Yesterday, July 23rd, 2025, fighting broke out along the Thai-Cambodian border.
Now, I know what you’re thinking: “What does a border skirmish really mean?” In this case, it’s not just soldiers posturing at a checkpoint exchanging sporadic fire. This means F-16 airstrikes, heavy artillery—MLRS—and scores of people reportedly killed. Real combat.
I lived in Thailand for four years. Like many veterans drifting between contracts during the GWOT years, I spent my downtime on its white sand beaches, riding out rest cycles in the chaos and calm of the tropics. I got to know the country’s contradictions—spiritual yet transactional, serene yet seething. More than a few nights blurred together on Bangla Road in Phuket, that drunken artery of neon, EDM, and regret, where Western men go to lose their shirts and sometimes their souls. But even in that circus of fire shows and flesh trades, I never imagined that the land of happy endings would be launching airstrikes on its neighbor.
The country is complicated and vibrant, but it isn’t some powder keg. Still, tensions with Cambodia have always lurked in the background—especially around the Preah Vihear temple and the surrounding highlands. This all dates back to how the French drew up lines in Indochina. Thais will proudly tell you they were never colonized, and technically, that’s true. But they will also tell you—often in the same breath—that their land was occupied, coerced, or handed off by colonial powers, especially the French, who awarded territory like Preah Vihear to Cambodia during their rule over the region. That contradiction sits at the heart of Thailand’s geopolitical self-image: never colonized, but still scarred by colonial legacies.
From what we know so far, the clash seems to have started near the Dangrek Mountains, close to land that both countries claim. Thailand says Cambodian troops moved artillery into a restricted zone. Cambodia says Thailand launched preemptive airstrikes. Neither side is backing down. And if you’ve followed these things before, you know how fast the shouting match can turn into shelling.
As with any conflict like this, there’s a blame game. But that game is never really about the truth. It’s about controlling the story before the other side does. What’s actually happening on the ground is chaotic, messy, and probably being filtered before it ever reaches our screens.
Naturally, China is coming in as a broker for mediation, which makes sense as Cambodia is heavily dependent on Chinese investment. As is Thailand and the whole region, but Thailand is a country that is far more economically robust than Cambodia.
What’s clear is this: both armies are on alert. People are leaving their homes. And ASEAN, as usual, is nowhere to be found when it comes to handling real military friction between its member states.
This could die down in a few days—a face-saving press release, some backchannel diplomacy. Or it could spiral. But either way, this deserves more attention than it’s getting. Southeast Asia isn’t just a tourist backdrop anymore. It’s becoming part of the main stage. The entire region sits on a very delicate balance of security—you have an ongoing war in Myanmar, a very low-level insurgency in southern Thailand, where bombs were recently discovered in Phuket. Laos is moving closer and closer to Russia, with reports of Russia looking to bring in Laotian soldiers into the ongoing war in Ukraine.
It seems like we forgot about Southeast Asia after Vietnam—probably because we needed to. The memories are still clear of the bloodbath that engulfed French Indochina.
In terms of military capacity, Thailand significantly outmatches Cambodia. The Royal Thai Navy operates the region’s only aircraft carrier, even if it’s largely symbolic in terms of power projection. More critically, Thailand fields a fleet of F-16 fighter jets, maintains a credible air defense infrastructure, and has continued modernizing its forces through joint partnerships with the U.S., China, and South Korea. The country has also moved ahead on its long-delayed submarine procurement program, signaling ambitions beyond coastal defense. Its ground forces are sizable, relatively well-equipped, and experienced from years of counterinsurgency operations in the south.
Cambodia, by contrast, lacks a functioning air force and maintains a military more focused on internal security than external conflict. Most of its hardware is outdated or ceremonial, and the armed forces are tightly intertwined with the ruling political elite, functioning more as a mechanism of regime stability than national defense. In a purely conventional fight, Thailand would dominate. But wars are rarely clean or predictable—and history has taught us to be wary of assumptions. Ukraine was supposed to collapse in three days, remember?
Let’s see where this goes.