Britain and the Cambodian Crisis of Spring 1970

Abstract

Exploiting recently released archival evidence, alongside a series of published primary and secondary literature, this article focuses on the way the British government reacted to President Nixon's apparent escalation of the Vietnam War when he ordered the American and South Vietnamese 'incursion' into Cambodia. Following an exposition of some of the background events, the British policy and reaction towards Nixon's decision is analyzed in depth, looking at how and why Britain was not adequately informed about the operation, and revealing how the Cabinet and Labour Party reacted both in private and in the public domain of the House of Commons towards the Cambodian crisis.British policy towards the Vietnam War, especially during the premiership of Harold Wilson (1964-70) has been of interest to historians in recent years. This is not surprising given the opening of archives of the key years of the Vietnam conflict in the mid-1960s, and the general role of British policy in this period is well understood. Britain and the Soviet Union were the co-chairs of the 1954 Geneva conference that divided Vietnam between North and South. This gave both countries responsibility for