DECEMBER 12 — The ceasefire between Cambodia and Thailand announced by President Donald Trump has once again produced a fragile calm along one of Southeast Asia’s most combustible borders.
Airstrikes have stopped. Troops have pulled back. Markets and border communities have exhaled, if only briefly.
Yet this peace remains distinctly roll on and roll off — activated under pressure, suspended by suspicion, and repeatedly vulnerable to disruption.
President Trump’s role has been central. His approach is direct, unapologetic, and grounded in leverage. He made it clear that continued fighting would not be cost-free.
Even Thailand, one of America’s oldest treaty allies in Asia, was reminded that trade access, tariffs, and economic privileges are not unconditional.
In a region that lives and dies by trade flows, this message landed with immediate force.
What is often overlooked, however, is how this pressure was made acceptable.
Malaysia’s Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, acting as Group Chair of Asean and Asean-related Summits, played a constructive and indispensable role. Malaysia did not dilute Trump’s message.
Instead, it facilitated and encouraged an approach that avoided coercive or crude language while still conveying unmistakable seriousness. This distinction mattered.
Asean states respond poorly to humiliation, but they respond pragmatically to firm signals delivered with respect for sovereignty.
Through sustained engagement, Anwar ensured that President Trump’s intervention could be aligned with the spirit and letter of the Kuala Lumpur Peace Accord.
The objective was not to impose peace from outside, but to bring Thailand and Cambodia back on board with commitments they had already endorsed.
Trump showed a willingness to work with Asean’s diplomatic processes, recognising that legitimacy amplifies leverage.
This cooperation explains why the ceasefire took hold at all. Yet it also explains why it remains unstable.
The weakness does not lie in Bangkok or Phnom Penh’s formal leadership alone.
The most destabilising factor sits outside the official negotiating framework, embodied by a figure who speaks least through formal channels but casts the longest shadow.
That figure is Hun Sen.
Hun Sen is no longer Cambodia’s prime minister. He now serves as President of the Senate.
Constitutionally, he does not command troops, negotiate ceasefires, or represent Cambodia in international diplomacy.
Politically, however, decades of uninterrupted rule have left him with unparalleled influence across state institutions, security networks, and informal power structures.
This makes Hun Sen a classic spoiler.
While Prime Minister Hun Manet has engaged with Asean processes and responded constructively to Trump’s initiative, Hun Sen has remained largely absent from the ceasefire architecture. But absence does not mean passivity.
When Hun Sen does speak, his language toward Thailand is often dire, defiant, and uncompromising.
His incendiary rhetoric reinforces nationalist sentiment and frames the dispute in existential terms.
In fragile ceasefires, such language is not neutral. It conditions behaviour. It narrows political space for compromise. It signals to loyalists that restraint is temporary.
More troubling is the perception that Hun Sen’s influence extends beyond rhetoric.
Over decades in power, he has cultivated dense networks linking political elites, security actors, and powerful business interests.
Some of these networks operate in grey zones that blur the line between state and non-state action.
This creates precisely the conditions under which peace can be quietly disrupted without formal responsibility.
Here, the role of the Prince Group cannot be ignored.
The Prince Group, widely reported to have close ties to Hun Sen’s political ecosystem, has been sanctioned by the US, the UK, and other jurisdictions for involvement in large-scale illicit activities, including cyber-enabled fraud, money laundering, and transnational crime.
Estimates of losses linked to these operations exceed US$ fifteen billion, much of it allegedly hidden through offshore structures and increasingly laundered via cryptocurrencies.
These sanctions matter geopolitically. They introduce a powerful incentive for spoiler behaviour. Networks facing financial strangulation do not benefit from stability, transparency, or sustained international scrutiny.
Border instability, diplomatic crises, and intermittent conflict create distraction. They complicate enforcement cooperation. They divert attention from financial flows and sanctions compliance.
In this context, peace is bad for business.
This does not mean Hun Sen personally directs criminal activity. It does mean that the political environment shaped by his authority has long tolerated, protected, or indirectly benefited from opaque networks that now face unprecedented pressure.
When such networks feel threatened, destabilisation becomes a rational strategy. The result is a roll on and roll off peace.
Ceasefires hold when pressure is intense — when President Trump signals economic consequences and Asean rallies behind restraint.
They fray when pressure eases, rhetoric hardens, and informal actors test boundaries.
Small incidents accumulate. Accusations fly. Militaries prepare for contingencies. Peace slips.
Hun Sen’s decades in power help explain this dynamic. Long rule breeds not only experience, but entitlement.
The belief that one remains the ultimate guardian of national interest can survive constitutional transition.
Parallel authority begins to feel normal. Undermining the sitting prime minister’s diplomatic posture may be justified internally as strategic vigilance.
Externally, it is destabilising.
For Thailand, this ambiguity is deeply unsettling.
Bangkok may negotiate with Phnom Penh’s government, but it listens just as closely to Hun Sen’s signals.
When messages diverge, Thai decision-makers default to caution and readiness.
Domestic political pressures, especially electoral cycles and military sensitivities, amplify this effect.
President Trump’s intervention exposes both the power and the limits of external leverage.
He can stop shooting. He can threaten economic pain. He can work constructively with Asean’s Group Chair to restore commitment to the Kuala Lumpur Peace Accord.
What he cannot do is resolve internal contradictions within another state’s political hierarchy.
That responsibility lies with Cambodia.
For peace to become durable, Cambodia must align informal authority with formal responsibility. Shadow influence must not contradict official commitments.
Otherwise, ceasefires will remain tactical pauses rather than strategic choices.
Anwar Ibrahim has shown that Asean facilitation still matters. President Trump has shown that pressure, when applied without humiliation, still works.
What remains unresolved is whether Cambodia’s most powerful political figure is willing to step back from spoiler behaviour.
Until that question is answered, peace between Cambodia and Thailand will continue to roll on — and roll off — at the mercy of forces that profit more from instability than from calm.
* Phar Kim Beng is a professor of Asean Studies and director at the Institute of International and Asean Studies, International Islamic University of Malaysia.
** This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail.
