Frontier of shifting sands and cruel deceptions

International boundary markers along the Cambodia-Vietnam border are more  short-lived  and planted  more as political contingency tools to allay well-founded fear of Vietnamese territorial expansion and encroachments rather than instruments with permanent character or legal validity - School of Vice [commonsenseandwhiskey]

Note by School of Vice

No one has the right to amputate national sovereignty in any deal with any foreign power without due transparency, democratic consultations or processes.

It is this kind of national betrayal and reckless treasonous acts committed in the past that had been the causes of so much agony and bloodshed over the last four decades. The irony is that the very individuals who decry and warn against 'extremism', 'radicalism', 'ultra-nationalism', ‘xenophobia’, violent civil-war and the like are most likely to be the very people today either lending their support to, or actively sowing the seeds for these 'ominous' reactive movements and extremism.

Why is it so hard for some to accept that as neighbours we should thrive to live peacefully side by side, that we have limitless scope and potential in helping one another to overcome our mutual short-comings and needs without consciously violating or transgressing one another's sacred rights and dignity, which is what this national sovereignty issue is about? What kind of relationship is Hanoi cultivating between itself and the Khmer people through its ever compliant hand-picked counterparts in Phnom Penh - men like Hun Sen and many others who owe their political existence and unheard of material wealth to Vietnam's patronage; who keep recalling in gratitude the gracious hospitality they had received from their Vietnamese hosts during their exile in Vietnam? Are what we are seeing or have been witnessing before us instances of Vietnam's "impeccable moral character" as claimed by these CPP stalwarts, or are they indisputable telling signs and proofs of something else of quite the reverse nature?

In any case, the weaknesses and or failings of Cambodia's own policy-makers and traitors alone cannot account for all of this one-sided dealing or contractual arrangement. The party who knowingly impinges upon the rights and sovereignty of 'the other party' despite or because of the latter's circumstantial impediments, physical handicaps or simply plain stupidity is just as in the wrong in this case and therefore as answerable for all the concrete outcomes and calamities that emanate, or are destined to materialise at some point in time in the history to be made. This weight of culpability and guilt would appear to gravitate to the party that have through deliberate deception or dishonesty and, driven by sole self-interest, had groomed the other party or misled that party into this unwholesome contractual obligation from ‘the start’ - that would be the moment Vietnamese settlers and soldiers walked into territories that had then been part of Cambodian territory and jurisdiction.