Vietnam's Leopard Skin' strategy is well designed to crush Cambodia identity

Introduction:

To most casual observers, only Europeans are seen as the ones who practiced the evil ideology of imperialism-colonialism. However, in reality, imperialism was a worldwide phenomenon. Imperialism is color-blind. Japan was an imperialist power as China (under the Yuan dynasty), England, France, Holland, Portugal, Russia, the former Soviet Union, Spain, andeven the United States (manifest Destiny) were. But, for whatever reason, most scholars specialized in Asian affairs tend to ignore or play down the role of smaller countries as imperial powers, such as Thailand, Vietnam in Asia.

This page is an attempt to correct this historical omission and injustice in the analysis of Vietnamese imperialism - colonialism and to show how Vietnamese imperialism-colonialism is threatening the very existence of Cambodia and Laos as a nation and as a distinct cultural group. This analysis is based on the writings of some selected Asian, Western, as well as Eastern European scholars.

Vietnam did not become an independent country until the 10th century. Before that time, Vietnam or Dai Viet was a province of China. With a very prolific people with little land, since 938 AD, Vietnam has been pushing its border Southward under the name of "Nam Tien" in order to find space to feed its fast growing people. Thailand was also imperialistic. But, unlike Vietnam, Thailand had more land

(see Bernard Fall's article below entitled "Vietnam Imperial March and Nationalism" and also "The Imperial March of Vietnam or Nam Tien as Perceived and Explained by a Vietnamese Scholar,")

compared to the size of its population. Therefore, Thailand or Siam needed people to populate its empty land. This makes these two regional colonialist powers very different as far as their impact on Cambodia is concerned. Vietnam had to commit some form of genocide or ethnicide in order to get hold of the land that belonged to Champa and Cambodia. as Bernard Fall had written that;

"But the Vietnamese yoke on Cambodia was to take a shape far more direct than the highly theoretical suzerainty China still exercised over Viet-Nam. The declining Khmer state was split into three Vietnamese "residences" under the control of a Vietnamese Chief Resident at the Cambodian court at Oudong. The Vietnamese began an acculturation process that, as in the neighboring provinces and in the case of the Chams, amounted to veritable genocide: destruction of the Buddhist temples and shrines, compulsory wearing of Vietnamese clothing and hairdress, Vietnamization of city and provincial names, and, finally, abolition of the royal title of the Cambodian sovereigns. By the early nineteenth century, the queen, Ang Mey (1834-41), held a virtual prisoner in her palace, was officially referred to as merely 'chief of the territory of My-Lam.'3"

While Thailand took prisoners from Cambodia as slaves to populate and till the empty land but did not occupy the Khmer land.

The first victim of Vietnam's imperial March was Champa, an old indianized kingdom located in the present day central Vietnam. It was a seafarer country. Like most indianized countries, its borders were not well defined. The border concept was based on personal loyalty than on any physical markers.

In the Indianized countries, the borders were more like a no-mansland than a precise physical demarcation, Whereas in the case of the sinicized countries such as China and Vietnam, as well as in the Western countries, the border concept is very precise and marked by clear and visible physical markers. This imprecise concept of borders in Cambodia can explain why the border disputes between Vietnam and Cambodia is still going on, today. The difference between the two concepts of borders can also help to understand why the French has sided with Vietnam in the border dispute between Cambodia and Vietnam during their colonial tenure in Indochina

(For more information on this subject please see P B Lafont editor; Les Frontiere du Vietnam, Editions L'hermattan, Paris, France 1989).

Champa disappeared from the face of the earth in less than four centuries and is now totally absorbed by Vietnam. The only remaining group of Chams is to be found nowadays in Cambodia, not in Vietnam.

The next victim of Vietnam colonialism was Cambodia. Starting in the 17th century (when a Khmer king married a Vietnamese princess) and by the middle of the nineteenth century, Cambodia came under Vietnam's control, jointly with Thailand. Only when French colonialism arrived in Cambodia did it regain its partial identity, at least within the French colonial empire. However, Vietnam imperialism did not stop under French colonialism. Using their special connection with the French (Vietnamese are used by the French as their second tiers administrators in Cambodia and Laos) through the Catholic Church or through the French colonial administration, the Vietnamese were able to continue to expand their occupation of Cambodia throughout the whole period of French colonization.

This creeping conquest is known as "the leopard's skin strategy," which consisted of allowing a small group of Vietnamese colonizers to occupy a stretch of territory in the middle of the Khmer land and later on this core group of Vietnamese settlers would expand their control to the whole region by bringing new settlers who were either former prisoners or former soldiers. This creeping method of silent invasion is still going on with the approval of Hun Sen and his CPP through several unequal treaties with Vietnam (1979, 1982, 1983, 1985 1991). The recent occupation of Cambodia, which lasted from 1978 until 1989, is a testimony to that continued effort by Vietnam to conquer Cambodia. It was not for the sake of "saving" Cambodia that Vietnam invaded Cambodia in 1978, but to bring the recalcitrant Khmer Rouge into their firm control as the following excerpt has shown:

"Relations between Khmer and Vietnamese communists have passed through some major periods of development. In the first period, which can be determined to span from 1930 to 1954, a small Khmer section of the Indochina Communist Party (ICP), was under full ideological and organizational control of the Vietnamese communists. During the years of struggle for liberation from the governance of France (1946-1954), the strength of this section grew continuously due to ICP recruitment of the most radical participants in the anti-colonial struggle. The Khmer People’s Revolutionary Party (KPRP) was founded in June 1951 on this basis. The leaders of this party, Son Ngoc Minh, Sieu Heng, and Tou Samut, acted hand in hand in the anti-colonial war with the Vietnamese and were truly valid allies and strict executors of all the plans drafted by the ICP. " ........ and

"The "cat and mouse" game between Pol Pot and Hanoi ended after the Vietnamese Deputy minister of Foreign Affairs Hoang Van Loi’s confidential visit to Phnom Penh in February 1977. Pol Pot declined his proposal of a summit of Vietnamese and Cambodian leaders (Chanda, Brother Enemy, New York, 1986, p. 186). After the obvious failure of this visit, Hanoi, apparently, was finally SRV, Hoang Bich Son, on December 31, 1977, the Vietnamese representative said that "during the war with the United States, Nuon Chea’s attitude towards Vietnam was positive and now in his personal contacts with Vietnamese leaders he is to a certain extent sympathetic to Vietnam, but the current situation in Kampuchea makes such people unable to do anything" (RSAMH, Fund 5, inventory 75, file 1061. Record of the conversation of the Soviet ambassador with the deputy minister of Foreign Affairs of the SRV, Hoang Bich Son. December 31, 1977. p. 10). "convinced that it was impossible to come to terms with the Cambodian leadership. Gone were the hopes that Nuon Chea could change the situation for the benefit of Vietnam. At least during the Soviet ambassador’s meeting with the deputy minister of Foreign affairs of the SRV, Hoang Bich Son. December 31, 1977. p. 10).

(Dmitry Mosyakov; The Khmer Rouge and the Vietnamese Communists: A history of their relations as told in the Soviet archives, and from Chang Pao Min, Kampuchea and Sino-Vietnamese Relations From: Kampuchea Between China and Vietnam. Singapore University Press, Singapore, 1985, posted below)

Below are some selected articles showing how Vietnamese imperialism is working against Cambodia. However, It should be added that it is not entirely Vietnam's doing. It is also Cambodia's faults. Vietnam colonialism against Cambodia can only be reversed when the Cambodian leaders stop appealing to Vietnam for help whenever there is a dispute between them, as so often happened throughout the Cambodian history, especially during the "Dark Age, after the fall of Angkor in 1431" period after the fall of Angkor until the French colonial intervention in 1866, and again during the Khmer Rouge regime, and more recently under Hun Sen and the CPP 's control.

(See Pen Nearovi's article posted below on Khmer Vietminh and Ohter Khmers under Vietnamese control to destroy Cambodia; also see the article posted below written by Trudy Jacobsen entitled "Kampuchea Krom: Facts behind Friction) 

These requests for support from Vietnam only give the latter country a pretext to come and "save" Cambodia with all the ensuing disaster in terms of loss of Cambodian sovereignty and territories. As Bernard Fall had again noted that:

"Vietnamese intervention in Cambodian affairs had begun in 1623 when Chey Chettha II, a king of Cambodia who had married a Vietnamese princess, attempted to shake Siam's overlordship with the help of the Nguyen. In exchange for that help, the Hue govern-ment requested Cambodia's authorization to send settlers to Prey Kor, and a Vietnamese general was sent with a security detachment to protect the new settlers. In 1658, a Vietnamese expeditionary force again had to intervene in the endless internecine struggles of the various pretenders to the Cambodian throne, and in 1660, Cambodia began to pay a regular tribute to the Vietnamese court."

Cambodia's ability to survive also stems from the organization of its society since the Angkor period. Not much has changed since then. This organizational and leadership problems facing Cambodia were well summarized by Bernard Philippe Groslier, a French archeologist when he wrote that:

"In spite of the extraordinary development of the State in Cambodia, she appears never to have formulated any theory of power or public welfare such as was bequeathed to all Europe by Rome and to the Far East by China. In Cambodia there was no society, nothing but an undefined juxtaposition of elementary and undifferentiated cells. There were no classes, none of those intermediate and unstable structures which alone provide any possibility of evolution. There was nothing but a vast anonymous proletariat, with a head which may have been wonderful but was, after all, severed from the body. It was a polypous society , a hive incapable of self-reproduction other than by swarming, doomed inexorably to die, as soon as queen, is destroyed."

(B P Groslier, 'An Uncertain Legacy: The Khmer Paradox"). 

Today, only Vietnam is still pursuing this colonialist policy and practice. Vietnam still carries out genocide against the Cambodian ethnic minority in Southern part of Vietnam known as "Khmer Krom."

