The Thai-Cambodian Border Clash, With Joshua Kurlantzick

Show Notes

Mentioned on the Episode:

Joshua Kurlantzick, Beijing’s Global Media Offensive 

Joshua Kurlantzick, “Thailand and Cambodia’s Ceasefire: Will It Stop War When Elites Want Conflict?,” CFR.org

Transcript

LINDSAY:
Welcome to The President’s Inbox, a CFR podcast about the foreign policy challenges facing the United States. I’m Jim Lindsay, the Mary and David Boies distinguished senior fellow in U.S. Foreign Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. This week’s topic is the Thai-Cambodian border conflict.
With me to discuss the recent fighting between Cambodia and Thailand along their disputed border is Joshua Kurlantzick. Josh is a senior fellow for Southeast Asia and South Asia at CFR. He’s a prolific author having written six books, the latest of which is “Beijing’s Global Media Offensive: China’s Uneven Campaign to Influence Asia and the World.” Josh has also written several pieces on the fighting between Cambodia and Thailand for CFR.org, including “Thailand and Cambodia’s Ceasefire: Will It Stop War When Elites Want Conflict?” Josh, thanks for coming back on The President’s Inbox.

KURLANTZICK:
Thanks for having me again.

LINDSAY:
Josh, as the title of your most recent piece indicates, we currently have a ceasefire between Cambodia and Thailand. Obviously things could change by the time this episode airs. Where I’d like to begin is with what the countries are in theory fighting over? Their clash is regularly described as one rooted in dispute over where France drew the borders between the two countries when it was the colonial power in Indochina ruling over Cambodia. Can you help me understand the specifics of the border disagreement?

KURLANTZICK:
Well, this is a border dispute in general that has lasted over one hundred years now.

LINDSAY:
I take it has something to do with a map that was written in 1907.

KURLANTZICK:
Yeah, some people say 1908, but at that time, France was the colonial power, so they were in control of Cambodia. Thailand was never a colony, which is the second thing any Thai person will tell you. Maybe the first, it was called Siam back then, but they negotiated with the French colonial authorities and there was no clear resolution and over this disputed border area where both Thai people or people of Thai ethnicity or people who were from the Thai kingdom living across the border in Cambodia, as well as a lot of Khmer people who were Cambodian living in the Thai side. So this goes on with intermittent uprisings over the years. There are also two beautiful ancient Hindu temples in this area. One of them is a thousand-ish years old, and I’ve been there several times and it’s truly staggering. If you’ve been to Angkor Wat in Cambodia, it’s pretty stunning. So finally in the 1962, Cambodia actually got a ruling from the UN’s highest court saying that it controlled the land around one of these staggering temples, but they made no ruling about any of the other land around it. The ruling was limited to a tiny parcel of land just around the temples. So since then, there’s been on-or-off border clashes for years. And some have turned deadly before, but this is the deadliest one that happened.

LINDSAY:
So Josh, help me understand why the dispute has flared up at this point. I take it as you mentioned, that this has been going on for a century. It’s flared up from time to time. I believe the most recent time we’ve seen gunfire across the border, at least gunfire that led to deaths was back in 2011. But all of a sudden it has really jumped out, increased in intensity as you note. But why now?

KURLANTZICK:
Well, on May 28, the initial day where there was gunfire and someone was killed, no one can know for sure who shot first. It could have been that people...that some trigger-happy soldiers just shot first. We don’t know that. But the important thing to understand is not May 28, but what happened after that, where suddenly it got ramped into a very significant dispute where both sides were immediately sending significant numbers of men to the border. And Thailand has all sorts of modern weapons that they were deploying there. And nationalist rhetoric on both sides soared, leading politicians on both sides were ramping it up immensely. The number of troops and types of weapons increased and nationalism on both sides started to become pretty toxic. Then you have to understand that the primary driver, why this...after May 28, which we don’t know what happened that day.

LINDSAY:
That was a spark.

KURLANTZICK:
Yeah, why this turned into a much bigger deal is due to domestic politics in Cambodia and more importantly Thailand, where there were reasons for major actors to stoke this conflict.

