On the morning of July 25, war broke out between Cambodia and Thailand. On the surface, the conflict was sparked by a dispute over control of a UNESCO-listed heritage temple along the contested border. In reality, however, this war has little to do with the temple itself, nor is it truly a battle between two nations. Rather, it is the result of domestic political decisions on both sides, decisions that ultimately amount to a war on the poor, regardless of which side of the border they are from. In this conflict, peace is the only class based solution.
Preah Vihear – The Temple
The roots of this conflict stretch back to colonial-era border demarcations that left the region’s boundaries ambiguous. In 1962, the International Court of Justice granted Cambodia sovereignty over the 11th-century Khmer temple, Preah Vihear, but the surrounding territory remained disputed, a lingering consequence of poorly defined colonial maps. Tensions flared periodically over the decades, most notably in 2008 when Cambodia’s successful UNESCO World Heritage bid for the temple triggered nationalist backlash in Thailand. By 2011, clashes escalated into sustained fighting, leaving dozens dead and thousands displaced before international mediation eased hostilities.
In recent months, the conflict reignited as Cambodia developed infrastructure near the border while Thailand bolstered military patrols in the area. The situation turned deadly again in late May when Thai soldiers killed a Cambodian soldier, sparking widespread nationalist protests in Cambodia.
The Thai Side
Again though, this is not a war about a temple, and as such we need to closely examine the role and history of the Thai military in this specific border area. The military leader commanding this stretch of the border hails from the Eastern Tigers (21st Infantry Regiment), a unit originally founded as an elite anti-communist force trained for both offensive and so-called ‘defensive’ warfare.
Further developed by the US military in the 1950s–60s as a counterinsurgency division, the Eastern Tigers saw combat in Korea and Vietnam, as well as in domestic operations against leftist movements with forays into Laos and Cambodia.
Following the Vietnamese liberation of Cambodia in 1979, the regiment played a key role in supporting the Khmer Rouge insurgency along the border. From their strategic position, they facilitated large-scale trafficking operations, smuggling weapons, looted antiquities, drugs, and even people, consolidating both power and profit.
By the late 2000s, the Eastern Tigers had grown into the most dominant military faction within Thailand’s already heavily militarised political landscape. Their power was solidified in 2014, when they were instrumental in orchestrating the coup that overthrew Yingluck Shinawatra’s Pheu Thai government (the sister of exiled former PM Thaksin Shinawatra and aunt of Paetongtarn Shinawatra, the recently deposed prime minister).
After a near decade of military dictatorship under the Eastern Tiger General Prayut Chan o’Cha, elections were held and Phue Thai regained office, with Paetongtarn Shinawatra eventually sworn in as prime minister. Ever since then, despite largely successful policies of the party has found itself squeezed between two opposing forces: ultra-nationalist factions loyal to the military establishment and the rising liberal challenge of the new Move Forward Party. For hardliners in the armed forces, the ultimate goal remains the total eradication of Pheu Thai and the Shinawatra clan from Thai politics, a resentment fuelled by the party’s populist pro-rural policies and its enduring grassroots appeal.
The Pheu Thai government’s three-year tenure brought significant gains for Thailand’s rural majority, marking a rare period where agricultural communities saw their needs prioritised. The administration expanded universal healthcare to cover dental treatment and mental health services – a vital reform for farming regions where pesticide exposure and debt-related stress have created silent health epidemics. Alongside this, large direct targeted cash transfers reached the poorest 20% of households, providing immediate relief during periods of economic instability.
In the agricultural sector, the government implemented crucial price stabilization measures for rice. Through strategic market interventions, they protected smallholder farmers from the volatility that had previously driven many into irreversible debt. This approach culminated in the landmark 2024 Farmer Debt Moratorium Act, which suspended loan repayments for over three million families, offering respite in a sector where the majority live below the poverty line.
The administration also invested heavily in rural infrastructure, particularly in neglected regions like Isaan. New irrigation systems brought water security to drought-prone areas, while paved road networks connected isolated villages to regional markets for the first time. Education reforms included expanded free school meal programs and scholarships specifically designed to keep farming families’ children in classrooms, addressing some of the nation’s worst regional literacy rates.
