Hun Sen's war calculations

Hun Sen has also clearly welcomed the ongoing conflict with Thailand as a chance to rally support and further marginalize his political opponents. Ou Virak, president of the Cambodian Center for Human Rights and a Phnom Penh-based political observer, said the contested Preah Vihear temple - a potent symbol, like Angkor Wat, of Cambodia's nationhood - has already been a source of much political capital for Hun Sen. 

By Sebastian Strangio

Asia Time Online

PHNOM PENH - Fighting along the Thai-Cambodian border continued over the weekend after two agreed ceasefires broke down last week. At least 17 people have been killed and 50,000 evacuated on both sides of the border since the latest round of armed skirmishes and diplomatic salvos commenced on April 22. Some analysts now wonder whether the sustained armed clashes could eventually escalate into full-blown war.

As with past clashes, both governments have accused each other of instigating the conflict. In a statement on April 27, the Cambodian Council of Ministers denounced Thailand for its "naked and blatant aggression" that had resulted in "immense

misery and suffering" for the Cambodian people. A day earlier, the Thai cabinet passed a three-point resolution authorizing "retaliatory military action" to push Cambodian troops out of disputed areas.

While it may be impossible to know who fired the first shots, many analysts agree that the conflict is an outgrowth of political turmoil in Thailand, reflecting an attempt by the Royal Thai Army to cement its position at the center of Thai politics ahead of elections set to be held by July. What is less clear are the factors driving decision-making on the other side of the border, where Prime Minister Hun Sen and his ruling Cambodian People's Party (CPP) have long maintained a stranglehold on domestic politics.

Since the military coup that overthrew former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra in 2006, Cambodia's strongman has played a cameo role in Thailand's unfolding domestic drama, alternatively courting and sniping at a succession of Thai leaders.

Occasionally he has taken center stage, as when he appointed Thaksin as an economic advisor in late 2009, plunging relations with Bangkok to their lowest point in years. At the time, some analysts speculated that the wily leader was backing Thaksin and his proxies in a future election, laying the groundwork for a more solid bilateral relationship further down the road.

Vietnam Imperial March and Nationalism

In the course of this successful venture into colonialism (for it was nothing else), the Vietnamese state decided to institutionalize the process, and in 1481, the don-dien were created. Like the Roman coloniae 1500 years earlier or the Israeli nakhal settlements 500 years later (or the Austro-German Wehrbauern in the 1700's) the don-dien were agricultural settlements given to farmers who were for the most part army veterans and who, in return for free land, defended the new frontier. The members of the don-dien were a tough hardy lot, not only willing to defend what they already had, but usually not loath to push the border farther west-this time at the expense of the decaying Khmer (Cambodian) state. It was obvious such a situation was fertile in border incidents, which were further exploited to round out the Vietnamese domain. In 1658, all of South Viet-Nam north of Saigon (then that the fishing village of Prey Kor) was in Vietnamese hands; Saigon itself fell in 1672.

Excerpt from “The Two Viet-Nams: A Political and Military Analysis”, Chapter 2: A Glimpse of the Past
By Bernard B. Fall (Praeger Publishers, New York, 1971), pp 10-19

In 111 B.C., the victorious Han crushed the young Vietnamese state, and save for a few brief but glorious rebellions, it remained a Chinese colony for more than 1,000 years.

Viet-Nam became a Chinese protectorate ruled by a governor and subdivided into military districts. By the beginning of the first century A.D., the country had absorbed along with many Chinese settlers – a great many of them the refugees from the Han dynasty – much of what was worthwhile in the culture of the occupying power: the difficult art of rice planting in artificially irrigated areas, Chinese writing skills, Chinese philosophy, and even Chinese social customs and beliefs. But – and in this the Vietnamese are unique – they succeeded in maintaining their national identity in spite of the fact that everything else about them had become “Chinese.” Opposition to the Chinese rule built up as the Chinese presence became more ubiquitous and brutal. Finally, what could be called a routine “occupation incident,” the execution of a minor feudal lord, brought about a configuration. In 39 A.D., Trung Trac, the wife of the slain lord, and her sister Trung Nhi raised an army that, in a series of swift sieges, overwhelmed the Chinese garrisons, which had grown careless over the years. In 40 A.D., the Vietnamese, much to their surprise, found themselves free from foreign domination for the first time in 150 years and the Trung sisters were proclaimed queens of the country.

