Word: sihanouk
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Zigzag Diplomacy. Sihanouk has executed such a dizzying series of flip-flops in the cold war that he is getting to be known as the man who would rather switch than fight...
...agitated that the U.S. State Department refuses to release monitored transcripts to the press so as not to aggravate the situation. Says one Washington hand: "We are now in the preposterous position where it is easier to get intelligence estimates of Soviet missile capacity than transcripts of a Sihanouk broadcast...
...there is method in Sihanouk's behavior. Even his enemies concede that he is a sincere patriot, obsessed by the desire to keep Cambodia independent. The closer the U.S. draws to his old enemies, the Vietnamese and the Thais, the more he feels he must swing to the other side in order to balance matters. He is probably serious when he says he does not really want the victory of Communism in Southeast Asia, because Cambodian independence depends on the continuing, balanced enmity between Communism and the West. Says he: "The day all Viet Nam is reunited under...
Wayward Boy-King. However such opinions may strike the West, they convince Sihanouk's own people. Of all the rulers of Southeast Asia, he is probably the most popular inside his own country, partly because he has an aura both of divine kingship and grass-roots politics. Sihanouk succeeded to the ancient Khmer throne in 1941 at 19, when the French were still firmly in control of Cambodia. Although his name, from the Sanskrit, means "lionhearted," he was a pampered prince, fussed over by a covey of nannies; not long ago, to illustrate the importance of milk...
...French picked Sihanouk over his seemingly tougher uncles, who were actually in line for the succession, because they thought that the boy would be more pliable. For the first few years, it looked as though they had been right. Sihanouk became an inveterate sampot-chaser, thereby entangling himself in a web of domestic complexities. Royal records are kept secret, but he has apparently been married six times, sired 14 children. His current favorite and constant companion: Monique, the lovely half-Italian, half-Cambodian beauty-contest winner whom Sihanouk met when he awarded her a pageant prize in 1951.* Five...