In Defence of Sound Defence

‘We know how to deal with the Khmers. We know when to be flexible and when to be decisive with them’ - Le Duan (right seen with Ho Chi Minh)

Tuesday, August 03, 2010
Op-Ed by MP

THE National Assembly must make it a matter of urgency to re-evaluate the conscription law.

The view held by some MPs that since the country is at peace (100%) there is no cause to increase military spending is misplaced at best and dangerously complacent at worst. It is not just on-going issues with Preah Vihear and other land as well as maritime disputes that demand increased military capability. Peace or the absence of it is a far broader, more complex reality than the absence of armed conflict or the prevalence thereof. The argument in favour of having or building strong defence is paramount.

First, historically, Cambodia has lagged behind all of its neighbours in defensive capability with the exception, perhaps, of Laos with whom it rarely has any major dispute. However, this luxury does not apply to the other 2 of her main neighbours. In 1975, for instance, the Khmer Rouge military was estimated to be between 55,000 to 60,000 troops strong with 230 mostly under-strength battalions. The North Vietnamese army was 685,000 strong, supported by a 3,000-man navy and 12,000-man air force equipped with 268 combat aircrafts, including 1 light bomber squadron and 6 fighter-bomber squadrons(Source: Stephen J. Morris, Why Vietnam Invaded Cambodia: political culture and the causes of war, p.92). This blatant disparity, however, did not deter the Khmer Rouge from attacking Vietnamese controlled islands in the Gulf in May 1975. By June the same year the Vietnamese recaptured the islands and attacked and occupied the Cambodian island of Poulo Wai. This incident could still be repeated anytime between Cambodia and any of her neighbours with familiar consequences.

Second, Cambodia has to learn to plan her defence mechanism and capability beyond her demographic disadvantage vis as vis her traditional adversaries. This major disadvantage has been one of the historical by-products of the country’s weak defensive organisation in the first instance in both military and political fields. A nation’s contraction or expansion in its population size is directly congruous with its ability to safeguard and retain its population and territory. It was Cambodia’s inability to defend herself against her adversaries that had seen her huge territories and population seized off by neighbouring powers rather than her relatively small population being the reason behind that inability in the first place. These demographic losses are still recurring today owing to the state’s inability or unwillingness to create favourable conditions for overseas Cambodians to return to settle in their homeland, for younger generations to resist emigrating through various means and so forth. Remember how the Israeli government dramatically airlifted Ethiopian Jews to Israel whose ancestors must have left Palestine 4 thousand years ago?

To address this long term phenomenon, a campaign of mobilisation and modernisation of existing resources - demographic as well as non-demographic – is called for. The key to this duel reform process lies, of course, in ‘revolutionising’ social administrative institutions through democratic processes. This will ensure that the state’s main pursuits or enactments of any of its priorities such as national security and defence do not involve the loss of, or impede upon, due rights and obligations of the citizenry. I realise that it is easier to propose than to dispose of institutionalised corruption, for example. But somehow if the country is to wrestle itself out of that familiar experiences of dependency upon external patronage (and all its costly consequences) as well as inherent internal tension and friction, it may have little choice but to accept democratic reform as the only rational step forward.

There are more reasons in favour of Cambodia embracing this alternative than there are in her continuing to accept the status quo – but that remains the subject of future discussion. For now though, it should be borne in mind that the unity and discipline of the CPP today as a compact organic movement and structure had been designed and retained primarily to advance not Cambodia’s own national purposes and priorities, but rather to ensure that Cambodians are in a position (or see themselves in such a position) to engage priorities and goals peacefully and independently, with a dash of nationalistic conviction or fervour even, without actually doing substantive violence to Hanoi’s hegemonic designs. One needs to recall Vietnamese Communist Party leader Le Duan’s conversation with a Soviet diplomat prior to the collapse of Democratic Kampuchea in which he reassured the latter that Cambodia would sooner or later come under Vietnamese political influence, for in his words: ‘We know how to deal with the Khmers. We know when to be flexible and when to be decisive with them’. Such patronising, confident tone could only have been made by someone who clearly was in no doubt as to his country holding a firm vantage point or upper hand position in relations to another country.

As well, I am inclined towards the view that it is preferable for the nation to have a strong and sound defence and never having to go to war with anyone because of that defence’s deterrence factor than having a wretched one that does not provide for adequate national security, leaving the people and country exposed and vulnerable to external threats and perennial misery. The army should also be a place for young and mature alike to imbibe the value of service, sacrifice, patriotism, discipline and more, rather than being a martial institution that merely indoctrinates human beings to become efficient killers and torturers, particularly, of unarmed innocent civilians within the ranks of the home population, or those of foreign ones, for that matter.