LINDSAY:
Okay, I’d appreciate it, Josh, if you could walk me through this, because I’ve been following the news on this story. And the domestic politics on both sides of the border seem reminiscent of that HBO series “Succession” or maybe one of the many ten episode, political thrillers I can find on Netflix. So just walk me through the political dynamics on the Cambodian side of the border and then tell me a little bit about Thailand.

KURLANTZICK:
Well, I can tell you first of all that I’m actually watching that with my older son. And yeah, I would say on the Cambodian side is definitely reminiscent of “Succession.” You have Hun Sen who basically after the Khmer Rouge fell apart after Vietnam invaded Cambodia, Vietnam installed a government in Cambodia. Hun Sen was very young at that time, maybe thirty. Eventually he became Prime Minister or actually co-Prime Minister after the peace accords. But he used a coup to get rid of the other co-prime minister. So he basically ruled Cambodia from 1993 until 2023. Then he technically handed power to his son, Hun Manet, who even as he was handing power to him, made clear that he didn’t really think Hun Manet was up to the job. A day after Hun Manet became prime minister, Hun Sen had an interview with reporters where he said something like, “I’m not sure and I can always step back in to handle things.”

LINDSAY:
It seemed like a ringing endorsement that any son would want from his father.

KURLANTZICK:
Yeah. So he never left being the most powerful actor in Cambodia, but his son has done some things that are different from him. And this was an opportunity for Hun Sen to reassert himself as the most powerful figure. His son wasn’t really doing that much at the border. Hun Sen was all over the place, rallying Cambodians, etc, etc.

LINDSAY:
He went to the border, as I understand.

KURLANTZICK:
Yeah, the son who is technically Prime Minister did go to the border. Hun Sen did often, and he also was all over the place on social media and rallying Cambodians.

LINDSAY:
Tell me about the Thai side, particularly since you just mentioned social media, because social media figures into how things played out in the Thai side of the border.

KURLANTZICK:
So on the Thai side, before May 28th, there are already some very clear signs that the Thai military who had lost some degree of power because there was a functioning, until recently, civilian parliament led by a member of the Shinawatra family. The Shinawatras have ruled civilian Thai politics since 2000, 2001. Thaksin Shinawatra, the godfather of the family dynasty, was prime minister from 2001 until 2006. I watched Thaksin’s rise in person as a journalist, and he struck the fear of God into the military and probably the monarch, although he would never say. Because he was the first Thai prime minister with the enormous...civilian prime minister with the enormous level of popularity, charisma, and some really effective policies that he could potentially have been a figure who displaced the military and even the monarch as the central actor in Thai politics. So over time, they tried various ways. The military, other elites tried various ways to get rid of the Shinawatras. In fact, in 2006, Thaksin was at a CFR event and he was discreetly told that while he was out of the country, a coup had been enacted against him, which does not happen to all our guests. But for twenty-five years, they keep coming back. They would find some other family member and when an election, they would win or some really close friend, etc. So there’s two things. The military had been building up power compared to civilians before May 28th, and this was shown in several ways. They had grown closer to the king. They took the very unusual step of filing lèse-majesté insult to the monarchy charges against a really renowned academic Paul Chambers. While they file those charges sometimes against Thais, to file it against one of the most famous Thai studies professors in the world who is also an American, while at the same time they were trying to negotiate a trade deal and the military pushed this show that the military was gaining significant power.

LINDSAY:
Well, let’s talk about Shinawatra because as I understand it, Thaksin’s daughter, prime minister of Thailand, and she has a phone call with Hun Sen as these events are unfolding at the border. What happened then?

KURLANTZICK:
Yeah, well, she wasn’t popular before that because she had zero political experience. With people already thinking her government is weak on national security, she has a phone conversation with Hun Sen. Not with Hun Manet, by the way, the actual Prime Minister of Cambodia. And in the call, which was leaked, first leaked in the old-fashioned way, which me and every other Thai scholar, Thailand scholar believe was almost surely leaked by Hun Sen.

LINDSAY:
Okay, so you think Hun Sen was behind it?

KURLANTZICK:
Yeah.

LINDSAY:
What was said in the conversation that took a lot of Thai’s attention?

