Assessment of Dr. Tith's Presentation on Cambodia: an Endangered Nation

By Kenneth So

Enclosed please find my assessment of Dr. Naranhkiri Tith.

It takes me a while to read Dr. Tith's presentation. I applaud his effort and tireless work in warning us about the danger of the Vietnamese hegemony toward Cambodia. I am trying to be objective in my assessment of his paper.

He is right to warn us about the Vietnamese danger, but I find it somewhat puzzling that he ignores the threat coming from Thailand also. Thailand is as much of a threat to Cambodia as Vietnam is. If you look at our history, Thailand had done more harms to Cambodia than Vietnam had. We lost more territory to Thailand than to Vietnam. Thailand did not even exist until the 13th century. All the territory that Thailand occupies now belonged to Cambodia.

We must be credible in delivering the message to the audience. We should not be partial by favoring Thailand over Vietnam. I find some inconcistencies in Dr. Tith's message. Please read my comments marked in red.

Thank You, Kenneth

***********************************************

Page 3:

Part. II looks into the domestic side of the failure of Cambodia to respond to Vietnam's
continued aggressions. It analyzes the main flaws of the Cambodian leadership, especially in
recent history, by pointing out the weaknesses in Cambodia's social and political organization.

Should we neglect about Thailand’s aggression on Cambodia in the past and also on the current event on Preah Vihear?

A. Foreign aggression; clash of civilizations, and the fundamentals underlying
Vietnam's successful strategies and policies allowing it to conquer her weaker and
weakened neighbors.

How about the western part of Cambodia? Cambodia was weakened by Thai‘s aggression from the Angkorian time to the present time. As a result of Thai’s conquest over Cambodia we became weak and were not able to fight the Vietnamese.

The second quotation (Box.2) refers to the conceptualization of the border or frontier. In the
Vietnamese context, the border is not a fixed one. It is a moving border. The Vietnamese border
will only stop if there is military resistance to its advance.

It’s not only the Vietnamese that considers Cambodia’s frontier a moving border. The Thai is also thinking the same thing.

Page 4:

"The conquest of Champa should be understood in the context of 'Nam Tien'
(southward movement). Chinese scholar Yang Bao Yun considers Champa a
victim of the Nguyen's deliberate policy of subjugation, which stemmed from the principle of "maintaining good relations with countries of distance, and attacking the neighboring countries."[§J. Title-inscriptions found on a cannon cast in 1670 by Joao da Cruz (Jean de la Croix), the Portuguese gun founder in the service of the Nguyen, sheds light on the matter. The title-inscription on the cannon reads, "for the King and grand Lord of Cochinchina, Champa and of Cambodia’s ill

SOURCE: WIKIPEDIA »

It’s called the path of least resistance. As its population continues to grow, Vietnam needs more space. She cannot move northward because China is a much more powerful country. It chose to move southward because it was the path of least resistance.

Page 6:

All this did not take place because there were no treaties between Vietnam and Cambodia in
which Vietnam had officially "recognize" Cambodia's border. As we can see there was more
than one treaty signed and sealed between Vietnam and Cambodia on the border issue. Why then does Vietnam need to sign these treaty supplements? Why - because, it knows that it can tear up these treaties any time it chooses for its convenience, and it knows that it can always count on a subservient Cambodian government that would go along these actions.

The same can be said of Thailand. Case in point: Preah Vihear.

Page 7:

Since its creation, history has shown that the Cambodian monarchy is one extreme form of
autocracy. The Chinese empire was ruled by the Son of Heaven, so was the Vietnamese empire.
But, the Khmer Empire was ruled by a king who considered himself a god. The city of
Angkor was built not as a place for people to live, but as the home for the gods or the cosmos.

It’s just words parsing. Both form of government were autocratic. Why are we complaining now that Cambodia is weak? Did we complain when we were an empire?

Since the fall of Angkor to the Siamese in the 15^th century, Cambodia has been constantly under
attacks from the west by Siam and from the east by Dai Viet starting in the 17^th century.

True statement, but Thailand had done more damage to Cambodia than Vietnam had done to our country. Thailand had attacked Cambodia more often, destroyed our country like the sacking of Angkor, and stole everything from us. The destruction caused by Thailand is worse than that caused by Vietnam. We are somewhat biased because the Vietnamese culture is different from ours. We have more affinity toward the Thai because of the similarity of our culture but it was the Thais who caused more damage to our country.

