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March 1977–March 1978

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Western Responses to Human Rights Abuses in Cambodia, 1975–80

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Abstract

From early 1977 to March 1978, tensions mounted between Cambodia and Vietnam and the great power backers of each. With the limited Vietnamese invasion in December 1977 and Cambodia’s subsequent public denunciation of Vietnam, they intensified by a quantum leap. Although Western states took pains not to get involved in the dispute, maintaining neutrality was an impossibility. This was especially true for a great power with such widespread interests as the United States. As Washington, under the newly inaugurated Carter administration, began to move towards closer relations with China, this was necessarily a step away from neutrality in the Sino-Soviet global dispute, and towards a more hostile position vis-à-vis the USSR. Taken to its logical conclusion, it was also a step which gave Washington and Phnom Penh a similar interest in opposing the extension of Soviet and Vietnamese power in Southeast Asia.

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Notes

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Harvard Law School, USA

    Jamie Frederic Metzl (Lecturer)

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  1. Jamie Frederic Metzl
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© 1996 Jamie Frederic Metzl

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Metzl, J.F. (1996). March 1977–March 1978. In: Western Responses to Human Rights Abuses in Cambodia, 1975–80. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-24717-2_4

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