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By Matthew Tostevin
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Cambodian rice farmer Mao Sary pressed his hands together in a show of gratitude.
He was packing up his belongings in the makeshift cart that had brought his family to safety when fighting with Thailand, a longstanding U.S. ally, broke out in July. Now, after a ceasefire facilitated by U.S. President Donald Trump, they were preparing to return home from the Buddhist pagoda where they had sheltered.
"I would like to thank Donald Trump for helping Cambodia and helping Cambodian people to move back to their villages," he said. "I appreciate it so much."
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Other displaced farmers echoed Sary's approval of the U.S. president, half a world away. Cambodia's government has nominated Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Of all the conflicts Trump has involved himself in since returning to the White House, the skirmishes over a colonial-era border dispute between Thailand and Cambodia may be the smallest. But just as much as his role in the Ukraine war or the Middle East, his efforts at strongman diplomacy are another indication of the abrupt shift away from a postwar liberal world order in which institutions and international law—in theory if not practice—took precedence over pure might.
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"Trump's involvement demonstrates a preference for state-dominated realism by the stakeholders involved in these crises, especially for direct great power arbitration rather than using international institutions such as the U.N.," said Paul Chambers, visiting fellow at the ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore.
"It places and prioritizes powerful states as the raw handlers of global power rather than international institutions," he told Newsweek.
U.S.-China Rivalry
And geopolitical calculations are also shifting.
After years of getting closer to Beijing and being at odds with a United States that had lectured them over human rights and backsliding on democracy, Cambodia's leaders could hardly have been more effusive in their praise for a U.S. president.
"This is but one example of President Trump's exceptional achievements in de-escalating tensions in some of the world's most volatile regions," said the nomination letter to the Nobel committee from Prime Minister Hun Manet. "His consistent pursuit of peace through diplomacy aligns perfectly with Alfred Nobel's vision—honoring those who have made outstanding contributions to international fraternity and the advancement of peace."
Thai officials have not made a public statement on the Nobel Prize nomination and did not respond to a Newsweek request for comment by publication time. Both countries have accused the other of ceasefire violations.
At the root of the clashes is a dispute over a border through a strip of jungle and rice farms where ancient Khmer-Hindu era temples are set. It has revived animosity that stretches back centuries between Siamese and Khmer societies. Trump spoke to leaders from both countries and told them it was time to stop fighting—backed up by his power to set tariff rates for exports to the United States that are critical for both nations.
Newsweek contacted the U.S. State Department for comment.
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"At least he called both countries to come to the table and reach a ceasefire. […] It helped save many lives," said Huy Vannak, president of the Union of Journalist Federations of Cambodia and also secretary of state at the Council of Ministers, the Cabinet of the Cambodian government. "If both countries stick with everything that we agreed on, the rest can be solved peacefully," he told Newsweek.
In a show of unity, the appreciation for Trump was just as much shared by Cambodia's political opposition, which has suffered years of crackdowns and arrests.
"Without President Trump's pressure to bring Thailand to ceasefire, we as a people and a country would be crushed by the Thais to an extent never seen before since ancient wars with them," said Monovithya Kem, the U.S.-exiled daughter of opposition leader Kem Sokha, who is under house arrest after first being arrested in 2017 and later convicted of conspiring with a foreign power—the United States—over his contacts with U.S. champions of democracy.
Cold War Victim
Cambodia has all too often been a bellwether for geopolitical shifts—and suffered the consequences.
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In the Cold War, it first came under heavy U.S. bombing in an American effort to cut off supply routes for the Viet Cong in the war in Vietnam. Then, it was devastated by the takeover of the Chinese-backed communist Khmer Rouge, whose genocidal regime murdered an estimated 1.7 million people—a quarter of the population. Fragments of bone and clothing still surface in the "Killing Fields" during the monsoon rains.
Although the Vietnamese drove out the Khmer Rouge in 1979, Cambodia remained a pawn in global rivalries until the end of the Cold War. In the early 1990s, it briefly became a poster child for U.N.-led efforts to bring multiparty democracy on a new tide of liberalism, but it steadily drifted into authoritarianism under long-serving premier Hun Sen, the current prime minister's father and still hugely influential.
