Well, as a matter of fact, it was the construction of a Chinese air base at Kg Chhnang in the seventies that set the alarm ringing in Hanoi and eventually led to the invasion and toppling of the KR regime in 1978-79.
Cambodia's Ream naval base is 'a threat to Koh Tral' [Phu Qoc] but, isn't that island located well inside Cambodia's interior sea and which - like all of the Mekong Delta - has always been a historical and integral part of the territory of Cambodia which has been illegally occupied by Vietnam who use it to encircle Cambodia and thus posing a grave national security threat to the latter too?
The US should let pupil and master fight it out between them and do the honourable thing by supporting the weaker parties such as Laos and Cambodia. The Chinese have learned a bitter lesson from having taken Vietnam as their ally, providing the Vietnamese tons of arms and medical equipment, logistics etc. needed to fight their common foes - the Americans – only to find the Vietnamese stabbing them in the back by siding with Moscow when relations between the two great powers turned sour and, this was the main reason behind Deng Xio Ping's decision to 'teach Hanoi a lesson' in the brief armed invasion in 1979. However, unlike the Cambodian elites, the Chinese have yet to lose an inch of their country's territory to Vietnam as a result of their "friendship" and dealings with Hanoi...
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