The military occupation of Kampuchea had profound consequences for Vietnamese foreign policy. Since gaining independence in 1954, the Vietnamese communist perspective on foreign policy had been dominated by the need to maintain a world order of two camps, communist and non-communist. Indeed, the treaties of friendship that Vietnam signed with the Soviet Union, Laos and the People's Republic of Kampuchea were consistent with that view. However, the ideological motivations of the Vietnamese communist leadership were proven to be limited and heavily flawed, as demonstrated by the 1979 condemnation of Vietnam after ousting the Khmer Rouge government. In the years that followed, the Vietnamese Government was left isolated from the world and its efforts to rebuild the country were handicapped by the lack of aid from the capitalist Western nations. Furthermore, the presence of Vietnamese military forces in Cambodia became an obstacle which prevented the normalisation of diplomatic ties with China, the United States and the member nations of ASEAN.