(MENAFN-Asia Times)
U. S. officials appear to revel in the debate over allegations that a Cambodian naval base that is being renovated recently with China’s help could soon become a permanent port of call for the People’s Liberation Army Navy, providing Beijing with a new southern flank in the disputed South China Sea.
But it’s no wonder that Vietnam, the country potentially most threatened by the Chinese military’s presence in Cambodia, has been silent on widely circulated data on a secret fundamental agreement between China and Cambodia.
Washington has clashed with Phnom Penh over the basic factor in recent years, pushing bilateral relations to a new low point. Cambodian officials have been sanctioned, adding the head of their navy, Tea Vinh. And U. S. embassy officials. U. S. citizens had tantrums when they were denied portions of the base.
Australia’s new prime minister, Anthony Albanese, recently jumped into the debate to say that reports that China has reached a 25-year secret access agreement for the Cambodian base are “troubling. “
But when asked about Beijing-funded advances at the Ream naval base at a june 9 press conference, a Vietnamese Foreign Ministry spokesman was enigmatic, even evasive.
“Vietnam is willing to maintain and consolidate smart cooperative relations with countries around the world,” Le Thi Thu Hang responded, according to local reports. “At the same time, cooperation between countries will have to make positive contributions to peace, security and stability. and prosperity in the region and the world.
Rumors have been circulating since 2017 that Cambodia has a secret agreement with China, its “infallible friend,” to allow it to station troops on its territory, which would violate the Cambodian constitution. Phnom Penh has long rejected those allegations, though it has done little to absolve American paranoia.
He rejected U. S. donations. The U. S. service to fund the development of the base, and some of the services demolished to make way for Beijing-funded services were built with the U. S. In the U. S. just a few years ago.
Cambodia unilaterally ceased the joint army with the United States in 2017. Now it is succeeding with China.
On June 8, an inaugural rite at the Ream Naval Base presided over by Cambodian Defense Minister Tea Banh and Chinese Ambassador to Phnom Penh Wang Wentian. The base is located in the Preah Sihanouk province of Cambodia, on the south coast.
A few days earlier, the Washington Post had announced that China would have exclusive parts of the base, which could allow it to station troops and intelligence apparatuses there permanently. Phnom Penh denies that it will be exclusive to the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA).
A changer?
Unsurprisingly, commentators are divided on the issue. For some, considerations about China’s access to the small base in the Gulf of Thailand are exaggerated.
The Beijing-funded domain of the base in progress is about 0. 3 square kilometers, according to reports. It will come with a new command center, meeting rooms and dining rooms, as well as medical outposts. A dry dock, a stand and two new docks are also planned.
There are reports that dredging will take place, it is not known how deep it will be. New docks in neighboring Kampot and Koh Kong provinces will likely be deeper.
If it’s a dual-use facility, than an exclusive Chinese military base, and without a constant or rotating Chinese unit, Hanoi would arguably have much less to worry about, some analysts say.
“If this is the case, it will not replace the scenario and therefore we do not expect Hanoi to overreact, remain alert and continue to express its considerations to remind its Cambodian and Chinese counterparts,” said Collin Koh, a researcher at Singapore’s S Rajaratnam School of International Studies.
“I have a tendency for Cambodia and China to be aware of Vietnam’s reaction and therefore would not try to induce Hanoi to adopt more bellicose responses that could harm their interests,” Koh added.
Other commentators are more skeptical. ” A two-acre camp in a camp is that small and will most likely have a permanent PLA detachment,” said Zachary Abuza, a professor at the National War College in Washington.
The genuine concern, he added, is the development of China’s “intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance” functions and, in particular, signals intelligence (SIGINT). This will allow the Chinese military to track “everything that goes in and out” of Phu Quoc, a neighboring Vietnamese island that is home to the army’s southern fleet and coast guard, Abuza said.
It may also allow the PLA to monitor activity at Sattahip Naval Base, Thailand’s largest naval base less than 500 kilometers away and where the U. S. U. S. make common stops.
This may “pose a massive risk” to the functioning of the Vietnamese navy, whose fifth regional command is about thirty kilometers away, said Khac Giang Nguyen, an analyst at Victoria University of Wellington.
Last year, Vietnam announced the creation of a new armed maritime defense force unit in Kien Giang Province, which borders Kampot Province in southeastern Cambodia.
The Vietnamese army newspaper Quan Doi Nhan Dan reported in June last year that the new unit would “protect sovereignty over the seas and islands” and would be under the Vietnam Army’s 9th region.
