Norodom Sihanouk

King of Cambodia (r. 1941–1955, 1993–2004)

• Born: October 31, 1922
• Birthplace: Phnom Penh, Cambodia
• Died: October 15, 2012

Sihanouk was king of Cambodia during widely separated eras, and in the interim was alternately prime minister, head of state, and leader of various opposition movements. He was at the center of Cambodia’s fractious and highly controversial politics for more than six decades.

Early Life

The privileged position in Cambodian politics that Norodom Sihanouk (NOHR-uh-dahm SEE-ah-nook) enjoyed came in part because his parents were direct descendants of modern Cambodia’s two main royal lines. Sihanouk’s father, Prince Norodom Suramarit, was the grandson of King Norodom (reigned 1860–1904), the person who first welcomed the French colonization of his country but then became bitterly disillusioned and hence a popular symbol of Cambodian nationalism. His mother, Princess Kossamak Nearireath, was the granddaughter of two kings named Sisowath who ruled between 1904 and 1927, and 1927 and 1941, respectively. Sihanouk’s parents separated, and his childhood was apparently not a happy one. His primary schooling took place in Phnom Penh’s École François Boudoin, but he went abroad to Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) in south Vietnam for secondary school at the exclusive Lycée Chasseloup Laubat.

While still a secondary school student, Sihanouk was unexpectedly chosen by the French resident general to succeed his uncle as king, apparently in hopes that he would be easy to control. Sihanouk instead made efforts to rule independently, refusing, among other things, the annual French gift of opium. He also took advantage of the Japanese takeover of the French colonial administration between March and October 1945, to press for independence. Sihanouk angered more radical nationalists by compromising when French troops returned in 1946, but he again pressed his case when the French were doing badly in their war against Ho Chi Minh in neighboring Vietnam. Full independence was finally granted in the multination Geneva Conference of July 1954.

Life’s Work

Sihanouk’s major concern over the next decade and a half appeared to be to keep Cambodia out of the rapidly escalating conflict in neighboring Vietnam between the American-backed South Vietnamese government on the one hand and the National Liberation Front (often crudely called “Viet Cong”) and North Vietnamese Communist forces led by Ho Chi Minh on the other. Abdicating the throne to his father in 1955, Sihanouk soon founded the Sangkum Reastre Niyum (people’s socialist community), which was designed to spread his own mix of capitalist and Marxist elements in what he liked to call a unique form of “Buddhist socialism.” He announced, “I categorically refuse to return to the throne no matter what the turn of events.” Instead, assuming the position of prime minister, he energetically toured the country distributing gifts and giving long-winded and apparently quite earthy speeches in his rather distinctive high-pitched voice. As a result, Sihanouk had much appeal in the countryside. Even in the cities he remained powerful, however, both because he could be ruthless toward his enemies and because few of Cambodia’s constantly squabbling politicians could agree on who should take his place. When his father died in 1960, Sihanouk was elected head of state and got the constitution changed to secure his position for life. He was in effect king without the title.

Sihanouk initially tried to be neutral toward the United States, refusing both as king and prime minister to join the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), yet accepting United States military aid and advisers. In 1963, he veered sharply to the left, nationalizing the import-export trade and Cambodia’s banks, while also cutting off all US aid, In 1965, he broke off relations with the United States. Sihanouk took these actions in part because he blamed the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for supporting Son Ngoc Thanh’s Khmer Serei (“free Khmer,” or “free Kampuchean people”) movement, in part because he was horrified by the apparent US involvement in the overthrow and subsequent assassination of the South Vietnamese prime minister Ngo Dinh Diem and his brother Nhu and in part, some argued, because he simply was convinced that the North Vietnamese and National Liberation Front troops were going to win. Fully aware that only French colonial rule had previously kept the traditional Vietnamese enemy at bay, Sihanouk in this period was now busy emphasizing his socialist credentials.

