Biting the Fishhook

Abstract

For a long time after his abdication from the throne in 1955 and his subsequent rise to power as Chief of State, Norodom Sihanouk's main problem in governing Cambodia was how to deflect political breezes from the sails of the internal leftist-Communist opposition. In the last year and a half, that problem changed to one of how to upstage his political rivals on the right. His defeat in the latter enterprise signals the demise of peace in the only Indochinese nation successful in the last fifteen years in preventing war and strife from sweeping across its borders.