Naturally in so large an empire, Chinese reaction was slow, but when it came, it was effective. Old general Ma Yuan began his counterattack in 43 A.D., and the Vietnamese troops of the two queens made a fatal error: They chose to make a stand in the open field against the experienced Chinese regulars, with their backs against the limestone cliffs at the edge of the river Day – not far from the place where General Vo Nguyen Giap was to pit his green regulars against French Marshal de Lattre’s elite troops 1,908 years later.

The result was the same in both cases: The more experienced regulars destroyed the raw Vietnamese levies. The two queens, rather than surrender to the enemy, chose suicide by drowning in the nearby river. “Sinization” now began in earnest, with Chinese administration taking the place of traditional leaders. Two more rebellions took place. One in 248 A.D., also led by woman, Trieu Au, collapsed almost immediately, and like the Trung sisters, Trieu Au committed suicide. The second led by Ly Bon lasted from 544 to 547 and was also crushed. With the rise of the strong Tang dynasty in China after 618, resistance became hopeless: Viet-Nam became the Chinese Protectorate General of the "Pacified South" ("An-Nam" in Chinese). It was under the name "Annam," a symbol of humiliation and defeat that the region was to become best known to the outside world.

Korean firm defies norms in Cambodia airport building

03-04-2011
By Oh Young-jin
The Korea Times

First, he mentioned the efficiency and professionalism of the Cambodian public servants. “We deal with Ph.D. holders who studied in the U.S., Russia and European countries,” Lee said.

Secondly, Cambodia proves to be neither a banana republic nor led by a tinpot dictator. “It is a country that has a strong tradition of adhering to a contract perhaps resulting from the influence of the French,” the CEO said.

Building an international airport in a third-world country is a challenging task.

It requires dealing with a mercurial government, acquiring enough land and raising financial support.

There is too much uncertainty for any firm to take on without hesitation.

In this sense, the NSRIA or New Siem Reap International Airport Co, led by two Korean firms ― Lees A&A and its financial partner Cambodia Airport Co. ― is engaged in what others might call a mission impossible.

But when one listens to its CEO Lee Tae-hwan talk about the project, one can appreciate how the difficult feat could be translated into reality. As with any business, however, there is no 100 percent guarantee.

The project is constructing a new international airport 40 kilometers east of Angkor Wat, the UNESCO-designated world cultural heritage site, at the cost of $500 million. It is composed of one runway and a terminal on the site as large as 5 square kilometers, with the capability to handle 3 million passengers a year.

According to Lee, the new airport is expected to go into operation in late 2015 with the old adjacent airport to be closed, so there will be no competition from it.

Reflections on 20 years of the Paris Peace Accords

Monday, February 21, 2011
Op-Ed by Antoine Phirun Pich,
Ph.D. Candidate, University of Ottawa

Twenty years after the Paris Peace Accords were reached, Cambodia still faces the inherent challenges of an emerging democracy while its people have been allowed to enjoy a certain degree of liberty (at least compared with the Khmer Rouge genocidal regime of the mid-1970s or the decade-long Vietnamese occupation that followed). However, to the outside observer, the country remains far from the democratic society based on the rule of law that drafters of the accords could have legitimately expected. This is partly due to the initial political circumstances that lead to the absurd formation of a bicephalous first mandate government, or the hidden military agenda of one of the signatory countries indubitably involved in the 1997 coup.

It is beyond doubt that Vietnam’s hegemonic ambitions over Cambodia have been the most prevalent obstacle to the effective implementation of the peace accords in so far as it has contributed to the establishment of an open door policy for Vietnamese nationals to settle across the country’s (eastern) provinces, thereby jeopardizing unity, independence and national identity. Due to the ethno-demographic distribution of modern Cambodia and its clandestine subservience to the neighbouring government, there can be no doubt that the “Vietnamese factor” will forever remain inseparable from the Cambodian political landscape. But given today’s communications technologies and coercive principles of international law, whether Vietnam will truly succeed in annihilating Cambodia in the same way as in the past remains an open question.

Pax Sinica? Impossible!

by Kim Jin Hyun            

Kim Jin Hyun [jinhkim@korea.kr] is chairman of the World Peace Forum and former president of Seoul City University.

Pax Americana, US dominance, and Western/ Atlantic hegemony are fading away. However, Chinese hegemony or Pax Sinica will never arrive. The Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the 2008 global financial crisis, the lowest interest rates in the history of the US and UK central banks, and the European Union and euro on the brink of disintegration -- all are signs of the ebb of US and Atlantic power and indications of a historical power shift. But what is next?

