Not "A Nation of Immigrants": Settler Colonialism, White Supremacy, and a History of Erasure and Exclusion

by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

Even after the Vietnamese drove out the Khmer Rouge regime of terror, the United States, along with Western Europe and China, continued to support them. Although the United States publicly condemned the Khmer Rouge, several presidential administrations, plus China and the US-dominated Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), gave military support to the Khmer Rouge. During the Reagan administration, the US increased its covert aid to the Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea (CGDK) from four million to ten million dollars for its resistance to the Vietnam-aligned Cambodian government.122 As a result of Chinese, US, and Western opposition to the Vietnamese intervention that overthrew the Khmer Rouge, the United States insisted that the disgraced and defeated Khmer Rouge, rather than the Cambodian Vietnam-aligned government, be allowed to hold Cambodia’s United Nations seat until 1982. After 1982, the UN seat was filled by a Khmer Rougedominated coalition, CGDK, which it held until 1993. The United States did not recognize and open relations with unified Vietnam until 1995.123 And, of course, the Clinton administration and subsequent ones did not even consider war reparations.