(See an article pasted below entitled 'Vietnamese Genocide against Khmer Krom, Wikipedia Encyclopedia, 2005).

While Thailand - being more open society and democratic - does no longer interfere with Cambodia's internal affairs. Of course, Thailand could not be expected to remain totally respectful of Cambodia's sovreignty when Vietnam is expanding its control into Cambodia. Sooner or later, Thailand will have to intervene in Cambodia in order to safeguard its borders and national interests.

Cambodians must be aware that - under the era of globalization, - nationalism carries a stigma comparable to racism, at least to narrow-mindedness. The majority of Cambodians being so emotional about the Vietnamese continued aggression against their homeland make things worse by often advocating violent means to get rid of the Vietnamese settlers in Cambodia, even though this is clearly a loosing proposition. Because Cambodia does not have, at the moment, any material, organizational means. and especially no capable leaders. 

Those who are advocating violent means for liberating Cambodia should know that it cannot work for another main reason. Because in the era of globalization where the notion of nation-state, thus the concept of nationalism is seriously weakened. In addition, because presently, there is no capable and honest leadership among Cambodian intelligentsia who would be able to lead this demanding task of liberating the country as it was tragically weakened by mass killings during the Khmer Rouge regime, and by constant and severe oppression of all who favor a more democratic and open society under Hun Sen's dictatorship, and during Sihanouk's egomaniac and autocratic regime and continued deceitfulness, against a militarily powerful and united Vietnam.

(For more details on Sihanouk's disastrous influence in Cambodia see an article entetled; Twilight falls on Cambodia's towering 20th century figure, but his legacy - good and bad – endures; posted below).

It can only backfire against Cambodia, as the international community may interpret this violent act as being very narrow-minded, or much worst as racist.

If Cambodians were to have any chance at all to survive the Vietnamese unrelenting onslaught, they must never resort to the use of violent means to liberate themselves. They must follow the non-violent road that other great leaders had taken in liberating their respective countries (India, South Africa, and Czechoslovakia). These men include Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, and Vaslav Havel to name only a few. Because of the bad image of Cambodians in the world resulting from the violent attacks against the Vietnamese during the Lon Nol and Khmer Rouge regimes, the Cambodian people has no choice but to use only non-violent means such as civil disobedience as a means to protest and fight against Hun Sen with Sihanouk's support to oppress the Cambodian people under Vietnam's supervision. 

For instance, they must avoid, at all costs, the expedient means such as the one used by Sam Rainsy to incite the people to riot. This is a very delicate and difficult road to follow and to implement in order toachieve freedom. But, that is the only one left for the Cambodian people to regain their freedom and dignity as a society and as a free and as a democratic nation.  Also important is the choice of moment to come to help the Cambodian people. That moment will come when starvation and general degradation of living conditions resulting from land grabbing by Hun Sen and his associates would push the mass of poor people to rise up against Hun Sen's greed and deadly oppression. 

(For a description of land grabbing in Cambodia this see an article posted below entitled "After touring the country, UN envoy proclaims evictions a 'national crisis' " the Phnom Penh Post, September, 2005; and for non-violent means to reach democracy see Gene Sharp; "From Dictatorship to Democracy: A Conceptual Framework for Liberation"; The Albert Einstein Institution, Boston, Mass; 2003; web site: www.aeinstein.org)

Washington, DC. August 16, 2005

Naranhkiri Tith, Ph.D.

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Kampuchea Krom: facts behind the friction

By Trudy Jacobsen

Many Cambodians harbor a deepseated cultural aversion towards their neighbors to the east, the Vietnamese. Yuon, a term denoting Vietnamese ethnicity, is one of the most derogatory insults Cambodians can hurl at each other during arguments. Prostitutes are popularly believed to be of Vietnamese descent, as no Cambodian girl - the model of propriety and virtue - would allow herself to be compromised in such a fashion. Past sovereigns of Cambodia supported by the Vietnamese are loathed, whereas those placed on the throne and maintained there by the Thais are lauded.

Explanations for Cambodian ill-will toward the Vietnamese are vague and unsatisfactory, usually referring to a time in the distant past when the Vietnamese are alleged to have killed hundreds of Cambodians in the course of constructing a canal between the two countries, or elucidated in terms of Vietnamese invasions of Cambodian territory and culture over the past 150 years. More recently, politicians have manipulated old concerns in this regard to garner support for their own party platforms. Yet these "justifications", always implied to have been based upon historical facts, appear to be unfounded by the very sources that would reasonably seek to demonstrate their veracity - the Cambodian Chronicles.

Let us first consider the issue of a Vietnamese "invasion" of Cambodia in the 17th century. It is true that Cambodia shrank to one-fifth its original size between the 14th and 19th centuries; but constant skirmishes with the Thais, Chams and multiple Viet dynasties were to blame rather than a wholesale invasion. The loss of Prey Nokor, the Cambodian name for what is now Ho Chi Minh City, and the area [broadly all the territory to its west] known as Kampuchea Krom in southern Vietnam, are particularly lamented. However, far from documenting any invasion, the Cambodian Chronicles reveal that the decision to part with these territories was made by a Cambodian king.

King Paramaraja IV (reigned 1603-1618) married his son and heir to a Vietnamese princess just before he died, in the hopes that the alliance would prevent the Thais from attacking. It was this Cambodian prince, who ruled as King Jai Jettha II (reigned 1618-1627), who made over the Cambodian lands along the east coast to Vietnamese hegemony.

In 1623, Jai Jettha II received a request from his father-in-law's court at Hue, asking that the territories of Prey Nokor and Kampong Krabei be handed over to Vietnamese administration. Fearing reprisal from the Vietnamese queen if they did not acquiesce, Jai Jettha II and his officials agreed, and Vietnamese settlers began moving into the area now known as Kampuchea Krom.

At the same time, Vietnamese officials began collecting the import taxes paid by merchant ships seeking entrance upriver.

On the surface this could be dismissed as a bad decision on the part of a young and inexperienced king concerned at potentially alienating his powerful in-laws. Yet it is possible that the administration of these territories had simply passed beyond the control of the Cambodian state by this point. Armies were constantly being faced to the northwest and northeast in order to stave off Thai offensives; there was no standing army available to maintain a presence on the east coast. The very name "Prey Nokor" is telling - it translates to "Wild City," implying that it was at the very least sparsely populated and ill-maintained, if not completely abandoned.

Whether the decision to part with Prey Nokor and its surrounds was made out of relief or in fear, there seems little doubt that this was a decision made by a Cambodian king, and not as a result of an invasion.

Another story exists in contemporary Cambodia to explain why the Vietnamese are dangerous and not to be trusted. The story goes that in the beginning of the 19th century, the Vietnamese wanted to build a canal between Phnom Penh and Chau Doc to facilitate transport. They conscripted a large number of both Cambodians and Vietnamese to do the work, although the foremen of the labor groups were solely Vietnamese.

The Vietnamese were very cruel toward the Cambodians, beating them with sticks to make them work faster. One day, two Vietnamese overseers were angry that the Cambodians were not fulfilling the quota of work despite repeated beatings. They selected three workers from the Cambodian contingent and buried them up to their necks in a triangular formation. Then they lit a fire in the middle and used the Cambodians' heads as cooking stones for their kettle.

The Vinh Te canal - which runs from Chau Doc to Ha Tien - itself is a historical fact; construction was begun in 1810 and continued into the 1820s, at a time when the king of Cambodia, Ang Chan (reigned 1797-1835) had turned to the Vietnamese for protection and assistance against the Thais. In return, Ang Chan was forced to embrace Vietnamese customs and language, and appoint Vietnamese officials to administrative positions. No doubt many Vietnamese abused their powers over what they saw as "backward" and "uncivilized" Cambodians. Yet this is hardly different from how Cambodians had in the past treated Chams, or Mons, or their own countrypeople from lower social classes conscripted to participate in the grandiose public works programs of Udong or Angkor.

Indeed, it is the enforced cultural changes that seem to have resonated most strongly with witnesses from the time. The Chronicles speak of enclaves of noble Cambodians taking to the forest rather than adopt Vietnamese customs, including a more "rational" taxation system, and the humiliations meted out to Ang Chan's daughters by their Vietnamese protectors.

It is hardly surprising that the almost total loss of Cambodian identity [from the former Kampuchea Krom] causes strong emotion today. Yet it is important to note that this occurred not as a result of marauding Vietnamese intent upon world domination, but as a result of policies adopted by Cambodian kings in the best interests of their people. These kings could not have foreseen how their decisions would impact upon later events; but it is imprudent to misrepresent the part that they have had in shaping relations between Cambodia and Vietnam.

There are 35 complete and fragmentary documents in Khmer that make up the Cambodian chronicles, found by the French in various wats, the Royal Palace, and in the possession of elite families. None date earlier than 1796.

They incorporate earlier oral histories and texts that have since been lost to the climate and upheaval of civil wars. Together these 35 documents make up eight different versions of Cambodian history.

Two Khmer scholars working in France, Khin Sok and Mak Phoeun, have translated the most comprehensive account of the chronicles into French, also offering commentaries upon dates and events, and supplying in appendices the different or missing accounts.

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Letter to  Editor                                  
 Phnom Penh Post June 3, 2006

"Flying kouprey and Vietnam"

I read with great interest and surprise Dr. Jacobsen's letter to the editor entitled "Maybe Kouprey can Fly" (PPPost, May 19, 2006). I especially found this paragraph disturbing:

"This episode has at least dispelled my naïve conviction that if Cambodians knew what their own records said about the two events constantly held up as evidence of a historical tradition of Vietnamese aggression prior to the 20th century, perhaps they would rethink their hatred of Vietnamese living in Cambodia and be less inclined to turn a blind eye when Vietnamese fishing villages are massacred; that perhaps they would be less suspicious of the motives of the Vietnamese government when treaties between the two countries are signed, and see such events as two countries moving forward into a shared future of goodwill and cooperation; that perhaps those who feel alienated from Cambodia after many years of living elsewhere will stop perpetuating this hatred in a frantic attempt to have an impact upon Cambodian politics, however tangentially."