These pro-poor measures represented the most serious challenge to Thailand’s entrenched power structures in decades. The government’s willingness to raise regional minimum wages and cut interest rates against corporate opposition, coupled with its direct support for indebted farmers, explains why the military and urban elite viewed Pheu Thai’s agenda as fundamentally threatening to their class interests.
The 2023 election results forced Pheu Thai into an uneasy governing coalition with military-aligned parties like Bhumjaithai and United Thai Nation, former allies of the 2014 coup government. To many Red Shirt supporters who had endured decades of violent crackdowns, this alliance appeared as nothing short of betrayal. Yet for party strategists, it represented the only viable path to avoid complete political marginalization. The alternative, ceding power to an outright royalist-military administration, would have guaranteed the systematic dismantling of every pro-poor reform enacted since Thaksin Shinawatra’s original 2001-2006 time as Primeminister, for which he was already couped out of power and forced into exile.
This impossible choice Phue Thai found themselves in following the 2023 results make clear Thailand’s enduring political paradox: even electoral victories require compromise with the very forces that have repeatedly overthrown democratic mandates. As Thaksin himself framed it after his controversial return from exile: “We enter the fire to rescue the people, not to burn with them.” Pheu Thai had to manage a precarious balancing act, working within a system still fundamentally controlled by its opponents to protect hard-won gains like universal healthcare, farmer debt relief, and rural development funds.
Yet despite the coalition’s parliamentary successes over the past three years, Thailand’s reactionary institutions have once again manufactured a crisis to undermine Pheu Thai, this time by escalating tensions with Cambodia. Following the killing of the Cambodian soldier in May by an Eastern Tiger unit, the pretext emerged from a leaked diplomatic call between Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra and former Cambodian leader Hun Sen, where she sought to de-escalate border tensions. Her remark that a senior Royal Thai Army lieutenant general was “on the opposite side” confirmed an open secret in Southeast Asian politics: Thailand’s military, holder of the modern world record for coups d’état, operates as a law unto itself, entirely unaccountable to civilian leadership.
In the background Phue Thai’s main opposition seems poised to capitalise on the outcome of the current crisis. The ultra-nationalist Bhumjaithai Party, formerly the second-largest coalition partner of Pheu Thai, quit the government after the call was leaked. The party had already been threatening to withdraw over disputes regarding control of the Interior Ministry and is facing a serious investigation into accusations of mass-vote rigging in the senate. The coalition was always an uneasy alliance, though in Thai politics, it is hardly unusual for rival factions to abruptly reconcile for political gain. Beyond feeling that Pheu Thai had backtracked on coalition agreements, Bhumjaithai leader Anutin Charnvirakul likely saw an opportunity in leaving. Not only could it position him for the premiership, particularly if Paetongtarn Shinawatra is forced out permanently, but it also allowed him to exploit rising anti-Shinawatra sentiment among conservative royalists and urban liberals alike.
Bhumjaitai also just so happens to have their primary constituency based in the exact region the conflict with Cambodia has erupted. Their stronghold of Buriram Province was the breeding ground for the party when it was initially formed in 2008. Today the party is an eclectic mix of royalism, ultra-nationalism, militarism, social conservatism, Buddhist supremacy and, in many quarters, distinctly anti-Khmer. In recent years they’ve skyrocketed from relative obscurity to becoming the primary reactionary force in Thai parliamentary politics. While they can not be shown to have had any direct involvement in the current conflict they are certainly set to be the only party that benefits from it.
On all accounts the leak was weaponised by Hun Sen’s side deliberately, whether he had already cut a deal with the Thai elite we will probably never know. Regardless, once the private diplomatic efforts to prevent conflict were exposed, hardliners on the Thai side created a manufactured scandal portraying the elected government as “weak” on national security which resulted in Paetongtarns suspension as PM by the military stacked constitutional court, a final hearing is scheduled for later this month, but all signs point to her complete dismissal. As we can see in the leaked phone call, the recent military escalation on the border is confirmed by Paetongtarn herself as a politically motivated attempt to destabilize Pheu Thai’s fragile coalition majority in parliament.
