General Tea Seiha at the ASEAN Defence Ministers’ Meeting (ADMM) in Luang Prabang, Laos, on March 5. Defence Ministry
Minister of National Defence Tea Seiha called on the ASEAN member states to work together and avoid division due to geopolitical interests, noting that failure to do so could cause insecurity or result in new conflict, as well as worsening existing regional tensions.
Seiha made his remarks during the March 4-6 ASEAN Defence Ministers’ Meeting (ADMM) Retreat and related meetings, held in Luang Prabang, Laos.
A March 6 defence ministry press release said that during the retreat, the ASEAN defence ministers discussed regional issues, as well as the bloc’s external relations, independence and centrality, and exchanged ideas.
“The division of geopolitical regions is a contributing factor to global insecurity, bringing new conflicts and making it more difficult to determine solutions to existing ones,” said Seiha.
“Any increased tension due to geopolitics will also affect our common efforts to respond to the major challenges which we are facing,” he added.
He urged the bloc’s members to adapt a multilateral path to solving geopolitical issues, emphasising ASEAN’s central role in resolving issues in the region.
He explained that the ADMM-Plus mechanism should be used to solve regional issues, referring to the defence platform of ASEAN and its eight dialogue partners, which include Australia, China, India, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, Russia and the US.
Seiha described ADMM and ADMM-Plus as effective platforms in building trust, joint strategy and defence cooperation for regional peace, security, and resilience.
Thong Mengdavid, a research supervisor at the Asian Vision Institute (AVI), noted that it was normal for Cambodia to express its concerns about geopolitical competition, as well as the wars currently happening around the world.
He warned that taking sides with any superpower could fuel global economic and security tensions. In addition, he believed that division or new coalitions among nations would also cause fragility to existing unity and multilateral cooperation.
Echoing Seiha’s statement, Mengdavid said: “ASEAN should maintain its position of neutrality and not align itself with any coalition, treaty, pact, in order to go against any country”.
He added that ASEAN unity and centrality must be maintained by the bloc’s members, in order to protect regional peace and prosperity.