What she wrote in her letter to the editor entitled "Maybe Kouprey Can Fly" is really nothing new. The Cambodian-Vietnamese relations have been well researched and well published. In this context, in a book entitled  'Les Frontieres du Vietnam' edited by Pierre Philippe Lafont, presents a comprehensive look at the various aspects of the border issues of Vietnam with her neighbors. The contributors to this book include Cambodian, Cham, French, and Vietnamese authors, namely ; Mak Phoeun, Po Dharama, Pierre Lucien Lamant, and Nugyen The Anh. So, her contribution does not amount to very much as far as new information is concerned. Worse still is Jacobsen's unfair and unsupported by historical documents accusation that Cambodians' hatred and unreasonable suspicion against the Vietnamese are unfounded and irrational.

Finally, I would like to remind Dr Jacobsen that there are numerous well written historical documents about Vietnam's grand design to conquer its weaker neighbors like Champa and Cambodia. It is well known under the Vietnamese name "Nam Tien" or "Southward movement" which is nothing more or less than Vietnam's grand design to subjugate Cambodia, after it had totally obliterated Champa in the 17th century. Perhaps the following excerpt from a book entitled A History of Cambodia, written by  a well-known historian in Cambodian affairs, David Chandler, would give Jacobsen a little different perspective than hers on Vietnam's contempt and condescending behavior toward the Cambodian people:

"Ironically, Vietnamese policies toward Cambodia in the 1830s foreshadowed the French mission civilisatrice ("civilizing mission") that was, during the colonial era, to weaken and dismantle so many Vietnamese in to Truong Minh Giang, the emperor outlined his policy:

'The barbarians [in Cambodia] have become my children now, and you should help them, and teach them our customs.... I have heard, for example, that the land is plentiful and fertile, and that there are plenty of oxen [for plowing] ... but the people have no knowledge of [advanced] agriculture, using picks and hoes, rather than oxen. They grow enough rice for two meals a day, but they don't store any surplus. Daily necessities like cloth, silk, ducks and pork are very expensive.... Now all these shortcomings stem from the laziness of the Cambodians ... and my instructions to you are these: teach them to use oxen, teach them to grow more rice, teach them to raise mulberry trees, pigs and ducks.... As for language, they should be taught to speak Vietnamese. [Our habits of] dress and table manners must also be followed. If there is any out-dated or barbarous custom that can be simplified, or repressed, then do so.'"

I agree with Dr Jacobsen that some overemotional Cambodians have unfortunately used epithets against the Vietnamese, more as a result of an uncontrollable and inexcusable rage resulting from their frustration of being powerless to defend against Vietnam's well designed policy and strategy to subjugate Cambodia under "Nam Tien."

Cambodians should learn to contain their rage and to behave as the real victims as they really are and not as victimizers.

Naranhkiri Tith, PhD - Washington, DC

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US Envoy Defends Expensive Cambodian Genocide Trials

For the full text of Ambaasador Mussomeli of his remark, please see the article posted just below this one.

Tuesday July 25th, 2006 / 13h22  

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP)--The U.S. ambassador to Cambodia on Tuesday defended holding genocide trials for the former Khmer Rouge, saying the multimillion dollar tribunal would help to heal the country's psychological and spiritual wounds.

His comment followed recent remarks by retired King Norodom Sihanouk, who questioned the value of spending $56.3 million on a U.N.-backed tribunal to try former Khmer Rouge leaders for crimes against humanity during their 1975-1979 rule.

Sihanouk said the money would be better spent alleviating poverty because the tribunal targets too few of those responsible for the Khmer Rouge's extremist policies that led to the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million people.

Ambassador Joseph Mussomeli said he agreed that people's basic needs have to be met, but added that "man does not live by bread alone."

"Cambodians deserve to have their hunger for justice satisfied," he said during a meeting with some 500 Khmer Rouge survivors on Tuesday.

Nearly 30 years after the Khmer Rouge reign of terror, Cambodia "is still lost and broken," he said. This "brokenness is more than just political and economic," he said. "It is also psychological and spiritual."

He said the brokenness fosters a culture of impunity "rooted in the belief ... that no crime is so great that it must be punished, and that whatever any Cambodian does is fine because it cannot possibly be worse than what the Khmer Rouge did - and got away with doing."

Prosecutors are now gathering evidence for the Khmer Rouge trials, expected to begin in 2007.

Washington has not given any money to the tribunal, although it has provided some $7 million over the last decade to the Documentation Center of Cambodia, an independent group researching Khmer Rouge atrocities, according to an embassy statement.

Mussomeli urged the tribunal's investigators to move "as quickly as possible," noting the death last week of Ta Mok, the group's former military chief.

He said he is concerned that other Khmer Rouge leaders could die "within the next decade, perhaps in the next year or two."

"If these criminals all die peaceful deaths, then there'll be a loss for Cambodia that they will never be able to clarify what really happened. That would be a great frustration, I think," he said. 

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Now it is official and in the Open that Sihanouk is Hun Sen's Man

Sihanouk: I Will Support Samdech Hun Sen for My Whole Life; Hun Sen: Samdech Euv Sings Beautifully

There was a joyful party last Saturday night [3 June 2006] at the Royal Palace, hosted by the Great Heroic King, the former King of the Kingdom of Cambodia. Mr. Hun Sen and Madame Bun Rany and hundreds of officials from the Council of Ministers attended the party. The leader of the government praised Samdech Preah Norodom Sihanouk for singing beautifully and the Great Heroic King said that he will support Samdech Hun Sen for as long as the premier lives.

During the joyful party, Samdech Preah Norodom Sihanouk sung 21 songs, which added to the joy. The former King sang 21 songs, but this did not seem to satisfy his foster son [Hun Sen], so he requested a song entitled ‘Monika,’ which is Samdech Mae’s souvenir. Samdech Euv [the Father King] sang this as his present. Khmer people who were unable to listen to the songs should wait for CDs and VCDs that will be available soon. 4 Jun e 2006 - 10 June 2006, THE MIRROR 3.

During the joyful party, Samdech Preah Norodom Sihanouk said that Samdech Hun Sen is the only person developing Cambodia and helping Khmer people. The former King said that he will back Samdech Hun Sen for his whole life.

Mr. Hun Sen and Samdech Norodom Sihanouk mentioned their good memories of when they first met each other, and decided to be foster father and foster son. Mr. Hun Sen considers King Samdech Preah Baromneath Norodom Sihamoni as his foster brother, part of his family, though he is the King.

During the party, Mr. Hun Sen and Samdech Euv showed their close friendship for the first time since the two had severely criticized each other over the 1985 supplemental [border] treaties last year. Their differences forced Samdech Euv to live abroad for nearly one year while he underwent treatment. Samdech Euv had frequently issued messages in Khmer saying that he would not return to Cambodia, and if he did return to Cambodia, that would mean that he recognized the illegal 1985 supplemental [border] treaties. Samdech Euv also confirmed that he would have to stay abroad until he died as Prince Norodom Yukanthor did.

A few days before returning to Cambodia, Samdech Preah Norodom Sihanouk said that it was just an informal return, so there was no need to have any welcoming ceremony. The retired King also stated that he would not grant an audience to anyone. He needed peace and quietness in the royal family.

Khmer people also appealed to Mr. Hun Sen not to play tricks with Samdech Euv, because it is noted that the Strongman [Hun Sen] always does this with his partner [Prince Norodom Ranariddh]. Obviously, the former King’s great son, Prince Norodom Ranariddh, once hugged Mr. Hun Sen many times, but now he does not dare to return to the country because the Strongman’s tricks.”

Sralanh Khmer, Vol.2, #129, 5.5.2006, The Mirror, June 13, 2006

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Twilight falls on Cambodia's towering 20th century figure, but his legacy - good and bad – endures

September 25, 2005 10:31 AM

(EDITOR'S NOTE - AP's Bangkok bureau chief, Denis D. Gray, has been covering Cambodia since the mid-1970s, reporting on its slide from war into genocidal rule by the Khmer Rouge, as well as its tortuous road to recovery. He has often met with leading Cambodians, including Sihanouk. By DENIS D. GRAY= Associated Press Writer)

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) - Just as the twilight dims the gilded spires of the palace where his remains will rest, Norodom Sihanouk - king, clown, prisoner, statesman, political escape artist - is fading from a stage he dominated for half a century of periodic triumph amid unrelenting tragedy.

One of the hottest battlefields of the Cold War, Indochina, put his small, impoverished country on the world map. But so did this larger-than-life character - lovable and detested, greatly gifted and deeply flawed - who wrested Cambodian independence from France, survived wars and the Khmer Rouge holocaust and for a time juggled the superpowers to secure peace for his country.

Now 82, in and out of China for treatment of cancer, Sihanouk has ceased to be an international player, while at home a young generation eager to plug into the globalizing present has all but relegated him to the history books.

The power of the monarchy, almost omnipotent under his rule, is waning fast, and while the legacy of his accomplishments are firmly embedded in today's Cambodia, so too are his failures.

In Sihanouk's place on the throne, which he abdicated last year, sits King Sihamoni, a ballet dancer, lifelong bachelor and political novice. He's an unlikely match for wily strongman Prime Minister Hun Sen, despite being coached by the wiliest of them all - his father, Sihanouk. It is Hun Sen, peasant-born and a former Khmer Rouge officer, who has replaced Sihanouk, once regarded as semi-divine, at center stage.

Democratically elected but an autocratic figure, Hun Sen indicates it is he who now calls the shots at the palace, and nobody dares challenge him.

Beneath flowery, formal words runs an underlying tension and an ccasioonal exchange of public barbs between the two men, with Sihanouk lamenting the state of affairs in Cambodia.

