Why did it Happen

There are many reasons why Vietnam launched the unprovoked attack on Kampuchea, to adequately understand all the implications for the move the information that is presently available will have to be supplemented from sources inside Vietnam. What can be said is that the major motivation behind the assault came more from the ambitions of the Soviet Union than the Vietnamese

During the war against the American occupation of Vietnam, the Vietnamese people and leadership relied upon assistance from other countries off-set the enormous expenditure that the US was putting into its war effort. They turned, not unnaturally to the Soviet Union, Eastern Block countries, and the People's Republic of China. While the majority of the success of the Vietnamese rested in the hands of the Vietnamese leadership, this help was vital to the eventual victory.

It was during this time, in the final stages of the war, that the Soviet Union began to gain a marked ascendancy in the political forces around the central Committee of the Vietnamese Communist Party.

While other countries at the end of the war, were content to let the loans of ammunition and money lay for a while, the Soviet Union demanded their loans back in protein, the very thing that war ravaged Vietnam could least afford.

Combined with the drought and floods that struck Vietnam last year, this has led to an intolerable situation. It is significant that when the Vietnamese armywere crossing the border into Kampuchea they were confiscating the crops and the produce of the villages thay they ploughed through.

The Vietnamese Communist Party, has since its formation seen its role as being not only the ideological vanguard of Indochina, but also the territorial leaders. The Vietnamese Communist Party wishes to bring about the formation of an Indochinese Federation, which would be dominated by Vietnam.