Page 9:

For example, Sihanouk allied himself with the murderous Khmer Rouge, thus allowing these
Cambodian communists to commit one of the worst atrocities in human history. Sihanouk has
always denied that he was the one who legitimized the Khmer Rouge by shifting the blame to
others. He blamed the United States when it bombed Cambodia in the late 1960s. But the truth in
this story was the fact that his collaboration with China, on the one hand, and the close alliance
of the Khmer Rouge with China, on the other hand, make it possible for the Khmer Rouge to rise
to power. Former US Congressman Steve Solarz rightly pointed this out. While the US bombing
of Cambodia was a factor in the success of the Khmer Rouge in taking over power in Cambodia,
Sihanouk's support to this group of mass murderers was a powerful signal to Cambodian
peasants to rally around the Khmer Rouge. Solarz said that

We are able to make this assessment only after the fact. Nobody could have predicted the atrocity committed by the Khmer Rouge. Even the Cambodian communists in France were duped by the Khmer Rouge. It’s not completely justified to put most of the blame on Sihanouk. The Khmer Rouge started to commit atrocity right away after their victory. How come the world stayed silent and did not do anything about it? The US was happy to leave Cambodia in a hurry but did not do anything to stop the Khmer Rouge’s atrocity. Where is the US responsibility?

Page 10:

These two sources of information reveal a number of important historical facts about Sihanouk's
egotistic and egocentric behavior. First, Sihanouk proclaimed his pride in leading the fight against American imperialism during the "Cold War" by allying himself with Cambodia's worst and long time enemy, the Vietnamese. By doing so, Sihanouk totally and conveniently forgot one tragic and important lesson from the bad and disastrous behavior of the monarchy in Cambodian history. Throughout Cambodian history, whenever Cambodian kings quarreled with members of their family in pursuit of absolute power, which was often, they always went to ask for help from either the Thai or the Vietnamese. Of course, the Thai and the Vietnamese were always more than happy to come and "save" Cambodia. But, one must ask the next question. By requesting help from the perennial and mortal enemies of Cambodia, what was the cost to the Cambodian people?

He is correct to say Sihanouk allied himself with the Vietnamese. He did not ask for Vietnamese’s help. Forming an alliance is normal in a war. The US formed an alliance with its enemy, the Soviet Union, against the Nazi during World War II. This is nothing new. After the Vietnamese invasion, Sihanouk and Son Sann formed an alliance with the Khmer Rouge with the support of the US to fight the Vietnamese. Why was it wrong for Sihanouk to form an alliance to fight the Lon Nol’s regime?

Page 11:

One should also ask the question whether the Khmer Rouge could have become a real political
and military force without Sihanouk's collaboration and alliance. The answer is a clear and
resounding no!

I beg to disagree with Dr Tith on this issue. Even without Sihanouk’s alliance with the Khmer Rouge, the US bombing and the Lon Nol’s policy and its corrupted regime would strengthen the KR case and in the long run they would be able to recruit more people.

The next question to ask is who brought Hun Sen to power in Cambodia after the fall of the Khmer Rouge? The answer unequivocally is the Vietnamese.

True, but without the Vietnamese’s intervention more Cambodian people would have been killed. Cambodia may not even exist today because there would not be enough people to defend against the Vietnamese and the Thai. At least now we survive.

Any honest observer would also know that it is Hun Sen who has been allowing the Vietnamese
colonialists to practically walk freely into Cambodia by signing a number of unequal treaties
with Vietnam beginning in 1979. These treaties are no more and no less a total capitulation and
surrender of Cambodia's sovereignty to Vietnam. Was Sihanouk aware of the content of these treaties? The answer is yes. Then he should not have been allying himself with Hun Sen while claiming at the same his desire to defend Cambodia's national borders.

True. I agree.

Now, let's look at Sihanouk's recurrent claims that he had to fight against American imperialism
in order to save Cambodia. In order to better understand this important issue we need to place it
in the historical context of the "Cold War". In this historical context, one can observe that the
communist countries, especially the former Soviet Union and their allies were as imperialistic
and perhaps more destructive than the US. However, one should also ask which of the two kinds of imperialism has collapsed so badly from implosion due to internal contradictions. ⁵

I am not sure I can agree with the above statement. The US was as destructive as the Soviet Union. One must never forget that Cambodia was just used as a puppet for a proxy war between the superpowers. In the process it was the Cambodians who got killed.

