- 8 months ago
Join Nailah Huda and panellists, Professor Lee Jones and Dr Kittipos Phuttivanich as they discuss the Thailand-Cambodia border crisis, where unresolved border tensions and deep political economy roots have flared into deadly clashes, even after the ASEAN-backed ceasefire.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00This is Awani Global with me, Nailah Huda.
00:09Just days after hostilities were put to a pause along their border,
00:14the fragile ceasefire between Thailand and Cambodia is already under strain,
00:19with Thailand accusing Cambodia of violating the truce after overnight attacks.
00:25And the fighting which has killed over 43 people and displaced over 300,000
00:31was initially put to a halt after high-level talks mediated by Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim
00:36with diplomatic pressure from the United States and China.
00:41And just recently, US President Donald Trump has set 19% tariffs on Thailand and Cambodia,
00:48much lower from the initial 36%.
00:51But with core issues unresolved, just how far will this ceasefire go?
00:56And what does this crisis actually say about ASEAN and its ability to manage conflict in its own backyard?
01:04Joining us on Awani Global to help us unpack some of these key questions,
01:08we have joining us Professor Lee Jones, Professor of Political Economy and International Relations
01:13at the Queen Mary University of London, joining us from London.
01:16And also with us today, we have Dr. Kitipos Putivanej, lecturer at the Faculty of Political Science,
01:23Ram Kham Heng University, joining us now from Thailand.
01:27Thank you so much, Professor Lee and Dr. Kitipos for joining us today on Awani Global.
01:33I'd like to start with Kitipos.
01:36Before we dive straight into the politics and the meat of this,
01:40we of course want to consider first the humanitarian impact of this crisis with over 43 killed now
01:48and over 300,000 displaced.
01:51We know the border dispute is nothing new.
01:53It's been going on for some time now, obviously with a lot of historical roots to this.
01:57But what's different about this round of hostilities and how serious is it?
02:04Okay, let me begin with it this way.
02:07The border dispute is very common in Southeast Asia, right?
02:10But the problem is that those disputes mostly do not escalate into a violent conflict.
02:15So this situation is not normal at all.
02:17Thailand also had shared the conflicting area with Malaysia, with Myanmar, and with Laos, PDR as well.
02:25But those areas didn't come into the conflict like this.
02:31So we have to dig down into the root cause of this problem.
02:35And between Thailand and Cambodia, you mentioned about the historical cause of the conflict.
02:44You know, in the historical teaching in Thailand and Cambodia, we are taught to hate Myanmar rather than Cambodia.
02:52While Cambodian people are taught to hate Vietnam more than Thailand.
02:56So this is not normal at all.
02:57I mean, the sense of hostilities this time is not normal at all.
03:01But, you know, it is also general in Southeast Asia that the root cause of the conflict is usually based on what we have in common rather than differences.
03:10What the two nations have in common this time is the new leader who are the offspring of the old generation leader at the very same time.
03:19In Thailand, we have Prime Minister Patong Tan Chinawad and in Cambodia, they have Prime Minister Hun Manet, who is the son of the previous Prime Minister Hun Sen.
03:34And what we have in common between Thailand and Cambodia this time is that those two leaders both also have something in common.
03:46That is, they are very unpopular at the beginning because of the legend of their fathers.
03:54While Patong Tan tried to boost her popularity by promoting the entertainment complex in Good Island and by visiting a lot of foreign leaders abroad whom she considered the friend of her fathers, this, in fact, worsened her situation.
04:08Prime Minister Hun Manet chose to boost the strong sentiment of nationalism among Cambodian people.
04:14The first evidence is the withdrawal from CLVDTA negotiation in September 2024, which caused much tension in Cambodian-Vietnamese relations.
04:26However, because of Vietnamese strong leadership, it turned towards the other neighbour countries whose leader, I'm so sorry to say that, is weak.
04:35It began by the Cambodian army burning Three Mook Pavilion or Luom Jai Pavilion in Cheongbuk in March this year, following by the gun firing situation around the same area in May.
04:49And in the middle of June, the secret talk between Patong Tan Chinawad and her uncle Hun Sen was leaked.
04:56As a result, many Thai protesters provoked nationalism to pressure her to resign.
05:05By the way, after the landmine incident, the conflict has been escalated into the violent clash.
05:19And the sentiment of hostility between the two nations goes beyond control, both in the battlefield and in the social media and online platforms.
05:27It does go even beyond the sense of humanity.
05:30Yeah, we will take a closer look at the ceasefire and how it's actually holding up now after a few days.
05:39And of course, with the new U.S. tariffs announced.
