By Youk Chhang

Director, Documentation Center of Cambodia

e: dccam@online.com.kh

on October 10, 2025

Today the Thai Prime Minister, Anutin Charnvirakul, spoke to the press, offering perhaps the most revealing and disturbing window to-date of the Thai government’s views of the current peace process between Thailand and Cambodia and the United States’ role in achieving peace in the region.

For starters, his insistence on vague pre-conditions for negotiating peace, let alone actually achieving true peace between both countries, reflects his contempt for a peaceful end to the conflict. His conditions depend on multiple, one-sided actions by the Cambodian government that are neither realistic let alone reasonable. The Thai Prime Minister is either receiving ill-informed advice from his staff, or he is knowingly pushing absurd conditions for the singular purpose of instigating a war. In either scenario, this is proof of Thailand’s abject unwillingness to negotiate in good faith.

The Thai government’s conditions for peace negotiations naturally echo previous bellicose governments in world history who used impossible conditions as the pretext for war.

A sincere commitment to negotiate for peace does not begin with one-sided preconditions; rather it must always begin with a demonstration of respect: respect for the process, the parties and the mediator. The Thai prime minister’s recent press statement all but confirms the government’s contempt for all three. On this point, the Thai Prime Minister’s remarks, which downplayed the U.S. President’s role in helping the peace process suggests his lack of regard for the United States’ good intentioned efforts in bringing the parties together. This disregard was compounded by the subtle, pointed reference to the U.S. President’s nomination for a Nobel Peace Prize—as if this was the basis for the U.S. government’s interests in the matter.

The Thai Prime Minister’s apparent indifference to the hard work and achievements of the United States government in brokering peace between Cambodia and Thailand is not a trivial matter on the periphery of this ongoing border dispute; rather, it is a substantive impediment to peace talks because if one party has contempt for the peace negotiator, then the entire peace process is jeopardized.

Today’s press remarks might be viewed as an apparent attempt to take a hard-line approach toward Cambodia, but I think there is a more important takeaway, which is the Thai government’s true contemptuous feelings toward the United States government, President Trump’s Administration and the sincere efforts by everyone to truly achieve peace between our countries.

End.