary challenge in an environment in which internal security is believed to be indivisible amor.g the five states of the Association. (3) Formally structured alliance arrangements designed to provide for both external and internal security have been on the wane. The South-east Asia Treaty Organisation (SEATO) was disbanded in June 1977, though the alliance obligations remain, in principle, in force. The AngloMalaysian Defence Agreement which had relevance for the internal security of Malaysia and Singapore was superseded in November 1971 by a Five-Power (consultative) Defence Agreement with an external security function only. Its limited external military underpinning has eroded with the passage of time, although interest in its revival was generated following an initiative by Australia's Prime Minister, Malcolm Fraser, in September 1980. The Mutual Security Agreement between the Philippines and the United States in 1951, and the revised bases agreements of 1979, provide a nexus for military assistance, while the residual obligations of the United States to Thailand under the Manila Pact of September 1954 have been disinterred and used to justify increased arms supplies. An unpublished exchange of letters remains the basis for Britain's deployment of a battalion of Gurkhas in Brunei, at least until the end of 1983, when that state reverts to sovereignty. Separatism and Irredentism Political boundaries in South-east Asia have tended to follow a colonially inspired pattern of demarcation arrived at for reasons of administrative convenience. State forms have been stamped out in a part of the world distinguished by its great social diversity. As a result of a combination of colonial policy and

ethnographic circumstances the successor states of the region have included within their bounds territorially-based minorities, some of whom have been unwilling to reconcile themselves to political dominance from culturally alien centres. Regional minority dissidence has been most marked in Burma, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines. In some cases such dissidence has severely tested the soundness of the successor state, and has also been a factor in generating tension between regional states. Once again, the issue of external - including regional - support has been critical to the significance of the conflict. This type of conflict can become joined to revolutionary social challenge. For example, alliances of varying quality have been struck between Communists and dissident minority groups in virtually every state in the region. And in Northern Thailand insurgency attributed to Communist inspiration has been confined, in the main, to zones of ethnic minority settlement. Naturally enough, regional relationships have been affected where there is suspicion or evidence of support for minority rejection of central authority. At times this has affected relations between Burma and Thailand, Thailand and Malaysia, Malaysia and Indonesia, and Malaysia and the Philippines. Separatism has been a recurrent source of conflict within South-east Asia, if not the most dominant politically. Regional states have dealt with the threat which it poses bilaterally and, to an extent, within regional organization. Once again it should be pointed out that this kind of conflict has assumed its most far-reaching consequences when support has been extended (even if informally) by a major power. For example, the United States was involved, to an extent, in the regional uprisings which took place in Indonesia in the late 1950s. But conflict of this kind, although a source of strain on relationships within and outside the region, has never become a major locus of regional contention involving powers of consequence - with the limited exception of the abortive regional uprisings in Indonesia, whereby the Soviet Union secured a temporary measure of political advantage in her dealings with the government in Jakarta. Undoubtedly, minority dissidence expressed either in demands for autonomy or independence has caused friction between regional neighbours. Thai tolerance of the cross-border activities of

Burmese minorities has been responsible for a recurrent downturn in relations. The attendant friction (much reduced after the en'd of the Second Indochina War) has never made a political impact beyond the bilateral relationship and has not engaged the interests of third parties. The same general conclusion applies concerning difficulties in the relationship between Thailand and Malaysia over the separatist activities of Moslems in the southern provinces of Thailand which abut the northern and dominantly Moslem provinces of Malaysia. This particular source of conflict does have a wider dimension in so far as it has engaged the interests of Moslem governments within the framework of the Islamic Conference. However, the limited effectiveness of Moslem separatists operating within Thailand has restricted opportunities for external exploitation. A more significant example of external support for separatist-based conflict has obtained in the case of the southern Philippines. Open rebellion on the part of the Moslem community dates from October 1972, shortly after the declaration of martial law by President Marcos. This rebellion has been sustained by external support initially provided within the region from the neighbouring territory of Sabah, a constituent state of the Federation of Malaysia. This support came partly as an act of reprisal because of the past prosecution of a Philippine claim to Sabah. The internal rebellion has also attracted external support from Islamic states, especially and importantly in financial form from Libya. This particular conflict with its source in an assertion of separate political identity by a distinctive cultural minority has posed a threat to the economic viability of the Philippines because of a dependence on oil from Islamic states and the drain of resources entailed as a result of the war over the integrity of the Philippine state. A significant regional consequence has been the strain imposed on relations between ASEAN partners. Attempts by cultural minorities to secure separate political identity have neither been remarkably successful nor engendered major regional conflicts within South-east Asia. A primary part of the explanation for this limitation of conflict arises from the fact that separatism is not an easy enterprise to undertake. Indeed, there has not been a single example of its success within South-east Asia since the onset of decolonization. 7

Singapore's independence from Malaysia was an involuntary act; it represented rejection, not successful separatism. There has not been any experience in the region to compare with the advent of Bangladesh in South Asia which came about as a consequence of direct military action by India,. facilitated by Soviet support. Corresponding circumstances to a once bifurcated Pakistan do obtain in South-east Asia in respect of Eastern Malaysia (Sabah and Sarawak), which is separated from its peninsular political heartland by several hundred miles of South China Sea and shares a common land border with Indonesia. During the Sukarno era insurgency in Northern Borneo, ostensibly in support of an independent unitary state, did receive active Indonesian backing, but British and Commonwealth military resistance denied success to this enterprise. After the downfall of President Sukarno, Indonesian/Malaysian relations rapidly assumed the quality of a de facto alliance, and this has been sustained ever since. Under the terms of their present association, any Indonesian intervention would be on behalf ofthe Federal Government in Kuala Lumpur. Indeed, Indonesian/Malaysian military co-operation along their common border in Northern Borneo against the residual radical left-wing component of the original separatist movement serves to underpin, for the time being, the political integrity of the bifurcated Malaysian state. Separatism is endemic to South-east Asia as a source of conflict, but the intensity of that conflict has been limited in impact, even if it has strained the resources and tested the integrity of states such as Burma, Indonesia and the Philippines. Despite the serious domestic weaknesses which are characteristic of virtually all South-east Asian polities, dissident cultural minorities have not demonstrated sufficient capability to exploit these weaknesses to full advantage. The success of such an enterprise would seem to depend on decisive external support which has not been forthcoming. Irredentism, of a kind, has enjoyed a better record within the area. For example, the unification of Vietnam can be placed within this category, as can Indonesia's incorportation of the western half of the island of New Guinea, if not that of East Timor. None of these episodes, however, arose from the inability of an alienated cultural minority to reconcile itself to the entrenched political dominance of a resented 8

cultural majority. The two examples cited represent aspects of partially frustrated decolonization. The example of West New Guinea merits limited discussion because the conflict involved assumed more than just a regional dimension. From the mid-1950s the Soviet Union had begun to engage in political competition with the United States in Asia. An obvious prize in South-east Asia was Indonesia, which was in serious dispute with her former colonial master, Holland, over the disposition of the western half of the island of New Guinea, which had been set aside in the transfer of sovereignty in 1949. The unwillingness of the United States to apply the same kind of pressure on Holland which had been a decisive factor in precipitating the transfer of sovereignty, and her initial partiality for the regional rebels in the late 1950s, encouraged a developing association between Indonesia and the Soviet Union whose nexus was the provision of arms. An enhanced Indonesian military capability lent credibility to a practice of coercive diplomacy and brought with it the prospect of armed confrontation whose outcome could have worked to both internal Communist and Soviet advantage. This prospect prompted American diplomatic intervention to contain and resolve the conflict. In these circumstances the conflict had its source in Dutch denial of the nationalist claim to the total territorial inheritance of colonialism, but it was brought to a point of crisis through external involvement. The significance of the conflict was regional in its physical location; its import arose from the engagement of external interests and the extent to which they were willing to become involved to sustain or to contain it. It should be pointed out that the eastern half of the island of East Timor, which was forcibly incorporated into Indonesia, was never a part of the Netherlands East Indies: it had been colonized by Portugal. Indonesia's military intervention was in no sense an act of irredentism, although it may have been intended to deter any separatist tendencies elsewhere within its distended archipelago. It represented an attempt to deny the establishment and consolidation of a government of incompatible political philosophy within the ambit of the Indonesian state.

Nation-building and Alien Minorities South-east Asia is distinguished by an immense cultural diversity which is made up, in part, of

minorities without territorial roots within its postcolonial states. Most of these minorities are ethnic Chinese, most of whose antecedents migrated from Southern China from the nineteenth century onwards. Significant minorities from the Indian subcontinent settled in Burma, Malay(si)a and Singapore, while Vietnamese moved into Kampuchea and Laos under French dispensation and also, in smaller numbers, as refugees into the north-east of Thailand during the course of the First Indochina War. Lao and Khmer refugees from successive Indochina Wars as well as Vietnamese 'boat people', have also sought sanctuary in Thailand. In the main, alien ethnic minorities serviced the needs of colonial economy and administration and attracted the resentment and envy of the autochthonous people as a consequence. The degree of such resentment and envy was governed, of course, by individual state experience and, in this respect, cultural differences between regional states gave rise to differing degrees of acceptance of such minorities. For example, ethnic Chinese were more readily accepted into the Buddhist societies of Thailand and Kampuchea and into the Roman Catholic society of the Philippines, but they experienced a strong measure of social rejection in Malaysia and parts of Indonesia where Islam was the dominant religion. Singapore, of course, has been unique in this respect in that her ethnic Chinese community makes up three-quarters of the total population whose other constituents are Malays and Indians. Policies of discrimination against alien minorities justified in the nation-building interest have affected relationships among regional and external states. A major local source of conflict arising from intra-regional migration has been Kampuchean resentment of Vietnamese settlement facilitated by colonial rule. In Kampuchea deep-seated racial hatred exploded with the killing of Vietnamese residents in April 1970, in the wake of the deposition of Prince Sihanouk and with the onset of armed intrusion by the Vietnamese Communists. This bloodletting and attendant forced migration of surviving Vietnamese residents across the border into South Vietnam embittered the ideologicallybased relationship which arose between rightwing governments in Phnom Penh and Saigon. Indeed the vengeful manner in which the South

Vietnamese Army conducted itself during its joint intervention with American forces in Kampuchea in the following month served the political interests of the revolutionary opponents of the successor Lon Nol regime. Looked at in perspective, the gory episode in Aprill970 was a subordinate dimension of a wider conflict rooted in the prospect of a unification of Vietnam on Communist terms. Tensions between Thailand and Vietnam over the repatriation of Vietnamese minorities have also been encompassed by this conflict. The treatment of alien minorities by national governments has not evoked a uniform external response. In the case of Burma, her government adopted discriminatory measures against her large Indian minority in the early 1960s, resulting in a major repatriation. Subsequently a largescale exodus of Moslem residents of Bengali origin took place during 1977-8. In both these cases the issues between the governments concerned were settled on a bilateral basis without other political interests being engaged. IndianBurmese relations were not subject to evident deterioration as a consequence of the application of nationalization measures to the retail trade, although Indian restraint was almost certainly governed by her embittered relationship with China. There were no major regional repercussions as a result of the exercise in 'Burmanization' by the military government in Rangoon; its counterpart in New Delhi did not challenge the national priorities which had prompted the change in the circumstances of the Indian minority community. In the case of the exodus of Moslem residents from Burma into Bangladesh, in the wake of an abortive separatist plot involving the border province of Arakan, an agreement on repatriation to Burma for its citizens of Moslem origin was negotiated during 1979 between the governments in Dacca and Rangoon. A more evident source of conflict and consternation in bilateral relations has been seen regarding overseas Chinese residents. The policy of the People's Republic of China towards these overseas communities changed in the mid-1950s with the negotiation of a treaty with Indonesia designed to resolve the contentious issue of dual nationality. Beijing's intention was to improve government-to-government relations by denying openly any legal obligation towards those

residents of Chinese origin who had assumed the citizenship of their host country. Indeed, overseas Chinese were actively encouraged to assume such citizenship and to obey the laws of their adopted lands. In practice, the attitude of Chinese governments towards the overseas Chinese communities has tended to vary according to political c1rcumstances. At times it has been found politic to overlook the most cruel treatment - for example, in the case of Kampuchea after April 1975 - while on other occasions their condition has been a matter of public controversy with the host government. Tension arose between China and Indonesia in the late 1950s over the prohibition of ethnic Chinese participation in retail trade in rural areas. Such tension was contained on both sides as Indonesia and China, as revisionist states, moved closer politically to one another. Indonesia's suspension of diplomatic relations with China in October 1967 was, ostensibly, in response to an alleged Chinese intervention in Indonesian domestic affairs and not the direct result of contention over the role of her overseas community. However, concern about the impact on that community of a restoration of diplomatic relations has served to justify delay on the part of the government in Jakarta. A bitter exchange over the alleged persecution of the resident Chinese community in Vietnam occurred in 1978. This issue, however, was not a source of conflict in itself!. It served to impair further an underlying relationship between China and Vietnam which had begun to deteriorate before the end of the Second Indochina War. In the circumstances the issue was more a symptom than a source of conflict. Vietnamese measures, taken from early 1978, to remove residents (including citizens) from the border area with China were a product of suspicion engendered by China's rapprochement with the United States from July 1971, even if the nationalization of the retail trade in Southern Vietnam was legitimately a matter of socialist principle. In the case of the Chinese community in Vietnam, their alleged persecution became an issue which accelerated the momentum of conflict. It ir.volved a matter of identity in so far as their ethnc -cultural distinctiveness and affinity with people across the northern border made them suspect as a potential fifth column. The relationship between the overseas Chinese 10

community and their mother-country became a weapon in the wider conflict over the pattern of power in the region as the government of Vietnam sought to represent all overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia as insidious agents of Beijing. To some extent this charge was given greater credence by a revision of interest in the overseas communities by the Chinese government from early 1978. For example, the Beijing Review maintained that 'The vast majority of overseas Chinese to-day are still labouring people. They are the masses forming part of the basic forces of the patriotic united front, on whom we must rely ... We must win them over and unite with them. ' 2 Whether the Chinese government, through its media, was trying to promote as extensive an alignment or united front as possible to counter the challenging role of Soviet-backed Vietnam, or was expressing a new sense of patrimonial regard towards kith and kin overseas, the effect was much the same. Regional states with significant resident Chinese communities were given cause for some apprehension, as indeed they were also when China exhibited a willingness to use force in her conflict with Vietnam in February 1979. The Vietnamese policy of encouraging, at a profit, the exodus of ethnic Chinese across the South China Sea was intended to reduce an undesirable alien presence and, probably, to demonstrate China's inability to protect them. In some of the countries of South-east Asia it had the effect of intensifying inter-communal friction and also introduced an element of strain into intra-ASEAN relations. China's policy towards her overseas community in South-east Asia has not been influenced exclusively either by a desire to protect their interests or by the priority of promoting good relations with particular governments in the region. Indeed, it does not make sense to talk in such isolation of China in relation to South-east Asia. Since her revolution China has never enjoyed the luxury of dealing with states to her south to the exclusion of other concerns. It has been those other concerns - namely, threats posed successively by the United States and the Soviet Union - which have governed Chinese policies. In this respect China's response to discriminatory treatment of overseas Chinese residents - whether citizens or not - by regional governments has been determined by extraregional factors, most recently by the spectre of an assertive Vietnam rejecting Chinese leadership for

an unholy alliance with the Soviet Union. Thus, although treatment of ethnic Chinese minorities by national governments has been a source of tension in bilateral relations with states of the region, such an issue has not been autonomous in generating regional conflict. Historical Antagonisms South-east Asia assumed its present politicalterritorial form as a direct result of colonial domination. That domination contained and subordinated antagonisms between pre-colonial kingdoms which comprised political rivalries and also deep-seated differences of culture and identity. Where colonialism served to sus tam state identity rather than to merge it with others in a wider administratiVe framework which became the basis for post-colonial succession, such antagonisms have survived in most conspicuous and politically relevant forms. For example, m the case of Kampuchea the transfer of authority from France involved a reversion to sovereignty and generated a revival of historical fears. It is in the mainland of South-east Asia that such a phenomenon has assumed major significance as a source of conflict. In the maritime part of the region, including Malaysia, the transfers of sovereignty have had the effect of establishing states which had never existed in that form before the advent of colonial rule. Only minuscule Brunei, which is now a fraction of her former size and which survived because of colonial 'protection', has experienced conflict arising, to a limited extent, from her pre-colonial identity. And even mainland states such as Burma and Thailand, which were antagonists before the advent of colonial rule, have experienced a postcolonial relationship marked by alternating tensions and accommodation rather than by a sustained revival of historical conflict. Kampuchea's relationship with Vietnam provides the striking regional example of such a revival, which might suggest that Communist rule reinforces traditional conflicts. Kampuchean-Vietnamese antagonisms have been discussed above in the context of problems of ethnic minorities. This represents only one dimension of a bitter inter-state relationship which has its source in a relentless Vietnamese expansion at Kampuchean expense within the Indochinese peninsular. The experience of Vietnamese occupation of Kampuchea in the

