The Border Is Not a Deadline

Every border story between Thailand and Cambodia begins the same way. Someone says they are waiting. Today, Thailand’s Deputy Minister of Defence announced that he is waiting for Cambodia to accept four proposals. That phrasing is not diplomacy; it is choreography. It reveals more about Thailand’s domestic stage management than about any actual dialogue across the border.

The General Border Committee was never designed as a submission platform. It is a mechanism of joint responsibility, two militaries aligning through process, not orders. To call cooperation “acceptance” is to quietly erase equality. Cambodia has remained consistent in this regard: every procedure, every document, every coordinate we handle is an act of sovereignty, not subservience.

Procedure is territory. Whoever defines the process defines the power.

When a Thai official says, “If they don’t cooperate, we have the legitimacy to protect our sovereignty,” that is not a comment, it is an opening justification. It normalizes the language of preemption before any act occurs. Cambodia has heard this rhythm before, and we read it for what it is: preparation for unilateral action disguised as patience.

Our response remains grounded in law, not theater. Cambodia’s position within the ASEAN framework has been consistent, documented, verifiable, and disciplined. We do not politicize the committees meant to uphold peace. Those who speak of sovereignty while bypassing the very joint commissions meant to protect it are not defending their borders; they are performing for their audience.

And what of the mysterious “four proposals”?

None have been published, yet the headline already circulates as though consensus were a fact. That is not diplomacy; that is stage direction. Cambodia does not perform in other people’s scripts.

The GBC and JBC are not speed trials. Their work is bound to history, treaties, and cartographic evidence, the 1904 and 1907 agreements that remain our shared record. Sovereignty does not expire because another nation grows impatient. The border is not a deadline; it is a measure of discipline.

If Thailand feels compelled to remind the world of its sovereignty each week, perhaps it is not Cambodia’s cooperation that is missing, but Thailand’s confidence.

Every fence, every coordinate, every statement given to a microphone eventually reaches a farmer’s field and a family’s sleep. That is why Cambodia insists on precision, because our people live on the line that others debate.

History will not remember who shouted sovereignty first.

It will remember who defined it correctly.


Midnight