19/12/2025
Op-Ed: 'From landmines to nostalgia: Thailand theatre of justifications':
“The present episode follows the same choreography: border tension as distraction, narrative as substitute. This is not security planning; it is political displacement.
International law is indifferent to such manoeuvres. Internal political difficulty does not generate entitlement abroad, nor does it dilute responsibility for unlawful conduct…
International law draws a firm boundary here: domestic politics end at the border. When theatre crosses sovereignty, it ceases to be metaphor and becomes violation…
As George Scelle warned, the violation of law does not create law; it creates responsibility. Under the law of State responsibility, conduct attributable to State organs that breaches international obligations engages responsibility automatically. No degree of rhetorical agility alters that equation.” D
[Op-Ed] Some States wage war with armies. Others wage it with narratives. Thailand has done both. In its confrontation with Cambodia, narratives have been pressed into service as its pretext for military action. What has emerged is a bespoke theatre of justifications so swift, so internally contradictory and so conspicuously detached from law that each appears designed not to explain conduct, but to outrun responsibility. Landmines yesterday, online scams today, military incapacitation tomorrow, territorial nostalgia always. The script changes; the facts do not. What binds these narratives together is not evidence or legality, but speed. What emerges is not a legal case, but a performance.
👉🔗 Full Story: https://www.phnompenhpost.com/opinion/from-landmines-to-nostalgia-thailand-s-theatre-of-justifications