In 1966, Sihanouk was forced to move back toward a more conservative position, in part because Cambodia’s more wealthy urban elite, and particularly the military, resented the loss of US aid and because the protests reflected anger at the new opportunities for corruption that Sihanouk’s nationalization schemes provided. Sihanouk himself also appears to have been bothered by a revolt against high taxes that took place in Battambang province in 1967, and he may also have concluded that the arrival of US troops in Vietnam in 1965 and the US policy of bombing North Vietnam made it advisable for Cambodia to move a bit away from the Left. For complex reasons, then, Sihanouk did not prevent the conservative general Lon Nol and many of his supporters from winning seats in the National Assembly in 1966, nor did he object to Lon Nol’s brutal suppression of the Battambang Revolt the following year. He apparently agreed to allow the North Vietnamese and National Liberation Forces to send supplies through Cambodia to their troops in return for guarantees of Cambodia’s borders, yet he also allegedly sanctioned the United States’ secret bombing raids against those forces as long as these were not brought to his official attention. Intensive US bombing soon began.

Try as he might, then, Sihanouk was unable to prevent Cambodia from becoming sucked into the increasingly violent war in Vietnam. On the one hand, leftists such as Khieu Samphan, Hou Youn, and Hu Nim no longer believed that they could work safely with Sihanouk, and they therefore fled to the jungles, where they joined a revolt of certain Cambodian communists (called by Sihanouk the Khmer Rouge, or “red Khmers”) led by a radical leader named Pol Pot. Rightists, on the other hand, objected to what they believed was increasingly erratic and even bizarre behavior by their long-time leader. The last straw in this process may well have been the opening of a gigantic gambling casino in Phnom Penh in 1969, most of the profits of which appeared to be somehow connected to previous corruption schemes by Sihanouk’s Eurasian wife, Monique Izzi, whom he had married in 1952. As the Cambodian economy deteriorated, the corruption and maneuvering that appeared to surround Sihanouk’s rule became all the more alarming.

In 1970, therefore, Lon Nol took advantage of Sihanouk’s visit to France to depose him and proclaim a new and more conservative government. The US government apparently had advance notice of the coup, may have supported it, and certainly did little to work out a compromise between the more actively anti-Communist Lon Nol and their nemesis Sihanouk. Sihanouk, therefore, repaired to the Chinese capital of Beijing, where the Chinese foreign minister Zhou Enlai quickly gave him enthusiastic support. Swinging again leftward, Sihanouk now embraced the Khmer Rouge cause and hence gave the leftists far more support among the peasants and moderates within Cambodia. Fighting between the forces of Lon Nol and the Khmer Rouge continued to be bitter for the next five years, with little quarter asked or given. Finally Lon Nol was defeated, and a new government headed by Pol Pot and Khieu Samphan took over the country in 1975. Sihanouk again became the head of state, albeit a symbol rather than a real power.

During the next three years, Sihanouk first briefly toured a number of foreign countries to proclaim the worthy social purposes of the new regime and then returned to Phnom Penh to announce a new constitution, which ended his role as head of state and placed him under virtual house arrest. During this time, the Khmer Rouge emptied the cities of almost all of their residents, executed thousands of “class enemies,” and forced most of the people to work exhausting hours on ambitious but poorly planned agricultural collectivization schemes. The historically deep hatred of the Vietnamese was used to rally support for the new regime, and border incidents were gradually increased until a full-scale war erupted between Vietnam and Cambodia in 1978. Only after the Pol Pot regime had been quickly defeated and forced back into the craggy jungles on the border with Thailand was Sihanouk finally released by the Khmer Rouge. His job now was to be at the United Nations to make sure that the new government installed by the Vietnamese invaders did not get Kampuchea’s seat in the United Nations.

