PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — The United States has lifted a four-year arms embargo on Cambodia after announcing a resumption of the annual Angkor Sentinel military exercises in a sign that relations between Washington and China’s tiny but key regional ally are on the mend.
Details of the resumptions were finalized by the Indonesia-based U.S. Mission to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations on the sidelines of last month’s ASEAN Leaders Summit in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, between President Donald Trump and Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet.
“Based on Cambodia’s diligent pursuit of peace and security, the United States will remove the arms embargo on Cambodia, and both sides agreed to restart the bilateral Angkor Sentinel defense exercise, last held in 2017,” the mission said in an Oct. 26 statement.
Additionally, the U.S. will increase seats for Cambodian officers at U.S. military colleges such as West Point – which Hun Manet graduated from – the Air Force Academy, and others.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio formally ended the 2021 arms embargo on Friday, according to a Federal Register notice, which added that arms sales would in future be decided on a case-by-case basis.
The notice cited Cambodia’s “diligent pursuit of peace and security, including through renewed engagement with the United States on defense cooperation and combating transnational crime.”
“Lifting the arms embargo is widely viewed by regional and US analysts as part of the Trump administration’s efforts to reduce China’s global and regional influence through a broad-based campaign,” Gavin Greenwood, a risk analyst with Hong Kong-based Allan & Associates, said.
“That ranges from imposing military and economic rewards to sanctions on those countries it is seeking to peel away from Beijing’s orbit.”
Angkor Sentinel had been a bilateral exercise between U.S. Army Pacific and the Royal Cambodian Army, focusing on training in peacekeeping and stability operations that included a battalion-level command post exercise, engineering and medical civic action projects.
“This is the protection and preservation of peace, both within the country and with our neighbors, which remains our highest national priority,” said Hun Sen, the former prime minister who retains an overarching role in Cambodian politics since transferring power to his son in 2023.
The embargo and suspension of military exercises were initiated due to human rights concerns, Cambodia’s dwindling democratic space and China’s growing military influence.
In lifting the arms embargo and restoring Angkor Sentinel, the U.S. Mission to ASEAN noted Cambodia had agreed to expand cooperation in combating transnational crime.
This included narcotics trafficking and online scam centers, the mission said, citing “criminal enterprises that steal over $10 billion annually from vulnerable Americans.”
U.S. relations with Cambodia struck their lowest point in decades in the late 2010s as China showered Cambodia with Belt and Road projects including reconstruction of the Ream Naval Base on the south coast, in the contested South China Sea.
Ream reopened in April with a deepwater pier and dry dock facilities. It has often been described as China’s second foreign naval base, after Djibouti.
However, Chinese investment has since dried up and Cambodia has become increasingly isolated by an overwhelming presence of international criminal syndicates running human trafficking and scam compound rackets and its undeclared border war with Thailand.
Last month the U.S. Treasury Department seized more than $14 billion in cryptocurrency – the largest such seizure in history – from Cambodia’s Prince Bank while the U.S. Justice Department indicted Chen Zhi, the bank’s Chinese founder, for fraud and running scam compounds.
That, amid a crumbling economy, has forced a rethink in Phnom Penh. Cambodia has repeatedly denied claims of exclusive Chinese use of the Ream Naval base, and says it will offer the base’s services to all friendly nations and their navies.
The USS Savannah visited the nearby Sihanoukville port last December, the first visit by the U.S. Navy to Cambodia in eight years and since reopening, warships from Japan, Australia, Vietnam, Russia and China have docked at Ream.