Sihanouk, a prolific writer, has his own blog on the Internet, where he posts sharp opinions on what he considers the deplorable state of Cambodian society and politics, highlighting corruption, deforestation and injustice. As often as not, he blames Hun Sen, in a diplomatically indirect manner that does little to disguise his target.

Among the older generation, especially in the countryside, Sihanouk is still a star who reminds them of quieter, simpler times before the Indochina war.

"I pray in front of his portrait every day for him to be well, to have a long life, because he is so generous to his people," says Ke Khat, a toothless, 66-year-old villager. Each night she lights incense sticks before bygone, dusty posters of Sihanouk and Queen Monineath hanging above her hard, bamboo bed.

She and her neighbors at Nikum Preah Kosamak, 50 miles north of Phnom Penh, remember how Sihanouk gave their village aid from his own coffers, including Ke Khat's house. They recall how the royal, handing out gifts, sobbed when, after returning from his long exile in 1991, he told them how much he had missed "his children."

But the predicament of Cambodia today, some critics say, is in some measure the fault of Sihanouk himself, who had decades and vast powers to make critically needed changes but did not.

Australian historian Milton Osborne points out that Sihanouk had little interest in reshaping Cambodia's semi-feudal institutions. This neglect contributed to spawning the terrible ultra-revolution of the Khmer

Rouge and allowed the ills of Sihanouk's reign to persist into 2005 - rampant corruption, a greedy elite, a dangerous gap between rich and poor.

While nearly half of Cambodians exist on $1 a day or less, foreign aid and domestic resources are siphoned off into the pockets of the powerful, with few legal means available to stop it.

Opulent villas of the rich, with new SUVs in the parkways, sprout in Phnom Penh while poverty, natural disasters and AIDS stalk the have-nots in the slums and villages.

With Sihanouk a one-man show from his ascension as king in 1941 until his ouster in a coup in 1970, popular and democratic institutions could not emerge and reformists weren't allowed to flourish.

"His greatest fault was never to let anyone else but himself have his own opinion. He was the classic tree under which nothing could grow. Sihanouk was not Cambodia but he thought he was," says Osborne, author of a critical biography, "Sihanouk, Prince of Light, Prince of Darkness."

"Perhaps princes, kings never admit their mistakes and thus fail to teach the coming generations to avoid their mistakes," says Lao Mong Hay, a lawyer and human rights advocate who has tracked Sihanouk's career for decades. "We have not learned the lessons of the past."

Cambodians who know their history still credit Sihanouk with giving birth to the modern nation by peacefully cutting the colonial yoke o f France and for a time managing to keep the firestorms of Indochina at bay by playing off China, United States and the Soviet Union against one another. But by the late 1960s he was losing control at home and abroad. Increasingly autocratic, he alienated the rightists and persecuted leftist radicals who, like their leader-to-be Pol Pot, were fleeing into the jungles to form the Khmer Rouge.

Sihanouk's ouster by pro-American rightists in a 1970 coup was welcomed by Washington because it removed a geopolitical handicap it faced in fighting the communists in neighboring Vietnam. It precipitated a savage war between the new, U.S.-backed government and the Khmer Rouge. Five years later, the communist ultras marched into the capital to begin their reign of terror.

His pride deeply wounded, the exiled Sihanouk had sided with the Khmer Rouge, a move some critics say implicates him in the deaths of at least 1.7 million of his countrymen through executions, disease and slave labor.

"History will prove that he shares some of the responsibility for the evils which befell Cambodia," says Lao Mong Hay.

All the same, he ended up being imprisoned by the Khmer Rouge, but was freed. By 1979, the great survivor was back in the limelight leading a coalition of guerrillas against the Vietnamese troops who had invaded Cambodia to topple Pol Pot and set up a pro-Hanoi regime in Phnom Penh. Twelve years later, with peace finally attained, he returned home from an exile spent mostly in China, as the United Nations tried to stabilize the country and supervise elections. Seen as a unifying force, Sihanouk was crowned king - for the second time.

But he no longer held center stage.

"I think he's a pretty unhappy person," says Osborne. "I think he had higher hopes that once the wars and United Nations peacekeeping mission ended he would again become a significant player, but this did not happen."

In his youth, the charismatic and prodigiously energetic Sihanouk fielded a palace soccer team, composed music, jested with world leaders and headed a jazz band, playing saxophone and clarinet at all-night parties.

But Sihanouk's time has passed.

"The new king doesn't like parties and singing," said Nou Thearoth, a guide at one of the last vestiges of the old Cambodia, the Royal Palace. She recounts that last year, before heading to Beijing again, Sihanouk staged one of his famous birthday bashes, taking the microphone to sing and dancing with the palace staff.

The spirited mood has vanished. During the day, knots of sweating tourists visit. When dusk falls, only seven old Brahmin priests, half a dozen North Korean bodyguards and a few servants remain with Sihanouk's royal successor in the vast compound.

"He will be buried there," the guide said, pointing to a mound-like Buddhist shrine in a tranquil, tree-shaded courtyard. According to his wishes, Sihanouk's ashes are to be mingled with those of his most-loved child, Kantha Bopha, a daughter who died of leukemia at age four.

Phnom Penh correspondent Ker Munthit contributed to this report. ©2005 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Searching for the Truth.Youk CHHANG, Director Documentation Center of Cambodia

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[Miloon Kothari, left, meets with the widows of the men killed during a forced eviction...]

At the end of a 13-day tour of Cambodia, Miloon Kothari, the special rapporteur on adequate housing for the United Nations national commission on human rights, spoke to Markus Bernsen about what he describes as the nation's biggest crisis: land.

MB: In 2004, you began your report to the UN commission on human rights with a poem: "If we fail to speak up today, deadly silence we will earn, every home will be on fire, every dwelling we will see burn." After two weeks in Cambodia, which poem would you recite at the next commission?

MK: Well, it will be something similar. The reason I chose that poem was because my report was on homelessness and landlessness in the world, and the year before it was on forced evictions. I was trying to express that if we don't control this phenomenon we are going to have major chaos.

And I think that Cambodia is in that respect - if you look at the scale of land grabbing, at the scale of dispossession that is occurring and is coming in the next years - it is probably one of the worst examples of what we are talking about in terms of dispossessing people from their lands. And of course, in numerous cases as we have seen in Poipet, and some of the other cases where protests from indigenous people have been repressed, there is violence involved as well. ...

But I think the NGOs are doing a lot. Some very courageous work is going on both by national and international NGO's, and most importantly by the communities. I think it's the kind of work we probably haven't seen in Cambodia before and it could be one of the areas of hope that people are at least speaking out.

In your work around the world, how often do you come across cases like Kbal Spean in Poipet, where five people were killed and 40 injured in a forced eviction?

Well, we do come across cases like that. It's not uncommon, but I think what is striking in this case and what is very disturbing, is that there has been made no attempts to bring justice to people. I mean, it's incredible that the widows haven't even been compensated. And nor has there been any attempt to compensate people for the destruction of property, nor has there been any attempt to say, 'Okay, perhaps there was a mistake in the judicial process.' ... And I find it even more striking because there has been international publicity; this is a case that is known everywhere, and why is it that the government is not sensitive of that?

So what do you propose the government should do on a short- term basis?

I think there should be immediate compensation for the widows, there should be compensation for the loss of property, there should be an independent investigation into, you know, who does the land belong to? Who is behind the chief? What is it worth? What is it going to be used for? Is it possible to settle the families where they are, for example? There has to be an investigation that is impartial, and then there has to be a prosecution for the people who are responsible for the murder. I mean, these are killings, they are not accidents, and I think that something we [the UN] would look for in a situation like this is even an announcement from the prime minister or something to say that, "We are aware of the problem, we are moving as fast as possible," but there hasn't been anything.

That is also very striking here; when you have a situation like Koh Pich or a situation like the Royal University of Fine Arts where the private sector is involved, it seems as if as soon as that deal goes through, the government loses it's sense of responsibility towards its citizens...

Where is the municipality, where is the government? People don't stop being citizens just because there is a private company involved. So I think there are lots of irregularities which I think have now added up to so many cases that I would say it's a national crisis. The land crisis in Cambodia is probably, I would say, the national crisis, because it affects simple people everyday of their lives.

Do you feel that transparency should be the first step for the Cambodian Government?

I think a number of steps have to take place simultaneously, but I think transparency certainly is one of them. For example, one thing I have called for is that there should be a national land use plan. ...

You don't have the kind of transparency to say, okay, this is public land, this is private land, this land can be used for public services. ... That is the kind of transparency you need, and I think without that kind of transparency, without the participation of people, without accountability for developing projects or handing over land to the private sector, democracy becomes a very surfaced kind of democracy; there is really nothing below the rhetoric. In a democracy you would expect a place for people to go and complain, you would expect information ... but here you are as far away from that as possible.

Compared to other countries with major housing issues, how would you rate Cambodia?

That might be a little bit difficult to do, but I think what is different here as supposed to other places I have been - like Afghanistan, Kenya, where they are also dealing with land issues - is that here there seems to have been no attempts to build institutions. In any post-conflict situation, where there is some kind of political or economic stability, you would immediately see the call for a land commission, which would examine dealings, whether they were irregular or not, you would see the formation of an independent human rights commission which would investigate independently of the state.

You still haven't told us how you will begin your report before the high commission in April next year?

Which poem? I'll have to look for one now. I think I've already used all the strong ones. I think certainly something that expresses the cost of keeping silent, when you are faced with such levels of injustice.

Of course, in this case, it is of predominant concern to me, because it's all about the homes and the land. It is not an armed, conflict situation where armies are going in and target the homes and the village, because that is how you get to the people, like in Palestine. ... But [in Cambodia], as far as people are concerned, in just as destructive a manner, you have this form of dispossessing people from their homes by land grabbing, evictions, land confiscations.