05:41But, Professor Lee, I do want to hear just first, how significant do you think were the roles played by the U.S. and China in mediating this?
05:50And how much of it was actually thanks to what we like to call, I guess, the ASEAN way?
05:56Well, ASEAN has taken credit for mediating the ceasefire.
06:01But actually, I think ASEAN has been quite ineffectual in this crisis, which, after all, has been brewing since May.
06:07And ASEAN leaders seem to do nothing about it until over a dozen people were killed and the U.S. and China were leading in.
06:15And I think pressure from them was probably more decisive in this case, particularly pressure from the United States on Thailand, threatening that there would be no progress on peace talks unless the conflict was settled.
06:26That seems to have been quite decisive in pushing Thailand to accept mediation in this case.
06:32And I think China will have put pressure on both sides as well behind the scenes because they're both friendly nations to China.
06:39China does not want to see them at each other's throats.
06:41And since the ceasefire has been violated or shaky, the Chinese also seem to have summoned senior officials on both sides to Beijing to press them to actually implement the ceasefire as well.
06:54So I think in this case, it's the big powers that seem to be more decisive than ASEAN, I'm afraid.
06:58We'll return to that.
07:00But just looking at the ceasefire and the development since the past few days, KITIPOS, not a week coming into the ceasefire announcement.
07:12We're seeing accusations specifically from Thailand that Cambodia has violated the truth with overnight attacks and whatnot.
07:20What do you think this is about the ceasefire and perhaps its fragility?
07:25How long do you think this can go on?
07:28This is a very hard question to be answered.
07:31But I can tell you one thing that though the ceasefire stopped the actual fight, it doesn't cover the other way of fighting.
07:38What is happening right now is the information of psychological and legal warfare between the two countries.
07:45In fact, in the case of Thailand, the accusation of Cambodia of stating the fight after the ceasefire, right?
07:57In fact, both Thailand and Cambodia are part of the Soviet Mekong, which is a cooperation framework between U.S. NASA and the Mekong countries.
08:06I mean the lower Mekong countries.
08:08In fact, we can find this into the NASA and use the satellite of the NASA to verify the truth.
08:18Who is the one who opened the fight first?
08:23Because during the information warfare, you know, words from both sides are meaningless.
08:28To make it equivalent, recently, Miss Mali Wright, the spokesperson of the Cambodian site,
08:38also accused Thailand of rejecting its wild wounded soldier to get the medical treatment in Thailand hospital.
08:44In fact, Cambodia can make this accusation because they know Thailand very well.
08:49Normally in Thailand, the public hospitals are always crowded.
08:53Thai people have to go to the hospital to wait for the service at 3 a.m. in order to get diagnostic around noon.
08:59This is normal in Thailand.
09:01I mean normal for the public hospital in Thailand.
09:04And keeping in mind that during the Cambodian attack this time, approximately 8 to 10 public hospitals were destroyed by Cambodian BM-21 rocket launcher.
09:14The remaining public hospitals are becoming even more crowded.
09:19However, the private hospital in Thailand is totally another world.
09:23Even many Cambodian rulers went to Thailand, Thai private hospital to get the treatment.
09:31I really have no idea why they just don't send a wounded soldier to this hospital instead.
09:37But they choose to go to the public hospital.
09:41Right?
09:42So, this is not just the information warfare, but it is the information warfare between those who know each other very well.
09:50You know?
09:51So, what we have to bear in mind is that every accusation needs a solid and well-run verification.
10:00This is what I can talk about right now.
10:01Yeah.
10:03Yeah, of course.
10:03And I hope that that's what we'll be able to address and try to get through all of this, as you say, the information warfare.
10:10But just on that note, Professor Lee, you were also talking briefly about this on Twitter or X,
10:18or at least that's some of the comments that you received from users on the social media with their own sort of narratives.
10:24But you did touch on some of the deep political economy roots to this crisis,
10:30and Kitty Pos has also talked about why this has triggered now.
10:35But, Lee, what are your thoughts on this?
10:37Why is this happening now?
10:38What are probably some of the key events that led to this?
10:42It's hard to say for sure, because it's all very opaque.
10:45We don't really know why decision makers are doing what they're doing.
10:49It's a kind of handful of people that probably know the true answer to this.
10:51But as Kitty Pos has already said, territorial conflicts are often more about domestic politics than they are about the territory.
11:01And there's a long history to this.
11:02So back in 2008, Thai conservative elites whipped up a crisis on the border over the contested temple of Priya Vaheer
11:11because they found it useful to bring down a government that they hated,
11:16which was aligned to their arch enemy, the politico, business, oligarch, taxing Shinobot, a bit like today.