Page 12:

Unfortunately, Cambodia and Laos have remained in practice communist and are still under the
tacit control of Vietnamese imperialism and communism with the support of Hun Sen/Sihanouk:

Communist? I would not call the current regime in Cambodia communist. It’s oligarchy, dictatorship with the love of money, but hardly communist.

Yet, Sihanouk, despite the existence of these historical records, recently claimed that Hun Sen and his wife did not join the Khmer Rouge but instead had joined his own movement of
liberation. He wrote "Samdech Hun Sen and Lok Chumteav Bun Rany Hun Sen when they were young decided to flee to the jungle after listening to my message”,

Misleading statement. What Sihanouk said was a true statement. In the early year they joined Sihanouk’s movement. It’s only later that they joined the Khmer Rouge and then split from them to ask for the Vietnamese’s help.

Page 13:

The Cambodian monarchy, unlike other Asian monarchies, has considered itself not merely as the “Son of Heaven” but heaven itself. or god. The monarchy’s smothering role in Cambodia was well-captured by Bernard Philippe Grolier, the well-known French archeologist, who spent his entire life in the pursuit of learning and rebuilding the foundation of the history of Angkor, when he wrote that;

Parsing words. It’s just the same between Son of Heaven and God King.

“It is perhaps worthwhile attempting to discover the reason why some civilizations are like beautiful but barren trees, while others are laden with blossom and fruit. The former in my opinion, is doomed because they are incapable of evolving a philosophy of man and his destiny. In this field, ancient Cambodia is was satisfied with what India gave her, and even so was content to remain second best. 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 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 that alone provide any possibility of evolution. There was nothing but a vast anonymous proletariat, with a head that may have been wonderful but was, after all, severed from the body. It was a polypus society, and incapable of self-reproduction other than by swarming, doomed inexorably to die, as soon as queen, is destroyed.” ⁸

Prejucial statement. Cambodia has surpassed India in its architecture. This is what Lawrence Palmer Briggs said in his preface on The Ancient Khmer Empire:

“Yet hidden away in the jungles of the interior, until recently all unknown to the Western world, are mute witnesses that here man lived and toiled and ruled and wrought his dreams into magnificient stone temples and marvels of sculpture and decoration which nowhere else on earth has ever been able to match — wonders which, for combined extent, magnitude, and splendor, dwarf and reduce almost to commonplace, the much heralded wonders of Egypt and Greece and Rome.”

I do not understand why Dr Tith put down Cambodia’s ingenuity and great achievement of the past by quoting foreigners who do not appreciate what we had done. Cambodia had evolved as a society from the Funan time to Chenla to Angkor. Those were great achievements. The Khmer empire is not an exception that had fallen. All great empires had fallen such as Egypt, Greece, Rome, Mongolia, and Persia. Dr. Paul Cravath made a poignant statement in his book “Earth in Flower” as follows:

“The early historians — for the most part, individuals in the colonial service of the Netherlands, Great Britain or France — tended to manifest what has been called a “Euro-centric” bias from which we have only recently begun to free ourselves.”

In addition, to the overpowering problem of the monarchy, Cambodians by nature are more
conservative and less adventurous than the Vietnamese. The Vietnamese can easily venture out
of their normal habitat and environment towards new and virgin space in search of new land to
settle in. Cambodians tend to live in their accustomed and familiar environment including their
spirit trees (usually a banyan tree) and other natural representations of that spirit, known as
Neak Ta."

This statement is not true in the time of ancient Cambodia. During the Angkor time Khmers were very adventurous, more so than the Vietnamese. Yes, we are less adventurous now because we are no longer an empire and we are striving to survive.

Page 14:

Cambodian villages have been loosely organized with practically no organized defense system
and always in prey of bandits and/or other forms of lawlessness. These villages have been
usually under the patronage of a provincial official who has total control on the lives of those

who are under his rule. Cambodian villages have been remotely connected to the royal
authorities in a capital city like Angkor, Lovek, or Phnom Penh. The further away the villages
were from the capital city, the less control the central authorities or the king had of their subjects. Cambodia's administrative, social, political organization has been relatively weak and
conservative compared to that of Vietnam. Again, Milton Osborne captured this Cambodian
concept and working administrative system as follows:

Dr. Tith is contradicting himself here. Earlier he complained that Khmer kings had absolute power over his subjects but here he has less control over them.

