This is a specialized case study of the Carter administration"s response to the tragic developments in Cambodia. It examines the complex interplay of factors that shaped American policy, including the inability to impose economic and diplomatic sanctions on the regime in Phnom Penh, a distaste felt by the American people at immersion into another Indo-China "quagmire", and the administration"s desire to move forward in its quest for normalization of relations with the People"s Republic of China, which was the chief patron of the Khmer Rouge.