11:23This time, it seems that from open source intelligence like satellite imagery,
11:27it's really the Cambodians that have been instigating this through quite longstanding building of roads and bases near the border and so on,
11:37notwithstanding tit-for-tat escalations on the Thai side as well.
11:42So the question is, why would the Cambodians initiate this at this particular point in time?
11:47I'm not quite sure it's about Hun Manette trying to shore up his regime,
11:51because the person who's been at the front of all this is actually Hun Sen.
11:56And by being at the front of all of this, he's not supposed to be the prime minister anymore.
12:00He's just the Senate president.
12:02But he's sort of revealing what everybody really knew about the so-called transition to a new generation in Cambodia,
12:09which is that Hun Sen is still pulling the strings from behind the curtains.
12:14It does seem, though, as Kitty Posse said, that it's about whipping up nationalist sentiment
12:18to help legitimate the CPP regime in Cambodia, which has been under increasing strain from 2013 onwards,
12:27when it effectively probably lost the 2013 elections and has become increasingly authoritarian ever since.
12:34Economic growth has been very sluggish since COVID.
12:37So this is an opportunity to rally the population around the flag.
12:41And I think also the longer term context is that the CPP has had a lot of external backing
12:47from the Chinese since 2000.
12:50Now, my view is that the Chinese don't want to see the Cambodians doing what they're doing.
12:53And as I said, they've put pressure on both sides to settle.
12:57But nonetheless, I think the quantity of military assistance, of economic assistance that the Chinese have provided,
13:03it has likely emboldened the CPP regime to take a more assertive stance against its neighbours.
13:10As Kitty Posse mentioned, it stands towards Vietnam.
13:12It could also add the construction of this canal that they're building that will route
13:16Cambodian trade away from Vietnamese ports and the stationing, permanent stationing,
13:23it seems, of Chinese naval assets at the Rheem naval base, which has alienated the Vietnamese side.
13:28And then, nonetheless, it's always dangerous to pick a fight with the Vietnamese
13:32as they're very difficult and hard customers.
13:36So maybe it's easier to whip up a border crisis with Thailand for domestic political purposes.
13:40That's what I suspect is going on.
13:43It's interesting you pointed out domestic politics.
13:46And if we were to look at the ceasefire, I guess we could also argue that this was a much-needed confidence boost
13:52for Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim as well, who was recently just faced with demonstrations and the cost of living crisis.
14:00So to what extent this was influenced by or driven by domestic politics and international politics,
14:06which does bring me to the question of the involvement of the US and China,
14:11which some analysts I've heard are trying to frame this as sort of a Thailand and US alliance
14:17versus Cambodia and China partnership.
14:20But, of course, many analysts in the region are refuting this, questioning this.
14:25Kitty Posse, what do you think of this kind of framing, of the kind of influence
14:29that the US and China power rivalry has on this border crisis?
14:34To what extent do you think it plays a role in this?
14:37The formula has just, I think as I follow the Cambodian behavior online and Thai behavior online,
14:49it seems that nowadays it's vice versa because Cambodia is now leaning toward the US,
15:00while Thailand is leaning toward China.
15:02This is very weird.
15:04This happened after the ceasefire.
15:07I don't know what really happened inside, but I can say that as Professor Lee mentioned that
15:15it was Hun Sen who is behind this also as well, right?
15:18Right after the ceasefire, Hun Sen praised President Trump a lot.
15:24And I have no idea why Hun Sen liked to do this.
15:28But, by the way, I think if we go to the old formula,
15:34that is Thailand attached to the US and the Cambodian attached to China, right?
15:40I think it is normal for everyone to think that way
15:45because the US built a lot of material facilities in Thailand.
15:48While the PLA built the real novel base in Cambodia
15:52and near the location near the novel base,
15:57around 40 kilometers, I don't know, China did construct something.
16:03I think you heard some news, but you can cut this, okay?
16:07Because it is some informal intelligence.
16:15Okay.
16:17But I would say that conflict this time is not about just the greatest power of politics in itself.
16:23It is for Thai, you know?
16:26It is just about the disagreement between Thailand and Cambodia
16:29on the way to solve the borderline chain.
16:31So let's see the two countries' position first.
16:35And you will understand why we see, we saw, we consider
16:39the great power of politics has to do something with this border conflict.
16:48The position of Thailand is that, right?
16:50Right after the 2010, Thailand went to the ICJ and there is the verdict in 2013.
16:59And the verdict is that, I mean, the ICJ verdict is that,
17:03besides the area of temple of prairie here,
17:05the other borderline demarcation has to be due to the bilateral negotiation between the two countries.
