The Dragon Has Arrived and the DC Police Are “Frantic”: Carceral Development and Ties to US Third World Leftists in Sangkum Cambodia, 1955–73

This paper explores Cambodia’s relations with U.S. Third World Leftists during the 1950s and 1960s as well as the resulting contradictions as Cambodia also honed its Western-styled policing and surveillance methods during this period. Two years after Cambodia’s independence from France in 1953, King Norodom Sihanouk abdicated from the throne and formed his own political party, the Sangkum Reastr Niyum (People’s Socialist Community). The Sangkum Party won the highly contentious national elections in 1955 and began to reshape postcolonial Cambodia through Buddhist-Socialism. As part of its Buddhist-Socialist (Khmer Socialism) political program, the Sangkum Party declared itself to be anti-colonialist, anti-imperialist, and anti-racist. The Party recognized the racialized nature of the Cold War as the key to how the United States and other “Great Powers” waged wars of colonial domination, so it formed anti-imperialist connections with groups such as the Black Panther Party, the Young Lords, and the Revolutionary Action Movement (R.A.M.). Cambodia’s anti-imperialist and anti-discriminatory stances did not align, however, with its domestic carceral development that highlighted the use of German Shepherds and the programs of the International Cooperation Administration (ICA).