In my thread on Cambodia it was pointed out that Pot’s regime was still recognized as late as the 90s by the UN etc.
What’s the story there ? I never looked into it but thought it was strange.
Well, Pol Pot regime was overrun by the Vietnamese communist invasion, which was deemed illegal by certain circles.
international law is quite a mess, often supporting tyrants and often disregarding legitimate claims of oppressed.
It’s unfortunate that this is all sliding into the realm of “Ancient History”. In a nutshell: In 1975 Vietnam and Cambodia went Communist, Cambodia, client of China, on April 17, 1975, South Vietnam on April 30. Vietnam was a client of the Soviet Union. At first the two new Communist countries tried to get along, but there was animosity almost from the start. In part because the KR were truly paranoid nutcases. By 1978 the KR had run the country into the dumper, and was increasingly heading into southern Vietnam to massacre villagers.
By late 1978 Vietnam, who at that time had the second largest army in the world, and they were highly trained after 50 years of fighting the French then the US, had had enough. Christmas Day 1978 they sent 190,000 troops into Cambodia, and went through it like sh*t through a goose, pushing the KR into the forest along the Thai Border, where they remained for the next 20 years, more or less.
So now you had a Soviet client having taken over a Chinese client. The US was never a friend of the KR when it had actual power, but now to recognize the Vietnamese installed government as legitimate would play into the hands of the Soviets, at the same time as the Soviets had invaded Afghanistan. So the US, and others, pushed to keep the KR as the recognized government of Cambodia for UN purposes, to prevent the Vietnamese/USSR takeover from becoming permanent. There was a bit of window dressing in that the US claimed to actually back a three-faction coalition, including two other non-communist groups, and not the KR per se, but the KR were first among equals.
Thailand, as well, and other countries in SE Asia, were less than keen at the prospect of Vietnam being permanently at their doorstep.
It is not misleading to say that the Western Left championed the KR at the time they were butchering their own people, for ideological reasons, and later, when the Vietnamese had taken over all but a sliver of Cambodia, the US and others backed the three faction coalition for geopolitical reasons, that is, to oppose expansion of Soviet influence.
Somehow this has been translated into the false notion that the US backed the KR from the 1970 overthrow of Sihanouk right through to 1993. The left, particularly, has tried to bury their past enthusiasm (basically up to 1978) for what turned out to be a homicidal maniac regime.