A parachuting demonstration on the closing ceremony of the final Angkor Sentinel army train between the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces and the U.S. Military, March 25, 2016.
Credit score: Flickr/U.S. Embassy Phnom Penh
Earlier this month, the Cambodian authorities introduced that it was suspending its two-week army train with China subsequent month, citing a necessity to chop spending amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Golden Dragon train was attributable to happen from March 13 to 27, and would have concerned round 3,000 Cambodian and Chinese language troops partaking in reside ammunition drills, together with coaching on using tanks, armored automobiles, and demining gear.
In feedback to Radio Free Asia’s Khmer-language service, Cambodian Protection Minister Tea Banh mentioned that the fourth annual Golden Dragon train can be canceled this 12 months attributable to heavy flooding in late 2020 that devastated the nation’s infrastructure and meals provide. He additionally pointed to the nation’s ongoing battle with COVID-19 and “a number of different issues” dealing with the federal government.
“We’re coping with these difficulties. [The flooding] severely affected the well-being and livelihood of the folks and is predicted to end in extra poverty and hardship,” Tea Banh advised RFA Khmer. “So, primarily based on this, we have now suspended the army train.”
Apparently, the suspension bears an in depth resemblance to the cancellation of an identical army train with the US in 2017. The Angkor Sentinel joint train was first held in 2010, and was unexpectedly referred to as off by the Cambodian authorities in January 2017. Only a few weeks earlier, in December 2016, Cambodian troops had taken half within the the primary Golden Dragon army train with China’s Folks’s Liberation Military.
The cancellation of Angkor Sentinel marked an vital marker within the declining U.S.-Cambodian relationship. In September of the identical 12 months, authorities arrested Kem Sokha, the president of the Cambodia Nationwide Rescue Get together (CNRP), two months earlier than it banned the celebration outright. Each strikes have been criticized strongly by the U.S. and different Western governments, as was the farcical nationwide election in July 2018, when the ruling Cambodian Peoples’ Get together (CPP) gained all 125 seats within the Nationwide Meeting.
As Prime Minister Hun Sen’s crackdown alienated his authorities from the Western democracies, he leaned ever extra closely on help from China. As experiences and rumors emerged that Cambodia was making ready to host a Chinese language army presence, Cambodia popped up on the radar of an more and more hawkish U.S. overseas coverage institution that was now inclined to view Hun Sen’s authorities as a Chinese language shopper state – and to deal with it accordingly.
On this context, there’s a risk that the cancellation of the Golden Dragon train was meant as a refined sign to the brand new U.S. administration that the Cambodian authorities is not any mere lackey of Beijing, and that it’s prepared for a reset in its relations with Washington. Such would definitely be Hun Sen’s pursuits, given his present heavy reliance on China, and the chance that the nation can be as soon as once more discover itself a topic of superpower tensions.
Whereas this will appear to be studying an excessive amount of into the Cambodian authorities’s rationalization for the suspension of Golden Dragon, it’s value declaring that the federal government supplied an identical excuse for the cancellation of army workouts with the U.S. in 2017. On the time, a Protection Ministry spokesperson mentioned that the nation was busy making ready for native elections in June 2017, however the workouts have by no means been held since.
Regardless of the actuality of the state of affairs, any enchancment in relations would require considered one of two issues: both Hun Sen’s authorities should make the democratic reforms essential to fulfill the U.S. and different Western governments, or the U.S. authorities should undertake a extra pragmatic strategy to Cambodia.
The primary is unlikely, given Hun Sen’s reluctant to something that places the CPP’s energy in jeopardy. In the meantime, the Biden administration is unlikely to take a considerably softer line on human rights and democracy promotion efforts in Cambodia. Certainly, if something, as Washington compromises on values in Southeast Asia in a bid to construct partnerships within the pursuits of curbing Chinese language ambitions, Cambodia’s standing as a topic of democracy promotion efforts is simply more likely to develop.