ASSESSMENTS

In Cambodia, Geopolitics Weakens a Strongman

Feb 17, 2016 | 09:30 GMT

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen at the inauguration of the Stung Russey Chrum Krom hydroelectric dams. Under Hun Sen, Cambodia has been one of the only Southeast Asian countries resistant to political change in the face of a strengthening China.

(STR/AFP/Getty Images)

On the periphery of China and India and at the nexus of major world trade routes, Southeast Asian states have always had to adapt to the movements of stronger regional and global powers. None are more abjectly dependent on the fortunes of geopolitical change than the oft-forgotten western province of what was once colonial French Indochina -- Cambodia. Since its inception, the country has been wracked by internal conflict and jostled by competition among its more powerful neighbors: Thailand, Vietnam and China.Now the regional order is being challenged once again....

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