Members of an ASEAN Observer Team visit a disputed settlement on the border between Cambodia’s Banteay Meanchey province and Thailand’s Sa Kaeo province that was the site of a recent clash involving Thai soldiers, on Nov. 13, 2025.
It was the Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez who was credited with the quote: “It is easier to start a war than to end it.” His maxim has found traction in Cambodia and Thailand, where ending a nasty, undeclared border war is proving intractable.
This week, three key agreements hammered out in the recently Joint Declaration as a pathway to peace stumbled and collapsed, highlighting all that’s wrong between Bangkok and Phnom Penh and why the October 26 deal signed off at the 47th ASEAN Summit in Kuala Lumpur won’t work.
As pointed out previously, Thailand has been fastidious about three agreed markers that need to be reache
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