Peacemaking in Cambodia: blueprint for a new world order?
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Authors
Fujimura, Paul N.
Subjects
Advisors
Buss, Claude A.
Date of Issue
1993-06
Date
Publisher
Monterey, California. Naval Postgraduate School
Language
en_US
Abstract
This thesis examines the peacemaking process as it has unfolded in
Cambodia. The end of the Cold War has engendered a new spirit of
multi-lateral activism in the international community. Intervention in
the domestic affairs of a sovereign country is deemed legitimate,
necessary, and desired to secure more worldly goals of peace, stability
and respect for human rights. The United Nations-sponsored
peacemaking process brought to Cambodia sought to achieve these goals
by establishing a cease-fire and setting Cambodia upon the road of a
comprehensive political settlement through democratic self determination
in the form of elections in May 1993. The analysis of this study has identified the Cambodian peace
plan as flawed in content and context as an externally imposed solution
to an internal problem entrusted to an institution without the ability to
enforce peace and order. The mandate establishing the UN mission in
Cambodia simply did not vest it with the proper authority to enforce
compliance with the terms of the peace plan. Cambodian political
culture possesses a dynamic which is resistent to national reconciliation. The winner-take-all mentality of the Khmer deva-rajas is poor soil for
democratic pluralism to take root.
Restoring peace and stability and establishing democracy in
Cambodia will require more than an eighteen-month lull in the fighting,
a single election, and the new constitution that the United Nations can
bring to the situation. As such, the UN mandated peacekeeping plan for
Cambodia, as it has unfolded, has exposed so many shortcomings of
good intentions gone awry that it cannot be adopted as the universal
model for a peacemaking process in the new world order.
Type
Thesis
Description
Series/Report No
Department
National Security Affairs (NSA)
Organization
Identifiers
NPS Report Number
Sponsors
Funder
Format
196 p.
Citation
Distribution Statement
Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited.