72 SOCIAL SCIENTIST set up in 1951 when US aid accounted for 15 per cent of the French military budget in Indochina. (This figure was to rise steadily to about 80 per cent in 1953-54). Even at this early stage, the leaders of the Indochinese revolution were aware of the ominous implications of this rising commitment. They pointed out, in their manifesto of 1951, that American intervention was aimed at the re-enslavement of the three peoples of Indochina (p44). The Left resistance represented at the 1954 Geneva Conference on Indochina did not press its claims because the settlement held promises of a constitutional struggle. Cambodia was to remain truly neutral, and there were to be no reprisals against the Liberation Army. The Khmer resistance disbanded, but did not dismantle its infrastructure. The US did not sign the Geneva Accord, nor did it accept the Conference decisions. Realizing that its whole policy in Southeast Asia was in danger of collapsing under a wave of neutralism which the example of Cambodia had just launched, the US Government set out on a course of intervention aimed at changing Cambodia's policy and ideology. To a top-level mission led by Senator Knowland and Ambassador Heath, Sihanouk and his ministers firmly stated their view that Cambodia was not against Communist regimes as long as they left it in peace. As Wilfred Burchett comments: Knowland's arguments that this was a dangerous policy, that one should not await the danger but go out to meet it by attacking "communists and Vietminh" made no impression.. .Heath added that the urgency of the fight against communism demanded that Cambodia agree to France having the sole military command for Cambodia, as well as Laos and Vietnam. Penn Nouth, with Sihanouk's backing^ refused. TheKnowland-Heath visit marked the beginning of prolonged and intensive US interference in Cambodia's internal affairs, soon to take the form of attempts to do away with Sihanouk and his brand of neutrality (p 52). Developments across the border in Vietnam are woven inextricably through the story of Cambodia in the years since Geneva. As American desperation mounted with defeat after defeat, there was a pulling together of the threads binding the three peoples, until their interests became one: expulsion of all US troops from Indochina. Sihanouk rejected categorically American overtures to join the SEATO. The overriding purpose of his neutralist policy was one of avoiding great power involvement in the internal affairs which he saw first in Vietnam and then in Laos. Genuine neutralism was incompatible with the subservience demanded by American imperialism. The kind of ^neutralist' desired and recognized by the US was Prince Souvanna Phouma of Laos, who had long since succumbed to American pressures. In 1963 Sihanouk decisively rejected all American aid and demanded that non-embassy American personnel leave ihe country. In 1965 in protest against the bombing of North Vietnam and the invasion of