page_title: Cambodian–Vietnamese War
section_title: Vietnamese reform and withdrawal
hierarchical_section_title: Cambodian–Vietnamese War / Vietnamese reform and withdrawal
caption_attribution_description: English: Mountains along the Cambodian-Thai Border north of the road between Sisophon and Aranyaprathet
context_page_description: The Cambodian–Vietnamese War, known in Vietnam as the Counter-offensive on the Southwestern border, and by Cambodian nationalists as the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia, was an armed conflict between Democratic Kampuchea, controlled by the Khmer Rouge, and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. The war began with repeated attacks by the Kampuchean Revolutionary Army on the southwestern border of Vietnam, particularly the Ba Chuc massacre which resulted in the deaths of over 3,000 Vietnamese civilians. On 25 December 1978, Vietnam launched a full-scale invasion of Kampuchea, and subsequently occupied the country and removed the government of the Communist Party of Kampuchea from power.
  During the Vietnam War, Vietnamese and Cambodian communists had formed an alliance to fight U.S.-backed regimes in their respective countries. Despite their open display of cooperation with the Vietnamese, the Khmer Rouge leadership feared that the Vietnamese communists were scheming to form an Indochinese federation with Vietnam as the dominant force in the region.
context_section_description: When the Vietnamese leaders launched their invasion of Kampuchea to remove the Khmer Rouge regime in 1978, they did not expect a negative reaction from the international community. However, the events that followed the invasion showed that they had severely miscalculated international sympathies toward their cause. Instead of backing Vietnam, most United Nations member countries denounced the Vietnamese use of force against Kampuchea, and even moved to revive the battered Khmer Rouge organisation that had once governed the country with such brutality. Thus, Kampuchea became more than just a military problem for Vietnam, quickly evolving into an economic and diplomatic problem in the international arena. Throughout the decade in which Vietnam occupied neighbouring Kampuchea, the Vietnamese Government, and the PRK regime which it installed, were placed on the periphery of the international community.
  The international community's political stance towards Kampuchea had a severe impact on the Vietnamese economy, which was already wrecked by decades of continuous conflicts. The United States, which already had sanctions in place against Vietnam, convinced other countries of the United Nations to deprive Vietnam and the People's Republic of Kampuchea of much-needed funds by denying them membership to major international organisations such as the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and the International Monetary Fund. In 1979 Japan stepped up the pressure by suspending all economic aid to Vietnam, and warned Vietnamese leaders that economic aid would only resume when Vietnam amended its policies towards Kampuchea, the Sino-Soviet rivalry and the problem of the boat people. Sweden, which was considered the staunchest supporter of Vietnam in the West, also considered reducing its commitments to the communist country as virtually every other country cancelled its aid.
  In addition to external pressure, domestic policies implemented by the Vietnamese Government since 1975 had proven to be largely ineffective in stimulating the country's economic growth. By building on the Soviet model of central economic planning, Vietnam placed most emphasis on the development of heavy industries, while production in agriculture and light manufacturing sectors stagnated. Furthermore, attempts to nationalise the economy of southern Vietnam after reunification only resulted in chaos, as economic output was driven down by dislocation of the general population. In addition to those failed economic policies, Vietnam maintained the fifth-largest armed forces in the world, with 1.26 million regular soldiers under arms, 180,000 of whom were stationed in Cambodia in 1984. Consequently, the Vietnamese Government had to spend one-third of its budget on the military and the campaign in Kampuchea, despite receiving US$1.2 billion in military aid annually from the Soviet Union, thus further hampering Vietnam's economic rebuilding efforts.
  In response to international pressure, and to avoid engaging in a debilitating conflict with various local armed resistance groups, Vietnam began withdrawing its military forces from Kampuchea as early as 1982. But the withdrawal process lacked international verification, so foreign observers simply dismissed Vietnam's movement of troops as mere rotations. In 1984, in order to disengage from Kampuchea, Vietnam unveiled a five-phase strategy known as the K5 Plan. The plan was authored by General Le Duc Anh, who had led the Vietnamese campaign in Kampuchea. The first phase required the Vietnamese military to capture the bases of armed groups in western Kampuchea and along the border with Thailand. The following phases included sealing off the border with Thailand, destroying local resistance groups, providing security for the population, and building up the Kampuchean People's Revolutionary Armed Forces. Foreign observers believed that the Vietnamese Army completed the first phase of the K5 Plan during the dry season offensive of 1984–85, when the base camps of several anti-Vietnamese resistance groups were overrun. Afterwards
caption: Mountains along the Cambodian-Thai Border north of the road between Serei Saophoan and Aranyaprathet. These were one of the areas where Khmer Rouge fighters hid at the time of the K5 Plan.
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