History & Chronicle: Norodom Sihanouk, modern and unsinkable leader

It's all too easy for armchair analysts, in the comfort of their distant offices, to condemn to death the historic reputation of a man who did what he thought was the only and best thing for his country.

King Norodom Sihanouk

The former king of Cambodia, Norodom Sihanouk, was the last survivor of those great leaders of newly independent countries who met in 1955 in Bandung, Indonesia, to give birth to a Third World that they wanted to be non-aligned between West and East, the United States and the Soviet Union, refusing to be engulfed in a Cold War they didn't want.

A survivor

Born in 1922, he was 89 when he died. “Samdech” Prince, as he liked to be called, was above all a survivor. He outlived his Bandung partners, democratic Indian Prime Minister Nehru by 48 years, autocratic Egyptian and Indonesian leaders Nasser and Sukarno by 42 years, and Communist Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai by 36 years.

He also survived the colonial period, when in 1941, the year Hitler invaded the USSR, the French installed this seemingly easygoing young man on the throne of their protectorate, formerly the prestigious kingdom of Angkor, in order to better control it. He remained easy-going for a very long time. In 1953, he wrested independence not only from the French, bogged down in the first Vietnam War, but also from the Vietnamese Communists, who wanted to build their own Indochinese empire, and from the Thais, eager to annex the western part of their neighbor.

God-King at the age of 19, he helped his kingdom survive, sometimes alone, against colonialism, the greed of his neighbors, the ambitions of his political rivals and the three successive wars that shook Indochina - with the French, the Americans and the Vietnamese occupation of his country.

Abdicating in favor of his father in 1955, he entered politics, leading his country as a non-aligned Prime Minister, benevolent, flamboyant but sometimes ruthless, with the support of the French and the Chinese, always his staunchest ally.

In March 1970, he survived the coup d'état organized against him during his absence by the American-backed Prime Minister Lon Nol. He also survived the bloody Khmer Rouge regime, which he had supported against President Nixon's South Vietnamese invasion of his country. Finally, he survived the overthrow of the Pol Pot regime.

The Vietnamese withdrew in 1989, paving the way for Sihanouk's triumphant restoration, still as king, but now only as a revered figurehead, like his Thai neighbor, King Bhumibol.

The Cold War is over, the Soviet Union, for decades Hanoi's main supporter, is dissolved and the Vietnamese are left to fend for themselves.

In 2004, he handed over the throne to one of his sons, Norodom Sihamoni, while retaining the title of King Father and spending most of his time in Beijing, nursing his many illnesses but continuing to publish his traditional “Bulletin”.

Florentine prince

Sihanouk was also a Florentine prince. He entertained his guests to sometimes sumptuous parties and gourmet dinners. A lover of foie gras and champagne, he served me these delicacies one morning in his suite at the Hotel Crillon in Paris. Going beyond artistic patronage, he became an actor, director, songwriter and saxophone player. He put his country on the map of the twentieth century. He toured the villages in well-organized filmed tours, where the peasants lay flat on the ground in veneration of this demigod.

He knew how to navigate the difficult corridors of geopolitics, accepting Beijing's support while remaining anti-Communist, allowing Hanoi to open its Hô Chi Minh trail through Cambodia and keeping quiet about the massive bombings of Washington's “secret war”.

For him, this was the only way to protect his kingdom's fragile neutrality. He was more of a tactician than a strategist. But did the ruler of such a small country have no other choice?

At home, he also liked to divide his political opponents, until he was outmaneuvered and ousted in 1970. He found himself supporting - as his last hope - the Khmer Rouge, whom he had ferociously hunted down and executed, as the only way to save his country from oblivion.

The greatest and most unforgivable of Henry Kissinger's “Metternich-style” strategies was to have turned these few hundred ragged doctrinaires, on the run and bathed in the Cultural Revolution, into a force which, having entered Phnom Penh on April 17, 1975, massacred some two million Khmers.

Born in a kingdom of the Thousand and One Nights, when the colonial powers still reigned over what was to become the Third World, which he crossed on his royal elephant, he died abroad, in the capital of the ambitious new superpower whose only rival was the United States.

Modern leader

This is also the way to look at “Samdech's” life. A fashionable monarch like many others in his youth, he became a modern leader in a changing world where only the smartest could survive and dictatorships - often military - prevailed. With few trump cards in his hand, he tried as hard as he could to protect his beloved country and avoid the many elephants fighting in his china store.

An anti-communist, he found his only support in Red China - including during the Cultural Revolution - while the France he adored became distant just four years after General de Gaulle's flamboyant 1966 trip to Phnom Penh, where, in his famous speech at the National Stadium, he praised Cambodia for its independent policy between East and West. His only asylum was Beijing, and his last lifeline the Khmer Rouge, whom he hated and who hated him.

Both wanted the Americans to leave, he to rebuild his dream kingdom, they to destroy the Old World and build their new state on the ashes of an “old society” shattered by ethnocide.

A marriage of convenience in which Prince Sihanouk lost much of his image. As a foreign correspondent on the spot at the time, I feel that many analysts and historians were far too critical of his choices. But what other path could he have taken? Surrender or retreat into oblivion were, for him, out of the question.

So, obsessed with his country's independence and its place in history, he rode a tiger that led him straight to hell. And back again.

He paid a heavy price for it, in order to gain international support against the Vietnamese occupation of his country. But it's all too easy for armchair analysts, in the comfort of their distant offices, to condemn to death the historic reputation of a man who did what he thought was best for his country. Underestimating, perhaps, what he thought was the lesser of evils and the high cost of his choices, through idealism, weakness, sometimes pride, and error.

The grief felt by most Cambodians after his death is living proof that, for them, he remains King Father, more loved than feared, and a memory of the good old days. If ever there were any!

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Author Patrice de Beer is a former Le Monde correspondent

Courtesy of Opendemocracy.net

For reasons of clarity, some passages have not been translated.