Throughout the 1980s Sihanouk tried hard to find an acceptable political future for Cambodia. During this time, the People’s Republic of Kampuchea (“Kampuchea” being the name originally given Cambodia by the Communist regime), led by Hun Sen and backed by the Vietnamese, made slow but steady progress in restoring a more normal economy and providing a reasonable amount of security in all but the more rural areas near Thailand. Vietnamese occupying forces, meanwhile, began a plan of total withdrawal that was to be completed by the end of 1989. Against them, in 1982 Sihanouk launched the Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea (CGDK), which consisted of an uneasy coalition of Sihanouk’s own forces, Son Sann’s Khmer People’s National Liberation Front, and the slightly modified Khmer Rouge. Each of these groups had its own army, and each accused the others of ruthlessness, corruption, or betrayal. United in their hatred of the Vietnamese-backed Hun Sen government, yet quite distinct in their ideas about what should replace it, each had different major powers on its side. A country that had once been a symbol of apparent pastoral bliss was now a perfect example of the cruelties to which human beings can sink.

With the help of the United Nations, Sihanouk’s CGDK negotiated a peace settlement with the Hun Sen government in 1991, and he returned from exile, having been gone thirteen years. By 1993, elections had been held, resulting in a tenuous government headed by Sihanouk’s son Ranariddh as “first premier” and Hun Sen as “second premier.” A new constitution was written and Sihanouk was officially made king once again. He was nevertheless without real authority, and a power struggle between Ranariddh and Hun Sen led to renewed bloodshed.

Sihanouk passed some of his second reign cultivating his interest in cinema. He had directed the film Twilight in 1969, and from 1992 until 1995 directed four more: My Village at Sunset, See Angkor and Die, Peasants in Distress, and An Ambition Reduced to Ashes. He is credited as the writer for three others. Sihanouk also wrote songs in French, English, and Cambodian and led a jazz band. In 2002, he opened his own website on the Internet, the first head of state in the region to do so. It became a venue for announcements about the royal family and served as his primary means to pass on to his subjects his views on national and international politics. Unafraid of controversy, on one of his postings Sihanouk supported marriage for gays and lesbians. Moreover, he wrote to oppose the display of bones in an exhibition about Khmer Rouge atrocities, to criticize the government’s repression of peaceful protests, and to denounce the 2003 invasion of Iraq by an American-led coalition.

Sihanouk left Cambodia for another short period of exile, this time self-imposed, first in North Korea and then in Beijing in January, 2004. Ill and upset with the political infighting in the government, on October 7 of that year, he told his people, “I can no longer continue my mission and activities as king and head of state to serve the needs of the nation.” With that he abdicated his throne. He was succeeded by his son Norodom Sihamoni, after which Sihanouk himself assumed a novel, elaborate title, usually translated simply as “king father.”

Married six times, Sihanouk had fourteen children, five of whom died because of the repression of the Pol Pot regime. Sihanouk died on October 15, 2012, in Beijing, China.

Significance

Sihanouk appears to have been at the center of most every major event in Cambodia since 1941 and hence to be indistinguishable from the modern history of Cambodia. His detractors would deplore this history and would assign much of the blame at Sihanouk. The sometime-king was enormously vain and erratic, they would say. He dabbled in films, played the saxophone, and boasted of his successes with women when he should have been running the country. The father of children by numerous wives and mistresses, including his mother’s half sister, he was not considered to be a very good parent. Fond of giving moral lectures, he nevertheless tolerated an extraordinary amount of corruption, particularly by his mother, Kossamak, and by his wife, Monique. Sihanouk could be ruthless to the point of foolishness, as, for example, when his police humiliated the future Khmer Rouge leader Khieu Samphan by leaving him naked in the street. Not surprisingly, one of Sihanouk’s last Western advisers found him to be an erratic man.

