Henry Kissinger’s central role in the U.S. carpet bombing of Cambodia

by REBECCA TAN AND REGINE CABATO

1 Dec 2023 - The Washington Post

Nowhere is the debate over the legacy of former U.S. secretary of state Henry Kissinger more searing than in the countries that bore the brunt of his military polices, such as Cambodia. Historians say his decisions led to decades of violence that have continued to haunt Cambodian society.

For many in the country, Kissinger’s impact was not abstract but visceral and continues even after his death. Land mines planted during Cambodia’s three-decade-long civil war, which was driven in part by U.S. interference, are still exploding today. In neighboring Vietnam and Laos, officials are also still undergoing the painstaking process of identifying and removing unexploded ordnance from a war that Kissinger helped to wage five decades ago.

“The sad reality is, he leaves this legacy which many, many Cambodians still pay the price for,” said Sophal Ear, a Cambodian American political scientist. “To this day, there are people who … lose limb and life in the process of trying to make a living in a land that has been filled with bombs.”

Carpet bombing

From 1969 to 1973, as national security adviser and secretary of state under President Richard M. Nixon, Kissinger directed the carpet bombing of large swaths of Cambodia that U.S. officials at the time claimed were sanctuaries for communist insurgents from South Vietnam as well as North Vietnamese soldiers. Ben Kiernan, a historian at Yale University and a leading scholar of the U.S. legacy in Cambodia, has estimated that around 500,000 tons of U.S. bombs were dropped on Cambodia during this period and killed as many as 150,000 civilians.

The scale of this bombing campaign, internally called Operation Menu, was kept secret from the American public for many decades, though leaked and declassified records have revealed that Kissinger personally “approved each of the 3,875 Cambodia bombing raids.” In 1970, according to declassified transcripts of his telephone conversations, Kissinger spoke to Nixon about the situation in Cambodia before relaying the following order to his deputy Alexander Haig: “He wants a massive bombing campaign in Cambodia. … It’s an order, it’s to be done. Anything that flies, on anything that moves. You got that?”

In later decades of his life, particularly as declassified documents detailed the extent of the U.S. assault on Cambodia, Kissinger drew intense criticism for his leading role and was labeled by some as a “war criminal.” He dismissed these critiques and maintained that the Cambodia bombing was milder than later U.S. bombing campaigns.

“I bet if one did an honest account, there were fewer civilian casualties in Cambodia than there have been from American drone attacks,” he said in a 2014 interview with NPR. Many researchers dispute this. Historian Greg Grandin, who wrote the book “Kissinger’s Shadow,” said that at least one area in Cambodia known to have “sizable concentrations” of civilians was bombed nearly 250 times.

Rise of a genocidal regime

Historians have also widely credited the U.S. bombing campaign with contributing to the rise of the totalitarian Khmer Rouge regime, which carried out a host of atrocities during its four-year rule, including the genocide of minority groups. An estimated 2 million people — or about 1 in 4 Cambodians at the time — were killed under the Khmer Rouge, led by dictator Pol Pot. Of 5 million survivors, at least a quarter live with trauma, say local researchers.

Hun Sen, who recently stepped down as Cambodia’s prime minister after a nearly four-decade rule, began his political career as a commander for the Khmer Rouge and has said that he felt compelled to join the insurgent force because the United States had bombed his hometown.

Until the early 1970s, the rural communities of eastern Cambodia had never experienced the horrors of aerial bombardment. “This was something beyond our imagination. … An invisible evil that was extremely frightening,” said Youk Chhang, executive director of the Phnom Penh-based Documentation Center of Cambodia. Over four years, it became a potent tool used by the Khmer Rouge to recruit new fighters, he added.

“Mr. Richard Nixon and Kissinger allowed the Khmer Rouge to grasp golden opportunities,” Kaing Khek Iev, a Khmer Rouge official known as Brother Duch, said during a trial by a U.N.-backed tribunal in 2009.

A few top Khmer Rouge leaders were tried by the tribunal and handed life sentences. Kissinger, however, faced little accountability for his role in his lifetime, rights activists say.

“He’s never admitted what he did. Never owned it,” said Phil Robertson, deputy director for Human Rights Watch in Asia. “For Kissinger, always, there was some excuse.”