Thai Government Fails to Meet the Nationalist Moment
Conflict with Cambodia averted for now, but Pheu Thai clearly fails to win over the public
The Cambodia-Thai border crisis has appeared to de-escalate for now, as it appears that negotiations between the Thai and Cambodian militaries led to troops returning to their 2024 positions. But even if it has ended, this short crisis will potentially have long-term implications for public opinion.
In the past week, the Thai government has experienced first-hand what political scientist James Fearon calls “audience costs”: the penalties leaders face at home from the domestic audience if they back down during an international standoff. De facto Cambodian leader Hun Sen, I am sure, has his own audience costs which has “tied his hands” in this escalation.1 But the crisis of reputation that the Pheu Thai Party is now suffering is deepening precisely because the audience costs that Pheu Thai is facing has, in the eyes of the public, still inexplicably failed to toughen its resolve.
Pheu Thai already started with a trust deficit on the Cambodia issue. To put it simply, national security was never a core element of the Pheu Thai brand, and Thaksin Shinawatra’s ties to Hun Sen has served to intensify the mistrust the public feels over whether or not the government is capable of putting the national interest over a personal relationship that appeared to yield little fruit. (For more on why Pheu Thai has such a credibility hole when it comes to Cambodia, see this piece).
With the government proving totally incapable of leading public opinion, other actors have stepped in. It was the Commander in Chief of the Royal Thai Army, General Pana Klaewblaudtuk, who signed the order permitting the closure of border checkpoints, taking away the initiative from a Pheu Thai government that appeared highly reluctant to take such measures. Given that it was the military rather than the government that took decisive action, public opinion will likely give credit to the army rather than to Pheu Thai.
Online, the army has encouraged Thai netizens to use the hashtag #ไทยนี้รักสงบแต่ถึงรบไม่ขลาด (“Thailand loves peace but will not be cowardly in war”). This line comes from the Thai national anthem and so is particularly evocative. With almost 100,000 likes and 70,000 shares, the campaign is possibly the most organically popular (and online-savvy) one the army has conducted is recent memory. Several politicians and political parties have now adopted this hashtag in their own posts, including prominently the influential Newin Chidchob. A follow-up post from the army arguing (against pacifist critics) that “supporting the troops is not supporting war” received almost 60,000 likes.
In essence, what the Pheu Thai government’s unpopular response has done is accidentally make Thai nationalism cool again. One case study: Facebook posts from the “Boran Nan Ma” Facebook page, which usually focuses sharing pieces on Thai culture and the monarchy. In recent days, some of its most popular Facebook posts has been those calling for the return of Prachan Khiri Khet province from Cambodia (almost 80,000 likes) or recalling how Thai troops refused to lower the Thai flag over Khao Phra Viharn when it was returned to Cambodia (over 60,000 likes).
As a longtime observer of Thai online spaces, I can tell you that all of this has been extraordinary. Nationalism (and in some cases, even revanchism) has been fired up in a way that is usually rarely seen. These sentiments have allowed actors outside of Pheu Thai and the opposition People’s Party to lead public opinion in a way seldom done over the past few years, especially the military. Given its relatively recent association with the increasingly unpopular Prayut Chan-o-cha government, the military has not been popular in Thailand for a long time. This crisis has done more to reverse this than anybody could have initially imagined.
This shift in public sentiment will potentially have an impact, at least in the short to medium term, on national politics:
For one, adding to a long list of problems (managing trade tensions, jump-starting a slowing economy, satisfying a fractious coalition, getting stonewalled on all of its key policies, and of course the legal issues surrounding Thaksin), the Pheu Thai government gets to add what the public sees as failing marks on national security to the mix. The party’s poll numbers will not be helped.2
For the time being, other actors such as the military will have gained a lot more political capital — at Pheu Thai’s expense. In a sign of the possibilities that the government felt the need to dismiss, Defense Minister Phumtham Wetchayachai has already had to say that “there is no sign of an impending military coup.” It is never a good thing for a government in Thailand if you have to say that to the press.
Other political parties and actors will also now know that there is a big market for nationalism, one that Pheu Thai is incapable of filling. Meanwhile, the People’s Party is already having to tread more carefully when it comes to opining on the military and national security issues.
In addition, the border tensions have also shed more attention to the scam centers and illicit activities operating along the border. For example, People’s Party MP Rangsiman Rome has called for the government to use this opportunity to “deal with the grey lords and destroy the power source of those breaking the law.”
As the writer Noom Mueng Chan wrote:
If the government had been the one to initiate closing the borders, and the army followed, leading to Cambodia retreating from their current positions, this would have been the government’s success. But the government was soft and too afraid to make decisions, so the government had to ask for decision-making power and close the borders. Therefore, today’s success is the army’s.
You may recall that when Cambodia burned the Thai embassy, Thaksin Shinawatra’s ratings skyrocketed because of his decisive action to send Thai troops to fetch Thais back home from Cambodia. But during this conflict, Pheu Thai’s ratings have nosedived. There is only one reason: they were too afraid to make decisions. From now on, Pheu Thai will likely decline further. You cannot blame anyone, only the person in the mirror.
Would it be an overstatement to say that Pheu Thai’s mishandling of the border crisis with Cambodia is its worst mistake so far since coming to power in 2023? Some would perhaps argue that backing down on its 10,000 baht digital wallet scheme is more electorally damaging amongst Pheu Thai’s base. But the policy itself is controversial, and many will be pleased to see it stalled. In terms of something that is so unpopular that it unites Pheu Thai’s critics across the board, and of so high visibility that everyone will be talking about it, nothing quite rivaled the Cambodia tensions. The government, to put it succinctly, simply failed to meet this nationalist moment.
See Fearon (1994) on audience costs and Fearon (1997) on hand-tying.
Thajsin daren't take back the Interior Ministry from Bhumjaithai now, especially as Bhumjaithai brandish their blue credentials.