History influences strategy deeply. It is no exaggeration to say that history, in the form of the US, has been unkind to Cambodia. The Ho Chi Minh Trail — a logistical network of roads and trails that ran from North Vietnam to South Vietnam through the kingdoms of Laos and Cambodia — constituted the symbolic geography that invited American military wrath during the Vietnam War.
The ongoing political transition in Cambodia has implications for the strategic future of a small state in Southeast Asia. The promotion in the military of long-serving Prime Minister Hun Sen’s son, Hun Manet, brings him closer to being his father’s political successor.
The Cambodian general election — slated for this July — may cement the younger Hun’s career progress to the premiership. No matter how the results go, whoever leads Cambodia would need to understand instinctively the geopolitical parameters within which the country has to function. Today, those parameters are contoured by the irresistible rise of China as a great power, as once they were hemmed in by the wartime excesses of American hegemony.