Phnom Penh Post, Issue 14/18, September 9 - 22, 2005

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Illusions of Empire: Defining the New American Order

G. John Ikenberry

From Foreign Affairs, March/April 2004

Summary: From Washington to Baghdad, the debate over American empire is back. Five new books weigh in, some celebrating the imperial project as the last best hope of humankind, others attacking it as cause for worry. What they all fail to understand is that U.S. power is neither as great as most claim nor as dangerous as others fear.

(G. John Ikenberry is Peter F. Krogh Professor of Geopolitics and Global Justice at Georgetown University and Transatlantic Fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States. )

The debate on empire is back. This is not surprising, as the United States dominates the world as no state ever has. It emerged from the Cold War the only superpower, and no geopolitical or ideological contenders are in sight. Europe is drawn inward, and Japan is stagnant. A half-century after their occupation, the United States still provides security for Japan and Germany -- the world's second- and third-largest economies. U.S. military bases and carrier battle groups ring the world. Russia is in a quasi-formal security partnership with the United States, and China has accommodated itself to U.S. dominance, at least for the moment. For the first time in the modern era, the world's most powerful state can operate on the global stage without the constraints of other great powers. We have entered the American unipolar age.

The Bush administration's war on terrorism, invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, expanded military budget, and controversial 2002 National Security Strategy have thrust American power into the light of day -- and, in doing so, deeply unsettled much of the world. Worry about the implications of American unipolarity is the not-so-hidden subtext of recent U.S.-European tension and has figured prominently in recent presidential elections in Germany, Brazil, and South Korea. The most fundamental questions about the nature of global politics -- who commands and who benefits -- are now the subject of conversation among long-time allies and adversaries alike.

Power is often muted or disguised, but when it is exposed and perceived as domination, it inevitably invites response. One recalls the comment of Georges Clemenceau, who as a young politician said of the settlement ending the Franco-Prussian War, "Germany believes that the logic of her victory means domination, while we do not believe that the logic of our defeat is serfdom." At Versailles a half-century later, he would impose just as harsh a peace on a defeated Germany.

The current debate over empire is an attempt to make sense of the new unipolar reality. The assertion that the United States is bent on empire is, of course, not new. The British writer and labor politician Harold Laski evoked the looming American empire in 1947 when he said that "America bestrides the world like a colossus; neither Rome at the height of its power nor Great Britain in the period of economic supremacy enjoyed an influence so direct, so profound, or so pervasive. ..." And indeed, Dean Acheson and other architects of the postwar order were great admirers of the British Empire. Later, during the Vietnam War, left-wing thinkers and revisionist historians traced the same deep-rooted impulse toward militarism and empire through the history of U.S. foreign policy. The dean of this school, William Appleton Williams, argued in The Tragedy of American Diplomacy that the nation's genuine idealism had been subverted by the imperial pursuit of power and capitalist greed.

Today, the "American empire" is a term of approval and optimism for some and disparagement and danger for others. Neoconservatives celebrate the imperial exercise of U.S. power, which, in a modern version of Rudyard Kipling's "white man's burden," is a liberal force that promotes democracy and undercuts tyranny, terrorism, military aggression, and weapons proliferation. Critics who identify an emerging American empire, meanwhile, worry about its unacceptable financial costs, its corrosive effect on democracy, and the threat it poses to the institutions and alliances that have secured U.S. national interests since World War II.

THE "E" WORD

No one disagrees that U.S. power is extraordinary. It is the character and logic of U.S. domination that is at issue in the debate over empire. The United States is not just a superpower pursuing its interest; it is a producer of world order. Over the decades -- with more support than resistance from other nations -- it has fashioned a distinctively open and rule-based international order. Its dynamic bundle of oversized capacities, interests, and ideals constitutes an "American project" with unprecedented global reach. For better or worse, other states must come to terms with or work around this protean order.

Scholars often characterize international relations as the interaction of sovereign states in an anarchic world. In the classic Westphalian world order, states hold a monopoly on the use of force in their own territory while order at the international level is maintained through the diffusion of power among states. Today's unipolar world turns the Westphalian image on its head. The United States possesses a near-monopoly on the use of force internationally; on the domestic level, meanwhile, the institutions and behaviors of states are increasingly open to global -- that is, American -- scrutiny. Since September 11, the Bush administration's assertion of "contingent sovereignty" and the right of preemption have made this transformation abundantly clear. The rise of unipolarity and the simultaneous unbundling of state sovereignty is a new and volatile brew.

But is the resulting political formation an empire? And if so, will the American empire suffer the fate of great empires of the past: ravaging the world with its ambitions and excesses until overextension, miscalculation, and mounting opposition hasten its collapse?

The term "empire" refers to the political control by a dominant country of the domestic and foreign policies of weaker countries. The European colonial empires of the late nineteenth century were the most direct, formal kind. The Soviet "sphere of influence" in Eastern Europe entailed an equally coercive but less direct form of control. The British Empire included both direct colonial rule and "informal empire." If empire is defined loosely, as a hierarchical system of political relationships in which the most powerful state exercises decisive influence, then the United States today indeed qualifies.

If the United States is an empire, however, it is like no other before it. To be sure, it has a long tradition of pursuing crude imperial policies, most notably in Latin America and the Middle East. But for most countries, the U.S.-led order is a negotiated system wherein the United States has sought participation by other states on terms that are mutually agreeable. This is true in three respects. First, the United States has provided public goods -- particularly the extension of security and the support for an open trade regime -- in exchange for the cooperation of other states. Second, power in the U.S. system is exercised through rules and institutions; power politics still exist, but arbitrary and indiscriminate power is reigned in. Finally, weaker states in the U.S.-led order are given "voice opportunities" -- informal access to the policymaking processes of the United States and the intergovernmental institutions that make up the international system. It is these features of the post-1945 international order that have led historians such as Charles Maier to talk about a "consensual empire" and Geir Lundestad to talk about an "empire of invitation." The American order is hierarchical and ultimately sustained by economic and military power, but it is put at the service of an expanding system of democracy and capitalism.

Fundamentally, then, the debate over the new American empire hinges on how extensive and deeply rooted these characteristics are -- and whether its assertion of power since September 11 constitutes a fundamental break with this liberal past.

THE GLOBAL RACKET

In The Sorrows of Empire, Chalmers Johnson advances the disturbing claim that the United States' Cold War-era military power and far-flung base system have, in the last decade, been consolidated in a new form of global imperial rule. The United States, according to Johnson, has become "a military juggernaut intent on world domination."

Driven by a triumphalist ideology, an exaggerated sense of threats, and a self-serving military-industrial complex, this juggernaut is tightening its grip on much of the world. The Pentagon has replaced the State Department as the primary shaper of foreign policy. Military commanders in regional headquarters are modern-day proconsuls, warrior-diplomats who direct the United States' imperial reach. Johnson fears that this military empire will corrode democracy, bankrupt the nation, spark opposition, and ultimately end in a Soviet-style collapse.

In this rendering, the American military empire is a novel form of domination. Johnson describes it as an "international protection racket: mutual defense treaties, military advisory groups, and military forces stationed in foreign countries to 'defend' against often poorly defined, overblown, or nonexistent threats." These arrangements create "satellites" -- ostensibly independent countries whose foreign relations revolve around the imperial state. Johnson argues that this variety of empire was pioneered during the Cold War by the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe and the United States in East Asia. Great empires of the past -- the Romans and the Han Dynasty Chinese -- ruled their domains with permanent military encampments that garrisoned conquered territory. The American empire is innovative because it is not based on the acquisition of territory; it is an empire of bases.

Johnson's previous polemic, Blowback, asserted that post-1945 U.S. spheres of influence in East Asia and Latin America were as coercive and exploitative as their Soviet counterparts. The Sorrows of Empire continues this dubious line. Echoing 1960s revisionism, Johnson asserts that the United States' Cold War security system of alliances and bases was built on manufactured threats and driven by expansionary impulses. The United States was not acting in its own defense; it was exploiting opportunities to build an empire. The Soviet Union and the United States, according to this argument, were more alike than different: both militarized their societies and foreign policies and expanded outward, establishing imperial rule through "hub and spoke" systems of client states and political dependencies.

In Johnson's view, the end of the Cold War represented both an opportunity and a crisis for U.S. global rule -- an opportunity because the Soviet sphere of influence was now open for imperial expansion, a crisis because the fall of the Soviet Union ended the justification for the global system of naval bases, airfields, army garrisons, espionage listening posts, and strategic enclaves. Only with the terrorist attacks of September 11 was this crisis resolved. Bush suddenly had an excuse to expand U.S. military domination. September 11 also allowed the United States to remove the fig leaf of alliance partnership. Washington could now disentangle itself from international commitments, treaties, and law and launch direct imperial rule.

Unfortunately, Johnson offers no coherent theory of why the United States seeks empire. At one point, he suggests that the American military empire is founded on "a vast complex of interests, commitments, and projects." The empire of bases has become institutionalized in the military establishment and has taken on a life of its own. There is no discussion, however, of the forces within U.S. politics that resist or reject empire. As a result, Johnson finds imperialism everywhere and in everything the United States does, in its embrace of open markets and global economic integration as much as in its pursuit of narrow economic gains.

Johnson also offers little beyond passing mention about the societies presumed to be under Washington's thumb. Domination and exploitation are, of course, not always self-evident. Military pacts and security partnerships are clearly part of the structure of U.S. global power, and they often reinforce fragile and corrupt governments in order to project U.S. influence. But countries can also use security ties with the United States to their own advantage. Japan may be a subordinate security partner, but the U.S.-Japan alliance also allows Tokyo to forgo a costly buildup of military capacity that would destabilize East Asia. Moreover, countries do have other options: they can, and often do, escape U.S. domination simply by asking the United States to leave. The Philippines did so, and South Korea may be next. The variety and complexity of U.S. security ties with other states makes Johnson's simplistic view of military hegemony misleading.