Without question, Asia will become the center of activity and the Pacific and Indian oceans will be a thoroughfare of human resources, international finance, and cultural exchanges. Because of this historical trend, many people believe China will be the next world leader -- as it was in Asia before the 19th century. However, China will never become a leader of a new order or create a Pax Sinica.

The US unipolar moment is passing, but it maintains hard and soft power supremacy and continues to be a balancer in a multipolar international system. The US and China will continue to cooperate and compete. If China wants to surpass the US, it must become the greatest country in the world or establish a continental coalition with Russia and India, or reorganize the G20 into an organization lead by the BRICs. But there are other important factors that transcend geopolitics: the role of individuals, such as Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Julian Assange, Stephen Jobs, or even Osama bin Laden; the revival of city states; or the prospect of religious confrontation between Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and Confucianism.

Can Mubarak Follow South Korea’s Path?

by Peter M. Beck

Peter M. Beck [beckpeterm@gmail.com] is a POSCO Fellow at the East-West Center and a Hitachi Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

As the world holds its breath to learn if the Egyptian people’s amazing struggle for democracy ends in a breakthrough or a bloodbath, President Hosni Mubarak would do well to consider the South Korea option. Ultimately, Korea’s dictators and democracy were both winners.

Like Egyptians, South Koreans endured decades of American-backed dictatorship.  In the spring of 1987, Korea’s military government held sham elections not unlike the ones held in Egypt last year.  However, in both places, a combination of repression and rising expectations proved a combustible mix.  If the actual trigger for Egyptians was the sudden overthrow of Tunisia’s dictatorship last month, Koreans drew inspiration from the “People Power” overthrow of Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines the year before.

As in Cairo today, student-led demonstrations drew hundreds of thousands into the streets of Seoul 24 years ago.  Like Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, Korea’s Christians played a supporting role at the outset.  After weeks of clashes and teargas, on June 29 the government announced that a free and fair direct presidential election would be held within six months.  Given that almost exactly seven years earlier, the military unleashed a crackdown that killed over 200 citizens, the question we must ask is, what had changed?

When facing persistent social unrest, all dictators invariably undertake a cost-benefit analysis of cracking down versus opening up.  In 1980, Korea’s coup leaders correctly determined that there would be little or no cost for killing.  Indeed, within months of wiping the blood off of his hands, General-turned-President Chun Doo-hwan was one of President Ronald Reagan’s first foreign guests at the White House. Later that same year, Seoul was awarded the 1988 Summer Olympics.  Far from incurring any costs, Korea’s dictators were rewarded for their bad behavior.

The Media and Democracy

The Media and Democracy

John Willis of the IRI (Photo: R. Carmichael, VOA)

Cambodia is moving in the right direction (sic!):
Boeung Kak Lake residents protest forced eviction (Photo: Reuters)

Kingdom of Wonder?
Wonder why the cops shoot at unarmed civilians?
(Photo: John Vink/Magnum)

Sunday, January 23, 2011
Op-Ed by MP

IRI's findings are just another Win-Win endorsement of a closed single party state.

I don't know the methods used to gather public opinion on the government's performance or the effects of public policies on social issues such as public services like roads and the like, but I do see that the majority of Cambodians still live in a closed, insulated environment where public information and opinion making are still largely a product of manufactured uniformity where diversity or dissent is neither tolerated nor encouraged.

It would be interesting to ask the public instead questions pertaining to that closed climate of uniformity, out of which public views of social issues are patterned and shaped, which such findings can be said to merely mirror in the first place. For example, respondents could be quizzed on how much they know about the management and manipulation of television broadcasting operation in Cambodia; how much of an influence/representation, if any, do opposition parties and civil society or organisation have via these state-controlled information delivering outlets; who decide what news items to be aired; who own and fund these television stations; how many stations are owned by the state and how many are in private/commercial hands; what is the media's appropriate functions and responsibilities in respect of news coverage invariably devoted to highlighting the government's 'achievements' in a country still ranked among the world's poorest and most corruption plagued, or is that because negative news reportage has no constructive role to play in the developmental process? Is it because such news compromise or impair people's sense of well-being; that feel-good factor that only popular cultural shows and entertainment programmes are said to engender in their audience?; is it because Khmer people are not at all concerned or have no right to know how many kilometres of Khmer territory or how many villages had been ceded to Vietnam in the last 30 years?; is it because it is not their business to know how much their government has acquired in revenue from off-shore exploration deals, numerous land concessions and sand-dredging operations etc? Or how is this public fund being managed and ploughed back into the mainstream of the national economy?