KURLANTZICK:
Well, in the call, she denigrates senior military generals, which as a rule in Thailand is pretty terrible idea. And she also in the call seems to be groveling in a way to Hun Sen as if Hun Sen is her parental figure.

LINDSAY:
She addresses him as “uncle.”

KURLANTZICK:
Yeah.

LINDSAY:
In the call, doesn’t she?

KURLANTZICK:
That’s what I mean, like parental figure, like older statesman who’s going to teach her. And that was reviled by Thais and it doesn’t make any sense anyway, since Thailand had...if there was actually a war, like a real war, Thailand would roll over Cambodia in two days.

LINDSAY:
It’s probably important to point out, Josh, that Thailand has a population of seventy million people, GDP per capita of around twenty-one thousand. Cambodia has a population of seventeen million people in a GDP per capita, less than one third of Thailand. So in terms of power resources, Thailand is much bigger and more powerful than Cambodia.

KURLANTZICK:
Also, Thailand has the most latest sophisticated U.S. fighter planes. They have the latest Swedish fighter planes, they have the latest generation of French drones, they have Israeli drones, they have all this stuff.

LINDSAY:
So one of the two countries is a military power and it’s not Cambodia.

KURLANTZICK:
Right. So after that phone call, Paetongtarn tried to apologize and meet with some military leaders who blew her off. Thai people were really angry about that, and there started to be demonstrations in Bangkok. Although some of those demonstrations were led by ultra-nationalists, royalists, but they were still demonstrations. Her party’s popularity and the popularity of Shinawatras in general plummeted, and it was only a matter of time before she was gone. There was a no confidence measure against her, but they didn’t get to that because the top court just removed her as prime minister. So now we have chaos in parliament with no clear path forward. We can go into this more, but the military also has in polling become extremely popular, which often happens during war and civilian politicians‘ popularity ratings, not just Paetongtarn, but everyone are in the toilet.

LINDSAY:
Josh, do you have a take on why it is that Hun Sen, who you think leaked the phone conversation also after it became known, posted it on Facebook so everybody knew what was said?

KURLANTZICK:
Hun Sen had a close relationship with the Shinawatra family for years and years and years. He actually helped Thaksin’s sister Yingluck Shinawatra, who was prime minister for a number of years until a coup in 2014, and she was a pretty effective prime minister. When the coup happened, she vanished. And it’s almost universally believed that she slipped into Cambodia and Hun Sen hid her and got her out of the country to the exile, which is in Dubai. So it’s not exactly like she was living that hard life but exile. And he’s had a relationship with the Shinawatras going back thirty years, maybe back to the time when Thaksin was a telecom tycoon. I think that...but Hun Sen is also a really savvy political operator or he wouldn’t have lasted that long. And I think he’s made the decision that the Shinawatras are going to be gone and Cambodia needs to build a relationship with Thai leaders going forward. There was also some stories of personal insults to each other, but there’s nothing that was confirmed and when Thaksin in the last couple of years also has made a lot of proposals about Thailand’s economic development, some of which infringe on some of the areas Cambodia does well.

LINDSAY:
So as we mentioned at the start of our conversation, there’s now a ceasefire in place. How did that come about?

KURLANTZICK:
Well, there was efforts at it that failed and eventually a lot of arm-twisting was applied to both countries by both China and the U.S. and the correct mediator was finally selected, a man named Anwar Ibrahim, who we have had at CFR many times to talk. He is probably the only person that both sides trusted.

LINDSAY:
He’s Malaysian, correct?

KURLANTZICK:
He’s the prime minister of Malaysia now, but I mean, he goes decades back. He was the opposition leader. He was all sorts of things, but he’s trusted by them. And then secondly...and so he’s cajoling them. Anwar is a very good speaker and he’s a really good negotiator. He’s cajoling them and then at the same time, the Trump administration is telling them, “If you don’t resolve this, we’re not going to make any trade deals with you.” They actually did supposedly just make a trade deal, both the countries with the U.S., although you never know because a deal isn’t a deal until it actually happens, but—

LINDSAY:
Right. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick announced there was a deal but then gave no details about what the deal was with either country.

