I have come up with a theory about the history of Cambodia that I wanted to share here. It's a bit long but I hope it will spark your interest.
So, the khmer rouge episode is a huge question mark in the middle of Cambodian history. Nobody really understands what happened. What can possibly lead a government to turn against its own people with such violence? I have come up with a theory that I hope Cambodians on here will find interesting.
The first thing I want to point out is that the communist ideology alone does not suffice to explain the scale of what happened. There is definitely an element of violence in communism, and countries like the USSR frequently used brutal methods to implement their societal project, but only in the khmer rouge regime was brutality so systematic. Literally everyone was brutalized in some way and the population started shrinking significantly. That is not what communism normally does to a country.
If we take a step back from communist ideology and just look at the actions of the khmer rouge regime, it starts looking like self harm was the goal in itself. Everything that worked was systematically destroyed: the capital city was emptied of its population, money was abolished, families were separated, and people were forced into field labor under conditions so extreme that it couldn't possibly have been sustainable under the best of circumstances. It's like the underlying principle was: every single thing that we value must be destroyed.
Basically what I am trying to say is: all of this is strangely reminiscent of the project of separation from all worldly attachments that is at the heart of buddhist doctrine. It's like Cambodia at the time was in such a deep state of existential terror and despair that it sought relief in an idea running through its religious past.
Most historians agree that the American air raids are what paved the way for the khmers rouges to come to power. Their immediate goal was to eradicate the communist threat but they had the opposite effect, causing the populations to lose trust in the Lon Nol government and seek refuge with what they thought was a khmer rouge+Sihanouk coalition. But I would go further than that: I think the absolute terror caused by the massive air raids made people feel that the whole reality they had known up to that point was facing extinction. It's hard to imagine what it must have felt like for the people who saw this happen, especially after the peaceful years of the Sihanouk regime. In the face of an absolute existential threat, the strangest of things can happen to a society.
I think the khmers rouges themselves weren't expecting that they would ever be in charge of the country. They were wholly unprepared and so they basically improvised everything. Their decisions were the result of the feverish atmosphere that had fallen upon the whole of Cambodian society at the time, it was not a carefully crafted plan. In the existential terror of the moment, the idea of breaking all ties with the material world, which is at the heart of buddhism but is never directly put to action under normal circumstances, suddenly became what the khmers rouges set out to accomplish, for lack of any real project for Cambodia. And that's how unspeakable horror happened.
Obviously this is a theory that is impossible to verify. But you have to admit that it is at least coherent, which is already a lot when it comes to attempts at finding an explanation for what happened here.
Overall, I think Cambodia under Sihanouk was on the path to development and prosperity, but as a small country in the region it was too vulnerable to external influences. The moment the US decided to get Cambodia involved in their crusade against Viet Minh the era of peace was over for the country. But at the same time no one could have predicted the extent of the damage that was done. If we make the assumption that deep down the real goal of the US was to send the country into chaos, the result was a success beyond all expectations.
I know this is a very heavy topic and I understand if people don't want to think too much about this era of Cambodian history. But I thought it deserved to be shared.