1830s, when an attempt was made to eradicate a traditior.al culture and to supplant it with an alien one, has left its legacy. Although it became conventional wisdom during the rule of Prince Sihanouk to label Vietnam and Thailand equally as political predators, it was Vietnam who was regarded with more apprehension. Fear of Vietnam - above all, a Communist Vietnam was an abiding theme of Prince Sihanouk's foreign policy, even when expressed in the form of political accommodation. This fear was inherited by both his nght-wing and left-wing successors. Indeed, the restoration of historical antagonisms appeared as virtually an article of faith in the public rhetoric of the Kampuchean Communist government which came to power in April 1975. Its apparent conviction that its Vietnamese counterpart had resumed the colonizing mission of its imperial predecessor was a major factor in the bitter conflict which reached a critical stage with the invasion of Kampuchea by the Vietname~e Army at the end of 1978. From the point of view of the Vietnamese Politburo, their decision to apply force majeure against a renegade political movement in league with China and which had been engaged in provocative military actions across a disputed border exposed patience strained beyond breaking point. Nonetheless, the prior insistence on the part of the Vietnamese that a special relationship obtained between the two states which ought to have political expression seemed to indicate a patrimonial regard arising from a historicallyrooted sense of superiority. Correspondingly, a similar pattern of relations has developed between Vietnam and China. At the onset of French colonial rule Vietnam was a formal vassal of China, if not subject to her direct political control. Over a number of centuries the two states had engaged in intermittent warfare, with Vietnam seeking to defend her independence from a dominating China. A parallel reassertion of independence by Vietnam against the dominance of China has occurred during the course of the past decade. For China, a critical element in her conflict with Vietnam at the end of that decade was the burgeoning relationship between the governments of Hanoi and Moscow. Vietnam's invasion of Kampuchea was perceived as serving the Soviet interest. However, the openly expressed desire by the Chinese leadership to put Vietnam in her place suggested a view of her 11

southern neighbour which had its source in precolonial experience. Although Thailand and Vietnam have never shared a common border their post-colonial relationship has also been shaped by historical experience of competition - in this case between culturally distinct peoples - for influence and advantage in the interposing states of Laos and Kampuchea. This competition resulted in an acceptable balance of advantage just before the coming of French colonial rule. From the viewpoint of governments in Bangkok the recent eradication of the 'buffer' function of eastern neighbours by a vigorous Vietnam has posed a major threat to security and has encouraged active, if not open support for internal opposition to its dominance within Kampuchea. Colonialism has had a major impact on the history of South-east Asia. Yet, in historical perspective, it represents only an interlude. Indeed, colonial rule did not transform totally the political landscape of the region; and so the transfers of sovereignty have represented continuity as well as major change. The accompanying revival of some pre-colonial antagonisms has had an undoubted effect on the course of conflict within the region. In particular they have reinforced enmities which have been at the centre of that phase of the struggle for power in Indochina which began with the unification of Vietnam and the establishment in neighbouring Kampuchea of an independent Communist regime. That struggle has taken place, in the main, between Communist states whose policies have been determined primarily by the imperatives of the balance of power, rather than by ideological priorities. The manner in which those policies have been pursued and applied has been distinguished by traditional considerations in which historical identity has played a significant role. It should be reiterated, however, that the dimensions of conflict have not been restricted to South-east Asia. If traditional Kampuchean-Vietnamese and Thai-Vietnamese antagonisms, as well as those between Vietnam and China, have been a source of conflict, the competitive engagement of external interests has served to fuel its furnaces. Indeed, it has been such competitive engagement combined with the revival of historical antagonisms which has served to make mainland South-east Asia the epicentre of regional conflict. 12

Legacies of the Transfers of Sovereignty The transfer of sovereignty from colonial powers to independent governments was a mixed experience for South-east Asia, and the impact and the legacy of those transfers has varied from state to state. One such legacy, which has been cited above, has been the determination of state boundaries. This inheritance has not been uniformly well received: post-colonial boundaries have been challenged in the form of irredentist claims, for example. One such claim has been made by the government of the Philippines to the Malaysian state of Sabah, and this has yet to be relinquished in acceptable legal form. Conflict over this issue has tested the cohesion of ASEAN and has persisted, ironically, because of Moslem rebellion in the southern islands of the Philippines. Boundary issues have been a factor also in relations between Brunei and Malaysia; and between Malaysia and Thailand there has existed a latent tension arising from a boundary settlement determined by British colonial power in 1909. Boundary demarcation has also been a source, if not the root, of conflict between Kampuchea and Vietnam, and between Vietnam and China. Conflict over state boundaries has assumed an important maritime dimension. The attractions of off-shore oil deposits have generated competing claims around the littoral, and over the islands and continental shelf of the South China Sea. In this context one notable legacy of the transfers of sovereignty has been the projection of Indonesia's archipelagic claim across the South China Sea as a consequence of an Anglo-Dutch treaty of 1824 whereby off-shore islands were placed under Dutch and, ultimately, Indonesian jurisdiction. The transfers of sovereignty have also affected intra-regional conflict when the colonial power has been reluctant to give up its position. Dogged colonial rule was demonstrated in the case of the Netherlands East Indies and in that of French Indochina where independence was attained only after violent revolutionary struggles. Where the attainment of independence involved such struggle, political attitudes of suspicion and hostility have been engendered towards neighbouring states which have not undergone the same experience and which have even been involved, in some way, in seeking to frustrate nationalist goals.

This experience of socialization on the part of Indonesia affected the outlook of the government of President Sukarno which could not comprehend the legitimacy of the Federation of Malaysia either at its conception or its subsequent establishment. In the more significant example of relations between Vietnam and her nonCommunist neighbours within ASEAN, the roles of these neighbours during the course of the Second Indochina War (especially of Thailand and the Philippines) would appear to have become firmly fixed in the political consciousness of the rulers of the Vietnamese state. Indeed, after Vietnam's conflict with Kampuchea had reached a critical stage the member-governments of ASEAN were reminded of their past transgressions. In March 1979 an editorial in the Vietnamese Party newspaper Nhan Dan argued that the view held by ASEAN member-countries about the situation in Indochina did not conform to realities. In censorious tone it continued: 'It should be remembered that certain ASEAN countries supported the US war of aggression in Indochina. We are prepared to forget this debt ... But these countries should not make another mistake.' 3 Ill.

In general terms political boundaries bequeathed by colonial rule have not been an acute source of regional conflict in themselves even where less than well defined. The actual experience of the transfer of sovereignty has had a greater impact in particular circumstances. For example, the wider issue of regional order, which requires the acceptance of shared assumptions among the resident states, has undoubtedly been prejudiced by Vietnam's bitter and protracted experience of attaining independence. An attempt has been made to identify, if somewhat cursorily, the principal sources of regional conflict in post-colonial South-east Asia. These sources of conflict are in no sense mutually exclusive; they exercise influence in an interlocking manner. What is most evident about their impact, however, is that, where acute, it conforms to a general global pattern. In other words, although they are rooted within the region, such conflicts take on special significance when the interests of major external powers become competitively engaged. Such is to be expected in the case of South-east Asia, where resident powers capable of assuming a regulating role in regional relationships are conspicuously absent.

THE INTERESTS AND ROLES OF EXTERNAL POWERS

Although the pattern of external power involvement in South-east Asia has changed radically since the end of the Second Indochina War, the practice has persisted, for the same reason that it arose during the course of the First Indochina War. Competitive external-power involvement in South-east Asia has been the consequence of a coupling of either internal or intra-regional conflict to strategic perspective and priorities. In this respect Kampuchea has assumed the kind of international significance attributed earlier to Vietnam, in that the outcome of internal conflict was perceived both within and outside the region as likely to transform not only the political identity of the Khmer state but also its external affiliations. The implications for the regional balance of power were not confined to South-east Asia. With this wider inter-relationship arising from the conflict over Kampuchea in mind, we must examine the interests and roles of the People's Republic of China, the United States, Japan and the Soviet Union.

The People's Republic of China Of all the major states outside South-east Asia, China has the most direct interest in the pattern of power within the region. Indeed, in terms of location and historical associations, China is hardly external. She shares common borders with Burma, Laos and Vietnam, and is a coastal state in the South China Sea, over which she maintains extensive claims. Within the states of South-east Asia there reside large communities of ethnic Chinese, approximately seventeen million in number, who play a central role in their economies out of all proportion to their numerical strength. As stated earlier, China's policy towards these communities has never been completely free from ambivalence, which has engendered an abiding concern on the part of regional governments that Peking might seek to influence their behaviour to political ends. China's policy has never been free from ambivalence in another sense. In her role as a revolutionary state she has never relinquished a 13

moral commitment to support fraternal revolutionary movements on her southern periphery. However, the dominant theme in her policy towards South-east Asia has been the denial of advantage to her principal international adversaries. The balance of power has been the prevailing consideration in this endeavour. Thus the re-unification of Vietnam on the terms of the Vietnamese Communist Party was a lesser priority than the elimination of an American strategic threat. The management of a revised relationship with the United States when the Soviet Union was perceived as the supreme external menace to the security of the Chinese state also took priority over Vietnamese interests. It was in this context that the apparent close political association between Peking and Hanoi did not survive the end of the Second Indochina War. Its marked deterioration and junction with Sino-Soviet relations became the central factor in China's policy towards the countries of Southeast Asia. From the end of the Second Indo-China War Vietnam was viewed increasingly as an ingrate and an upstart: an ingrate because her government had refused to acknowledge the extent to which revolutionary success had been facilitated by Chinese assistance; an upstart because she had expressed her independence in an obdurate and uncompromising manner, especially in her refusal to acknowledge China's international doctrine and in her willingness to endorse Soviet diplomatic positions. The issue of Kampuchea served as the catalyst in moving relations with Vietnam past a point of no return, and the alleged persecution of her resident Chinese community from the early months of 1978 was a major aggravating factor. Central to Chinese calculations was her perception of Vietnam as the political surrogate of the Soviet Union for the fulfilment of her regional ambitions. The consolidation of Vietnamese - Soviet economic ties through tile former's membership of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA) in June 1978, and then the conclusion of a Treaty of Friendship and Co-operation with the Soviet Union in the fo!lowing November confirmed the client role of the Vietnamese government. Indeed, it was regarded as more than a coincidence that the Treaty was signed just one month before the proclamation of a so-called Kampuchean National United Front for National Salvation, in 14

opposition to the incumbent government in Phnom Penh and with open Vietnamese support and evident inspiration as well as Soviet endorsement. The Chinese media commented on the day that Phnom Penh fell to the Vietnamese forces utilizing the political cover of this United Front: 'As is known to all, it is to serve the Soviet Union in its expansionist strategic plan that the Vietnamese authorities have invaded Kampuchea so recklessly. ' 4 As a matter of political self-respect, and in response to its view of Vietnam as an externally inspired regional poacher, the Chinese government set out to act as regional gamekeeper to restrain her smaller neighbour. Her credibility and reputation as a regional power was at stake. China's limited military intervention was not intended to challenge the existence of the government in Hanoi; it was intended to underline the geopolitical context of Sino-Vietnamese relations and to demonstrate that Vietnam could readily be chastised despite a Treaty of Friendship with the Soviet Union which contained a security clause. The notion of 'punishment' entailed in the exercise was manifested in the systematic destruction of the economy of Northern Vietnam. The related idea of teaching Vietnam a lesson had the additional purpose of seeking to explode the myth of Vietnamese invincibility. To this end China was prepared to sacrifice men for limited and temporary territorial gains. China set out to register a political gain by military means. In the event, she demonstrated that her army possessed the firepower (as well as the dispensable manpower) to break through Vietnam's defence perimeter and to lay waste her northern border region. China's Liberation Army Daily of 8 March 1979 commented: 'Now the Vietnamese aggressors should understand that the Chinese people are not to be bullied and that no one will be allowed to throw his weight around and run amuck just because he thinks he has the support of Soviet social-imperialism.' Despite this confident assertion, the outstanding question which arose from China's military intervention in Vietnam was not whether Vietnam had been chastised but whether she had been chastened by the experience to the extent of conceding one of China's implicit objectives, namely, to loosen her grip on Kampuchea. China's military intervention undoubtedly increased the price

