Disputed territory in northwest Cambodia
Cambodia and Thailand are fighting over the border defined by the French in 1907, and confirmed by the International Court of Justice in 1962. Thailand says they don’t care what the French said or what the ICJ says; they just want to take the land.
That reminds me of Trump’s stance on Greenland. It belongs to Denmark, part of the EU. However, Trump is preparing military invasion plans to take Greenland, simply because he wants to take the land.
The same can be said of the Panama Canal, where Trump has threatened to take the Canal by force, just because he wants it. Trump has even talked about taking over Gaza and cleansing all the Palestinians, just so he can create a ‘Riviera’.
The threat of unilateral land-grabbing has created an atmosphere where land-grabbing is considered part of the game. Trump has set the tone: it’s OK for big countries to grab land from smaller ones.
For nearly the past century, big countries have largely refrained from invading smaller countries to take over pieces of land. This is because the United States has served as an international policeman. This is also due to the big-power rivalry that ensured that any invasion could cause a superpower confrontation. The past 80 years have been called the ‘Pax Americana’.
It is only a recent trend that countries have felt emboldened to take land from weaker countries. Russia wanted to take over Ukraine without provocation. Recently, Rwanda has been backing an invasion of Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, simply because they perceived weakness in the DRC. According to the Internationalist 360,
the deal is beginning to look like a “mineral grab”
in another round of colonization of Africa.
Thailand is far stronger than Cambodia. The border dispute has been going on for decades, but only now does Thailand feel emboldened enough to go in and grab the land they want. No superpower will intervene or apply sanctions.
My fear is that the far-right extremists in Thailand will argue: “Cambodia is weak. Let’s go ahead and take over the whole country, or at least the three northwestern provinces that Thailand conquered centuries ago, before the French made Siam give them back. No one will stop us.”
Cambodia and Greenland are only two of the countries where stronger countries simply want to take their land. The new ‘Trump Doctrine’ is “If you want it, take it.” I fear that there could be many more land-grabs around the world.