As for Cambodia, the return of the USA is the return of very bad memories.
And the list in long : during the years, 50-60 many attempts to destabilise the country and overthrow the legal government and even to assassinate the Head of State; support for the territorial claims by neighbours and for extreme right-wing Khmer militias based in the neighboring territories; the dropping of 2,756,941 tonnes of bombs from 1965 to 1973 on a country which waged no war on anyone; from 1963 to 1971, chemical warfare with Agent Orange; support for the coup d’état of March 18, 1970; invasion by US troops on April 29, 1970. After 1979, support for a military coalition dominated by Pol Pot’s men, embargo from 1979 to 1991 depriving survivors of the most fundamental human rights; during UNTAC, deliberate desire to oust the CPP from power. Since 1995, financial and technical support to the opposition.
History teaches us that the USA are able of doing anything to achieve their ends.
Did they not invent the fiction of “weapons of mass destruction” to hold themselves up against the international right to invade and occupy Iraq at the cost of more than one million victims? Did they not go beyond international law by cooperating with France and Great Britain in the destruction of Libya with the chaos that followed ? Biden was Obama’s vice-president when the democratically elected president of Honduras was overthrown by military officers close to the United States. We have already seen the American media quoting reports that invent from scratch the fiction of a Chinese military base in Cambodia. The pawns are s What can we expect else? To watch the US attempt to increase divisions within ASEAN, within the Mekong region? To watch the US efforts to dismantle the natural solidarities between Asian and South-East Asian countries? To be forced to take side like other ASEAN countries? The creation of the Quad already provides a strong indication that these questions are relevant.
How can we not already perceive the first steps of an escalation which will lead to a fatal gear in which Cambodia will be involved in spite of itself and which will impose on the people, once again, to suffer US devastations?
It is absolutely clear that the interests of the ASEAN countries are not those of the USA. That these countries belong to a region of the world which no longer has the destiny of being under the tutelage of the West. Colonial time is over. And that it is up to Asian leaders to resolve among themselves the problems which arise between them.
The time has come to implement in Asia the Monroe doctrine and say all together to the Westerners that Asia belongs to Asian people.et for the repetition of the deadly interference of the past.
Thomas Fowler
Thomas Fowler is an expatriate observer based in Phnom Penh