which Vietnam has been obliged to pay for the sake of asserting a special relationship with Kampuchea. But there has not been any indication since that act of punishment was concluded in March 1979 that the Politburo in Hanoi has entertained any willingness to compromise over the internal transfer of power within Kampuchea. Indeed, on the contrary, sustained military effort has been undertaken to crush resistance to the client Heng Samrin administration despite, and because of, China's military action. It has been encouraged in this attitude by the military and economic assistance bestowed by the Soviet Union. It may be argued that China's punitive policy has been self-defeating and has served to demonstrate the shortcomings of her general military capability. She could not prevent Vietnam from discharging her ethnic Chinese community into the South China Sea. To the extent that China has succeeded in driving Vietnam deeper into the political embrace of the Soviet Union, the outcome of that policy may be regarded as a distortion of strategic priorities. The object of the exercise was to counter the extension of Soviet influence, not to promote it. Nonetheless, it may be argued also that her government was obliged to react strongly to Vietnam's invasion of Kampuchea as a matter of political self-respect; otherwise her standing as a regional power would have been diminished. Correspondingly, she was obliged to demonstrate that she was not intimidated by Soviet patronage of Vietnam irrespective of the impact of her action on Soviet-Vietnamese relations. China's policy is best contemplated as a longterm undertaking. She has been adamant in her refusal to be reconciled to Vietnamese hegemony within Indochina and conducts her policy not on the basis of success or failure being realised in the course of just one dry season. It has been suggested above that one purpose of China's 'punishment' of Vietnam was to underline the geopolitical context of Sino- Vietnamese relations. China's geographical position enables her to apply persistent pressure on Vietnam throughout Indochina at acceptable cost. She has maintained a high level of tension along her borders with Vietnam and Laos, holding out the prospect of a second 'lesson', and has been able to provide material support to the Pol Pot resistance inside Kampuchea. In consequence Vietnam has

been obliged to raise the strength of her own armed forces from 600,000 to over a million in the course of one year, which has involved a major burden on national resources. The object of Chma's policy is to prevent Vietnam from satisfying the conditions for the political consolidation of the Heng Samrin government in Kampuchea, and also to pose a measure of challenge to the government in Vientiane. More to the point. her intention would seem to be to make Vietnam over-reach herself and drain her resources in the process - to the point of virtual collapse. In addition, China seeks to demonstrate to the Soviet Union that she is throwing good aid after bad and to Vietnam that no ultimate profit can accrue from an unhygienic political relationship. China has not shown any willingness to tolerate what she regards as the pretensions of an externally-inspired political upstart in her own regional backyard. To this end, while her government has been willing to encourage the broadening of the base of the Pol Pot resistance in order to overcome its notoriety both within and outside Kampuchea, she has refused to contemplate a political settlement to the conflict that does not entail a Vietnamese withdrawal. Accordingly, she has fed the furnace of internal war in order to drain Vietnamese resources and will. China's refusal to be reconciled to the prospect of Vietnamese hegemony in Indochina has been a function of traditional interest and of a bitter adversary relationship with the Soviet Union reinforced by events in Afghanistan. She has been encouraged in opposition to Vietnam by the diplomatic solidarity expressed by the ASEAN states, which she has sought to sustain. An earlier endorsement of ASEAN's Zone of Peace proposal and support for the regional role of the Association in the cause of denying Soviet advantage has been complemented by an attempt to forge a united front in the wake of Vietnam's invasion of Kampuchea. Coincidence of interest has been most evident in the case of Thailand, whose leadership has valued China's public commitment to that kingdom's external defence, and who exercises a veto power over any joint ASEAN initiative designed to promote a political settlement with Vietnam over Kampuchea. As long as China can assure a government in Bangkok of the utility of seeking to deny 15

Vietnamese dominance in Kampuchea, other states will be obliged to sustain a common diplomatic position with Thailand or risk threatening the cohesion of the Association. For China the conventional imperative of the balance of power is the guiding principle of her policy in South-east Asia. And yet such a policy is not without ambivalent aspects. For example, as long as the Communist Party of China sustains its support, if only in principle, for revolutionary movements in the region - as part of its strategy of denying the penetration of Soviet influence non-Communist governments in the region are depicted as illegitimate. In addition, the claim by China that the overseas Chinese communities resident in South-east Asia represent a patriotic united front and that there exists a 'flesh and blood relationship between the overseas Chinese and the people of the motherland' 5 appears to make a demand on the loyalties of nationals of regional states. From the point of view of these regional states, China's strategy of denial in relation to Vietnam and the Soviet Union is well understood. There is considerable uncertainty and apprehension in assessing her intentions beyond that, particularly as China has demonstrated a willingness to resort to force in a conflict which involved the ill-treatment of an overseas Chinese community. Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Kuan-yew made the point: Our dilemma is acute. If there had been no (Chinese) intervention, we would face Vietnamese supremacy which in this case means Soviet supremacy. If the intervention is over-successful, it means that in ten, fifteen years there will be an assertion of influence, perhaps not amounting to hegemony, by a Communist power that has influence over all guerrilla movements in the countries of Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia. 6 ASEAN

The United States of America In the wake of her related debacles in Vietnam and

Kampuchea in 1975 the United States government visibly lost interest in mainland South-east Asia. Military withdrawal from Thailand by the middle of 1976 was countered, however, by a desire to retain air and naval bases in the Philippines, although negotiations over the revised terms of their operational use were not concluded when Jimmy Carter became President. His campaign promise, incorporated into policy, (although 16

subsequently much modified), to withdraw American ground-combat forces from South Korea served to confirm apprehensions among South-east Asian governments that the United States was in strategic retreat in Asia, although she had taken a firm position ver rights of naval passage through the Straits of Malacca and Singapore. A re-orientation of American policy was indicated following the Vietnamese invasion of Kampuchea, although earlier expressions of interest in South-east Asia were exemplified by the visits of Vice-President Mondale to the Philippines, Indonesia and Thailand in April1978 and by the ministerial dialogue conducted with ASEAN governments in Washington in August that year. Coincidentally, January 1979 marked the successful renegotiation of the military bases agreements with the government of the Philippines, as well as the fall of Phnom Penh to Vietnamese forces. The conclusion of these agreements, which had involved protracted discussions, represented concrete evidence of an American strategic interest which extended through South-east Asia to the Indian Ocean and on to the Persian Gulf. The United States Administration expressed its strong opposition to the Vietnamese overthrow of the Pol Pot regime and its replacement by an evident Hanoi puppet. It was a matter of some irony that the Carter Administration, which had denounced the Pol Pot regime for its gross violation of human rights, should be so aroused by its removal. The concern displayed reflected balance-of-power considerations arising from Vietnam's relationship with the Soviet Union as indicated, for example, in the measure of tolerance accorded to China's military intervention in Vietnam. The immediate response of the United States to the invasion of Kampuchea was to suspend negotiations over the establishment of diplomatic relations with Vietnam, in marked contrast to the formal resumption of such ties with China celebrated by the visit to Washington in January 1979 of VicePremier Deng Xiaoping. For the non-Communist states of South-east Asia a limited revival of confidence in American interest in the region was d'erived from the visit to Washington in February 1979 of Thailand's Prime Minister, General Kriangsak Chamanand. President Carter expressed his commitment 'to the integrity,

freedom and security of Thailand' and reaffirmed the validity of the American commitment under the Manila Pact (or SEATO Treaty) of September 1954. He promised also to step up arms deliveries although the Thai government was less than satisfied with the scale of material assistance until an acceleration in arms transfers after a Vietnamese military incursion in June 1980. American support for the integrity of Thailand was extended, if less explicitly, to the whole of ASEAN. In July 1979 the American Secretary of State Cyrus Vance met the Foreign Ministers of the ASEAN states on the island of Bali at the termination of their annual meeting. His presence there was due, in part, to the acute problem for some ASEAN governments which had arisen from the flow of refugees from Vietnam. It reflected also a greater sense of commitment to ASEAN as an institution and to the denial of Vietnamese political goals. The United States made other gestures which confirmed the direction of her policy including increased naval deployment in the Indian Ocean. Most significant was the decision announced in July that President Carter had halted indefinitely the withdrawal of American combat troops from South Korea, on the grounds that intelligence reports had demonstrated that the size of North Korean forces and armaments were much larger than had been admitted previously. The issue of Kampuchea turned on the consolidation of a pattern of power which had seemed likely to assume a definite form in April 1975. The invasion of that country brought about not only an immediate revival of that prospect but also Soviet backing of Vietnamese dominance. In consequence, the United States became associated with the governments of ASEAN and China in seeking to restore the independence of Kampuchea. But, apart from pursuing the issue within the United Nations, the United States Administration has played a secondary role if supporting an international relief aid operation to Kampuchea across the Thai border which has served to sustain the Pol Pot resistance. Its policy has followed the direction set out by President Nixon on the island of Guam in July 1969, above all in encouraging military self-reliance on the part of regional allies. In response to the crisis which followed the events of January 1979, the US Administration took this course while urging a peaceful resolution of outstanding issues. There

was no consideration of troop deployments. Vice President Mondale made plain in February that it was not America's intention to send American troops anywhere, except under the most extreme compelling circumstances. Cyrus Vance sought to promote the idea of an international conference on Kampuchea following his meeting with ASEAN's Foreign Ministers in July; to no avail because the parties directly involved in the conflict were not disposed to resort to such diplomacy until a decisive test of strength had occurred on the field of battle within the country. In October 1979, in Bangkok, Richard Holbrooke, the United States Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, offered an improvement in his government's relations with Vietnam in return for a withdrawal of its forces from Kampuchea in order to pave the way for a political settlement. But Nguyen Co Thach, then de facto Foreign Minister of Vietnam, refused to link the two issues and the attendant diplomatic impasse has been sustained. American policy towards South-east Asia is an integral, if subordinate, aspect of a wider design in Asia in which the prime object is to ensure that the strategic balance between the United States, China and Japan on the one hand, and the Soviet Union on the other, is not disturbed dramatically, either in a general sense or in respect of a particular sector of the region. Richard Holbrooke defined this policy in June 1978 as an attempt 'not to allow any single power to achieve a preponderance of influence or military superiority in the region'. For the United States, 'A new role has been defined - one that does not return us to the inappropriate earlier level of involvement in the internal affairs of the region and yet does not constitute a confusing and destabilizing "abandonment" of Asia'. 7 Interestingly, the general priorities of policy in Asia which he identified in June 1978 - namely, a strong flexible military presence to help maintain the balance of power, the cornerstone quality of the relationship with Japan, the commitment to normalizing relations with China and the promotion of United States trade and investment - did not have direct relevance to South-east Asia. It was the crisis over Kampuchea which brought South-east Asia within the compass of a revised American policy in Asia. But the commitment which has been expressed since January 1979 and the undertakings that have been 17

assumed in consequence - in particular to Thailand - have not brought nearer the establishment of a non-aligned government in, Phnom Penh which is Washington's declared policy. Such an exercise is beyond American will and capability. In so far as the governing factor in United States global policy is her relationship with the Soviet Union, then she has been concerned to limit the influence in Asia of any states directly identified with the Soviet interest, a view which has been reinforced by events in Afghanistan. Those events may well have indicated the merits of encouraging the disengagement of Vietnam from her close association with the Soviet Union, but such a policy could be promoted only by conceding Vietnamese interests in Indochina, which would bring the United States into conflict with some ASEAN states and China. Moreover, in April 1980 Richard Holbrooke stated publicly: 'Let me be very clear. We are not interested in producing a negotiated acceptance of the Vietnamese occupation of Cambodia'. 8 Historically, the United States has never shown a major direct interest in South-east Asia but has intervened in the region as a consequence of her governments' perceptions of the place of the region in a global framework. Although the focus of her involvement has altered ever since rapprochement with China, containment of a kind has been her objective. From the onset of the Third Indochina War in December 1978, containment has been expressed in an attempt to limit the direct influence of Moscow's regional beneficiary and to ensure the integrity of an allied state most directly affected by that war. This practice of containment has been conducted with restraint and without direct involvement in the prosecution of conflict. The priorities of the United States include upholding the independence of the non-Communist states of the region and maintaining the freedom of sea-lanes essential to the deployment of naval power from the Pacific to the Indian Ocean, as well as to the passage of oil supplies. The fulfilment of these priorities depends primarily on the internal political stability of the littoral states concerned and, in this respect, theroleofthe United States in underpinning that stability remains important but not decisive. The ASEAN states, for their part, have exhibited a greater measure of confidence in Washington in terms of its regional interest, if major doubts were 18

held over the consistency of such interest and over the quality of recent American leadership. There has not been any expectation of a return to a practice of intervention, as in the 1960s, nor indeed is there any real desire for such a return. Economic involvement, a willingness to supply arms and a determination to maintain an offshore naval presence represent the sum of ASEAN requirements which President Reagan is expected to satisfy. Japan

Japan's interest and involvement in South-east Asia was barely interrupted by her failure to enforce her co-prosperity policy during the course of the Pacific War. In the context of the United States' post-war practice of containment of Communism in Asia, the medium of reparations served the process of economic recovery and promoted a relationship of mutual economic dependence with states of the region. Japan's priorities in South-east Asia have been that of access to raw materials, markets and investment opportunities and to safe commercial maritime passage for oil supplies from the Middle East. With the passage of time the balance of economic dependence has shifted to favour Japan, while the region has never occupied the same importance as North-east Asia as a zone of security. Nonetheless, South-east Asia has remained of considerable attraction as an area of economic opportunity which requires stability to be sustained in that role. Although Japanese governments have not been conspicuous in assuming political responsibilities, they have undertaken some diplomatic initiatives in an attempt to reduce regional tensions. The evolution of ASEAN has been in some ways a mixed blessing for Japan in that some of the collective initiatives of the Association have been directed towards redressing the balance of economic advantage. Japan prefers to deal in economic matters on a bilateral basis. However, the measure of intra-regional reconciliation and co-operation achieved as a result of that process of evolution has been regarded as an asset to Japanese policy. Commitment to ASEAN and to economic co-operation with its members on a collective, as well as a bilateral, basis was indicated in the attendance of Prime Minister Takeo Fukuda at the meeting of the Association's Heads of Government held in Kuala Lumpur in

