Dump Lon Nol

RECENT REPORTS from Cambodia indicate that living conditions under the faltering Lon Nol regime have become particularly grim and are likely to worsen if the U.S. maintains the current stalemate there. The problem for the U.S. is not a question of "mopping up" a messy aftermath of the war in Southeast Asia; it is a question of renouncing a policy of belligerent imperialism and cutting off aid to the head of the Phnom Penh government--Lon Nol.

Last week, the United Nations voted down a proposal pushed by the People's Republic of China to oust the Lon Nol regime from the U.N. The proposal was defeated by two votes, largely because of Soviet ambivalence and heavy U.S. lobbying. Despite reports that some U.S. officials now want to end our support of Lon Nol, the current administration seems committed to propping up the regime without regard for the cost to the Cambodian people. Western journalists estimate that the annual rate of inflation in Cambodia is now between 250 and 300 per cent, a staggering figure by any standard. For the Cambodians this means no work and no food; it means that some Cambodian women are being forced to resort to prostitution to feed their families; it means families have had to try to sell some of their children to stay alive. Cambodia is also still in a state of military conflict. The Khmer Rouge, who have fought Lon Nol since his 1970 coup that drove Prince Norodom Sihanouk into exile, now control three fourths of the land area in Cambodia. Only massive amounts of American aid--$700 million annually, most of which is military--and the threat of American retaliation prevent the rebels from over-running the few, isolated urban centers where the Lon Nol regime still holds sway.

As in so many areas, the U.S. holds the key to peace and progress in Cambodia. In the absence of American dollars and other forms of continued intervention it seems probable that the Lon Nol regime would fall almost immediately. While the Khmer Rouge provides no guarantee of building a model democratic socialist state in Cambodia, they constitute a definite progressive alternative to the current regime. Cutting all American aid is the necessary first step out of the current stalemate.