Brain Food

The current Hun Sen-led political regime lacks a credible nationalist pedigree, and Cambodia now seems to be passing - some would say disappearing - into an era of Asianization within globalization, having never passed through a period of viable nationalist rule. Instead, after a series of at best weak and at worst catastrophically self-destructive regimes since the nine­teenth century - late classical, colonial, royalist, republican, communist, and liberal democratic - Cambodia still lacks an effective modern state and a self-sustaining national identity.

- Steve Heder