With just 13 million people, Cambodia is a small nation surrounded by much more powerful neighbors. Plus, it has to deal with that global behemoth, the USA. Rulers of weak countries often have to balance the interests of competing outsiders.
Using only media and diplomacy, a 30-year-old Norodom Sihanouk managed to win Cambodia's independence from France, and he was allied, at various times, with Japan, the USA, China, the Soviet Union, North Korea and even Pol Pot, all to secure not just his nation's survival, but his own.
Those who routinely invade, but are almost never invaded, at least not militarily, can too easily mock such inconsistencies or contradictions, but they're understandable to much of the world. Further, the weak have survival skills that may allow them to outlast the smug and fleetingly powerful. Constantly threatened, they can't afford to not know what are most enduring and inviolable about themselves, and what are merely cosmetic.
(Article changed on March 6, 2018 at 00:50)
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
3
3
2