In fact, the U.S. alliance system -- remarkably intact after half a century -- has helped create a stable, open political space. Cooperative security is not just an instrument of U.S. domination; it is also a tool of political architecture. But Johnson neglects the broader complex of U.S.-supported multilateral rules and institutions that give depth and complexity to the international order. Ultimately, it is not clear what the United States could do -- short of retreating into its borders or ceasing to exist -- that would save it from Johnson's condemnation.

PAX AMERICANA

In Colossus, Niall Ferguson argues that the United States is indeed an empire and has been for a long time. To Ferguson, however, it is a liberal empire that upholds rules and institutions and underwrites public goods by maintaining peace, ensuring freedom of the seas and skies, and managing a system of international trade and finance. The United States is the imperfect but natural inheritor of the British system of global governance; it is open and integrative and inclined toward informal rule. Accordingly, Ferguson's worry is not that the world will get too much American empire but that it will not get enough. U.S. leaders, for all their benign intent, have unusually short attention spans and tend to go "wobbly."

In Ferguson's view, the United States shares many characteristics with past empires. Like Rome, it has remarkably open citizenship. "Purple Hearts and U.S. citizenship were conferred simultaneously on a number of the soldiers serving in Iraq last year, just as service in the legions was once a route to becoming a civis romanus," Ferguson writes. "Indeed, with the classical architecture of its capital and the republican structure of its constitution, the United States is perhaps more like a 'new Rome' than any previous empire -- albeit a Rome in which the Senate has thus far retained its grip on would-be emperors." The spread of America's language, ideas, and culture also invites comparison to Rome at its zenith.

But Ferguson is even more taken by parallels with the British Empire. U.S. presidents, from Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, and John F. Kennedy to Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush, have put their power to work promoting the great liberal ideals of economic openness, democracy, limited government, human dignity, and the rule of law -- a "strategy of openness" that is remarkably similar, Ferguson argues, to the aspirations of the British Empire in the second half of the nineteenth century. After all, it was a young Winston Churchill who argued that the aim of British imperialism was to "give peace to warring tribes, to administer justice where all was violence, to strike the chains off the slave, to draw the richness from the soil, to place the earliest seeds of commerce and learning, to increase in whole peoples their capacities for pleasure and diminish their chances of pain. ... "

Most of Colossus retells the familiar story of the rise of U.S. global dominance as an exercise in liberal empire. What is distinctive about American imperialism, according to Ferguson, is that it has been pursued in the name of anti-imperialism. For each phase of U.S. history, Ferguson nicely illuminates the tensions between republican ideals and the exercise of global power and shows how those tensions are often resolved. The Cold War -- and George Kennan's doctrine of containment -- provides the ultimate example of this fusion of anti-imperialism and hard power. Security, openness, democratic community, political commitment, and the mobilization of U.S. power went together. The core of U.S. global rule involved the enforcement of rules of economic openness, but the United States was also willing to act forcefully to integrate countries into the liberal order.

Ferguson's most interesting claim is that the world needs more of this liberal American empire. This argument stems in part from the uncontroversial claim that the current international order needs enlightened leadership and that only Washington can provide it. (Ferguson holds little hope that Europe will ever overcome its preoccupation with the internal contradictions of its enlargement.) It is especially the wider system of sovereign but failed states that needs imperial supervision by Washington. In vast swatches of Africa, Asia, and the Middle East national self-determination has led to much grief. Ferguson argues without qualification that "the experiment with political independence -- especially in Africa -- has been a disaster for most poor countries." To Ferguson, the extension of liberal empire into these regions (even involving some form of colonial rule) is necessary. What precisely these imperial arrangements would look like, however, remains unclear.

When Ferguson says that he is "fundamentally in favor of empire," he is to some extent pulling a conceptual sleight of hand. What Ferguson means by "liberal empire" scholars have previously called "liberal hegemony": a hierarchical order that is still very different from traditional forms of empire. By virtue of its power, the liberal hegemon can act on its long-term interests rather than squabble over short-term gains with other states; it can identify its own national interests with the openness and stability of the larger system. The United States thus shapes and dominates the international order while guaranteeing a flow of benefits to other governments that earns their acquiescence. In contrast to empire, this negotiated order depends on agreement over the rules of the system between the leading state and everyone else. In this way, the norms and institutions that have developed around U.S. hegemony both limit the actual coercive exercise of U.S. power and draw other states into the management of the system.

Ferguson's case for the virtues of American empire hinges on his claim that in the aftermath of the Soviet Union's collapse, the world could have gone one of two ways: international order organized around independent nations or an American imperium. He maintains that a world of decentralized, competing states, many of which are not democracies, would result in chaos. This may be true; he is certainly right that stability and open markets are not easily sustained without the support of powerful states. But the notion of liberal empire conflates very different types of U.S.-led order. One in which Washington coerces other states into obedience is very different from a system of multilateral rules and close partnerships. The challenges of peace and economic development that Ferguson identifies are best pursued by advanced democracies working together. Ultimately, such a cooperative order would require that Washington transcend the atavistic habits of empire rather than pursue a more complete realization of it.

In the end, Ferguson finds invoking the image of empire useful for political reasons. Unlike the British, Americans do not believe that they operate an empire. As a result, the United States makes a flighty and impatient imperial power (in contrast to the British, who acquired a cultural mentality for global rule). Ferguson thinks that speaking honestly about the reality of American empire will foster understanding of its duties and obligations.

Yet precisely the opposite is true. The United States does not need to view the world as its Raj and deploy a colonial service to the vast periphery; it needs to find ways to exercise its power in sustained, legitimate ways, working with others and developing more complex forms of cooperative international governance. It is also extremely doubtful that the American people would accept such a massive imperial undertaking: last September, as soon as President Bush revealed the price tag for occupying Iraq, public support plummeted immediately.

IMPERIAL INSECURITY

Benjamin Barber's Fear's Empire presents a case against the recent unilateral impulses in U.S. foreign policy. According to Barber, empire is not inherent in U.S. dominance but is, rather, a temptation -- one to which the Bush administration has increasingly succumbed. In confronting terrorism, Washington has vacillated between appealing to law and undermining it. Barber's thesis is that by invoking a right to unilateral action, preventive war, and regime change, the United States has undermined the very framework of cooperation and law that is necessary to fight terrorist anarchy. A foreign policy oriented around the use of military force against rogue states, Barber argues, reflects a misunderstanding of the consequences of global interdependence and the character of democracy. Washington cannot run a global order driven by military action and the fear of terrorism. Simply put, American empire is not sustainable.

For Barber, the logic of globalization trumps the logic of empire: the spread of McWorld undermines imperial grand strategy. In most aspects of economic and political life, the United States depends heavily on other states. The world is thus too complex and interdependent to be ruled from an imperial center. In an empire of fear, the United States attempts to order the world through force of arms. But this strategy is self-defeating: it creates hostile states bent on overturning the imperial order, not obedient junior partners.

Barber proposes instead a cosmopolitan order of universal law rooted in human community: "Lex humana works for global comity within the framework of universal rights and law, conferred by multilateral political, economic, and cultural cooperation -- with only as much common military action as can be authorized by common legal authority; whether in the Congress, in multilateral treaties, or through the United Nations." Terrorist threats, Barber concludes, are best confronted with a strategy of "preventive democracy" -- democratic states working together to strengthen and extend liberalism.

Barber's overly idealized vision of cosmopolitan global governance is less convincing, however, than his warnings about unilateral military rule. Indeed, he provides a useful cautionary note for liberal empire enthusiasts in two respects. First, the two objectives of liberal empire -- upholding the rules of the international system and unilaterally employing military power against enemies of the American order -- often conflict. As Barber shows, zealous policymakers often invoke the fear of terrorism to justify unilateral exercises of power that, in turn, undermine the rules and institutions they are meant to protect. Second, the threats posed by terrorism and weapons of mass destruction are not enough to legitimate America's liberal empire. During the Cold War, the United States articulated a vision of community and progress within a U.S.-led free world, infusing the exercise of U.S. power with legitimacy. It is doubtful, however, that the war on terrorism, in which countries are either "with us or against us," has an appeal that can draw enough support to justify a U.S.-dominated order.

BALANCING ACT

Michael Mann also warns of a dangerous, and ultimately unsustainable, imperial turn in U.S. foreign policy. This "new imperialism," he argues in Incoherent Empire, is driven by a radical vision in which unilateral military power enforces U.S. rule and overcomes global disorder.

Mann believes that this "imperial project" depends on a wildly inflated measure of American power; the United States may have awesome military muscle, but its political and economic capabilities are less overwhelming. This imbalance causes Washington to overemphasize the use of force, turning the quest for empire into "overconfident and hyperactive militarism." Such militarism generates what Mann calls "incoherent empire," which undermines U.S. leadership and creates more, not fewer, terrorists and rogue states.

In his distinguished scholarly work on the history of social power, Mann, a sociologist, has argued that four types of power drive the rise and fall of states, nations, empires, regions, and civilizations: military, political, economic, and ideological. Applying these categories to the United States, Mann concludes that it is, in a jumble of metaphors, "a military giant, a back-seat economic driver, a political schizophrenic, and an ideological phantom."

Mann acknowledges that the United States is a central hub of the world economy and that the role of the dollar as the primary reserve currency confers significant advantages in economic matters. But the actual ability of Washington to use trade and aid as political leverage, he believes, is severely limited, as was evident in its failure to secure the support of countries such as Angola, Chile, Guinea, Mexico, and Pakistan in the Security Council before the war in Iraq. Moreover, Washington's client states are increasingly unreliable, and the populations of erstwhile allies are inflamed with anti-Americanism. American culture and ideals, meanwhile, hold less appeal than they did in previous eras. Although the world still embraces the United States' open society and basic freedoms, it increasingly complains about "cultural imperialism" and U.S. aggression. Nationalism and religious fundamentalism have forged deep cultures of resistance to an American imperial project.