Yet this orchestrated persecution only confirms the Shinawatra family’s long-held conviction: Thailand’s establishment will tolerate pro-poor reforms only when it lacks the means to block them. Their strategy, enduring judicial harassment and public vilification while safeguarding incremental gains, is not weakness, but a pragmatic understanding of asymmetric political warfare.
For all its flaws, Pheu Thai remains the sole political vehicle capable of challenging Thailand’s military-monarchy complex, the entrenched power structure that has governed unchecked since the Cold War. This latest crisis is another battle in a century-long class war, one where every challenge to the elite status quo by the rural poor has been met with coups, judicial overthrows, or, as now, manufactured scandals. As of early July, the kingdom stands at another precipice: whether the remnants of the coalition can limp on, or whether the tanks will roll again in another coup remains uncertain, though the latter is increasingly likely as, on the 25th of July, the military declared martial law in 8 provinces near the border. What’s undeniable is that the real casualties will be, as always, Thailand’s working class.
The Cambodian Side
Cambodia’s 20th century stands as one of modernity’s most devastating tragedies. While most remember the CIA’s “secret war” bombings and the Khmer Rouge’s killing fields, few comprehend how these cataclysms shaped the material realities of Cambodia’s working class. Contemporary analyses invariably fixate on Hun Sen’s reign (1985–2023), yet this obsession with strongman politics obscures a more fundamental question: how has Cambodia’s proletariat endured, reconstructed and resisted in the aftermath of genocide?
The answer can be found in Phnom Penh’s garment sweatshops, where women labour for 16-hour shifts on £150 monthly wages, and in mine-strewn rice paddies still claiming limbs and lives decades later. It resonates through the testimonies of peasants dispossessed by big landlords and mining concerns, and in the prison cells housing union organisers who dared demand living wages. This constitutes Cambodia’s so-called “peace”, not the cessation of violence per-se, but the translation of class war into neoliberal terms. The very powers that carpet-bombed rural Cambodia with 2.7 million tonnes of ordnance later engineered an economic “reconstruction” that converted survivors into a disposable workforce for global capital.
It didn’t have to be this way. When Vietnamese forces, along with exiled Cambodians made up of the Kampuchean United Front for National Salvation liberated Phnom Penh in January 1979, they launched one of the most ambitious post-genocide reconstruction projects in modern history. Vietnamese engineers restored Phnom Penh’s water and electricity within weeks; medical teams vaccinated over two million Cambodians against polio and other diseases; and agricultural collectives revived food production. Assistance from Hanoi’s administration and the hard work of the Cambodian people laid foundations and literacy rates rose from 5% to 88% by 1987. A new generation of Cambodian teachers, doctors and civil servants, many trained in Vietnam, began rebuilding their shattered society.
During this phase of reconstruction the Kampuchean United Front and their Vietnamese backers attempted to build proletarian state apparatuses in Cambodia, modelled on Vietnam’s– very successful –socialist system but adapted to Cambodian realities. They established the People’s Republic of Kampuchea (PRK), with nationalised industry, collectivised agriculture, and a mass literacy campaign inspired by Hanoi’s post-war reconstruction. The state prioritised basic needs, free healthcare, land redistribution to peasants, and a public education system rebuilt from scratch, while maintaining political control through grassroots Krom Samaki (solidarity groups).
However, Vietnam’s position as Cambodia’s sole ally became an unsustainable drain on its already embattled socialist project. While an already heavily sanctioned Hanoi poured 15–20% of its GDP into rebuilding Cambodia’s infrastructure, the US and ASEAN (led by Thailand) orchestrated a brutal insurgency. Washington funnelled arms to Khmer Rouge remnants through the Eastern Tigers on the Thai border, while Bangkok provided sanctuaries and CIA-trained mercenaries, all under the guise of supporting “democratic resistance.” This war-by-proxy bled Vietnam dry: by 1986, 40% of its military was bogged down in Cambodia, rationing food at home while fighting US-Thai-backed guerrillas abroad. The final blow came when Gorbachev’s USSR, Vietnam’s last patron, slashed aid amidst its own crisis. By 1989, with 500,000 Vietnamese malnourished at home and its economy in freefall, Hanoi had no choice but to withdraw, leaving Cambodia to a UN that would resurrect the very same people it had overthrown.
