Executive Summary
In late May 2025, the armies of Thailand and Cambodia clashed at Chong Bok Highland, near the highly symbolic Preah Vihear Temple. Despite its limited scale, the conflict gradually evolved into a regional political risk with profound impact, reflecting the deep tension of the national political structure of both nations.
Key Points
- The increasing Thailand’s internal political tensions, marked by the growing nationalist sentiment, further stresses the national political pressure.
- The change of governance urged up the tough policy preference: as the Anutin Charnvirakul replaced Paetongtarn Shinawatra and pledged to hold elections next year, Thailand is more likely to adopt an aggressive position under the prosperous nationalism background.
- Hun Sen leveraged on Thailand’s diplomatic vulnerabilities, breaking up the bilateral trust, and further undermining the national political stability of the Thai government.
Analysis
In political practice, sovereignty has a massive particularity, while its tight connection with populism and nationalism naturally empowers it with an outrageous ability to mobilise social sentiment and impact elections. As a result, this matter is more like a power negotiation within these two countries’ internal power parties. The Thai internal opposition uses nationalism to question the reliability of the government, using the border conflict to construct a moral and political attack on the ruling party. While Cambodia, owing to its current political system that is inherently a highly centralized, Wittfogel-style “hydraulic society model”. the use of external threats can reinforce the necessity and reliability of the ruling family.
Under the “hydraulic society model”, the nation achieves a high degree of administrative centralisation through the construction, management, and resource allocation of large-scale water infrastructure, particularly irrigation systems and hydroelectric projects. Objectively, within this context of highly concentrated power and considerable potential for authoritarian opportunism within the system, external threats tend to be constructed as key instruments for consolidating the legitimacy and irreplaceability of the regime.
Particularly, the wealth of power centralisation on the basis of “hydraulic society model”, making the national machine highly familialization, Hun Sen attempted to reshape a similar traditional centralised institution of water conservancy society under this foundation to sustain the governance. Under this situation, it is inevitable that the Hun Sen family exploits fragile conflicts to maintain its control over the military and the elite class, serving the interests of the family.
In fact, the occurrence of this conflict is not unavoidable. On the one hand, the International Court of Justice has already ruled on the territorial dispute related to Preah Vihear Temple, providing a clear legal framework for both sides. On the other hand, the Thai government has tried to de-escalate tensions through flexible, non-public diplomatic communication. However, the Cambodian ruling family, fueled by nationalist mobilization, chose to adopt a confrontational stance towards the Thai government’s efforts at appeasement and de-escalation.
Overall, when political parties have marked political needs, the sovereignty is easily instrumentalised. Under this background, the complicated international conflict simplified sensitive political symbols. Leaders tend to publicly show their assertive attitude to accumulate the national political capital, instead of achieving a substantive peaceful solution through low profile diplomacy. This political incentive structure not only undermines the possibility of conflict degradation but also puts the region into a long-term, highly risky trajectory.
Policy Implications
- When sovereignty is institutionalised, the border conflict will continue “internalisation”, and cut down the space for technical negotiation. While bilateral diplomacy remains necessary in this context, its technical nature and scope to negotiate discreetly face structural constraints, limiting its effectiveness under conditions where sovereignty is politicized. Consequently, policy interventions should prioritize addressing the domestic political incentives of leaders.
- The nationalism mobilisation may forge into a “self-reinforcing cycle”, leading to the continued dysfunction of regional mechanisms. The regional policies need to design new risk mitigation mechanisms, rather than relying on consensus-based diplomacy.
- The institutional dependence on external conflicts of the Cambodian authoritarian system makes the border problems acquire long-term “re-productive ability”. The focus of policy needs to shift to the incentive structure of the authoritarian structure, not solely responding to a single accident.
References
Blake, D.J.H., 2019. Recalling hydraulic despotism: Hun Sen’s Cambodia and the return of strict authoritarianism. Austrian Journal of South‑East Asian Studies, 12(1), pp.69–89. doi:10.14764/10.ASEAS‑0014/
Iannone, A., 2025. Sovereignty performed, regionalism denied: what the Thai‑Cambodian clash reveals. E‑International Relations, 4 July. Available at: https://www.e-ir.info/2025/07/04/sovereignty-performed-regionalism-denied-what-the-thai-cambodian-clash-reveals/
The Guardian, 2025. Why has ceasefire collapsed between Thailand and Cambodia? 9 December. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jul/24/why-thailand-cambodia-border-clash-conflict
When soft power is weaponized: the Thai‑Cambodian border crisis, 2025. E‑International Relations, 22 June. Available at: https://www.e-ir.info/2025/06/22/when-soft-power-is-weaponized-the-thai-cambodian-border-crisis/