Mann and Barber both make the important point that an empire built on military domination alone will not succeed. In their characterization, the United States offers security -- acting as a global leviathan to control the problems of a Hobbesian world -- in exchange for other countries' acquiescence. Washington, in this imperial vision, refuses to play by the same rules as other governments and maintains that this is the price the world must pay for security. But this U.S.-imposed order cannot last. Barber points out that the United States has so much "business" with the rest of the world that it cannot rule the system without complex arrangements of cooperation. Mann, for his part, argues that military "shock and awe" merely increases resistance; he cites the sociologist Talcott Parsons, who long ago noted that raw power, unlike consensus authority, is "deflationary": the more it is used, the more rapidly it diminishes.

EMPIRE UNRAVELLING

The French essayist Emmanuel Todd believes that the long-term decline predicted by Mann and Barber has already started. In a fit of French wishful thinking, he argues in After the Empire that the United States' geopolitical importance is shrinking fast. The world is exiting, not entering, an era of U.S. domination. Washington may want to run a liberal empire, but the world is able and increasingly willing to turn its back on an ever less relevant United States.

Todd's prediction derives from a creative -- but ultimately suspect -- view of global socioeconomic transformation. He acknowledges that the United States played a critical role in constructing the global economy in the decades after World War II. But in the process, Todd argues, new power centers with divergent interests and values emerged in Asia and Europe, while the United States' own economy and society became weak and corrupt. The soft underbelly of U.S. power is its reluctance to take casualties and to pay the costs of rebuilding societies that it invades. Meanwhile, as U.S. democracy weakens, the worldwide spread of democracy has bolstered resistance to Washington. As Todd puts it, "At the very moment when the rest of the world -- now undergoing a process of stabilization thanks to improvements in education, demographics, and democracy -- is on the verge of discovering that it can get along without America, America is realizing that it cannot get along without the rest of the world."

Two implications follow from the United States' strange condition as "economically dependent and politically useless." First, the United States is becoming a global economic predator, sustaining itself through an increasingly fragile system of "tribute taking." It has lost the ability to couple its own economic gain with the economic advancement of other societies. Second, a weakened United States will resort to more desperate and aggressive actions to retain its hegemonic position. Todd identifies this impulse behind confrontations with Iraq, Iran, and North Korea. Indeed, in his most dubious claim, Todd argues that the corruption of U.S. democracy is giving rise to a poorly supervised ruling class that will be less restrained in its use of military force against other democracies, those in Europe included. For Todd, all of this points to the disintegration of the American empire.

Todd is correct that the ability of any state to dominate the international system depends on its economic strength. As economic dominance shifts, American unipolarity will eventually give way to a new distribution of power. But, contrary to Todd's diagnosis, the United States retains formidable socioeconomic advantages. And his claim that a rapacious clique of frightened oligarchs has taken over U.S. democracy is simply bizarre. Most important, Todd's assertion that Russia and other great powers are preparing to counterbalance U.S. power misses the larger patterns of geopolitics. Europe, Japan, Russia, and China have sought to engage the United States strategically, not simply to resist it. They are pursuing influence and accommodation within the existing order, not trying to overturn it. In fact, the great powers worry more about a detached, isolationist United States than they do about a United States bent on global rule. Indeed, much of the pointed criticism of U.S. unilateralism reflects a concern that the United States will stop providing security and stability, not a hope that it will decline and disappear.

RULERS OR RULES?

Is the United States an empire? If so, Ferguson's liberal empire is a more persuasive portrait than is Johnson's military empire. But ultimately, the notion of empire is misleading -- and misses the distinctive aspects of the global political order that has developed around U.S. power.

The United States has pursued imperial policies, especially toward weak countries in the periphery. But U.S. relations with Europe, Japan, China, and Russia cannot be described as imperial, even when "neo" or "liberal" modifies the term. The advanced democracies operate within a "security community" in which the use or threat of force is unthinkable. Their economies are deeply interwoven. Together, they form a political order built on bargains, diffuse reciprocity, and an array of intergovernmental institutions and ad hoc working relationships. This is not empire; it is a U.S.-led democratic political order that has no name or historical antecedent.

To be sure, the neoconservatives in Washington have trumpeted their own imperial vision: an era of global rule organized around the bold unilateral exercise of military power, gradual disentanglement from the constraints of multilateralism, and an aggressive effort to spread freedom and democracy. But this vision is founded on illusions of U.S. power. It fails to appreciate the role of cooperation and rules in the exercise and preservation of such power. Its pursuit would strip the United States of its legitimacy as the preeminent global power and severely compromise the authority that flows from such legitimacy. Ultimately, the neoconservatives are silent on the full range of global challenges and opportunities that face the United States. And as Ferguson notes, the American public has no desire to run colonies or manage a global empire. Thus, there are limits on American imperial pretensions even in a unipolar era.

Ultimately, the empire debate misses the most important international development of recent years: the long peace among great powers, which some scholars argue marks the end of great-power war. Capitalism, democracy, and nuclear weapons all help explain this peace. But so too does the unique way in which the United States has gone about the business of building an international order. The United States' success stems from the creation and extension of international institutions that have limited and legitimated U.S. power.

The United States is now caught in a struggle between liberal rule and imperial rule. Both impulses lie deep within the American body politic. But the dangers and costs of running the world as an American empire are great, and the nation's deep faith in the rule of law is undiminished. When all is said and done, Americans are less interested in ruling the world than they are in creating a world of rules.

• The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic. By Chalmers Johnson. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2004, 400 pp. $25.00

• Colossus: The Price of America's Empire. By Niall Ferguson. New York: Penguin Press, 2004, 368 pp. $25.95.

• Fear's Empire: War, Terrorism, and Democracy. By Benjamin R. Barber. New York: Norton, 2003, 192 pp. $23.95.

• Incoherent Empire. By Michael Mann. New York: Verso, 2003, 284 pp. $25.00.

• After the Empire: The Breakdown of the American Order. By Emmanuel Todd. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003, 192 pp. $29.95.

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CHAPTER III:  THE NEGATIVE ROLE OF THE JAPANESE AND FRENCH IN CAMBODIA

(As seen by a Thai Diplomat posted in Phnom Penh in the early 1990s. Sihanouk's hidden and treacerous collusion with Hun Sen was also revealed)

It has recently been announced that the Japanese Ambassador in Phnom Penh will soon leave his post on completion of his mission in Cambodia. He was duly given a royal decoration by the King (which the King himself has described as not having any value any more as they are given to mafia types and other financiers of the CPP).

Japan is a strong supporter of Hun Sen's regime and the main donor to "Cambodia's reconstruction and rehabilitation". Together with France, Japan has always supported a "rapprochement" between King Sihanouk and the CPP (previously known as the SOC or State of Cambodia) and it has always shown its lack of impartiality.

In an article published in the Japan Review of International Affairs  in Spring 1992, Japanese scholar Seki Tomoda described Japan's role in the Cambodian peace process as follows:

1)Japan played a valuable, albeit not decisive, role in gaining international recognition of SOC (today's CPP) as a real and important entity;

2)Japan contributed to merging the four parties into a more manageable two;

3)Japan played a limited role in fostering an alliance between Sihanouk and Hun Sen; and,

4)Japan lacked the decisive influence needed to arrange a peace settlement on its own.

While Japan, joining many western countries, maintained a tough stand towards the Khmer Rouge, it also showed a remarkable lack of impartiality by siding with Hun Sen's SOC. Japan policy makers conveyed the impression that  SOC deserved to gain wider international recognition as an important Cambodian entity, because it had a formidable staying power.

The policy makers in Tokyo obviously assumed, already back in 1989, that Hun Sen's regime would continue to rule over Cambodia, when they expected that a formal alliance betwen Sihanouk and Hun sen would serve as the basis of political power in Cambodia after a peace settlement had been achieved.

Japan's first  Ambassador to Cambodia -Yukio Imagawa, a most unpleasant man, whose only concern was to become Ambassador to Cambodia at any cost, influenced such policy and was the perfect representative and administrator of his country's close association with Hun Sen, ignoring all violations of human rights, corruption, lack of transparency and lawlessness of the regime. He had been posted to Cambodia prior to 1975, learned the language reasonably well and managed to be elected, unfortunately for Cambodia, as   co-chairman of the Paris Conference's Third Committee on Repatriation and Reconstruction.

In 1990, he visited Cambodia and claimed that most Vietnamese nationals had left Cambodia. After he was appointed Ambassador to Cambodia, he was in frequent contact with senior members of the Hun Sen regime while keeping his distance from human rights NGOs and the other three political factions composing the Supreme National Council of Cambodia.

In 1992, for instance, he arranged for eight (8) SOC/CPP officials and only two (2) officials from the other parties to go on a study tour of Japan.

He referred, not without a certain arrogance, to FUNCINPEC as a "party of emigres" as if the party had no legitimacy. He influenced many decisions of the head of UNTAC, Yasushi Akashi, but because Imagawa lacked a profound knowledge of the political factions in Cambodia, Akashi ended up making many disastrous decisions in Cambodia.

Japan basically saw its role in Cambodia as creating the ideal conditions for an alliance between Sihanouk and Hun Sen with both leaders having the same status. In this regard, Japan was ably assisted by the then Thai government of General Chatchai Choonhavan and his group of advisors.

Indeed, in April 1990, Thailand suggested to Japan that they should work together to promote peace in Cambodia. A conference was hastily organized in Tokyo, held in June the same year, which almost caused a break between China and Japan, as the conference was so heavily sided towards Hun Sen, that the Khmer Rouge decided not to attend and not much came out of it.

Together with seeking a major role in Southeast Asian affairs, Japan also was looking for new business opportunities for its industrial conglomerates. Thus, when the policy advisors of Prime Minister Chatchai suggested that Japan and Thailand should work together to transform the battlefields of Indochina into marketplaces, Tokyo was more than willing to agree, ignoring the profound differences separating Khmers from Thais and Khmers from Vietnamese.