August 1977 to commemorate the tenth anniversary of its formation. The terms of that co-operation were articulated by the Japanese Prime Minister in a speech which he made in Manila in the same month, before returning to Tokyo. Yet Japan's relationship with the ASEAN states was not regarded as an obstacle to engaging in economic dealings with Communist countries within the region after the end of the Second Indochina War. The prospect of additional access to energy resources was an incentive to explore economic co-operation with Vietnam. Indeed, the underlying philosophy of Japan's foreign policy has been to open up options and to avoid having to make invidious choices. In the case of Northeast Asia such a philosophy was confronted by practical obstacles when the opportunity arose not only to conclude a peace treaty with China in August 1978 but also to expand a fruitful economic association. Japan's response to the Vietnamese invasion of Kampuchea has corresponded, in form to that of the ASEAN states, China and the United States. She has continued to recognize the ousted Democratic Kampuchean government. Indeed, she has continued to receive its emissaries, including Foreign Minister Ieng Sary. Japan voted in the United Nations for a withdrawal of Vietnamese forces from Kampuchea but also recorded disapproval of China's 'punishment' of Vietnam. Before the invasion of Kampuchea Japan had provided economic assistance to Vietnam. For the financial year 1979 a total of US$58.5 million had been committed. A concrete measure taken by Japan in response to that invasion was her suspension in April of that aid, even though it entailed prejudicing the undertaking assumed by the government in Hanoi to repay a large debt incurred in the past by the Thieu government in Saigon. Although the suspension of aid has been regarded as provisional in Tokyo, it was renewed for the financial year 1980. Although Japan has well understood the sense of alarm engendered within ASEAN as a result of Vietnam's invasion of Kampuchea, her government, under the late Mr Ohira, was keen to promote a political settlement. A major factor in her calculations has been the belief that any military solution satisfactory to ASEAN could be effected only through Chinese pressure, which would have the consequence of further consolidating the relation-

ship between Vietnam and the Soviet Union. Vietnam's invasion of Kampuchea and the probable establishment of Vietnamese political dominance throughout Indochina was not regarded in Tokyo as a direct threat to Japanese interests. Indeed, recent experience had demonstrated that Japan need not be obliged to choose between Communist and non-Communist South-east Asia in economic relations. However, she has been very concerned about the potential threat posed by the build-up of Soviet military forces in the close vicinity of her home islands. That concern was articulated in the Defence White Paper issued in July 1979 which provided for an expenditure of over US$10 billion - an increase of more than ten percent over the 1978 military budget. In assessing the strategic environment the White Paper drew attention to the enhancement of the military capabilities of the Soviet Union in the Pacific, including the deployment to Vladivostock of the aircraft carrier Minsk and supporting craft. It noted also that, for the first time in eighteen years, Soviet ground forces had been deployed on Kunashiri and Etorofu, two of the four northern islands which have been a constant source of contention since the end of the Pacific War, affecting the basis of relations between the two countries. In addition, after mentioning that the ability of the United States to control sea areas might be further reduced in the future, it stated that, should the Soviet Union gain improved access to port facilities in Indochina, this would affect the military balance in the area and the safety of Japan's sea lines of communication. Although the content and tone of this White Paper and its successor do not indicate any fundamental ijlaterial revision in Japan's long-term defence planning in response to changes in strategic environment, there is no evidence of complacency. 9 A prime consideration is the prospect of a continuing expansion of Soviet naval capability. And in this respect the position of Vietnam is believed to be of major importance borne out by the sighting of the Minsk in Cam Ranh Bay in September 1980. In the light of the above analysis it is evident that the interests of the ASEAN states and Japan over the issue of Kampuchea have been less than fully congruent, although when Japan raises the prospect of Soviet advantage accruing from the continuation of conflict in Kampuchea, a chord is 19

struck in ASEAN capitals. It was for this reason, among others, that Japan's former Foreign Minister Sunao Sonoda, put forward the idea of an international conference on Kampuchea when he met the Foreign Ministers of ASEAN in July 1979 after their annual meeting in Bali. This initiative encountered hostile response from the Vietnamese government which maintained that the situation in Kampuchea was irreversible, while the Chinese government was equally unenthusiastic. Although Japan was unable to induce any movement into the diplomacy of political settlement, she did not relinquish an interest in promoting a weakening of Vietnam's dependence on the Soviet Union. Indeed, this interest was an evident concern of Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Kuan-yew when he visited Tokyo in October 1979, shortly after his Japanese counterpart Masayoshi Ohira had barely retained office following inconclusive general elections. In the context of warning of the growth in Soviet naval and air power in the Western Pacific, Mr Lee urged Japan's denial of economic assistance to Vietnam as a means of isolating her and quarantining the government which she had installed in Kampuchea. Although sustaining its suspension of economic aid to Vietnam, the Japanese government persisted with an attempt to promote a political settlement in Kampuchea in the face of the perceived reality that the Heng Samrin government would not be removed by military means. However, when Mr Ohira visited China in December, he found an adamant refusal to consider such an approach. Indeed both China and Vietnam appeared to be of the same mind in requiring the continued presence of Vietnamese troops in Kampuchea: for the former, this was desirable because of the drain imposed on Hanoi's resources; for the latter, because of the continued military necessity to uphold the Heng Samrin regime and also to demonstrate resolution in the face of Chinese intimidation. In the event Japan was obliged to give up her political initiative and also to sustain her suspension of economic aid to Vietnam, in part because she was then concerned to minimize the offence to the United States over purchase of oil from Iran and also because of a reluctance to antagonize an ASEAN suspicious of the implications of Japan's developing economic relationship with China. With the assumption of office by Zenko Suzuki in

20

July 1980, Japan pledged full and active support for ASEAN initiatives to find a political solution to the Kampuchean conflict. Economic interests and security concerns have widened the scope of Japan's relationships within Asia, primarily within the compass of an alignment of states which find common cause in opposing the expansion of territorial control and influence by Vietnam and the Soviet Union. For Japan the issue of Kampuchea, which has served as a catalyst in regional conflict, is not clear-cut; certainly not in the manner it has been to China or to Thailand and Singapore. Like some other members of ASEAN Japan's political outlook betrays a sense of ambivalence. This ambivalence arises from the fact that the interests of Japan's trilateral associates (China and the United States) as well as those of ASEAN as a diplomatic community, have disposed them to seek the international isolation of Vietnam, which has, accordingly, been obliged to rely on the Soviet Union as her major external source of economic benefaction and military assistance. Japan's concern arises from the prospect that in order to ensure the continuation of that benefaction and assistance Vietnam may have to make naval base facilities available to the Soviet Union on full operational terms and that such an enhancement of Soviet naval power and reach will not necessarily be matched or countered by the United States. Such a consequence is regarded with greater apprehension in Tokyo than any consolidation of Vietnamese dominance in Indochina. At the same time there is no doubt that Japan wishes to preserve the various rights of access which she enjoys within non-Communist South-east Asia, whose governmen ts share her economic philosophy and her principal external affiliations. To this end she is willing to act in a bountiful manner where necessary to help regional governments fend off internal challenges to political stability. However, the effects of regional conflict on the pattern of power in Indochina - to which external contentions have become attached - are beyond the capacity of Japan to regulate, to serve her complex economic and security interests. The Soviet Union The interests and the policies of the Soviet Union within South-east Asia have been governed by

relationships with her principal adversaries, which have had their focus in other regions. Nonetheless, these relationships have prompted increased competitive involvement, particularly since the incorporation of China within their ambit and the transformation of Sino-American relations. The most important co-operative relationship which Soviet governments have maintained within South-east Asia has been with their counterparts in Hanoi - a relationship consummated by treaty in November 1978 and consolidated as a consequence of China's military intervention in Vietnam in February 1979. Although Soviet involvement in South-east Asia was prompted initially by competition with the United States, exemplified in Indonesia as well as in Vietnam, growing rivalry with China was more important. Over Vietnam the Soviet Union sought, with some success, to reconcile the conflicting objectives of promoting the cause of the government in Hanoi and of advancing the attainment of detente with the United States. It also demonstrated the meaning of the term 'adverse partnership' in the joint stand taken with the United States over the issue of unimpeded naval passage through the Straits of Malacca and Singapore. Towards China, the Soviet Union has long sought to practice a strategy of containment, and this was indicated formally in June 1969 when Leonid Brezhnev put forward a less-than-precise proposal for a system of collective security in Asia. Although this proposal has never received serious consideration from the governments of South-east Asia, the Soviet Union did extend her diplomatic ties in the region. However, a striking example of her abiding concern to secure the political disadvantage of China was her reluctance to break diplomatic contact with the Lon Nol administration in Phnom Penh when the ousted Prince Sihanouk set up a government-inexile in Peking in May 1970. In the wake of the Second Indochina War the Soviet Union has been a political beneficiary of the progressive transformation in relations between Vietnam and China. The Soviet Union conducted her relations with Vietnam from a position of considerable advantage, both because of the kind of economic assistance she was able to offer for post-war reconstruction and development, and also because history and geography had combined to render her much less

of a threat to Vietnamese interests than her rival China. Indeed, Vietnam appeared to express her independence of undue Chinese influence through her relationship with the Soviet Union. Initially the government in Hanoi seemed to be not much more than aligned with that in Moscow as was seen, for example, in its echoing of Soviet diplomatic positions on a wide range of issues. That alignment developed into an intimate political relationship after the open armed confrontation between Vietnam and Kampuchea drew China to the support of Kampuchea with serious consequences for the condition of SinoVietnamese relations. The Soviet Union profited from this development: from the serious economic difficulties facing Vietnam which were aggravated by the termination of Chinese economic assistance; from the limited ability of the government in Hanoi to attract aid from the Western world; and from a failure to reach a political accommodation with the United States. In the circumstances the Soviet Union would appear to have made an offer which the politburo in Hanoi could not refuse. In June 1978 Vietnam became a full member of the CMEA. From this moment Soviet and Vietnamese policies in South-east Asia proceeded in evident harmony in competition with China. For example, the two governments embarked concurrently on an apparent change of public heart towards ASEAN by expressing a willingness to look more favourably on the Association's formula for regional order - the establishment of a Zone of Peace, Freedom and Neutrality. However, the course of events in the latter months of 1978 dictated that the Soviet Union should make a choice with consequential costs to her relations with the governments of ASEAN. On 3 November the Soviet Union and Vietnam entered into a Treaty of Friendship and Co-operation which the politburo in Hanoi had not found necessary during the entire course of the Second Indochina War. The circumstances surrounding negotiation of that Treaty bear comparison with those which obtained at the time of the conclusion of the Soviet- Indian Treaty of August 1971 which served to deter any Chinese military response to India's role in the dismemberment of Pakistan. It is not known whether the Soviet Union or Vietnam took the initiative in this enterprise, whether the Soviet Union had been pressing for such a treaty for some time (as in the

21

case of India) or whether she was impelled by a desire for a riposte to the Sino-Japanese Peace Treaty of August 1978. The signature of the Treaty between the Soviet Union and Vietnam indicated the willingness and the ability of the government in Moscow to make a decisive political choice. If the complementary diplomacy of the Soviet Union and Vietnam towards the ASEAN states was negated by the evident consequences of their treaty relationship for the independence of Kampuchea, its outcome appeared to serve the principal purposes of the Soviet Union in the context of her rivalry with China. First, the Treaty sanctified the ideological standing of the Soviet Union through an act of identification with a renowned Third-world Communist state. Second, the evident connection between the Treaty, which contained a security clause, and the unhindered invasion of Kampuchea demonstrated the virtues of the Soviet Union as an ally. However, in undertaking a security obligation to Vietnam in advance of the invasion of Kampuchea, the Soviet Union took the calculated risk that her credibility as an ally might be called into question. She may have assumed also that a Vietnamese army would be able to pacify Kampuchea within the course of one dry season, and that the cost involved in supporting its expedition would be limited. On the other hand, the Soviet government may have calculated that Vietnam's undertaking in Kampuchea would entail such a measure of dependence on the Soviet Union that her government would be able in time to secure operational naval and air-base facilities of major strategic advantage for military deployment in East as well as in South-east Asia. In response to China's military intervention in Vietnam on 17 February 1979, the Soviet Union behaved with caution. Although her obligations under the Treaty of Friendship with Vietnam were reaffirmed, Soviet reaction was confined to a vigorous denunciation of China's 'shameless aggression', limited naval deployment and aerial reconnaissance in the Gulf of Tonkin, and an airlift of arms to an ally stretched militarily in containing the intervention across its northern border while engaged also in protracted pacification in Kampuchea. Soviet prudence would seem to have been governed, in part, by the preference of Vietnam to cope herself, independent of any direct military support. Her

22

conduct would seem also to have been governed as much by the realization that it is easier to initiate a limited punitive strike than it is to bring it to a satisfactory military conclusion as by a reluctance at the time to embark on a course which might prejudice the Strategic Arms Limitation (SALT) negotiations. In addition, the Soviet Union's presumed forebearance gave some credence to her vilification of China as an international deviant, especially among those non-Communist states of South-east Asia disconcerted by the sight of Beijing action as regional gamekeeper. The military obligations of the Soviet Union were never put to a full test because Sino- Vietnamese confrontation was not played out aoutranee on the field of battle. Nonetheless, her credibility as an ally was tarnished somewhat, for China's military intervention in Vietnam represented a demonstration of resolution in the face of Moscow's support for Hanoi. It was also the first occasion on which the territory of a formal ally of the Soviet Union had been invaded, except, of course, by the Soviet Union herself. In consequence, in the absence of direct military support for Vietnam, it became incumbent on the Soviet Union to assist her ally to consolidate its dominance in Indochina - in particular, to help it sustain, by military means, the public legitimacy of the client regime in Phnom Penh. The burden of that obligation has become more onerous with the failure of the Vietnamese army to crush the Pol Pot resistance inside Kampuchea within the course of two dry seasons. Indeed, the cost of sustaining the economy and the defence of Vietnam, as well as her expeditionary forces in Laos and Kampuchea, has been put by Richard Holbrooke at US$3 million a day. The Soviet government may have some mixed feelings about such costly benefaction, particularly as it serves to reinforce the sense of political alienation promoted among the ASEAN states by her connivance in Vietnam's invasion of Kampuchea. The scale of costs, however, is well within Soviet means, and continued Vietnamese dependence serves Soviet strategic purpose. As already noted, one tangible advantage in this respect would be secure access to operational naval and air-base facilities. Vietnam's Prime Minister has been emphatic that the Soviet Union has not been, and would not be, given military bases, if conceding that she had been accorded normal facilities offered to friendly countries . 10 The Soviet

government has confirmed that its warships have been using the facilities of Cam Ranh Bay under the terms of its Treaty of Friendship with Vietnam. 11 This usage has given rise to growing Japanese and American concern. In April 1980 the Philippine government protested to the Soviet Union at the intrusions into its air space of TU95D reconnaissance planes based at Danang. And in November 1980, the Thai government protested at the deployment of the Minsk and three support vessels in the Gulf of Siam. The recent burgeoning of Soviet- Vietnamese relations has been encouraged by force of circumstances which have engaged the complementary interests of Moscow and Hanoi. That relationship has not always been easy or necessarily natural when not forged by the imperatives of the balance of power. In the case of the Soviet Union, the principal incentive in the relationship has been the opportunity to deny political advantage to China. As long as Sino- Vietnamese relations are beset by bitter antagonism and Vietnam is at the same time faced with economic difficulties internally and continuing problems in Kampuchea, then the greater will be her dependence on the Soviet Union and the greater will be the influence of the latter over the self-proclaimed outpost of socialism in South-east Asia. The treaty relationship between the Soviet Union and Vietnam marks the most successful Soviet diplomatic engagement in the political affairs of South-east Asia. Indeed, the Soviet Union has never before enjoyed such an exclusive association with any state in the region. The key to that association is the triangular relationship with

IV.