17:11And Thailand adhere to this principle always.
17:14But the problem is that, I don't know what happened.
17:17Maybe China, as Professor Li talked about,
17:21or maybe the raising of nationalism,
17:25as I observed from my neighboring country.
17:31Cambodia chain is policy.
17:33Cambodia want the third party, such as international organization,
17:37or the great power to get intervened in this negotiating process.
17:41It began with the submission of whatever substance to the ICJ
17:44to find a new case, which hasn't been replied yet.
17:49It also asked for the help from China first.
17:52But now, after the ceasefire negotiation,
17:54they are asking the U.S. to increase American influence in Cambodia.
17:58As I follow the Facebook of one of the Cambodian influencers,
18:03they even proposed to let the U.S.
18:08to construct the military braids in Cambodia right now.
18:14This is what I can say.
18:15Just quickly, Li, your thoughts on this.
18:19How complex is this global power alliances in the crisis?
18:23I think it's been important, as I say.
18:27But just to be clear, I'm not saying that China is behind all of this.
18:31I think China does not want to see this kind of conflict and instability
18:35between two countries that actually are quite closely,
18:40in close relations with China.
18:43I think it's, Cambodia is often seen as a kind of Chinese stooge or client state.
18:47I think that's very simplistic.
18:50And Thailand is a U.S. treaty ally.
18:53But actually, it has very warm relations with China
18:56and has been sort of, if you like, tilting towards China.
18:59I think what all countries in Southeast Asia generally try to do
19:02is to be poly-aligned,
19:04to have relationships with as many different states as possible
19:07in order to create maximum room for manoeuvre,
19:10to extract economic benefits and so on.
19:13And Cambodia and Thailand are not unique in doing this.
19:19They've had difficulty, in some ways,
19:21managing their external relations and maintaining poly-alignment, right?
19:24So the Cambodians have been quite alienated from the U.S. for some time
19:29because of this increasing authoritarianism since 2013, as I mentioned.
19:33So the U.S. has increasingly put sanctions on the regime
19:37and cut off cooperation.
19:40So the Cambodian regime probably sees this
19:42as an opportunity to improve ties with the Americans
19:47because instinctively that's what they want.
19:50They want close ties with China and close ties with the United States
19:53and with the U.K. and with the EU and with India,
19:56with everybody, in fact.
19:58That's the general strategic approach that Southeast Asian countries take.
20:03So I think to read all this as, you know,
20:05one country's taking one side and one country's taking another side,
20:08I think is to misunderstand how these regimes try to manage their external relations.
20:13Just on that point about ASEAN's poly-alignment or what they like to call,
20:19I guess, the ASEAN neutrality,
20:21what do you think, Lee, this is about ASEAN's conflict management
20:26and diplomatic centrality.
20:30How do you think they would fare in managing other disputes and conflicts?
20:34Perhaps if we were to see tensions in the South China Sea getting worse,
20:39you know, do they have to get their things together, do you think?
20:42Yeah, I think they do.
20:43I mean, as I said earlier, I think ASEAN was kind of asleep at the wheel
20:48when this crisis broke out.
20:50It did not really do very much.
20:52This reflects the kind of ostrich approach that ASEAN countries often take
20:56to sensitive and difficult issues.
20:59You know, stick your head in the sand and hope that the problem goes away.
21:03And what if it doesn't, right?
21:05Crises are apt to boil over into serious conflicts.
21:09In this case, I think it was only when the big powers got involved
21:12and put pressure on the two sides that that created a space for ASEAN.
21:17And as you say, the South China Sea issue
21:19is another one of these longstanding territorial disputes
21:22where there is a real possibility at any time
21:25that frictions, particularly at the moment,
21:27frictions between the Chinese and the Philippines
21:30inside the Philippines EZ could boil over into active conflicts.
21:35Now, there are lots of different national interests within ASEAN
21:38that divide the region.
21:41Like some countries don't have a claim in the South China Sea.
21:43They don't really want to get involved.
21:45They don't want to annoy China.
21:47Others, they are claimants,
21:50and they want ASEAN to take a strong stance.
21:52And so the region is divided.
21:54But ASEAN claims to have a central role
21:58in diplomacy and managing regional order.
22:02And simply going through 20 years
22:05of fruitless negotiations with China
22:07on a code of conduct in the South China Sea
22:10is not enough.
22:11There's a real risk that this could boil over into conflict.
22:13And so I think ASEAN needs to develop serious mechanisms
22:17of preventive diplomacy.
22:19We used to talk a lot about preventive diplomacy
22:20in the 90s and the 2000s,
22:23but really we don't hear very much from it anymore.