Supporters of Sihanouk could find much to respect in Sihanouk’s boundless energy and his repeated attempts to preserve the security of a very small nation surrounded by extremely hostile neighbors. Dismissing Sihanouk’s personal foibles as either typical of Cambodian men or of little consequence in the life of the nation, supporters of Sihanouk instead saw the Cambodian tragedy as part of a “proxy war.” In this war, they viewed the United States as inflicting terrible damage by bombing an enraged Khmer Rouge and by supporting unsatisfactory right-wing regimes that would help the US cause in Vietnam. During the Vietnam War, China kept the Khmer Rouge supplied with arms so as to hurt the Vietnamese, and the Russians supported Vietnamese efforts to establish a friendly regime.

Because Cambodia was caught in the middle of a major struggle between the great powers of the world, the wonder is that Sihanouk was able to do as much as he did to preserve the fragile nation’s independence. Sihanouk perhaps put it best when he said that the “great misfortune” of the Cambodian people “is that they always have terrible leaders who make them suffer. I am not sure that I was much better myself, but perhaps I was the least bad.”

Bibliography

"Dancing Off the Stage?" Economist 20 Oct. 2012: 38. Academic Search Complete. Web. 23 Dec. 2013.

Drivas, Peter G. "The Cambodian Incursion Revisited." International Social Science Review 86.3/4 (2011): 134–59. Academic Search Complete. Web. 23 Dec. 2013.

Kiernan, Ben. How Pol Pot Came to Power. London: Verso, 1985. Print. Though primarily a history of Cambodian communism, this book does deal with Sihanouk’s rule.

Kissinger, Henry. The White House Years. Boston: Little, 1979. Print. Kissinger’s eloquent defense of his dealings with Sihanouk should be read in conjunction with the William Shawcross book to understand the complex relations between United States policy and Sihanouk’s rule.

Lacouture, Jean. The Demigods: Charismatic Leadership in the Third World. Trans. Patricia Wolf. New York: Knopf, 1970. Print. Lacouture’s work emphasizes Sihanouk’s appeal to peasants rather than his use of power and his corruption.

Lancaster, Donald. “The Decline of Prince Sihanouk’s Regime.” Indochina in Conflict. Ed. Joseph J. Zasloff and Allan E. Goodman. Lexington: Lexington, 1972. Print. An attempt by one of Sihanouk’s last Western advisers to convey the complexity of Sihanouk’s personality.

Osborne, Milton. Before Kampuchea: Preludes to Tragedy. Boston: Allen, 1979. Print. This useful recounting of the author’s experiences and observations helps explain the later tragedy.

Lancaster, Donald. Politics and Power in Cambodia: The Sihanouk Years. Camberwell: Longman, 1973. Print. A more formal history than the 1979 book, hence a useful supplement full of valuable information.

Shakespeare, N. "How the Dead Live." New Statesman 15 Feb. 2013: 36–41. Academic Search Complete. Web. 23 Dec. 2013.

Shawcross, William. Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon, and the Destruction of Cambodia. London: Hogarth, 1986. Print. This controversial book blaming US policy for the Khmer Rouge has much information on Sihanouk’s role. The new edition responds to then Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s comments.

Sihanouk, Norodom, with Wilfred Burchett. My War with the CIA: The Memoirs of Prince Norodom Sihanouk. New York: Pantheon, 1973. Print. Written between the 1970 coup and the Khmer Rouge victory in 1975, this work reflects one of Sihanouk’s anti-American periods and makes a number of disturbing charges about US policy.

Tully, John. A Short History of Cambodia: From Empire to Survival. London: Allen, 2006. Print. A concise history that includes the events during Sihanouk’s life and describes the nation’s culture and geography, this volume provides eminently readable background.

Widyono, Benny. Dancing in Shadows: Sihanouk, the Khmer Rouge, and the United Nations in Cambodia. Lanham: Rowman, 2007. Print. A United Nations envoy, Widyono was caught in the political struggle between Sihanouk, the Khmer Rouge, and the Vietnam-backed government. He relates his experiences and traces the international events that led to the tragic result.