China. However, one cost of cementing that association has been the evident increase in suspicion and mistrust on the part of the ASEAN states, and articulated most vigorously by the government of Singapore. It would not seem possible for the Soviet Union to erase that suspicion and mistrust unless she acts less wholeheartedly as an advocate and benefactor of Vietnam's attempt to establish dominance in Indochina by force of arms. But the condition of Sino - Soviet relations would seem to indicate that the Soviet Union is not prepared to allow China to appear to secure advantage at Vietnam's expense for the sake of conciliating ASEAN . In the wake of its intervention in Afghanistan, its general support to Vietnam has not wavered, and it formally welcomed Kampuchean leader Heng Samrin in Moscow in February 1980. The Soviet Union would appear to regard the prize of attracting and sustaining the political affections of a Communist Vietnam dominant in Indochina as worth any disadvantages which might accrue in the rest of South-east Asia from being perceived as the patron of a state which has visibly violated the independence of a regional neighbour. Indeed, she has reinforced that perception by her own military action in Afghanistan. The Soviet Union views South-east Asia, from the standpoint of a global power, as a region of marginal direct interest but one where competitive involvement is demanded because of her own rivalry with principal adversaries. Her ideas about regional order, vis-a-vis the pattern of power in Indochina and the issue of naval passage in the maritime part of the region are a product of this global outlook.

THE INTERESTS AND ROLES OF REGIONAL STATES

The conflict in Kampuchea has engaged the competitive interests of external powers in a manner which bears a resemblance to the earlier and more momentous struggle which centred on Vietnam. In both cases external-power rivalry became attached to regional conflict. Indeed that rivalry served to sustain the momentum of conflict up to the point of its violent resolution. Consequently it has not been possible so far for the external powers to agree on a code of conduct which might mitigate their competitive

involvement and so enable regional states to work out for themselves a viable and orderly structure of mutual relations. Two states within South-east Asia, have stood out as candidates for the status of regional powers because of their military performance to date or their presumed J;;JOtential. These are Vietnam and Indonesia. In addition, amid the conflict in Kampuchea over the pattern of power in the mainland of the region, Thailand occupies a critical position as the most vulnerable non23

Communist state and as the member of ASEAN whose views on a political settlement are paramount. In this section of the Paper primary attention will be given to these three states. Vietnam

The qualities that have been generally associated with Vietnam are single-mindedness and tenacity. These qualities, as well as remarkable military and political skills, were demonstrated during the course of a conflict which spread over almost three decades, in which time a cohesive Communist leadership was able to generate sufficient popular support and sacrifice to overcome successively the military challenges of France and the United States. The First and Second Indochina Wars were waged over the identity and bounds of the Vietnamese state, with the Communist Party regarding itself as the legitimate heir of the French colonial power. In prosecuting the costly conflict to unify Vietnam on its own terms the Vietnamese Communist Party established, early on, a patron-client relationship, with a counterpart in neighbouring Laos, which was never relinquished, despite the compromise agreements reached at Geneva in 1954 and in 1962. Indeed the utility of this relationship and the need to maintain it was reinforced by the experience of the Second Indochina War. Laos served as a means to circumvent logistically the boundary and barrier of the 17th Parallel of latitude and also a zone in which to hold at bay hostile ground forces (supported from Thailand) which posed a challenge to Vietnamese Communist interests. By the end of 1975 Laos, in part as a result of Vietnamese intervention, conformed to the political model of Vietnam with power exercised by the Marxist-Leninist (People's Revolutionary) Party. In July 1977 a proclaimed special relationship between the Lao People's Democratic Republic and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam was expressed in a Treaty of Friendship and Co-operation. The preamble to this Treaty stated that the two governments, 'endeavouring to protect and develop the special Vietnam-Laos relationship to make the two countries inherently united in the national liberation cause, remain united forever in national construction and defence'; 12 a statement which may be interpreted as indicating that the economic and security systems of the two states 24

were to be firmly interlocked. At this time the prime regional animus of both governments was directed against those non-Communist states of Asia organized within ASEAN. Thailand had been accused of pursuing a hostile policy, while all the member-states of ASEAN were charged with actively strengthening bilateral military ties with the attendant danger of transforming the Association into a de facto military alliance. In contrast Kampuchea was treated with warmth and fraternity. The Fourth Congress of the Vietnamese Communist Party, convened in December 1976, had made it clear that the special relationship applied to Kampuchea as well as to Laos. Indeed an impression was given that it would not be too long before Kampuchea would be united also in national construction and national defence with her close neighbours. For their part, the governments of Vietnam and Laos then fully supported 'the revolutionary cause of the Cambodian people who, under the leadership of the Cambodian revolutionary organization, are building an independent, unified, peaceful, neutral, non-aligned, sovereign and democratic Cambodia with territorial integrity' . 13 If the Treaty between Vietnam and Laos confirmed one special relationship within Indochina and indicated the prospect of another, the Kampuchean Communist government which came to power in April1975 was not prepared to accept an equivalent place and role to Laos in a Vietnamese order. Although the degree of compromise which the Vietnamese Communist delegation to the Geneva Conference on Indochina of 1954 had been prepared to accept over the political identity of Kampuchea was far greater ihan in the case of Laos, the eastern borderlands of Kampuchea had been of increasing logistic use for the prosecution of the war in South Vietnam from the mid-1960s. Moreover, the overthrow of Prince Sihanouk in March 1970 by a right-wing military regime openly hostile to Vietnamese Communist interests made it necessary to confront and undermine that regime by promoting the growth and military efficacy of a then fledgling Kampuchean Communist movement which had developed as an independent identity only after the Geneva Agreements of 1954, and which did not enjoy a sense of special affinity with its Vietnamese counterpart. The relations between the two parties and military forces during the latter phase

of the Second Indochina War were distinguished by tension and animosity as well as co-operation. After their respective victories in April 197 5 armed clashes occurred almost immediately over land and maritime borders but, it was the nature oftheir relationship which appeared to be at issue, with Vietnam seeking an association comparable to that she enjoyed with her client in Laos. The motives of the Vietnamese Communists have never been explicitly articulated from Hanoi, but one might suggest that the Kampuchean Communists were contemplated as a renegade party subject to a Vietnamese version of the doctrine of limited sovereignty. At the same time Vietnamese experience of protracted conflict gave rise to the priority of ensuring the presence of a suitably friendly government in Phnom Penh. Indeed the vulnerability of a narrow-waisted united Vietnam virtually demanded a zone of forward defence to the west. Before the open break between the governments in Phnom Penh and Hanoi it was not a foregone conclusion that the Vietnamese politburo had any intention of asserting in haste, rather than negotiating, the special relationship which described its ties with Laos and which it had long hoped to see applied to the whole of Indochina. With that break and the attendant rift with China, which developed into open antagonism over the issues of the Hoa people and economic assistance as well as over Kampuchean military intrusions across the border, the position of the government in Phnom Penh came to be viewed with a sense of urgency. At one point its obdurate expressions of independence may have been regarded solely as an obstacle to long-standing Vietnamese Communist ambitions based on a patrimonial view, as well as on revolutionary experience. The increasingly close political association forged betw.:-en Kampuchea and China during 1978 was construed as an unholy alliance of menacing proportions. Thus, if at the outset Vietnam was inspired to establish political conformity in her relationship with her two smaller neighbours in Indochina and was motivated, in part, by a strategy of denial, the incentive to realise such a policy through a decisive application of force majeure was reinforced by the conviction that China had encouraged Kampuchea's stance of confrontation. The openly declared break between Phnom Penh and Hanoi was construed by the

latter as the creation of 'a bridgehead of aggression' on behalf of the Chinese. Indeed it was later maintained that 'they used the reactionary and genocidal Pol Pot-Ieng Sary fascist gang to make war, nibbling at the southwestern border of our homeland hoping to squeeze us in a vice'. 14 In launching an invasion of Kampuchea, on Christmas Day 1978, the Vietnamese politburo took a calculated risk. At a time of major internal economic, social and administrative difficulty, aggravated by the application of economic sanctions by China, Vietnam sought to effect an expeditious internal transfer of power in Kampuchea at an acceptable cost, no doubt encouraged by the Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation concluded with the Soviet Union at the beginning of November. It appeared an opportune moment to strike because the once monastic attitude of Kampuchea to the outside world was changing, and her government appeared to be consolidating its position internationally as well as domestically. However, the initial victory which led to the capture of longemptied towns was of a less than complete nature. Indeed in pacifying the country the Vietnamese forces became dependent on vulnerable and overextended lines of communication requiring supply by Soviet airlift. By the end of the dry campaigning season, in May 1979, Vietnam's goal had not been fully attained and it became necessary to mount a second dry-season campaign in the latter part of the year, involving the deployment of over twenty divisions. Yet, at the close of the 1980 campaign, the Khmers Rouges resistance force was still intact and able to frustrate Vietnam's political design in Kampuchea in great part through access to sanctuary and material supply across the porous border with Thailand. The intention of Vietnam had been evident from the outset. Her leadership was determined to transform the political identity and external affiliations of Kampuchea. It did so by implanting a new government, conveyed into the country in the baggage train of its army, and then by concluding a Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Co-operation (18 February 1979) with that government, which then served as the legal justification for the continued deployment of Vietnamese forces. The political interests of Vietnam have been governed subsequently by 25

military imperatives in that the liquidation of all effective resistance on the part of Pol Pot loyalists has been regarded as essential to protect the Heng Samrin regime from internal challenge. Only with the elimination of such challenge can Vietnam ensure the viability of an acceptable administration and reduce the cost and the size of a conspicuous military presence which does not provide the most practical means of reconciling the Khmer people to incorporation within her sphere of influence. There has been no indication yet that the Vietnamese government has weakened in its resolve to overcome such challenges. From Vietnam's point of view the only alternative would be the intolerable return to power of Pol Pot as a client of China. Vietnam has experienced a conspicuous lack of political success in persuading Thailand and her fellow members of ASEAN to accept the transfer of power in Phnom Penh as a fait accompli. Vietnam's relationship with the ASEAN states had been uneasy well before her revolutionary success at the expense of the government in Saigon. The government of a united Vietnam has looked with suspicion on ASEAN, partly because of the various roles which its members had played in support of United States policy during the course of the Second Indochina War. ASEAN as a regional organization and its declaratory formula for regional order - the proposal for the establishment of South-east Asia as a Zone of Peace, Freedom and Neutrality - have been construed as surrogates for a tattered American alliance system. At the Conference of NonAligned States held in Sri Lanka in August 1976 that formula was attacked as not representing a commitment to 'genuine independence, peace and neutrality'. Nonetheless, representatives of the Vietnamese government expressed a willingness 'to forget the past and establish new relations with other South-east Asian countries on the basis of the four-point policy of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam' . 1s Regional order for Vietnam was contemplated at this time in the light of the experience of American intervention. The government in Hanoi sought, as a general priority, the elimination of American influence. The essence of its policy towards the ASEAN states was to deal with them on a bilateral basis and to establish a structure of relations using the Soviet model of Treaties of Friendship. Vietnamese intent was indicated in a

26

regional tour by former Foreign Minister Nguyen Duy Trinh at the end of 1977. An even more significant set of visits was undertaken by Prime Minister Pham Van Dong in September and October 1978 at a time when the ASEAN governments had become the object of intense diplomatic competition between Vietnam and Kampuchea and also between the Soviet Union and China. This visit, taken together with the invasion of Kampuchea, induced a much greater sense of apprehension of Hanoi's intentions in South-east Asia. Pham Van Dong's tour produced initial expectations of political accommodation. It was distinguished by freely dispensed assurances of non-intervention and by public confessions of past support for Communist insurrection. The Vietnamese Prime Minister sought, without success, to press Treaties of Friendship on his host governments. In retrospect, it would appear that the underlying purpose of his visit was to test the political ground before the invasion of Kampuchea, although it was not necessarily understood in this way by the host governments at the time. Indeed, when shortly afterwards he travelled to Moscow to sign a Treaty of Friendship which included a security clause, a sense of betrayal was engendered. The consequent invasion of Kampuchea was seen by the ASEAN states as a stab in the back. Undoubtedly it represented a shock to their collective nervous systems which has endured as a residual obstacle to any working relationship between its governments and Hanoi. From the point of view of Hanoi there would appear to be a genuine desire for such a relationship (if on a bilateral basis only) but conditional on the recognition and endorsement of the existence of the People's Republic of Kampuchea established on 11 January 1979, and sanctified with the conclusion of a Treaty of Peace and Friendship in the following month. In other words, the ASEAN states have been expected to regard the incorporation of Kampuchea within an exclusively Vietnamese sphere of influence as a special case without prejudice to future relations between them and the government in Hanoi. It is a matter of conjecture whether or not the Vietnamese government sought deliberately to undermine the stability of ASEAN states through encouraging a mass exodus of ethnic Chinese in the first half of 1979. In the event, the political

impact of the flow of refugees had the greatest effect on those ASEAN states, namely Malaysia and Indonesia, which, like Vietnam, were apprehensive of Chinese intentions. And at a United Nations Conference on refugees convened in Geneva in July the Vietnamese government responded positively to international pressures to halt the flow. However, if this action was intended as a gesture designed to modify ASEAN's diplomatic position on Kampuchea, it did not produce the desired effect. The members of the Association persisted within the United Nations in pressing the issue of the Vietnamese invasion. Vietnam's response was to revert to an earlier view of ASEAN . For example, the army newspaper Quan Noi Nhan Dan charged, after the passage in November 1979 of a General Assembly Resolution calling for the withdrawal of Vietnamese forces from Kampuchea: 'The ASEAN countries who directly or indirectly joined the Americans in committing aggression against Vietnam are now toeing the United States and Chinese line in opposing the Indochinese countries' . 16 Within ASEAN the Vietnamese government has reserved its greatest hostility for Singapore because of the outspoken nature of her opposition to its policy in Kampuchea. Thailand has also come in for recurrent criticism for providing cross-border asylum and material assistance for the Pol Pot resistance, and was warned that her government must bear full responsibility 'for its erroneous attitude'. In June 1980 a military incursion was mounted into Thailand in response to the inauguration by the Thai government of a policy of 'voluntary repatriation' of Kampuchean refugees. This action indicated Vietnam's determination, at high cost, to assert and consolidate a special relationship with the whole of Indochina in the face of strong diplomatic and military pressure. China's act of 'punishment' in February 1979 and her continued campaign of intimidation along her common borders with Laos and Vietnam, as well as provision of material assistance to the Pol Pot resistance inside Kampuchea, have not weakened that determination. Indeed the constant refrain from Hanoi since the middle of 1979 has been that the situation in Kampuchea is irreversible. That position has been reiterated in fruitless negotiations with Thailand and also with China, ostensibly over their common border. And, for

the time being, because of the state of Vietnam's relationship with China and the opportunities to be gained from perpetuation of the conflict, the Soviet Union has been willing to pay the bill involved in upholding Vietnam's position. Indeed the Soviet Union has performed the role of natural ally given the deep-rooted and apparently enduring basis of Sino-Vietnamese antagonism. The Vietnamese Communist Party is pursuing an historical ambition which dates from its founding as the Indochinese Communist Party in 1930, reinforced by pressure of population on limited national resources. Its sense of manifest destiny as the dominant party in Indochina has been influenceed by the experience of protracted conflict against France and the United States and, more recently, against China which has posed the greatest threat for obvious geopolitical reasons. The imperative for Vietnam wa1> made explicit by Foreign Minister Nguyen Co Thach in Bangkok in May 1980. He pointed out: 'The solidarity of the Indochinese nations is as important to Vietnam as is the solidarity of ASEAN to Thailand. We have no intention of making an ASEAN country as a buffer zone between our countries and we cannot accept the premise that an Indochina country be made a buffer zone between these groups of countries.' 17 The immensity of the task which Vietnam has assumed in asserting this solidarity, given the scale of her internal economic problems and the continuing externallysupported insurgency within Kampuchea which she is obliged to overcome, means that much of her people's energies will be consumed to this end for some time to come. It is by no means clear whether or not dominance in Indochina may be regarded as the logical limit to Vietnam's strategic bounds and political ambitions. It may be expected that, if in time the government of Vietnam effectively incorporates Kampuchea as well as Laos within a sphere of exclusive influence, she would assume a different kind of interest in the political fortunes of Thailand than if Kampuchea and Laos had assumed the role of genuine buffer states. In other words, for Vietnam, Thailand would then come to assume the role of buffer state. Should Vietnam succ~ed in establishing a major concentration of power within Indochina, the government in Hanoi would find it difficult not to be especially concerned about the political priorities and external affiliations of governments 27

in Bangkok. In such circumstances one would expect it to seek to fashion a structure of regional relations which would ensure that special account be taken of its interests. One priority was indicated in the communique issued after the first joint meeting of the Foreign Ministers of Vietnam, Laos and Kampuchea held in Phnom Penh in January 1980 to commemorate the establishment of the People's Republic of Kampuchea. They pointed out that 'while the United States imperialists are the main enemy of all mankind, the Chinese expansionists and hegemonists are the direct and most dangerous enemy of the three Indochinese peoples' . 18 Thailand

