1972 in the Vietnam War the number of air raids against North Vietnam during all of 1971. Prime Minister Lon Nol declared President of Cambodia. Unlike the former Cambodian leader, Norodom Sihanouk, Lon Nol was a U.S. ally. The U.S. 101st Airborne Division left South Vietnam, the last U.S. ground combat division to be withdrawn from South Vietnam. The Khmer Rouge bombarded with artillery Phnom Penh, the capital city of Cambodia, killing more than 100 civilians. This was the heaviest attack on Phnom Penh since the Cambodian Civil War began in 1970. The United States boycotted peace negotiations in Paris with the North Vietnamese, citing
Soviet Middle Eastern foreign policy during the Cold War Israelis and ending the nuclear-arms race. Nixon also became a key player in Middle East peace talks, ignoring Dwight D. Eisenhower's non-interventionism and hoping that his reputation for ending the Vietnam War, brokering the first nuclear-arms treaty and opening China to American trade would overshadow the Watergate scandal. The Arab-Israeli peace process was complex during the Soviet era. Although the Soviets were reluctant to join the American-backed peace movement (since they wanted a divided West), the cost of the arms race was beginning to bankrupt the Soviet Union. Strained relations among the parties stalled the initial negotiations, exacerbated by American-North