KURLANTZICK:
Yeah, so that was impressive leverage applied by Trump, that was definitely important and China was leaning on particularly Cambodia very hard. Cambodia is almost a client state of China at this point, so China was leaning on them and threatening—

LINDSAY:
So why would China lean on its own client state? Why wouldn’t it lean on the Thais?

KURLANTZICK:
Because it’s a client state, but it’s of minor importance to China in general. But what does matter to them is that the region is calm. And there’s another area where Thailand and Cambodia and Laos meet very close to China called the Golden Triangle, and it’s also close to Myanmar too. On the Myanmar side, an organization has become the biggest narco trafficking organization in the world. Myanmar has become the world’s leading hub of organized crime. There’s a lot of stuff there that China is intensely concerned about, and they want to just keep everything calm in Cambodia so that they can also do what’s more important and keep that incredibly chaotic area farther north calmer.

LINDSAY:
To what extent, Josh, did China lean on Phnom Penh? Because China’s looking to continue to improve relations with Bangkok. My understanding is that in some sense, while Thailand is a treaty ally of the United States, its relations with Beijing are better than its relationship with Washington these days.

KURLANTZICK:
I think most defense planners would say if there came to a conflict in the region, even despite being a treaty ally, they could not count on Thailand. I think that China is definitely more interested in increasing its influence in Thailand where it already has massive economic ties and increasingly close ties to the generals there than Cambodia. They basically pay off Cambodia to try to prevent any Cambodian problems from spilling into China or spilling North, but for sure they want to build a closer relationship with Thailand. And it’s notable that...this think tank in Singapore called ICS does these surveys every year of Southeast Asian opinion leaders. And for the first time recently, the opinion leaders said that if they were forced to choose, they don’t say gun to the head in the survey, which major power they would align with, for the first time ever, they said China.

LINDSAY:
How stable do you those results are? Is that just a momentary blip because President Trump has come in and ruffled a lot of feathers, or do you think this is part of a more sustainable trend that predates Donald Trump’s arrival back in Washington?

KURLANTZICK:
Yeah, the most recent survey was taken before Trump was even elected president. So I mean, Trump might make it worse, but it’s not because of him. It’s a long-standing trend that has just gotten worse and worse due to U.S. ignorance of Southeast Asia, whereas China pays attention. U.S. failure to send top officials to important Asian events and U.S. complete mispractice on soft power in the region.

LINDSAY:
We’ve talked a bit about the United States‘ role. We’ve talked a bit about the role played by China. What I haven’t heard you mention, Josh, is the role played by ASEAN, or is it the case that Mr. Ibrahim was acting on behalf of ASEAN?

KURLANTZICK:
The chairmanship of ASEAN switches every year among the ten members. Malaysia is the chair this year, and Anwar is thus this year’s head of ASEAN effectively. So you could say that through Anwar, ASEAN played some part, but that’s not really accurate because if Malaysia wasn’t the chair, they would’ve still gone to Anwar anyway because he’s a figure. ASEAN did almost nothing. And ASEAN has proven itself in the last few years. There’ve been a lot of issues they could have weighed in on. Most notably, one of their members is in an incredibly bloody brutal civil war whose leaders should be in The Hague.

LINDSAY:
This is Myanmar?

KURLANTZICK:
Yeah, Myanmar. And ASEAN did nothing.

LINDSAY:
Any individual countries in ASEAN showing a particular interest in this conflict? I have in mind Indonesia, which is by far the most populous country in Southeast Asia. Are the Indonesians at all active? The Vietnamese, or is it pretty much the rest of ASEAN is off to any other business?

KURLANTZICK:
The Vietnamese care, because Cambodia used to be their client state and at they still have close relations and they don’t want China to absorb everything. So they played some modest role. I don’t think Malaysians care one way or another. It’s far from them. Anwar just cares. And then when you go beyond that, I mean, I don’t think there’s much care. Prabowo Subianto, the president of Indonesia, is a former general himself who isn’t that interested in some of the issues that were raised during this massive displacement of people, etc. Prabowo himself has allegedly committed massive human rights abuses.