Thailand's military involvement with the United States in the Second Indochina War reflected not only an ideological commitment against Communism but also a determination, arising from historical experience, to deny Vietnamese dominance throughout the valley of the River Mekong. The failure of the United States to sustain her clients in Indochina had shaken that determination by 1975 with the successive military investments of Phnom Penh and Saigon and the more gradual erosion of the position of the Royal government in Vientiane. At that juncture the fragile parliamentary administration of Thailand had some expectation of the country assuming the role of an oriental Finland, even though it had refused to defer to Vietnamese priorities for the whole of Indochina in negotiations in May 1975. Indeed the government of Kukrit Pramoj sought an alternative recourse to countervailing power in establishing diplomatic relations with China. By the end of 1975 a measure of political confidence had returned, and the prospect of a monolithic Indochinese Communism had lessened considerably because of the obdurate expression of independence made by the Kampuchea of the Khmers Rouges. The terror instilled by the Khmers Rouges conveyed to the Thai people what they might expect from Communism. Kampuchea's refusal to accept the role of servile client of Vietnam had attracted the interest and support of China and served to modify the strategic environment of the Thai state. Indeed in time, and to some extent as a product of her increasing difficulty with Kampuchea, Vietnam was pleased to encourage a major improvement in Thai- Lao relations which was exemplified by a

28

visit to Vientiane by former Prime Minister General Kriangsak Chamanand early in January 1979, between the onset of the Vietnamese invasion of Kampuchea and the fall of Phnom Penh, reciprocated by Kaysone Phomvihan in April1979. Vietnam's evident determination to remove a politically intolerable government in Kampuchea and to replace it with one of her own choosing foreshadowed the elimination of a partial buffer between Thailand and her historical enemy. Vietnam's military initiative violated the strategic environment with which the government of Thailand had come to terms after the immediate peril of 1975 had passed. Two critical issues were raised. First, that the Vietnamese were willing to use force in a direct and overt manner in order to overthrow a neighbouring independent government. Second, that as a consequence of that overthrow a fundamental shift seemed virtually certain to occur in the regional balance of power unless the Vietnamese could be prevented from consolidating their position within Kampuchea. Apart from a deep-seated reluctance to be reconciled to the political fait accompli brought about by Vietnamese force of arms, Thailand was not subject to the sense of isolation and vulnerability which she had felt in 1975. In April that year all opposition within Kampuchea to Communist control effectively ceased, while external support for disaffected elements 'Vas virtually non-existent. In January 1979 an internal military option in opposition to Vietnamese control existed and that option has survived two dry seasons.ln addition the People's Republic of China made explicit her determined opposition to Vietnamese dominance throughout Indochina, expressed dramatically through the act of punishment in February 1979. In that month the Thai Prime Minister travelled to Washington, where President Carter reaffirmed the validity of America's commitment under the Manila Pact of September 1954 and promised an acceleration of arms transfers. Furthermore, Thailand's fellow members of ASEAN demonstrated unprecedented political solidarity and refused adamantly both to recognize the Heng Samrin government in Phnom Penh and to withdraw recognition from the ousted Democratic Kampuchean government then headed by Pol Pot.

In 1979 Thailand was better placed to resist Vietnam's violation of the cardinal rule of the international system. Her government was firm in its refusal to endorse such a precedent. Yet at the same time it was reluctant to be drawn into military conflict with Kampuchea because of the uncertainty of such entanglement, and also because a poor military performance by its own armed forces would undermine the position of the administration in Bangkok - which was less than well entrenched. The government of General Kriangsak accordingly pursued an ambivalent policy which may be described as flawed neutrality, one continued by his successor in March 1980, General Prem Tinsulanond. In a diplomatic sense Thailand was not neutral. She continued to recognize and treat with the ousted Democratic Kampuchean regime, even to the extent of providing transit facilities for its ministers to enable them to travel to international conferences. As far as the conflict within Kampuchea was concerned, the Thai government declared itself non-involved and neutral. However, such neutrality was suspect, certainly in Hanoi, as it became evident that the Pol Pot resistance was able to make use of Thai territory along the common border as an active sanctuary and as a source of material resupply. Indeed there is reason to believe that the Chinese government has been able to utilize Thai territory, including its waters, to sustain the forces opposed to the Heng Samrin regime with military assistance. In an attempt to reinforce the impression of neutrality, General Kriangsak went to Moscow in March 1979, the first Thai Prime Minister ever to make such a visit. This visit represented an attempt to trade assurances with the super-power patron of Hanoi concerning Thailand's relationship with China and her non-involvement in the supply of arms through her territory to Kampuchea for assurances about Vietnam's intentions in mainland South-east Asia. It was during this visit that the Soviet Government offered assurances on Vietnam's behalf concerning Thai territorial integrity. In a gesture to demonstrate Thai neutrality, limited permission was granted for Soviet transport aircraft to fly over Thai territory en route to Indochina, a facility that was abused and therefore withdrawn by early 1980. The flawed neutrality of Thailand became an increasingly significant factor in relations with Vietnam in the early part of the 1979-80 dry

season, as Vietnamese forces within Kampuchea resumed their pacification role. As the conflict revived within Kampuchea, particularly along the border with Thailand, the government in Bangkok from October 1979 encouraged a major movement of Kampuchean refugees across its own borders, where they were given sancutuary. One explanation for this willingness to accept hundreds of thousands of refugees, including battle-hardened guerrillas, is that it represented an attempt to eliminate the straddling of the border area by concentrations of Kampucheans in order to reduce the opportunity for major acts of 'hot pursuit' by Vietnamese forces. In addition it may be suggested that, in the light of the holocaust in Kampuchea under the Pol Pot regime and the subsequent human attrition following war and famine, it became important for the Thai government to try to save as many Kampucheans as possible. During the greater part of 1979 it was conventional wisdom in Thailand that the process of conflict and attrition within Kampuchea would undermine the Vietnamese position. But, as the dry season of 1979-80 got under way, it was obvious that attrition through war would also deplete the already ravaged ranks of Kampucheans which could result in the eradication of an ethnic buffer interposed between Vietnamese power and the heartland of Thailand. However, even before General Prem succeeded General Kriangsak in March 1980 Thailand had begun to reverse her open-door policy - in the light of domestic political opposition and apprehension about the degree of economic assistance to maintain the refugees that would be forthcoming from the international community. Nonetheless, the Thai government recognizes the political asset of sustaining refugee concentrations close to the Kampuchean border. The crisis in Indochina which revived with Vietnam's invasion of Kampuchea placed Thailand in a serious predicament. The act of invasion foreshadowed a fundamental change in the strategic environment. It confirmed long-held apprehensions about the inherent aggressiveness and expansionist intent of the Vietnamese. But Thailand was not in a position to contemplate direct engagement of the Vietnamese army - as she did in the r{ineteenth century - in order to deny Vietnam a hegemonial position in Indochina. Thailand has felt a strong compulsion to sustain military resistance, together with an

29

equally strong reluctance to become entangled directly in military conflict. She does not have access to the kind of external countervailing power which is capable of an early revision of the political fait accompli established by Vietnamese force of arms in Kampuchea. Her government was not displeased at the retribution handed out by China to Vietnam but has been careful, nonetheless, not to become openly identified with any Chinese attempts at intervention in either Kampuchea or Laos because of her own vulnerability to the external exploitation of multiple internal insurgency. While Thailand has welcomed a pledge of Chinese support in the event of a Vietnamese attack, her ASEAN partners have been less than enthusiastic about the prospect of an unduly close association between Bangkok and Peking. Thailand has been unwilling to give up this option and has sustained the relationship since General Prem became Prime Minister, if without a fully shared view of the Kampuchean conflict. The United States, for her part, has fulfilled pledges over the acceleration of arms supplies and has also provided funds for the relief of refugees. An underlying sense of insecurity remains, matched by a determination to oppose the consolidation of Vietnamese dominance in Kampuchea as long as is practicable, despite the sense of revulsion felt towards the Khmers Rouges, whom the Thai Government does not wish to see restored to power in Phnom Penh. Thailand's dilemma is that its instrument of opposition to Vietnamese dominance is not acceptable as a political alternative to Heng Samrin. Indeed in April1980 Thailand's Foreign Minister Sitti Sawetsila remarked that his government would even be willing to accept a government headed by Heng Samrin 'if this is the result of a political settlement and if it is not necessary for foreign forces to keep it in power.' 1" In association with her ASEAN partners Thailand has sustained diplomatic opposition to Vietnamese policy in Indochina. She has attracted the ire of Hanoi because of her flawed neutrality, but her direct influence on the pattern of power within Kampuchea is limited. That pattern can only be revised either through a second and decisive Chinese 'punishment', likely to provoke a Soviet military response, or through the ability of the Pol Pot resistance to drain Vietnamese will and resources to a point of compromise. The latter course represents Thailand's policy 30

preference with the objective, the restoration of Kampuchea to some kind of buffer status. In effect, Thailand's limited practical options oblige her to wait on events with the prospects of entanglement in conflict, of an undue burden of refugees and of the emergence by the end of the decade of a major concentration of power in Indochina against which she could well stand in the same relationship as Finland to the Soviet Union - with the same obligation to take special account of the interests of her hegemonial neighbour. Thailand's policy in the wake of Vietnam's invasion of Kampuchea has been beset by a contradiction between the unacceptability of Vietnamese dominance and the near inevitability of that prospect. As a state she does not possess the capability of engaging in more than flawed neutrality. Indeed she lacks the resources to be able to afford to alienate a successful Vietnam. Her own internal condition of multiple insurgency feeding off minority grievance and rural economic decline and discontent makes the policy which she has pursued fraught with danger. It has been based on the premise that Vietnam has overreached herself and is, in effect, a tiger in distress. But if Vietnam emerges as a tiger rampant, the predicament of Thailand will enter a new phase. Indonesia The strategic perspective of the leaders of this distended archipelagic state has been shaped by very different historical experiences to those of Thailand. Indeed the Vietnamese invasion of Kampuchea did not transform the perception of external threat held in Jakarta. The government of President Suharto has always perceived China, rather than Vietnam, as the principal source of long term external threat, even if it has made evident its preference for an independent Kampuchea rather than one subject to the diktat of Hanoi. However, given the unprecedented action by Vietnam in overthrowing an independent neighbouring government and the profound significance of that episode for Thailand, the government of Indonesia was obliged to place its commitment to its ASEAN partner before the cultivation of a special political relationship with Vietnam. The desirability of such a relationship has been influenced partly by the sentimental consideration of the parallel experiences of the two states in challenging

colonial rule. In addition, a further parallel had been drawn between the proprietary claim of the Indonesian nationalist movement :.:oncentrated in Java to the entire area of the Netherlands East Indies and that of the Vietnamese Communist movement to exercise dominant influence throughout the entire area of former French Indochina. The deep-seated Indonesian apprehension of Communism has been moderated in the case of Vietnam because of a belief that her nationalism is the dominant value, that she is not expansionist beyond Indochina and that her strength and vitality will serve to withstand undue pressure from China to the benefit of South-east Asia. Because of the radical political changes which had overcome the mainland of South-east Asia in 1975, the Indonesian government was obliged to give up any expectation of an enlarged ASEAN to encompass all the states of the region. It did not see any advantage in weakening the cohesion of the Association by tolerating the membership of Communist governments. There was also no enthusiasm for making a new start in regional organization in order to overcome the evident unwillingness of Vietnam to join a regional body conceived at the height of the Second Indochina War, and which she regarded as an insidious instrument of American and Japanese interests. An alternative dualistic regional policy was indicated at the first-ever meeting of ASEAN Heads of Government held in Bali in February 1976. Two documents were issued on that occasion. A Declaration of ASEAN Concord articulated the political priorities of the members of the Association with prime emphasis on their common interest in internal security. In effect it reaffirmed a special relationship, developed over eight-and-a-half years, and the sense of shared predicament among the essentially conservative governments of ASEAN in the light of the radical political changes in Indochina. In addition, a Treaty of Amity and Co-operation was promulgated. This Treaty constituted a code of inter-state conduct. It was explicitly made open 'for accession' by other regional states, with Vietnam uppermost in mind. In the event the Bali formulae drew a hostile response from Vietnam but it has remained the policy of the Indonesian government, nonetheless, to persist with the two priorities of reinforcing the solidarity of ASEAN while at the same time seeking to promote a

dialogue with Vietnam in order to forge some basis of shared assumptions about regional order. A prospect of reconciling these two objectives emerged briefly from the middle of 1978 when the public attitude of Vietnam towards ASEAN appeared to change as a consequence of the condition of Sino-Vietnamese relations. There is little doubt that the Indonesian government was greatly encouraged by the visit to Jakarta in September 1978 of Prime Minister Pham Van Dong of Vietnam.That visit, however, was followed shortly by the conclusion of the Treaty of Friendship and Co-operation between Vietnam and the Soviet Union which was itself a precondition for Vietnam's invasion of Kampuchea. This undermined the viability of Indonesia's policy, which was based on a reluctance to make a choice which, in the event, became necessary and inevitable given Indonesia's order of regional priorities. ASEAN was the foundation stone of her foreign policy despite ASEAN's limited prospects for growth. It took first place in the political priorities of the government of Jakarta before the attraction of cultivating a special-relationship with Hanoi. In the circumstances Indonesia was obliged to take special account of the interests and apprehensions of Thailand. Indeed if she were seen or believed to be lacking in support for a fellow ASEAN member which believed itself to be in jeopardy, then, as a consequence, the cohesion and viability of the Association would be undermined seriously. Thus Indonesia, despite her sense of political self as the central power within ASEAN, has been obliged to follow in support of Thailand rather than to lead, as she would have preferred. It is recognized in Jakarta that any ASEAN initiative over Kampuchea requires the prior approval of the Thai government. Although Indonesia has been obliged to make such a choice since January 1979, her government has sought to mitigate the impact of that choice by seeking to keep open a line of communication with its counterpart in Hanoi. However, although Vietnam was not named in the initial ASEAN statement which deplored the intervention in Kampuchea, the momentum and consistency of the diplomatic offensive on which the Association embarked has meant that the prospect of a serious dialogue has not really been possible. Part of the rationale for Indonesia's somewhat ambivalent policy was to try to ensure that Vietnam should

