COVID-19 geopolitics: silence and erasure in Cambodia and Myanmar in times of pandemic

ABSTRACT

COVID-19 has become a global public health pandemic which requires scientific, technical, public policy and health system responses at multi-scales. COVID-19 is also a pandemic that is impacting socio-economic and political systems in profound ways. This paper briefly outlines why and how pandemics may expose uneven socio-economic geographies of vulnerability and risk, and also be thought of in relation to environmental and non-human challenges to our geopolitical map of territorial nation-states and sovereignties. In relation to Southeast Asia we argue that preexisting and ongoing political-economy linkages are shaping key responses to COVID-19. In particular, we consider the geopolitical and geoeconomic reasoning of Cambodia and Myanmar, and their relations with China. We reflect on the factors that shape their national responses in response to the pandemic, characterized by certain silences and erasures to their local geographies.

KEYWORDS:

• COVID-19
• geopolitics
• silence
• erasure
• Cambodia
• Myanmar

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Tim Oakes and Craig Young for their useful comments and suggestions to improve the paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. While the statement made by the Myanmar’s government spokesman on the common use of cash instead of credit cards helped curb the spread of COVID-19 is interesting, cashless transactions, however, are strongly encouraged instead with money often changing hands. Additionally, the widespread use of credit cards was credited with helping South Korea curb the spread of COVID-19 (see, Sonn and Lee 2020).