"The organization of the Buddhist states contrasted sharply with that found in Vietnam.
The pattern of official relationships was in many ways much more complex, in part because it was a pattern lacking the clearly defined lines of authority that were so much part of the Vietnamese system. Where the Vietnamese system sought to control the state in great detail down to the level of the village, the central power of the Buddhist kingdoms followed a very different practice. Control over the more distant regions of the kingdom was readily delegated to the provincial governors who were able to exercise almost completely unfettered power, always providing that they did not challenge the king's position as the ultimate arbiter of affairs within the state. If the pyramid is a useful symbol to depict the disposition of power in Vietnam, a series of concentric circles might be taken to represent the nature of power in the Buddhist kingdoms. The state might be considered as the area contained by the largest of these concentric circles, but it was only at the center, where the smallest of these concentric circles is located, that the king's power was truly absolute. Beyond that central circle-or beyond the limits of the palace to take the real-life example instead of the graphic concept-it was frequently the case that the king's power diminished in a clear proportion in the distance one moved away from the capital. As for the border regions, Buddhist rulers in mainland Southeast Asia, again in contrast to Vietnam, accepted that these were uncertain and porous."⁹

Dr. Tith is contradicting himself again. Earlier he complained about Khmer kings having absolute power but now he praised the Vietnamese of controlling power down to the detail and Khmer kings delegating his power to provincial governors. What Khmer kings delegating his power to the provincial governors sounds to me like Federalism, the same model the US is doing now. For a large country like the Khmer Empire, that was the only way to govern the country. I am at a loss here about Dr. Tith’s point of view. What does he want? A King with an absolute power who controlled everything down to the level of the village like the Vietnamese or the one who delegated the power to the governors?

It is clear that Cambodian administrative, social, and political organization is more conservative,
less dynamic, and more detached from the central authorities than that of Vietnam. This, in turn,
has led Vietnamese leaders to be more aggressive and organized. This also has allowed them to
readily assemble an army from a fast-growing population constantly in search of new space to make
their long term dream of enlarging their empire a reality, namely by conquering their weaker
neighbors Cambodia and Champa.

For the Vietnamese, it’s a matter of survival. The march toward the south was necessary due to

its population growth. She cannot move up north because of China. Her only option is to push toward the south. It’s a matter of geography.

Page 17:

The pervasive and crushing role of the monarchy combined with the conservative nature of the Cambodian society, such as the belief in prophesies and the rigidity in social organization and behavior, also contribute to the inertia and the inability to allow new and capable leaders to emerge. This, in turn, leads to the inability to resist foreign aggressions, especially today's naked and unrelenting aggression from Vietnam.

The Jews believe in the coming of the Messiah but it does not stop them from progressing. Vietnam’s rigid and social organization that Dr Tith praised earlier did not prevent her from progressing and growing.

Until very recently, Cambodia faced aggression from both Siam and Dai-Viet. However, since
the early 1990, because of the changes in the political system in Thailand, this country has
become much less of a problem for Cambodia. By contrast, Vietnam, because of the autocratic
and totalitarian nature of its political system remains extremely dangerous for the survival of
Cambodia.

I beg to disagree. Thailand is as much a threat to Cambodia as Vietnam. I do not believe for a moment that Thailand abandons her goal of retaking Angkor. The war at Preah Vihear is just a preview of what to come.

In dealing with Vietnam's naked aggression, Cambodia must start reforming from within. The
main obstacles are the strong grip of power in Cambodia by the Hun Sen and his CPP with
Sihanouk's support. Therefore, isolating Sihanouk by fully protecting and implementing the
content of the constitution is the first step. The next step is to use non-violent means to remove Hun Sen and his CPP from power. It won't be easy but it can be done.

How about Thailand’s aggression? What is the solution? Dr. Tith needs to offer a step by step process of what needs to be done to solve the problem.

The protection of the rights of the Cambodian people should be extended to include those
Cambodians, The Khmer Krom, who are now living in the southern part of Vietnam.

Their rights, security, and dignity as a minority must be accepted and respected by Vietnam, just
like Cambodia has accepted and applied this principle to the Vietnamese legal residents living inside
Cambodia.

Don’t forget Khmer Surin in Thailand. Actually, Khmer Krom is still keeping our tradition alive while Khmer Surin starts to lose the Khmer tradition. Young Khmer Surin does not want to learn Khmer anymore.

--
Kenneth So