LINDSAY:
So we have a ceasefire for now. Do you expect the ceasefire to hold, Josh, or do you see bumps in the road going ahead?

KURLANTZICK:
I don’t expect the ceasefire to hold. It might hold for some weeks, but there are two more dates in the future that they’re supposed to negotiate and make the ceasefire firmer. I don’t think it’s going to make it to that.

LINDSAY:
Yeah, they’re meeting August 4th, I believe, somewhere in Malaysia.

KURLANTZICK:
They’ll make it August 4th, but the next point after that... Again, I want to go back to the Thai military now with Parliament in chaos has several options. Parliament needs a majority coalition, right? So there’s two parties in Thai parliament that have enough seats that you could build a coalition out of because they have over a hundred seats. One is Thaksin’s party, Pheu Thai. Now, the military hate Thaksin. Thaksin’s actually on trial for insulting the king, so that would be something they really don’t want. The other party they could build a coalition from is even worse for the military. It’s a very progressive party, and that party has openly called for military reform and essentially making the military controlled by civilians. So they really don’t want that. If they call a snap election because there’s no parliament able to be found, able to be seated. The military definitely doesn’t want that either, because in a snap election, that progressive party would likely win an outright majority of seats. So that leaves the military with the traditional fallback option.

LINDSAY:
Which is a coup.

KURLANTZICK:
Yeah. Thailand is the only middle or upper income country in the entire world that regularly has coups.

LINDSAY:
And what would that mean in terms of the conflict? Do you think the Thai military, if you were to have a coup or maybe without a coup, we’d look to resume hostilities given that they have a decided advantage over Cambodian forces?

KURLANTZICK:
They might not. I mean, it served a purpose. I don’t think it necessarily means that Thai military has to go back to the border and start shooting anti-aircraft missiles across and bombing them with heavy artillery and drones. I think probably if there were coup, the coup makers would immediately try to show that they can run the country more effectively than civilians. And probably one of the things they would do would be to move beyond the ceasefire and come up with something that makes them look good. Like we’re going to resolve these tensions forever as well as a bunch of domestic things. But when you have a coup, you got to immediately come in and show that you can do stuff as well as the other obvious stuff, like the TV starts playing just the national anthem and everything else shuts down and all this stuff.

LINDSAY:
And you make sure people don’t come out in very large numbers in public squares to protest.

KURLANTZICK:
Yeah, I mean, there’s a fair amount of ultra-nationalist, pro-military, pro-royal sentiment in Thailand, so those people wouldn’t come out to protest anyway. If they did, that wouldn’t be a problem. There could be definitely protests among young people, but coups have been getting harsher in Thailand actually, over the last couple ones. There was a coup in 2006, it was pretty mild. They held real elections and didn’t change the constitution. By and large, Thaksin’s proxy won. In the 2014 coup, it lasted four years until 2018, and it was much harsher. They rewrote the constitution. They were jailing all sorts of activists and writers. They were banning all sorts of online material. It was much, much harsher. There was abuse, torture, et cetera.

LINDSAY:
So it seems that the message here, Josh, is that at least when it comes to Thailand, stay tuned.

KURLANTZICK:
Yeah. And if they have a coup, it’s likely to be even harsher. They want to wipe out the Shinawatras forever, and they probably would rewrite the constitution again.

LINDSAY:
On that note, I’ll close up The President’s Inbox for this week. My guest has been Joshua Kurlantzick, senior fellow for Southeast Asia and South Asia here at the Council on Foreign Relations. Josh, as always, thank you for joining me.

KURLANTZICK:
Thank you so much for having me.

LINDSAY:
Please subscribe to The President’s Inbox in Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen and leave us a review. We love the feedback. You can find the books and articles mentioned in this episode, as well as a transcript of our conversation on the podcast page for The President’s Inbox on cfr.org. As always, opinions expressed on The President’s Inbox is solely those are the host or our guests, not of CFR, which takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. Today’s episode was produced by Molly McAnany with Senior Podcast Producer Gabrielle Sierra. Jimmy Stoffa was our recording engineer. This is Jim Lindsay. Thanks for listening.