The Thai-Cambodian tension is almost uniformly treated as a manageable bilateral issue, serious but contained, sensitive but familiar. This is a mistake. The real implication of the dispute is not the danger it poses of immediate escalation but rather what it indicates of the future security order of Southeast Asia and of ASEAN’s decreasing strategic relevance in the formation of that order. The problem is not that ASEAN lacks goodwill or experience, but that it is increasingly misaligned with the type of conflicts now emerging within its own region. At the heart of the dilemma is a category mistake: ASEAN was never constituted to arbitrate or adjudicate, only to regulate. Its diplomatic culture emphasizes confidence-building practices and the maintenance of open, institutionalized avenues for dialogue. Those are things necessary and reasonable. Territory sovereignty is different; it is zero-sum and domestically chiseled. As such, solving such disputes with ASEAN’s traditional toolkit is to operate outside one’s skill set, not unlike an artist trying to bake a cake.
Border tensions play a role in domestic politics on both sides. They play into narratives of sovereignty, justify military readiness, and distract from internal pressures. Crucially, escalation is not an end in itself. Escalation has its risks; resolution has its concessions. Protracted ambiguity, on the other hand, can be handled politically. ASEAN’s preference for dialogue without deadlines, restraint without enforcement, and consensual rather than arbitrated decision-making seems to reproduce this state of equilibrium. This dynamic is often misinterpreted as diplomatic paralysis. It is instead the reflection of a stable, albeit fragile, strategic equilibrium. ASEAN offers a forum for de-escalation. From the standpoint of member states, this is not an institutional malfunction but a rational outcome. The costs of change exceed the benefits, especially when national leaders must answer to domestic audiences that reward toughness over compromise. Where this method turns strategically perilous is in the aggregate. Managed conflicts are not frozen conflicts; they harden over the years. Military interventions are normalized, crisis rhetoric becomes established, and trust dribbles away. What begins as stability based on restraint gradually transforms into militarized coexistence. This process is not the escalation of the crisis but its solidification. As strife becomes routine, the region becomes accustomed to permanent insecurity, and politicians come to treat it as usual, not abnormal.
The regional context renders this trend more significant. Southeast Asia is not functioning in a permissive strategic environment today. Competition among the great powers is increasingly shaping the calculations of states in the region. Thailand’s security ties and Cambodia’s external alignments are not marginal to the conflict; they are part of its strategic backdrop. With external alignments solidifying, tensions within the region are becoming less easy to isolate. Even when they are not directly involved, the great powers’ presence changes bargaining behavior, threat perceptions, and strategic confidence. ASEAN can least afford to see its centrality challenged now. Centrality is strategically and politically meaningful when regional institutions make rather than take outcomes. When disagreements are settled outside the ASEAN framework through bilateral interests, external balancing, or strategic ambiguity, the organization’s role is so minimal as to be symbolic at worst. The consultations and statements continue, but the real influence is shifting elsewhere. ASEAN, over time, also runs the risk of becoming a platform on which it simply reacts rather than organizes and shapes regional strains.
The economic aspect makes the matter even more complex. ASEAN’s integration project presupposes a degree of predictability and strategic restraint. However, it is not entirely effective while security tensions between the two remain unresolved. Border disputes impede cross-border trade and infrastructure planning and introduce risk into investment calculations. They seldom produce immediate or dramatic changes, but they do build up. For a while, economic integration can coexist with political tensions, but not forever. Often, uncertainty begins to erode confidence, particularly in mainland Southeast Asia, where connectivity is most vulnerable to instability. The fundamental problem, then, is not whether ASEAN can stop war. It pretty much can, and it often does. The more profound question, then, is whether war prevention is sufficient in a region under such long-term strategic duress. A security order based solely on restraint, without avenues for resolution, will erode its ability to adapt. It treats the symptoms and not the causes of these problems. This does not necessitate that ASEAN turn away from its founding principles, but rather that it apply them in new and innovative ways. Consensus and respect for non-interference continue to be the pillars of regional cohesion. However, they no longer suffice. Without additional tools in the toolbox, such as informal arbitration, issue-specific mediation regimes, or more explicit regional norms on appropriate dispute behavior, ASEAN will remain trapped in a stance of containment, with no progress.
Overall, the Thai–Cambodian tension is no mere side issue. It shows how latent tensions, domestic politics, and external competition converge in ways that ASEAN cannot fully control. The risk is not a sudden breakdown but strategic stagnation: a region at peace but progressively divided, stable but strategically tenuous, and whose members continue to hesitate over which direction they want to take. If ASEAN is ever to have a fundamental, not just a token, role, it has to face up to this fact, not just in rhetoric but in its structures. This decision will determine whether the future security structure in Southeast Asia is built on deterrence of conflict or on the tolerance of latent tensions as the price of regional cohesion.