Austin to Cambodia opens the way for big defense reset

US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin’s upcoming visit to Cambodia, scheduled for June 4, marks the first official bilateral trip by an American defense chief in recent years.

Predictably, Western media have already oversimplified Austin’s visit by focusing solely on the controversy surrounding China’s role in upgrading the Ream Naval Base. In the singular context of Sino-US rivalry for regional influence, it is easy to portray China’s assistance in modernizing Cambodia’s navy and port infrastructure as an attempt to establish a military presence in the country.

That narrative disregards Cambodia’s agency and the genuine challenges the country faces in upgrading its military and procuring modern naval vessels and equipment to keep pace with neighbors like Thailand and Vietnam. In that contest, Cambodia has logically turned to China – one of the few viable sources for such acquisitions at prices Phnom Penh can afford.

By raising the Ream Naval Base issue, which Phnom Penh has repudiated for years on the basis the Cambodian constitution bars the presence of foreign troops on Cambodian soil, Austin would risk irritating his Cambodian hosts. But it’s not clear to many observers that the naval base controversy will be atop his agenda.

Austin’s visit will take place amid restored and stabilized US-Cambodia relations, which hit a nadir after the suspension of the Angkor Sentinel joint military exercise in 2017. Those strained relations deteriorated more with the withdrawal of scholarships for Cambodian cadets studying at the US Service Academy in 2021.

But ties are arguably back on an upswing, enabling the diplomatic environment for Austin to visit. The visit also occurs as Cambodia is about to assume the role of the