Writing this month, Cambodian analyst Sokvy Rim speculated that the new Vietnamese unit might have been created “with the purported goal of collecting data related to the long-term Chinese military base in Ream. “
More seriously, the Chinese military’s presence in southern Cambodia can potentially mean a “siege” for Vietnam, which has been embroiled for decades in a heated standoff with Beijing over South China Sea territory.
Vietnam has recently been facing Chinese troops along its northern border and to the east of China’s growing military installations in the South China Sea. Chinese military ships stationed at the Ream naval base in Cambodia would mean that Vietnam is now a risk to the south and west.
With the Chinese-controlled islands in the Spratly Islands, “they are creating a military clamp to squeeze Vietnam,” said Alexander Vuving, a professor at the Daniel K Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Honolulu, Hawaii.
“The Chinese presence at the Ream naval base is a game-changer for Cambodia-China relations on the one hand and Vietnam on the other,” Vuving added. “This marks a point of no return in Cambodia-Vietnam and China-Vietnam. “relationships. . “
The two neighbors were the closest allies after Vietnamese troops helped Cambodian defectors overthrow the genocidal Khmer Rouge in 1979. Hanoi was one of the few benefactors of an isolated Cambodia worldwide in the 1980s.
Chinese forces introduced a border war opposed to Vietnam that decade in retaliation for their help to overthrow the Khmer Rouge, a best friend of Beijing.
The ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP), in force since 1979, owed its survival in the early years to Vietnamese sponsorship. Relations between Cambodia and Vietnam have weakened significantly since the early 2010s, when Phnom Penh began to pivot toward Beijing.
“Vietnam has already lost its position as Cambodia’s most influential spouse in a decade,” Giang said.
ASEAN Silence
Southeast Asian governments have remained silent on the Ream naval base issue, and some resources believe states like Vietnam and other States with Chinese strength have let Washington take a more confrontational stance on the issue.
One of the reasons Vietnam, along with Thailand, has remained silent about the factor is “probably because they see few features to avoid it,” says Gregory Poling, director of the Southeast Asia program and the maritime transparency initiative in Asia at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank.
As members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), they are also subject to a strict code of non-interference in each other’s internal affairs. Most states in the region are also incredibly involved in being perceived as taking sides with the US. U. S. -Chinese Rivalry.
“The region has long tolerated US bases and would be noted to choose to blatantly criticize China or Cambodia,” said Natalie Sambhi, executive director of Verve Research, a think tank focused on civil-military relations in the Southeast. Asian.
“Publicly, Southeast Asian leaders will continue to affirm that they will respect Cambodia’s prerogative to settle for Beijing’s presence in Ream. If there is a replacement in the response, it will be kind in public but strong and transparent in private,” he added.
A Vietnamese ministerial official told Asia Times that while many in Hanoi are naturally “worried,” the agreed policy is to overreact and interact diplomatically with their Cambodian counterparts.
They added that Vietnamese officials are discussing the factor with U. S. diplomats, the source does not say what was discussed.
“The default position of Vietnamese university officials and analysts when talking about China is the worst,” said Carl Thayer, a professor emeritus at the University of New South Wales in Australia and a highly reputable expert on Vietnam.
“Beyond this knee-jerk reaction, those same officials are more positive in the conversation,” he added, noting that they are referring to an agreement between Cambodia and Vietnam “not to allow any force to use the territory of their country to engage in acts opposed to the other. “security and stability”.
Although Vietnam is no longer Cambodia’s main sponsor, efforts have been made to strengthen military cooperation in recent years, adding a stopover in October 2019 in Hanoi through Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen.
Another joint was issued during Vietnamese President Nguyen Xuan Phuc’s stopover in Phnom Penh last December.
“The two sides agreed to cooperate in defense and security on the basis of the precept of not allowing hostile forces to use their respective territories to harm each other’s security,” he said quite explicitly.
This year, Cambodian and Vietnam’s defense ministers, Tea Banh and Phan Van Giang, respectively, celebrated their first friendship on border defense in Hanoi.
Although Vietnam’s ruling Communist Party has remained silent on the controversy over the Ream naval base, Cambodians have been less reluctant to criticize their neighbor.
In an interview with Voice of America last year, Rear Adm. Mey Dina, staff leader at the Ream naval base, said Vietnam urged the United States to criticize Cambodia’s progress at the naval base.
“Politically speaking, Vietnam and the United States are pressuring others to make sure Cambodia gets nothing or that we can’t expand our naval forces. With our naval functions lately underexpanded, we also feel vulnerable,” he said.
“That’s why [Vietnam] continues to urge the U. S. The U. S. is suing us because they know the U. S. and China are rivals,” he added.
This is a single opinion. According to some observers, one of the reasons Washington has been so committed and outspoken about the fundamental factor is that it has to ventriloquize other Southeast Asian states that are reluctant to talk.
