After Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge ill-advisedly provided Vietnam with a reason to overthrow that regime, Vietnam invaded Kampuchea in late 1978 and within 3 weeks had captured Phnom Penh. One part of the plan had apparently been to capture Prince Norodom Sihanouk who was essentially under house-arrest in the capital. Before they could do that however, the Khmer Rouge spirited him away to New York to speak out against the invasion and then on to China and North Korea for refuge.
Afterwards Sihanouk became a focal point around which a (somewhat) respectable resistance to the Vietnamese-backed Heng Samrin regime in Kampuchea could be opposed. Without Sihanouk it is difficult to see how the non-communist factions could ever have banded together with the Khmer Rouge under an umbrella resistance organization.
So if the Vietnamese had captured Sihanouk, what would they have done with him and what would have happened to the Cambodian resistance to Samrin's regime? Would it have been weaker to the point where eventually Samrin's People's Republic of Kampuchea would have gained international legiticimacy and be around today? Would Cambodia still be the People's Republic of Kampuchea today and be tied economically and militarily to Vietnam as Laos is today?
Afterwards Sihanouk became a focal point around which a (somewhat) respectable resistance to the Vietnamese-backed Heng Samrin regime in Kampuchea could be opposed. Without Sihanouk it is difficult to see how the non-communist factions could ever have banded together with the Khmer Rouge under an umbrella resistance organization.
So if the Vietnamese had captured Sihanouk, what would they have done with him and what would have happened to the Cambodian resistance to Samrin's regime? Would it have been weaker to the point where eventually Samrin's People's Republic of Kampuchea would have gained international legiticimacy and be around today? Would Cambodia still be the People's Republic of Kampuchea today and be tied economically and militarily to Vietnam as Laos is today?