The recent coup in Cambodia demonstrates extremely clearly the truth of the permanent revolution which revolutionary Marxists have been proclaiming for many years. There is no "third camp" position, there is no such thing as "neutrality" in the context of the capitalist world market and the non-capitalist economies.
Sihanouk has only himself to blame for not understanding and assimilating the lessons of Ghana, Algeria, Indonesia and the governments of many other states who thought that they could use an anti-imperialist rhetoric to try and mask from the people, and sometimes also themselves, that there existed at home a backward capitalist economy which was firmly tied to and part of the imperialist market. In the past United States imperialism has continually removed regimes which refused to completely incorporate their countries within the imperialist system, and it was only a matter of time before Sihanouk, the last of a dying species, would be overthrown. One of the factors which kept Sihanouk in power was the proximity of the Vietnamese Revolution. The United States was reluctant to get embroiled in a struggle in Cambodia. However, recent developments must have forced their hand. It was becoming increasingly clear with the social revolution spreading to Laos and Thailand that Cambodia could not carry on in the same old way. The right-wing demonstrations against the embassies of North Vietnam and the Provisional Revolutionary Government were part of the plan to bring matters to a head inside Cambodia, and Sihanouk was overthrown while paying a visit to the Soviet bureaucracy in Moscow. and it is ironic that these theoreticians and proponents of peaceful coexistence received yet another slap in the face from imperialism.
It has become crystal clear even to those radicals who are not Marxists that the war in Vietnam and the successes of the Vietnamese cannot be isolated or restricted between national boundaries demarcated by imperialism, The forces of social revolution unleashed in Vietnam will not stop at Laos or Thailand or Cambodia—their effects and their influence will continue to increase in Pakistan, India, Burma, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines, and the lesson which revolutionists in the colonial and semi-colonial world will learn will be extremely clear: a) that armed struggle against imperialism is the only way forward, and b) that the national bourgeoisie, whether it is led by a Sukarno or a Sihanouk, can play no role whatsoever in this process.
The question we must ask is why the United States chose this particular moment to overthrow Sihanouk. The answer to that lies in what is happening elsewhere in South-East Asia. The magnificent successes of the Vietnamese revolutionaries which in their turn have inspired the revolutionary movement in Laos and Thailand to take the offensive, and have resulted in a severe defeat for the puppet armies in Laos, have obviously forced the Pentagon to strike back in return. It is extremely likely that the struggle between social revolution and the desire of the Asian masses for emancipation will now also be waged in Cambodia. The army of General Lon Nol is extremely weak, badly equipped and numerically insignificant. An NLF regiment relaxing in Cambodia could without much difficulty inflict a military defeat on it. The indigenous liberation forces in Cambodia which had not been much in evidence because of Sihanouk's [illegible] Peking and Hanoi are now bound to increase their activities. The United States will then expand the war to [illegible] trying to destroy some of the base areas of the liberation armies, and it is possible that they will also use Cambodia as an excuse to resume the bombing of "strategic targets" inside North Vietnam, and that in this initial phase this might succeed in uniting the badly split ruling class in America,
For us in Britain it becomes crystal clear that far from being over, the war in South-East Asia is only just beginning, and the task of revolutionists in imperialist countries is to continue to increase the intensity of their struggles against the capitalist system in their own countries and at the same time build strong and solid anti-imperialist movements to express their solidarity with the struggle taking place in South-East Asia.