22:25So instruments that can deploy,
22:26regardless of what the parties involved want,
22:29that can do shuttle diplomacy,
22:31that can try to do crisis management,
22:34because the risks of conflicts boiling over
22:36have increased with the increasing geopolitical tensions
22:40in the region.
22:41So ASEAN needs to make its claim
22:43to diplomatic centrality more substantive.
22:46Now, I want to look quickly at the US tariffs
22:50and what's just been recently announced
22:52by President Trump.
22:53Ketipos, you look a lot or you observe a lot
22:56about, you know, the public perception,
22:59about public sentiment towards this crisis.
23:04And I guess just to understand
23:06how people are now looking at this,
23:08looking at the ceasefire,
23:09looking at the US involvement,
23:10and I guess the pressure coming from the US tariffs,
23:14with President Trump announcing the 19% levy
23:18drastically lower from the 36% initially set,
23:22how has the reaction been like, Ketipos?
23:28Everyone praised the process of the ceasefire.
23:31Everyone praised Anwar Ibrahim for this,
23:34because of this ceasefire negotiation.
23:36So we can reduce the amount of the tax
23:40that Trump cast on us, right?
23:43So I think everyone cannot say that
23:48we disagree with that
23:49because we weakened the benefit, right?
23:52So what I want to mention a little bit
23:57is that I do agree with Professor Lee, right?
24:01That ASEAN has to do a lot for this
24:10in order to get the...
24:13what is called the conflict resolution mechanism, right?
24:21And this is the first time,
24:22we have to mention that this is the first time
24:24that ASEAN did the conflict resolution.
24:28Mostly before, I mean, before this,
24:30since the 1967,
24:33since ASEAN establishment.
24:34What ASEAN can do is just to...
24:37not escalate the standing conflict into the violent one.
24:43This is what ASEAN can do.
24:44We cannot solve the conflict.
24:46We can sweep everything under the carpet
24:48or left everything behind
24:50and we talk about other topics instead, right?
24:53This is what ASEAN can do.
24:56And my point is that
24:58this is the first time that ASEAN chairman
25:01played a very active role
25:02in regional conflict resolution.
25:06Of course, we have to praise Prime Minister
25:08Anwar Ibrahim for this,
25:10for his commitment for peace.
25:12But as an economist,
25:14there are two things to be concerned for this.
25:17The first is that ASEAN has never had
25:21the rule enforcement mechanism.
25:24This time, it's also the first time
25:26that we can see the rule enforcement mechanism.
25:29As I heard the news that
25:31Prime Minister Anwar is trying to establish
25:33the DA team and ASEAN monitoring team
25:35to monitor the ceasefire, right?
25:41This is the positive sign for ASEAN
25:43to have the first one.
25:44But the problem is still about the ASEAN consensus
25:47because as a ASEAN chairman,
25:52Anwar Ibrahim can do everything as a chairman.
25:54But everyone knows that chairman has the
25:56only one year term.
25:59What about the next year?
26:01What about the years to come, right?
26:03So we have to be very careful about this.
26:06And the second is like the point
26:10that Professor Lee made.
26:11But when talking about South China Sea,
26:16what Malaysia should do this year,
26:19I mean at the end of this year,
26:24Malaysia should address this conflict resolution
26:27and expand it into the ASEAN regional forum,
26:31which is directly towards the security and dispute issue
26:35in Asia-Pacific region.
26:36Now they are talking about preventive diplomacy,
26:39which is its second step of cooperation.
26:43If in this year,
26:44the ASEAN could address the role of Malaysia Prime Minister
26:47in conflict management as a successful case,
26:49it is very positive that ASEAN could make a significant progress
26:54towards the third step,
26:55which is to establish the conflict resolution mechanism.
26:58after being stagnant as Professor Lee said that
27:03it becomes stagnant for more than 20 years.
27:07So this is all I want to say.
27:09Yeah.
27:10I'm not sure if ASEAN has,
27:13I don't think this is the first time ASEAN has
27:15tried to resolve a conflict.
27:18I believe there have been past occurrences
27:21like the Cambodian conflict in 1978
27:23and even just the Myanmar crisis.
27:26But to what extent it has been successful,
27:27I guess is the question.
27:29That's all the time that we have.
27:31Of course, plenty more we'd like to unpack.
27:33But that's all for today.
27:34Thank you so much once again to Kitty Posen Lee
27:36for joining us today on Awani Global
27:37and plenty more developments, of course,
27:40to stay tuned to.
27:41But that's all on Awani Global this week
27:43with me, Naila Huda.
27:44Thank you so much for watching.
Comments