Thai Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul is using fresh border skirmishes with Cambodia to tap nationalist sentiment at home before an election. In doing so, he’s gambling it won’t unduly irritate U.S. President Donald Trump, who claimed credit for ending a previous outbreak of fighting.
It’s a delicate line to walk for Anutin, who insists the Cambodia dispute is separate from Thailand’s trade negotiations with the U.S. Trump, though, has linked them previously — in fact, he used the threat of trade penalties to prod Thailand and Cambodia into a ceasefire earlier this year.
At a ceremony in October to formalize an agreement between Thailand and Cambodia to manage their tensions, Trump declared “we did something that a lot of people said couldn’t be done, and we saved maybe millions of lives.” And the Thai-Cambodia issue is one he often cites when declaring how many wars he says he’s ended this year.
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