Cambodias hard-won stability and early-socialist state was systematically dismantled by the same international community that had ignored the genocide. The United Nations, led by US, UK, Chinese and French diplomats, had only recognised the Khmer Rouge as Cambodia’s legitimate government until 1991, funnelling arms and aid to Pol Pot’s exiled forces along the Thai border.
In 1992 the United Nations sent in UNTAC (United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia) to govern the country. A $3 billion “peacekeeping” mission that became a vector of colonial plunder and social catastrophe. When the UNTAC peacekeeping mission arrived in 1992, it imposed neoliberal shock therapy: state enterprises were auctioned to foreign investors, rice subsidies abolished, and Vietnam’s egalitarian education model replaced with World Bank-approved tuition fees that pushed rural children out of schools. The mission’s 22,000 personnel, overwhelmingly Western, Thai, and Japanese troops, triggered a public health disaster: UN soldiers frequented Cambodian brothels where HIV/AIDS infection rates soared from an estimated 0.1% in 1991 to 4% by 1995, creating an epidemic that still scars the country to this day. The result was a lost decade where Phnom Penh’s streets filled with UNICEF branded Land Rovers while 40% of Cambodian infants suffered malnutrition. State infrastructure projects were left to crumble under structural adjustment. Today’s sweatshops and land grabs aren’t accidents, they’re the logical endpoint of a system where survival is commodified, and genocide survivors become cheap labour for H&M and Primark.
During this entire period, there was one face ever present, that of Hun Sen. A teenage Khmer Rouge battalion commander who fled to Vietnam in 1977, he returned as a young puppet premier of Hanoi’s government in 1985 as a self described Marxist-Leninist, only to abandon socialism when Soviet aid dried up. By the 1993 UNTAC era, he’d rebranded as a “free-market democrat”, while retaining death squads to murder rival politicians. His real talents lay in serving every master: taking Chinese investment money and US military aid, Vietnamese politburo connections and Thai casino syndicates. The same man who once collectivised rice farms now evicts peasants for foreign developers; the ex-communist who once denounced NGOs as “imperialist” today depends on them to run the medical clinics so his big capitalist allies can steal health budgets.
Cambodia is a product of UNTAC’s 90s “end of history” free market fever experiment. The state abdicated its role in providing social care and basic infrastructure to the market, supplemented by a vast international aid program (the largest ever in dollar amount at its time). Today though, as aid funds dry up, the state finds itself completely lacking the capacity to function. Very few levers are left for Hun Sen, and his successor son Hun Manet, to pull to address the country’s social and economic crises.
The “transition” from father to son merely formalises what UNTAC set in motion: capitalism without development and genocide survivors as disposable labour. Thirty years after the UN promised peace, Cambodia’s proletariat remains trapped between the Khmer Rouge’s killing fields and the sweatshops.
At the onset of this war Cambodia’s economy is hemorrhaging from self-inflicted wounds by the elite classes and global market shocks. The garment sector, 40% of GDP and a direct legacy of UNTAC’s sweatshop model, collapsed as Western brands fled, with 90 factories shuttering and 85,000 workers laid off in the past year alone. Foreign direct investment cratered by 32%, while youth unemployment hit 18.4%, a time bomb in a median-age-25 population. The riel (currency) is in freefall, inflation hit 4.5% despite stagnant wages, and 1.2 million Cambodians now survive on under $1.90/day as rice exports dwindle under elite land grabs.
All of this and an uneasy dynastic transition in a state with such little capacity has few other means to address the many crises it faces other than to raise the nationalist stakes in a unifying war.
Additionally, there are around 500,000 registered Cambodian migrant workers in Thailand. Including undocumented migrants the number could be double or even triple by some estimates. These workers are literally building and taking care of Thailand everyday; on construction sites as labourers, in farms as harvesters, in homes as caregivers and in brothels as sex workers. Often they’re paid far less than Thai workers and treated with contempt by their employers. In short, they’re a cheap expendable labour force and are treated as such.