Options and risks
While Ream’s strategic relevance is questionable, the symbolic importance of the Chinese military’s presence in mainland Southeast Asia would be far greater, even if it is a permanent deployment.
Symbolically, this would underscore how “Southeast Asia is at the forefront of competition between the United States and China,” said Andreyka Natalegawa, southeast asia program studies associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
If Chinese troops were stationed at the base, even on a non-permanent basis, many in Washington believe this would be the moment when the United States would realize it had “lost” Cambodia to Beijing.
“The presence of the Chinese military in Cambodia is a step in China’s weiqi game,” said analyst Vuving, referring to China’s popular encirclement board game.
“This tilts the regional balance of forces in China’s favor,” he added. Endanger the maneuver of the US military in the region.
Washington’s responses since reports on the Chinese military’s imaginable plans in Cambodia in 2017 were first published are occasionally the source of commentators’ anger, with some contemplating that the U. S. will continue to respond to the Chinese military. The U. S. overreacts and scolds itself.
It has sanctioned several Cambodian officials allegedly on charges of corruption and rights abuses, but the Ream case is suspected of persisting as part of Washington’s actions.
For some experts, this is natural hypocrisy since the United States has military bases in Thailand and the Philippines, two U. S. allies.
China has only one official military base, in the East African country of Djibouti. However, it has military services on islands in the South China Sea and recently signed a defense agreement with the Solomon Islands in the Pacific that can have access to a local base.
Sam Seun, an analyst at the Royal Academy of Cambodia, said it is “unfair that the world is paying too much attention to the Ream naval base, while Cambodia still lacks a deep-water port. “
“Consider Vietnam and Thailand,” he added. How many seaports or naval bases do you have?Why does Cambodia have one?
Although Vietnam’s imaginable responses are limited, there is no shortage of agencies. Diplomatically, he is running to improve security ties with Cambodia so as not to lose all influence.
“Vietnam has a strategic influence that may have been communicated implicitly or in a different way to its counterparts in Cambodia and the People’s Republic of China,” Koh said.
This may come with intensifying its defense and security commitments to friendly powers outside the region, such as the United States, Japan, and European states. Australia, India, Japan and the United States.
It is possible that Hanoi will also grant foreign powers to its military installations, such as Cam Ranh, a naval base in the south of the country that has housed American, British and French ships in recent years.
All of this can be achieved without Vietnam having to replace its foreign policy principles of non-alignment and non-alliance, Koh added.
Vietnam has been reluctant to replace the prestige quo. It has delayed the transformation of its relationship with the United States into a “strategic partnership” and in recent years has reiterated its policy of national defense of the “four no’s”.
Huynh Tam Sang, a professor at Ho Chi Minh City University of Social Sciences, recently explained that “they don’t get involved in military alliances; they do not take sides with one country to act against another; there are no foreign military bases on Vietnamese territory or Vietnam as leverage. “to counter other countries, and no use of force or risk of use of force in foreign relations.
However, any major replacement in Vietnam’s foreign policy would come after a significant escalation of the Threat from the Chinese military, said Hai Hong Nguyen, an honorary fellow at the Center for Policy Futures.
So far, it doesn’t look like the beijing-funded Ream naval base advance falls into this category. Vietnamese officials who spoke to Asia Times did not say whether the stationing of Chinese troops in Cambodia would be such a major escalation.
“Although there is no confidence in China, there are fears of negative effects on Vietnam’s economy and security as a result of China’s reaction if Hanoi joins the Quad or any security pact with the United States,” Hai Hong added. largest trading partner.
“But if China poses a real risk to Vietnam, reaching out to the United States to protect the country would have . . . a positive effect on the strength of the Communist Party of Vietnam,” Hai Hong said. China’s initiative would make the CPV more nationalistic and get public aid if there was a genuine risk from China,” he added.
But much depends on what happens not only in Ream but in other parts of Cambodia. Allegations are still circulating that the Chinese military would possibly have access to sites in Dara Sakor, a 360-square-kilometer “tourism development” in Koh Kong province that is being built through the Chinese-owned Union Development Group, which was sanctioned through the United States in 2020.
Satellite photographs reveal a larger-than-expected airstrip at the site, as well as abundant dredging of a port. Not far from the Ream naval base, some analysts believe the Chinese military could use it only for transportation. Dara Sakor is a bigger fear for me,” Abuza said.
According to Ou Virak, chairman of the Phnom Penh-based think tank Future Forum, all of this is “simply a failed coup in China in a wider rivalry. It’s just the first days. “
He added: “Over time, this may be forgotten in the footnotes, as there will indeed be many more advances that will have more consequences. “
Follow David Hutt on Twitter at @davidhuttjourno
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