It was through this agreement that Hun Sen was invited for the first time to visit Thailand, a visit that contributed nothing to create national reconciliation in Cambodia.  It is interesting that today most of Prime Minister's Chatchai's former advisors are in governmental positions with the current Thai government of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, another supporter of Hun Sen.

It was also the advisors' idea to convince Hun Sen that Sihanouk should be made King of Cambodia again, as they did not want Sihanouk in a strong position, considering the latter "a very difficult man", particularly as far as Cambodia's sovereignty and territorial integrity was concerned.

It should also be pointed out that Japan was one of the few countries that recognised until 1991 Pol Pot's "Democratic Kampuchea" and appointed a senior Japanese diplomat, Tadashi Ikeda, as Charge d'Affaires to DK, based at the Japanese Embassy in Beijing.

Lastly, Japan together with France, was instrumental in the Sihanouk-Hun Sen alliance hastily put together in November 1991, with disastrous consequences for Cambodia.

All in all, Japan's role in Cambodia has been rather negative and it is difficult to understand why policy makers in Tokyo cannot see that by helping dictators such as Hun Sen and the generals in Burma, Japan will win nothing but the contempt from the peoples of those countries.

Source: Kittisak Kraithong:Memoirs of a Diplomat in Cambodia; Chapter  III: cambodiatoday2003@yahoo.com.au 

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Comments on the interview of former strongman Pen Sovann with WCCPD 's Tith Naranhkiri, published on http://www.vocri.org/

By Pen Nearovi: A Cambodian-Canadian

         One of the performances of Dr Naranhkiri was to make Gen. Pen Sovann (he was general, let's not forget) say that Hun Sen, Chea Sim, Sar Kheng and their gang are actually serving Vietnamese interests. Shall Sovann expect retaliations from his former subordinates? Or will the latter play the deaf once more because they know too well that Pen Sovann still enjoys protection from Hanoi? As a matter of fact, Sovann, not long ago, has hinted to opposition leader Sam Rainsy that Chan Si was poisoned by Hun Sen. Has Sovann been jailed or murdered for that? Other Cambodians would have lost their life or freedom for less. But Pen Sovann is a curious "hinter" by himself. Hasn't he, some twenty years ago, suggested to Vandy Kaonn - - another highranking Heng Samrin's appointee - - to stage a revolt like Printemps de Prague? Kaonn was so frightened he took the first opportunity to stay in Paris and achieved his doctorate at La Sorbonne (Cf. Cambodge: La nuit sera longue, Apsara Publishing). 

         I understand the feeling of Tith Naranhkiri when he used the word "traitors" to qualify those Cambodians who asked foreign troops to overthrow other Cambodians, I have used it myself in my novel Comment reconstruire le Cambodge... et le Canada. There are now three kinds or three groups of Khmers so-called Vietnameses' puppets or accused of (or at least suspected of) collaboration with Vietnam. The most ancient were the Khmer-Vietminh and those "thousands" of teenagers kidnapped and took to North-Vietnam after and despite the 1954 Geneva Agreements. These Vietnamese-trained Cambodians, under the command of Norng Suon, were sent back to Cambodia to form, assist and /or command Pol Pot 's troops. One already knows that Pol Pot 's cadres started eliminating their "suspect" comrades (including Norng Suon) even before their victory of April 17, 1975. Khmer Rouge were communist, Norng Suon and his officers were also Khmer and communist but have been executed as well just because they got Vietnamese training. Securing but devastating logic, don't you agree? 

         The second group (oh surprise!) were the same Khmer Rouge who were killing Norng Suon 's officers but got once again assistance from Hanoi in 1978. They are Heng Samrin, Say Phou Thang, Chea Sim, Hun Sen, etc. Here let me open a parenthesis. Pol Pot was then slaughtering your relatives and my relatives and... making some of you work like oxen and buffaloes. I and other Khmers tried to form a guerrilla movement "from" the Thai border. What I want to know, and each Cambodian deserves to know - - from the mouth or pencil of Pen Sovann in his upcoming book and above all from the mouth or pencil of Heng Samrin, Chea Sim and Hun Sen - - is why in the world they did not stage a guerrilla warfare from the inside, from where they were. They had everything : weapons, ammunitions, troops, a population and a territory. As soon as they knew that their chief So Phim has been eliminated, they should have gathered the population, fed them with triple ration and told them they were now in liberated zone and were free to work and fight for their own life and liberty. Why in the world Heng Samrin, Chea Sim and Hun Sen had to go to Vietnam? 

         Pen Sovann and Chan Si (dead), in the second group, were the surprise of the surprise : not all of Norng Suon 's followers had been killed by Pol Pot, some (maybe many) of the kidnapped teenagers have survived, Hanoi still had a number of cards to play. By the way, how old were Pen Sovann and Chan Si in 1955? I am ready to bet on that Heng Samrin, Chea Sim and Hun Sen, before their arriving in Vietnam, did not know at all Pen Sovann and Chan Si. The latter two were major cards spared by Hanoi for further game. And I will bet on that many Cambodian teenagers are currently receiving formation in Vietnam (if not in Cambodia) for future strategic move. 

         Finally the third group of Khmers suspected of collaboration with Vietnam were neither communist nor Vietnamese-lovers but found themselves caught by circumstances. They are living here, around you and me, in Canada, in the States, in Europe, in Australia, in Cambodia... They are (or have been) members or supporters of Cambodian People's Party (CPP) or simply civil servants or military in the present administration. And facing the above three kinds of Cambodians, stand the members and supporters of FUNCINPEC, SRP, etc. Not to forget the former masters and killers in Pailin. So, what if one side decides to secure its victory by simply eliminating the other side? Cambodians would once more kill each other without Vietnam having to send in any troop. 

         No one contests the fact that Vietnameses were ruling Cambodia more or less directly from January 1979 to September 1989 (eleven years). But since the elections of 1993 it was up to Cambodians... well, after a short period of UN 's sponsorship with Japanese diplomat Akashi and Australian general Sanderson. A Cambodian journalist living here in the West still has not digested his nasty encounter with Akashi. The two men were trading insults and finger-pointings because Akashi forbade him to call Vietnameses "Yuons". Here another parenthesis is necessary. Vietnamese, like Vietnamien in French, are adjectives derived from a substantive (Vietnam). Such way of adjective forming simply does not exist in both Khmer and Yuon languages. Vietnameses have always called us "Mien" and we have always called them "Yuon", like we call Chineses "Tchen". There are no insult, no hatred in that. The issue is not politic but linguistic. By the way, the word "Vietnam" i.e. the country Vietnam did not exist before the 1954 Geneva Agreements. Before, it was Tonkin, Annam and Cochinchine. But the most ironic in the issue is that the word "Yuon" does not hurt Vietnameses at all, but displeases greatly those self-proclaimed western specialists of South-East Asian affairs, journalists, authors or diplomats. 

         Vietnamese threat and danger always have been there, all over Cambodia. The Vietnam-Cambodia border is thousand times more translucent than the Manitoba-Minnesota demarcation line and million times more permeable than the Rio Grande around El Paso. Vietnamese spies, supply buyers, moles, hitmen were operating freely and efficiently for a long time in Srok Khmèr. A Vietminh captain made himself footman of French Résident supérieur Raymond and, before Dien Bien Phu, quietly killed his boss. The assassin of Democrat Party 's leader Iev Kaeus, in 1950, never has been clearly identified (Vietminh, French, Royal Palace ?). Vietcong agents, after Lon Nol 's coup in March 1970, spread confusion by killing successively two national assembly 's members in Kampong Cham, Gen. Seng Sun Thay at his home, Lon Nol's godson Thach Chea and cabinet minister Keo Sang Kim at Lycée Yukanthor. A group of peasants and demonstrators pro-Sihanouk, organized by moles, arrived in Phnom Penh 's suburb of Km-6 and were slaughtered by soldiers (who returned fire to the armed moles). Presently Hun Sen himself does not sleep easily by fear of Dakk-Cong, the completely unknown hitmen who would act if the "secret treaty" were not honoured properly. 
         Independently from his foreign affinity or submission, every politician has his agenda. Pen Sovann, as soon as liberated (not killed) by Hanoi, made his first move in hometown of Takeo by denouncing government corruption, and his second move at the 1998 elections with his National Sustaining Party. Like Brejnev controlled but did not own Dubcek, the Vietnamese politburo controls but does not own the triumvirate Heng Samrin-Chea Sim-Hun Sen. Western powers, which are also playing cards in Cambodia, had to comply as well with Khmer behaviour and political culture. In the first freely elected national assembly after the communist era, in May 1993, only two parliament members voted against the return of the monarchy. The mystic power (barami) of royalty was still almighty to Cambodian mind? So be it. As novelist and journalist Soth Polin put it : Yuon love their country more than their king, Khmèr love their king more than their country ! Before killing the last Cham king in the late 1600, Annameses first secured their position far south of Phan Thiet and Phan Rang (meaning : after they' ve got Prey Kor / Saigon from Chey Chetha), even if Champa was no longer on the world map. Annameses were sedating Chams with the Cham king 's barami (Cf. Kampuchea ning sahapoanth indoutchen, by Chan Dara, Pen Nearovi and Ith Thong Nguon).

         No surprise on Sovann 's saying that Vietnameses helped liberate Cambodia from Pol Pot, neither on stubborn Hun Sen 's exhibiting victims 'skeletons. They wanted to justify their past action and they wanted to stay in power. The facts have been there : the UN never recognized the Heng Samrin regime and Vietnam occupied Cambodia for eleven years. But from now to the year 4000, it will be between all of us, Cambodians. It will be up to us to keep our country on the world map. Let 's not repeat the mistakes of killing each other for power. "L' histoire est le cimetière des erreurs humaines", said Paul Valéry. So let 's read history books, and let 's write up too - - for other people to know who 's doing what, why, where, when and how.  nearovi@sympatico.ca (2001/04/21).

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