Harvard International Review: Throughout most of your career, your area of specialization has been Southeast Asia. What is the nature of the United States' engagement and relations with Cambodia?

Right now the United States' aim is to support the process that has helped Cambodia turn away from several decades of genocide, mass murder, and killings-severe traumas unlike those undergone by almost any other country in recent history.The United States also aims to help Cambodians rebuild their society and pick up the broken pieces of their political and social systems. It has been a long and arduous process, but one in which I think the American people can feel that the money they have contributed in terms of support for UN peacekeeping, humanitarian and economic development assistance, infrastructure-building activities, and support for human rights has really paid off. Cambodia is a very different country today from what it was ten years ago, and its society is certainly much different from that which the Khmer Rouge almost destroyed in the 1970s.

There was discussion at one point of tying the United States' aid to Cambodia to terms of conditionality-protection of human rights, development of democratic governance, the free market system, and toleration of opposition figures. You voiced opposition to this policy. In your view, what are the benefits and drawbacks of conditional aid?

Sometimes when aid is made conditional, you may work against your goals. Often this stance may be perceived by the target government as a threat.The approach of both the Bush and Clinton administrations-which I think has paid off-was to influence the government so that it did those things necessary to arrest Khmer Rouge members responsible for genocide; built human-rights organizations; addressed the most pressing social problems; installed open markets; allowed the opposition to operate; and maintained freedom of the press. And in fact, Cambodia now has probably the most open economic market and investment system in all of Southeast Asia, as well as a free press.

I did favor conditioning aid and other improvements in our diplomatic relations with both Cambodia and Vietnam to human-rights improvements. In fact, I personally included this conditionality in our "Roadmap to Normalization" policy, which we presented to both countries in 1991. This policy resulted in over 2,000 political prisoners being freed in Cambodia and a number of high-profile political prisoners being freed and allowed to leave Vietnam. Once our Agency for International Development (AID) mission was set up inside Cambodia, all of the programs it carried out were humanitarian in nature, and none went through the government. Any withholding or conditioning of that aid only meant that we would be taking assistance away from the Cambodian people, who had already suffered enormously and, in my view, did not deserve to be further deprived of what little help we were providing. I did support halting and conditioning our non-lethal assistance to the Cambodian military and police following the 1997 fighting, until such time as the political opposition could return and internationally monitored and approved elections could be held in an acceptable environment. That was the policy we did follow. Other types of assistance, such as Cambodia receiving Most Favored Nation (MFN) status, were also made contingent on the government's adoption of an internationally-approved labor code. Once again, this approach succeeded in achieving its desired result, and today over 100,000 workers are employed in new factories that are subject to international monitoring, thanks to the conditional terms we utilized.

The system of interaction that you describe between the US and Cambodian governments is one of influence. What form does such a tactic assume? Who are the parties responsible for wielding this influence?

Influence takes place in several ways. Sometimes it comes from high-level players: the US Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, participated, for example, on several occasions in meetings and negotiations. Sometimes it comes from the United Nations and UN organizations or from joint efforts with other nations. Other times influence originates in quiet, private meetings. In 1997, for instance, there was a serious question in Cambodia: would the political opposition be allowed to return to the country? Would it be able to stand and participate in elections? It appeared that that was not going to happen, despite having many senior diplomatic emissaries come and despite discussion of the issue at the United Nations. Then we in Phnom Penh had some private conversations with the Cambodian government during which the implications of banning the opposition party were made very clear. As a result, the political opposition was allowed to return, its members were allowed to participate in the election, and, in fact, they got more votes than the ruling party.

Are private meetings, then, the backbone of policy formation?

Some negotiations need to be conducted publicly, but the judgment of what is most effective needs to be made for each situation as it arises. It may be that private meetings will yield no results; then you have to turn to something else. My experience in Cambodia and Vietnam was that I could be most effective working out of the public view. The Cambodian and Vietnamese officials tended to think that if the United States went public, we weren't really interested in negotiations, but instead in scoring popular opinion points or in making the other side look bad. That was their prior experience. Yet if US officials could speak clearly and privately, progress could be made. I negotiated the first US entry into a prison camp in Vietnam to look for American prisoners of war (POWs) and men listed as missing in action (MIAs). This was done outside the glare of the cameras by explaining the situation and what the United States' goals were. Our views were taken into account and the Vietnamese government allowed us into the prisons.

Cambodia's current government, although a notable improvement over the Khmer Rouge regime, has often been labeled as merely the lesser of two evils. There has also been criticism leveled at the United States for not taking a stronger stance against the coup that occurred in 1997. How have perceptions of Cambodia's government changed in recent years, and should there be active work to create a better system?