31

not become unduly dependent in her relationship with the Soviet Union or unduly weakened by her confrontation with China. But there has not been any indication of Vietnam being willing to compromise over her priorities in Kampuchea while China's military intervention in Vietnam in February played a critical part in consolidating Soviet- Vietnamese relations. In the circumstances, Indonesia has appeared politically impotent in achieving her would-be role of manager of intra-regional reconciliation. An attempt at negotiations in 1979 through the medium of her Ambassador in Hanoi proved abortive, while the flow of refugees served to promote a measure of reappraisal of the threat of Vietnam within South-east Asia on the part of Indonesia's armed forces. Indeed without altering, in any fundamental sense, their strategic persP.ective, the leadership of the armed forces introduced a greater measure of concern in its perception of Vietnam than had been displayed by the Foreign Ministry. That sense of concern increased by the end of 1979 as a result of negotiations between the two countries over the establishment of a maritime boundary dividing the continental shelf in the South China Sea. It was not a coincidence that the largest -ever exercise in combined operations by Indonesia's armed forces, held in March 1980, took place on islands in the South China Sea. Indication of an increasing sense of irritation with Vietnam might be read also into the positive declaration of intent to contemplate a restoration of diplomatic relations with China. At the onset of the Third Indochina War, the Indonesian government had tended to look at the problem of regional order in somewhat ideal terms. That is, while China and Vietnam were both contemplated with suspicion as revolutionary states, the latter, if separated from the capability of the Soviet Union, was regarded as a much lesser threat, a view reinforced by a sentimental, as well as a realistic perception of Vietnamese revolutionary experience. In the event, Indonesia has not been able to influence the pattern of Soviet- Vietnamese relations and has been obliged to stand firmly by her Thai partner in ASEAN, a commitment which has not assisted the collateral objective of keeping a line open to Hanoi. In effect there has never been a substantial enough political connection on which to base such a dialogue. Because of the place of ASEAN in its 32

regional priont1es, the Indonesian government cannot acknowledge a Vietnamese-dominat ed Indochina in advance of Thai endorsement. Yet, despite the significant diplomatic solidarity expressed by the ASEAN states, Indonesia, with her partners, is not in a position to do more than help to deny international legitimacy to the Heng Samrin government. In concert they have refused to acknowledge and endorse the externally enforced internal transfer of power, and have taken a calculated risk that such an internal transfer will fail to be consolidated. In the event of such consolidation it will, of course, be Indonesia and her ASEAN partners that will be obliged to come to terms with a hegemonial Vietnam. For this reason there has been unofficial Indonesian urging that Thailand reach an accommodation with Vietnam before it is too late. The circumstances of the Vietnamese invasion of Kampuchea and the need for Indonesia to stand publicly by Thailand has meant that Indonesia has not been able to exercise any truly independent initiative in the management of regional order. There has been some indication of military contingency planning in the event of Thailand being subject to invasion, as opposed to 'hot pursuit', but no real enthusiasm for such a role in which Indonesia would be obliged to respond to events rather than to shape them. In addition Indonesia lacks the logistical capability with which to lend effective military support to Thailand. In a situation in which it has been impossible to bring any force to bear to revise the pattern of power in Indochina or to moderate Thai resistance to Vietnamese policy in Kampuchea, and in which it has been impossible also to insulate intra-regional conflict from extraregional involvement, Indonesia, as the largest and most populous member of ASEAN, still finds elusive the role of credible manager of regional order.

Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines In contemplating the different interests and policies of Vietnam, Thailand and Indonesia it is evident that the government in Hanoi calls the political tune in its dealing with its counterparts in Vientiane and Phnom Penh, as can be seen in the outcome of meetings of Foreign Ministers in the Kampuchean and Laotian capitals in January and July 1980. No government within ASEAN exercises equivalent political influence. Thailand and

Indonesia cannot work together in complete political harmony, for their priorities for regional order are not fully congruent. The same is true of their ASEAN partners who reflect the basic differences in Thai and Indonesian strategic perspective. The most vociferous in opposition to the Vietnamese invasion, as well as to the Soviet role, has been Singapore who has articulated publicly what the Thai government has been inhibited from expressing openly. It was Singapore's Foreign Ministry which stated in January 1980 that 'We in South-east Asia are equally aware that the Soviet action in Afghanistan comes on top of its massive military support to Vietnam to overrun and occupy Democratic Kampuchea. ' 2°Conscious of its own vulnerabili ty arising from size, location, economic function and ethnic identity, Singapore's government also perceives the managemen t of regional order in terms of a balanced application of external countervailin g power. It is conscious of the dangers which could flow from China being able to bend Vietnam to her will. And it is most concerned that the United States should play a full role in upholding a regional balance in response to what it sees as a forward movement from the Soviet Union. Indonesia, however, has been less alarmed by Soviet initiatives than Singapore and thus perceives Soviet intervention in Afghanistan as the natural action of a great power which should be conceded a role in South-east Asia as a counter. to Chinese influence. She is in accord with Singapore on the desirability of a visible US presence as an essential make-weight against competitive Sino-Soviet involvement. Malaysia, although upholding the principle of non-recognit ion of the Heng Samrin government V.

because of the manner of its advent has been a pioneer in advoc;ating an indigenously-based system of regional order which, in diluted form, matches Indonesian priorities. To this end the Malaysian government has also combined diplomatic resistance to Vietnam's policy in Kampuchea \Vith a desire to sustain a dialogue with Hanoi, exemplified in the fruitless visit there in January 1980 by Foreign Minister Tengku Ahmad Rithauddeen which was reciprocated by Foreign Minister Nguyen Co Thach in May. Its policy, governed also by a quality of ambivalence , corresponds more closely to that of Indonesia than that of Thailand in also regarding China as the principal long-term source of external threat. The Philippines, which enjoys a position of maritime insulation, though beset by internal Communist and Moslem rebellion, has been least directly affected by the transformati on in the pattern of power in Indochina. Indeed she has been to an extent a beneficiary of SinoVietnamese conflict which has helped to insulate her claim to one of the island groups of the SpratJy· Archipelago in the South China Sea. The Philippine government has also expressed a strong refusal to endorse the political fait accompli in Kampuchea yet, in its concern not to be unduly provocative to Vietnam and to keep open options for dialogue, its position has been closer to that of Indonesia and Malaysia than to that of Thailand and Singapore. It is important to be aware, in the light of this analysis, that the diplomatic solidarity exhibited by the ASEAN states barely conceals underlying differences of strategic perspective which do not find a counterpart in the relations between Vietnam and her client states in Indochina.

THE PROSPECT S FOR REGIONAL ORDER

The entangling conflict over Kampuchea has demonstrate d, for the time being at least, that the elusive goal of regional order is beyond the cooperative endeavours of the regional states. It is not just a matter of capability. The states of South-east Asia are beset by an acute political polarization. At the same time the central issue which divides Vietnam and her clients from the ASEAN states - namely, the appropriate pattern of power for Indochina - also divides external

states of global consequence who are not readily disposed to compromise or to accept a resolution of conflict to their disadvantage . In this respect regional order would appear to be no nearer to a point of achievement than at the height of the Second Indochina War. The regional states broached seriously the problem of regional order with the advent of ASEAN in August 1967, even though the founding document of that Association made only 33

secondary reference to the promotion of 'regional peace and stability'. This less publicized priority became a more pressing concern shortly after ASEAN's formation, when decisive changes were perceived in the balance of external influences bearing on South-east Asia, arising, in particular, from a fundamental revision in American policy. Greater common attention to the problem of regional ordei was indicated with the enunciation in November 1971 of a proposal for the recognition of South-east Asia as a Zone of Peace, Freedom and Neutrality. This proposal which was a diluted version of a more precise plan advocated by the government of Malaysia - was the outcome of an ad hoc meeting in Kuala Lumpur of the Foreign Ministers of ASEAN and not of the Association as such, which did not then identify itself formally with it. Although this meeting hammered out a highest common denominator of a position and rejected Malaysia's suggestion of external power guarantees, it marked a watershed with the articulation of a policy that has been proclaimed with consistency by ASEAN from the start of the second half of the decade. At an informal meeting in Kuala Lumpur in December 1979 the Foreign Ministers of ASEAN reiterated that it was their desired goal to secure South-east Asia as a region free from interference by outside powers or from involvement in great power rivalry. If, in November 1971, the ASEAN states were still reluctant to identify formally their organization with a proposal embracing the entire region, the success of revolutionary Communism in Indochina during 1975 served to revise their priorities. The turning point in the evolution of ASEAN into a security organization of a limited kind occurred with the convening of the first -ever meeting of its Heads of Government in Bali in February 1976. Fear of the consequences of the emergence of a concentration of Communist power in Indochina was responsible for this unprecedented occasion. Although by the time of the Bali Summit it was evident that the Kampuchea of the Khmers Rouges had rejected the role of servile client of Vietnam, the ASEAN states were sufficiently alarmed for common political priorities to be incorporated into the public pronouncements of the Association. Regional order was approached in three ways. The five heads of government made explicit in their Declaration of ASEAN Concord the view that 34

political stabJlity and internal security were indivisible within the bounds of the Association. In this respect they identified ASEAN as a security organization with an internal focus. Indeed they asserted that 'the stability of each member-state and of the ASEAN region is an essential contribution to international peace and security. Each member-state resolves to eliminate threats posed by subversion to its stability, thus strengthening national and ASEAN resilience.' The declaration affirmed also a commitment to the Zone of Peace formula which had been designed for the whole of South-east Asia. At its formation the members of ASEAN indicated that the Association was open for participation to all states in South-east Asia which subscribed to its aims, principles and purposes. Any early promise of expansion of membership was not fulfilled and, by the end of the Second Indochina War, there was every prospect of acute regional polarization. As indicated above, the ASEAN governments sought to overcome the dilemma of either inviting Communist membership of the Association or of making a fresh start in regional organization in an attempt to avoid such polarization and any attendant conflict. The Treaty of Amity and Co-operation was the means adopted to try to create a wider structure of ordered inter-state relations. The Bali formulae were intended to provide an opening to Vietnam and Laos in an attempt to promote a political modus vivendi and an accord about limiting the involvement of external powers without sacrificing any of the essential interests of ASEAN governments. The ASEAN initiatives drew a hostile response from the government in Hanoi, which regarded the Zone of Peace proposal as an unacceptable basis on which to construct a system of regional order. At the Conference of Non-aligned States held in Colombo in August 1976 Vietnamese and Laotian opposition denied the Zone of Peace proposal a place in the final communique. The Vietnamese position was made explicit by Ngo Dien, an assistant to the Foreign Minister, who commented: It should be made clear that the Socialist Republic of Vietnam has many times declared its support for the efforts of the South-east Asian countries for genuine independence, peace and neutrality. But we did not agree to insert this question in the resolution of the

summit conference in the name of the Kuala Lumpur declaration of ASEAN, a declaration issued at the very moment when the ASEAN countries were directly or indirectly serving the US aggressive war in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia in complete contravention of the principles of the non-aligned movement ... The Vietnamese people are ready to forget the past and establish new relations with other South-east Asian countries on the basis of the four-point policy of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam which has been approved by the· governments of these countries themselves. But we decidedly do not tolerate any scheme to revive a none-too-bright past of ASEAN and to sell an outmoded and bankrupted policy of this organisation. 21 ASEAN was regarded by Vietnam as a substitute for the South East Asia Treaty Organization. The economic and political philosophies of its governments, the nature of their external affiliations and, of course, their record during the Second Indochina War had made the enterprise suspect. Accordingly, the Zone of Peace proposal was construed as designed to conserve American and Japanese interests and as a challenge to those of Vietnam. An alternative Vietnamese formula for regional order, which also included the term neutrality, was based on experience of confrontation with the United States and indicated a determination to reduce further her presence and influence in the region. In consequence there did not exist any basis in common assumptions on which the ASEAN states and Vietnam (with Laos) might come to terms. Vietnam was unwilling also to recognize the corporate standing of ASEAN, especially in respect of its claim to prescribe for the management of regional order. In place of the proposal for a Zone of Peace, Freedom and Neutrality, Vietnam substituted an alternative plan for a zone of 'peace, genuine independence and neutrality', which implied scepticism of the legitimacy of ASEAN governments. A new form of regional cooperation was mooted during the course of a visit to Malaysia in 1977 by Vietnamese Foreign Minister Nguyen Duy Trinh. At the end of that year Prime Minister Pham Van Dbng was asked 'What kind of relations are you going to establish with ASEAN?; He replied, 'The policy of setting up such military blocs as ASEAN in South-east Asia has failed and passed forever. The

relationship of friendship and co-operation among countries of this region must be established on the new basis, in a new spirit ... ' 22 An indication of the Vietnamese conception of 'a new basis' was provided during the course of a tour of ASEAN capitals by Pham Van Dong in September and October 1978. In the middle of that year an apparent reversal occurred in Vietnamese public attitudes towards ASEAN, prompted undoubtedly by the marked deterioration in Sino- Vietnamese relations. However, this Vietnamese opening to the ASEAN states did not incorporate any real willingness to defer to their priorities on the subject of regional order. Indeed, the Vietnamese Prime Minister made it quite clear that his government would prefer the establishment of a structure of regional relations based on the conclusion of Treaties of Friendship on a bilateral basis. Intra-ASEAN diplomacy brought about a closing of ranks in the face of this initiative and, in the event, the various communiques which recorded the consensus attained in each capital reflected a merger of symbols but not policies. For example, at the conclusion of Pham Van Dong's first visit to the region, to Thailand, the joint communique stated inter alia:

The two Prime Ministers expressed their respective views on the desirability of Southeast Asia being an area of peace, independence, freedom and neutrality as well as of stability and prosperity. In this connection, the Thai Prime Minister reiterated Thailand's commitment to work toward the realization of the ASEAN concept of the zone of peace, freedom and neutrality 23 If assurances of non-interference in the internal affairs of regional states by the Vietnamese Prime Minister were received in ASEAN capitals with a measure of satisfaction as indicating the prospect of an agreement on the kinds of self-denying ordinances incorporated in the Treaty of Amity and Co-operation, the subsequent conclusion of the Treaty of Friendship and Co-operation between Vietnam and the Soviet Union in November 1978 revived underlying apprehensions. These apprehensions were confirmed with Vietnam's consequent invasion of Kampuchea which was regarded virtually as an act of treachery. Vietnam's willingness to violate the cardinal principle of the international system was more than disconcerting to the governments 35

of the ASEAN states, who were only too conscious of the implications of endorsing a precedent which might well be applied first of all to the detriment of their frontline member, Thailand. In consequence they refused to be reconciled to the internal transfer of power within Kampuchea and mounted a successful diplomatic campaign during the course of 1979 and also in 1980 which played a major part in denying international recognition to the implanted Heng Samrin Administration. The political gap between ASEAN and Vietnam widened over the issue of an appropriate structure of regional relations. A political gap emerged also within ASEAN itself. Thailand, supported strongly by Singapore, has been bitterly opposed to the consolidation of Vietnamese dominance within Indochina, whereas Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines, while sympathetic to Thailand's sense of vulnerability, have been more directly concerned with Vietnam's mode of exercising influence (by force of arms) and her relationship with the Soviet Union than by the ultimate prospect of her exercising a hegemonial position in Indochina. Despite the common imperative of solidarity within ASEAN, underlying differences exist within the Association over whether or not a policy of accommodation should be pursued in order that a strong Vietnam dominant in Indochina might serve as an obstacle to Chinese influence. For Vietnam the retention and recognition of her special position throughout Indochina has been central to her relationship with the ASEAN states. Her government has indicated a readiness to enter into a more constructive political relationship with them, if on a bilateral basis. However, true political accommodation from Vietnam's point of view demands a recognition of the fait accompli achieved on 11 January 1979 with the proclamation of a People's Republic of Kampuchea which was consummated politically on 18 February with its conclusion of a Treaty of Peace and Friendship with Vietnam. In other words, the ASEAN states have been expected to treat the incorporation of Kampuchea within an exclusively Vietnamese sphere of influence as a special case without prejudice to future relations between themselves and the government in Hanoi. There has not been any collective meeting of minds on this issue. Indeed open anger has been displayed towards the ASEAN states for their role in sponsoring resolutions in the United Nations 36

General Assembly in 1979 and 1980, calling for the withdrawal of Vietnamese troops from Kampuchea, which secured overwhelming majorities. As a result the governments of ASEAN were accused of 'crudely interfering' in the internal affairs of Kampuchea. In December 1979 Vietnam's Foreign Ministry made clear its position: It should be noted that the Kampuchean situation cannot be altered. . . The time has come for South-east Asian countries to agree on how to make South-east Asia a region of peace, independence, freedom, neutrality, stability and prosperity and to resist the Chinese expansionists' scheme of sowing discord among them and undermining peace and stability in the region. 24 Vietnam attends to her security needs by military deployment in both Laos and Kampuchea, justifying this deployment on the basis of treaty rights and threats from China, and she is sustained in her policies through the materiaf benefaction of the Soviet Union. ASEAN by contrast, is essentially a diplomatic community, even if it pursues security objectives. It does not possess the structure and capability of a viable alliance. Political intitiatives designed to effect Vietnamese troop withdrawals from Kampuchea have not been matched by any novel forms of military co-operation. Bilateral military co-operation has been conducted along the common borders of Thailand and Malaysia and of Malaysia and Indonesia from before the formation of the Association. Such co-operation has had an internal focus reflecting the principal overall direction of security concerns. But cooperation in counter-insurgency, in exchanges of intelligence, as well as in bilateral and occasionally trilateral military exercises, has been undertaken outside the formal auspices of ASEAN. A measure of contingency planning has been adopted in respect of the development of individual defence capabilities 25 and to meet the prospect of a direct threat to the territorial integrity of Thailand but without any indication of collective action being contemplated. At one point - in the latter part of 1979 - there was some speculation that ASEAN was contemplating a more positive security role and that a conference of ASEAN Defence Ministers would be convened to this end. The former Thai Prime Minister General Kriangsak Chamanand indicated that the

idea of a meeting of ASEAN Defence Ministers could be explored, but he said also that such a meeting could be only for the purpose of exchanging ideas and not for discussing military ties which would violate ASEAN principles. Such a meeting has yet to be convened. In October 1980 General Prem reaffirmed that ASEAN was not a military bloc. In effect the Association has never been in a position to contemplate concerted military action to reverse the politicaljait accompli accomplished by Vietnamese force of arms. It has been obliged to rely on diplomacy as a weak alternative. Such an instrument has been successful at the United Nations but not in direct dealings with the government in Hanoi. An informal meeting of ASEAN Foreign Ministers held in Kuala Lumpur in December 1979 instructed Malaysia's Foreign Minister, Tengku Ahmad Rithauddeen, to visit Hanoi in his capacity as Chairman of the Association's Standing Committee in order to demonstr~te its interest in ending the conflict in Kampuchea by dialogue. The Vietnamese government, however, pointedly refused to receive Tengku Rithauddeen in that capacity. Indeed, in January 1980 the Foreign Ministers of the Indochinese states convened their own separate meeting in Phnom Penh where they reiterated that 'the situation in Kampuchea is

irreversible'. In addition an offer was made to all the other governments in South-east Asia, including that of Burma, to exchange views and sign 'bilateral non-aggression treaties' in order 'to make South-east Asia a region of peace, independence, democracy, neutrality, stability and prosperity'. The governments of ASEAN responded negatively to this initiative. Tengku Rithauddeen travelled to Hanoi but only in his capacity as Foreign Minister of Malaysia and brought back with him no more than the agreement of Vietnam to engage in continuing dialogue with members of ASEAN on a bilateral basis. The limits to such a dialogue were demonstrated by the visit of Nguyen Co Thach, Vietnam's Foreign Minister, to Bangkok in May 1980. The Thai government refused to depart from its commitment to the restoration of Kampuchea as a buffer state. Nguyen Co Thach would not countenance such a prospect: he was only prepared to consider a settlement of the Kampuchean conflict on the basis of the acceptance of the fait accompli imposed in Janu,ary 1979. Indeed withdrawal of Vietnam's forces from Kampuchea was made conditional on the removal of the threat from China and not on termination of Thai support for the Pol Pot resistance.

CONCLUSION In South-east Asia the 1980s have ushered in political polarization and political impasse. The issue of Kampuchea has aggravated the divisions between the ASEAN states and Vietnam in particular, and has become the dominant symptom of an inability on the part of regional states to agree on common assumptions for the management of regional order. Any prospect of a compromise of position leading to a measure of accommodation will depend on internal resolution of conflict within Kampuchea. Only after a decisive result on the field of battle will contending regional and extra-regional parties be in a position to review their priorities. However, even in such a circumstance it would not necessarily be possible for regional states to assume any measure of exclusive responsibility for the management of regional order. The

central issue which has been raised as a consequence of the continuing conflict in Kampuchea - namely, the acceptability of the pattern of power in Indochina - has engaged the interests of extra-regional states whose involvement on the side of contending clients has not only sustained the momentum of conflict but has also made its eventual resolution in political terms more difficult. The conflict which has endured in Kampuchea is far-reaching, as it is of a kind which dovetails local and international disorder. The outcome is of paramount importance to China because of her geographic location and her conviction that Vietnam is serving the interests of the Soviet Union. Ironically the policies which have flowed from such a conviction, including the act of 'punishment', have had the effect of reinforcing 37

the close relationship between Vietnam and the Soviet Union. Nonetheless, the Chinese government has shown itself totally unreconciled to the establishment of Vietnamese dominance in Indochina, which would appear to be a necessary condition if Vietnam is to be able to reduce her degree of dependence on Soviet material and political support. China's concern at the extension of Soviet influence through the instrument of an expansionist Vietnam has been shared by the United States and reinforced by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. In practical terms the nettle of regional order cannot be grasped firmly until the issue of who is to rule in Kampuchea is settled one way or another, with regional and extra-regional acceptance. Vietnam has not shown any indication of moving from her strongly held position that 'the situation in Kampuchea is irreversible'. Given that the Soviet Union is willing to sustain her materially in maintaining that position, any disengagement in the relationship between Vietnam and her Soviet benefactor would seem likely only if two conditions are satisfied. First, if Vietnamese forces are able to overcome all internal resistance within Kampuchea; second, if China makes clear, in time, that she is willing to be reconciled to the special position of Vietnam in Indochina. Such circumstances could then provide an opportunity for the United States, Japan and the countries of the European Community, as well as those of ASEAN, to promote the greater independence of Vietnam through economic co-operation, including participation in the exploitation of offshore oil resources. At the same time it would be important for any attendant accommodation between a Vietnamese-dominated Indochina and the ASEAN states to be buttressed by substantial Western economic involvement and military assistance, particularly for Thailand. A major obstacle in this scenario is the resilience of internal resistance in Kampuchea (supported from Thailand) while the Chinese government has pursued policies which have served to reinforce its own suspicions of the role of Vietnam in the region. To the extent that it has driven Vietnam deeper into the political embrace of the Soviet Union, the outcome has been a distortion of strategic priorities. Nonetheless, the Chinese government has given no sign of a reversal of policies designed to apply pressure on and to 38

weaken Vietnam, while the events in Afghanistan have reinforced this hard line. This attitude highlights a central problem in the promotion of regional order within South-east Asia: given the persistent engagement of the interests of external powers in the affairs of the region, the problem of regional order can be approached and overcome only if some form of balance or accommodation of interests can be worked out between regional states and their competing external patrons. In this respect a common basis for regional order would seem most likely to be acceptable to those external powers least competitively engaged, and least acceptable to those external powers most competitively engaged. Within South-east Asia political polarization has crystallized between the Vietnamesedominated Indochinese governments and those of ASEAN, with Burma following their diplomatic position on Kampuchea which is, of course, acceptable to China. The governments of ASEAN have taken a calculated risk in maintaining concerted opposition to the Vietnamese military presence in Kampuchea in the absence of countervailing military capability. They do not possess the collective strength to influence a pattern of power in Indochina which pivots on the outcome of conflict within Kampuchea. Their common policy entails waiting for signs of Vietnamese weakness. Yet the Association, if bound by a shared apprehension over the prospect of future Vietnamese pressure on Thailand, is beset also by differences of strategic perspective in relation to China. Vietnam has sought to exploit these differences by representing herself as a dam in the river of Chinese expansionism in the region. She has sought to play on the fears harboured by some ASEAN members that some of their number may be moving too close to China - the only power which has demonstrated a willingness and capability to use force in response to Vietnam's expedition into Kampuchea. For the time being there is no indication of genuine movement towards intra-regional accommodation. Neither the Indochinese states, led by Vietnam, nor Thailand, supported by ASEAN, have been prepared to defer to each other's strategic priorities. Vietnam remains relentless in her determination to assert and consolidate a special relationship throughout Indochina but the ASEAN governments have not been fully united in how to respond collectively to

the prospect of a concentration of power in the mainland of the region. Singapore and Thailand have exhibited the greatest concern over this prospect; but the other members of ASEAN, although committed to upholding the solidarity of the Association, have not relinquished the hope that a territorially sated Vietnam might in time become a partner in a system of regional order based on restriction of the competitive involvement of external powers. It is a moot point whether any such system would be contemplated by Vietnam unless that restriction applied equally to China and to the United States. And in respect of the United States even ASEAN governments who have been in favour of dialogue rather than total diplomatic confrontation with Vietnam are likely to be equivocal. Whatever reservations may be held about US reliability, all ASEAN governments require her visible presence in the region. If there has been no sign of intra-regional accommodation, there has equally been no sign of

such a prospect among external powers, although Japan has been least enthusiastic about being drawn into a pattern of polarization. Without a clear-cut end to resistance and pacification within Kampuchea, China has remained totally unreconciled to the internal transfer of power within that country, while the Soviet Union continues to fulfil her pledge to sustain Vietnamese political priorities. Furthermore, the effect of the Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan has served to harden the attitudeG of her adversaries. It should be understood that it is not really possible to come to grips with the problem of regional order in South-east Asia until the internal clients of competing external patrons have first resolved in Kampuchea the issue of the pattern of power in Indochina. The eventual resolution of this internal test of military strength will be the starting point for any reappraisal and readjustment of relations both for states resident in South-east Asia and for those external to the reg10n.

NOTES 1 For a discussion of this i;sue see Bruce Grant, The Boat People. an 'Age' investigation (Harmondsworth, Middx: Penguin Books, 1979). Chapter 4. 2 Quoted in Wang Gungwu, 'China and the Region in Relation to Chinese :\linorities', Contemporary Southeast Asia, val I, no I. May 1979. 3 BBC Summary of World Broadcasts (SWB), FE/6072; A3/9. 4 SWB, FE/6010/AJ/3. 5 BeijinK Review, 26 May 1978. 6 Singapore Bulietin, August 1979. 7 'US Policy in Asia: Changing Perspectives', Address to the Western Governors' Conference in Honolulu, 16 June 1978. 8 'The Indochina Situation: A Continuing Threat to Peace', Address to the Council on Foreign Relations, New York, 2 Aprill980. 9 See ian Nish, 'Japan's Security Preoccupations', The World Today, November 1980. 10 In May 1979. See SWB, FE/6127/A3/5 and again in September 1980, SWB FE/6532/ A3/2. 11 International Herald Tribune, 15 ~lay 1979 12 SWB, FE/5567 I A3/9.

13 Joint Vietnamese- Laos statement made during visit of SRV delegation in July 1977. See SWB, FE/5567/ A3/5. 14 Vietnam News Agency, 4 March 1979. SWB, FE/6059/ A3; 3. 15 The principles of the policy of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam regarding the basis for the establishment and development of relations with South-east Asia countries were outlined by Foreign Minister Nguyen Duy Trinh in an interview with the Vietnam News Agency on 5 July 1976. 16 16 November 1979. SWB, FE/6277/A3/2. 1 ' Bangkok Post, 22 May 1980. 18 SWB, FE/6313/ A3/9. 19 Bangkok Post, 3 April 1980. 20 SWB, FE/63!0/Cl/9-10. See also From Phnom Penh to Kabul, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Singapore. Sept. 1980. 21 SWB, FE/5298/ A3/3. 22 See Far Eastern Economic Review, 13 January 1978. 23 SWB, FE/5914/ A3/2. 24 SWB, FE/6303/ A3/4-5. 2 ' Such capabilities are now subject to substantial reinforcement. See Far Eastern Economic Review, 24-30 October 1980.

39

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No. 105. NEV. APPROAl HL':> TO AR'-1'-i Rt D\ 'C T10:-. I~ ELIHJPl by Joseph l. Coffe). Autumn 1974. EL'ROPE.:: PJ\RJ IV: Mit II A.R'l Dm TRJ:--.l &.."JD Tu H~OI oc,\ by Ste\en Canby. Winter 1974.'75. No. Ill. fHE: ARAB-hRALL WAR. Oc !OBI R 1'173- BAc ~o.c !rom the I ISS Eighteenth Annual Con terence. Spring

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