During the Khmer Rouge era & insurgency (up to 1991) there were around 1 million Cambodian refugees in Thailand, living in horrific conditions, treated as unwanted pests by the Thai army– who were simultaneously supporting the Khmer Rouge insurgency.
In Phnom Penh Thai speakers are not hard to find, as so many learnt to speak it as a refugee or as a worker in Thailand. Cambodians know Thailand. They know how they’re treated there, they know how they’re seen. While ultra-nationalism is abhorrent in any guise, one can at least understand why the average Cambodian person might feel aggrieved at the Thai state.
The Thai Cambodia War
Hun Sen ruled Cambodia for 38 years (1985-2023) before transferring power to his son, Hun Manet, in August 2023. The situation bears some similarity to Thailand, where Paetongtarn Shinawatra – daughter of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra – now leads the Pheu Thai party. Both leaders are widely seen as continuing their fathers’ political legacies, and the families have historically maintained close ties. Wikileaks revelations showed that Thaksin even supported Hun Sen’s position on the Preah Vihear temple dispute in 2009, and in the recent leaked phone call, Paetongtarn referred to Hun Sen as “uncle.”
However, following the leak, it appears Hun Sen has now abandoned this alliance, likely seeking better relations with Thailand’s conservative establishment instead. This shift serves multiple purposes: it allows him to capitalize on nationalist sentiment in Cambodia to distract from economic troubles like currency weakness and youth unemployment, while also helping consolidate his son’s position as the new leader. The leaked call’s exposure seems deliberately timed to undermine Pheu Thai, showing how quickly political loyalties can change when interests diverge.
From the Eastern Tigers’ CIA-backed origins along the border to the present day, to UNTAC’s neoliberal dismantling of socialism, from Hun Sen’s endless flipflopping to Thailand’s anti-communist deep state, this border conflict is not a clash of nations, rather it is the latest convulsion of an international class war, where the poor bleed for empires old and new.
This war is not about a temple. It has also been misinterpreted as a scrap between Hun Sen and The Shinawatras, some kind of 4D chess game between the US and China or simple nationalist grandstanding. It is none of those. This war is the outcome of a decades-long project of anti-communism on both sides of the border, a war against the poor, fought by the poor as commanded by the elite. Both the US and China have called for peace– along with almost every other state in the region. Those who attempt to paint it as Chinese meddling in Southeast Asia obviously try to do so in bad faith, both parties have accepted some Belt and Road funding, bought some weapons, etc. While those inclined to see this as some kind of US instigated conflict completely fail to see the woods through the trees.
Yes, ultimately it was the US pax-Americana project that birthed these repressive state apparatuses decades ago, but today little direct interference remains beyond the “free” markets they left behind, along with their unexploded ordinance and incalculable trauma. To point the finger at the US is to flatter them, particularly the current administration. This war is between two of the aforementioned reactionary state apparatuses they also happened to leave behind.
The conflict has already devastated rural communities on both sides. During the 2011 clashes over 30,000 Cambodian villagers were forced to flee, many losing not just their homes but entire harvests, rice paddies shelled into craters and livestock left to starve. On the Thai side the story is exactly the same. Debt spirals grip households, with many forced to mortgage land they’ll never reclaim. Landmines remain a grim ever-present threat, with uncleared fields, and reportedly new mines, still claiming limbs and lives. Both countries have militarized the border zones, turning villages into ghost towns of closed schools and abandoned clinics. Parents split families, mothers flee with the children and fathers stay behind to guard fields, while soldiers occupy classrooms and hospitals.
In Bangkok there is a rogue military holding a civilian government hostage, in Phnom Penh there is a state gutted by the fever dreams of the Chicago School, both perpetrating a completely unjust and unnecessary conflict. The only losers in this war, however it ends, will be the poor of Thailand and Cambodia. This is what The Eastern Tigers and organisations like UNTAC were made for. Class war against the poor.
Peace between nations is the only class-based solution.