The Nixon Doctrine the Case of Cambodia Research Paper

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Nixon Doctrine, declared by President Richard M. Nixon in the summer 1969 just a few months after taking office, represented a slight alteration of American policy during the Cold War. Nixon upheld the fundamentals of George Kennan's strategy of "containment" for the spread of Communism, insofar as he promised American support for any democratic third world nation in its fight against Communism. The shift came with the type of support America offered; the Nixon Doctrine promised that America would send military and financial assistance, but no troops. A quick glance at the prior history of American troop commitments during the Cold War gives some sense of Nixon's rationale. The American intervention in Korea under Truman had resulted in a stalemate, with a hostile Marxist North Korea separated from the U.S.-backed South Korea by a narrow demilitarized zone. Meanwhile in the Americas, Roosevelt's "Good Neighbor" policy meant that Cold War strategy was conducted largely without troop involvement: when Communist governments were either democratically elected, as with Arbenz in Guatemala, or seized power through revolution, as with Fidel Castro in Cuba, the response from the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations came through covert operations (a CIA-sponsored coup in Guatemala, the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba). As a result, the Nixon Doctrine was, in some sense, a synthesis of previous Cold War strategies employed in different regions. The Nixon Doctrine responded to the stalemate (and heavy loss of American lives) that accompanied the large-scale commitment of troops in Korea and Vietnam by announcing that troop involvement would no longer be American policy. But the Nixon Doctrine likewise learned from the history of Cold War covert operations, in its recognition that American money and weaponry (presumably combined with policy advice) could be employed to contain the spread of Communism.

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However the success of the Nixon Doctrine overall is a matter of debate.

To take one particularly interesting example that immediately followed Nixon's establishment of the Doctrine, we might consider the seemingly peripheral case of Cambodia. For Nixon himself, Cambodia would prove to be anything but peripheral: this small neutral nation would, in 1970, be the cause of tremendous social unrest within the United States itself. The reasons for this are complicated but fascinating. Like Vietnam, Cambodia had been part of the French colonial protectorate of Indochina at the time of World War Two (Brinkley 2011, 45). During World War Two, Cambodia was occupied by the Japanese from 1941 to 1945, but after the end of the war it became once more a French colonial possession in the era of widespread decolonization. However, Cambodia received its independence from France in late 1953 peacefully, unlike Vietnam, which was engaged in warfare against the French under Ho Chi Minh's leadership. The contrast extended to the types of government established: about six months before Ho Chi Minh's forces in Vietnam won their victory against the French at Dien Bien Phu, Cambodia was made independent as a constitutional monarchy much like the U.K., with a parliamentary government and prime minster, but a monarch, King Sihanouk, as official head of state (Brinkley 2011, 125). Fascinatingly, in two years, Sihanouk would abdicate as King in order to run for, and win, the office of Prime Minister. Perhaps this granted him a greater legitimacy as the country's ruler: because Sihanouk abdicated in favor of his own father, when his father died in 1960, Sihanouk was heir to the throne. He took the title of Prince Sihanouk and became head of state in addition to….....

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