U.S. efforts to pressure Cambodia for democratic reforms only prompted a backlash that saw relations with Washington plummet. More than any country in Southeast Asia, Cambodia embraced the rise of Chinese might for political support and as a source of funds for infrastructure projects and military help—including cooperation on a naval base that angered the United States.
Now the dynamic has shifted again.
"The silver lining in this nonsensical Cambodia-Thailand conflict is it shows Cambodians that the U.S. is the friend we can count on at our most vulnerable time," said Kem, who is hopeful the change can also lead to the release of her father.
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"The reality is no one else has the influence or the will to put a stop to this. The U.S.-Cambodia dynamic has drastically transformed because of it; it's important both countries seize this opportunity to rebalance Cambodia's international politics. The U.S. has demonstrated it's the major reliable partner we need," she told Newsweek.
That is not to say that China does not remain involved in Cambodia or that Phnom Penh has abandoned its ties to Beijing. Chinese diplomats were also present at ceasefire discussions alongside those of the United States—another indication of the reshaping of the global order among the big powers.
"Big nations have more interests than small nations. Small nations just follow basically," Vannak said.
Retreat of the Old Order
Being swept aside is the liberal world order that emerged after World War II and which was in theory grounded in political liberalism, economic openness and global cooperation—and promoted by the United States. It emphasized rules-based institutions, democratic governance, free trade and multilateral engagement. Built on ideals of peace, self-determination, equality among sovereign nations and shared prosperity, the system was designed to prevent a repeat of the wars of the early 20th century.
"I think it was an era. I think we are in the beginning of a new one with more uncertainty, an era that is more insecure and therefore also more dangerous," Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen told Newsweek in May, while adding: "I think the answers have to be the same. I mean that democracy has to win, and that all countries have to respect the U.N. Charter, so the principles have to be the same."
The prioritization of hard power, trade and business transactions over diplomatic process is just as evident in the new U.S. approach to the wars in the Middle East and Europe—and in Trump's other crisis interventions such as between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan, Congo and Rwanda and a new agreement between Azerbaijan and Armenia.
In the Middle East, it has meant strong White House support for Israel in seeking to demolish Iran's potential nuclear capabilities and its network of regional proxies from Hamas and Hezbollah to the Houthis.
Ukraine is just as instructive after Trump's recent meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss ending the war since Russia's invasion. The debate is shifting to how much of Russia's battlefield victories will be accepted, rather than over rights and the inviolable nature of international borders. That had been a theoretical cornerstone of the world order for decades, even if it frayed with the collapse of the former Yugoslavia.
There was no better indication of the changing times than the lineup of European leaders in the Oval Office this week for follow-up talks with Trump on Ukraine—whether or not that was to pressure him or to hear out what he expected them to accept. Countries that had shaped the postwar order and were vocal in supporting it were now diminished players and lacking the military or economic power to determine events by themselves.
Meanwhile, institutions such as the International Criminal Court are repudiated by the Trump administration. ICC officials are now under sanctions over "their transgressions" against the United States and its ally Israel.
Raw Power
"Trump's approach underscores that in a world where China is militarizing trade routes, Russia wages hybrid warfare, and Iran funds terror networks across three continents, security will not be preserved by appeals to process but by the projection of raw power," Zineb Riboua, a research fellow at the Hudson Institute's Center for Peace and Security in the Middle East, told Newsweek.
"We are entering a new era of geopolitics where the weight of alliances is judged by deliverables: energy access, basing rights, intelligence cooperation—not abstract principles, values or statements."
"By making power the currency of diplomacy, Trump clarified that survival in the new Cold War depends not on the rituals of institutions bound by law in theory, and on whether America can anchor itself in arenas where it has historically been absent or weak, from the Levant to the Caucasus. In this environment, raw leverage, not rhetorical values, determines who prevails against Beijing, Moscow, and Tehran," she said.
The shift in approach could have unpredictable consequences as more states adopt a mindset that their ability to decide their fates depends on their own power and alliances rather than on the strength of their arguments or appeals to a global system of laws and rights.
"If you look at geopolitical affairs, Cambodia is like a drop of water on a lotus leaf. When the lotus leaf is swung by the wind, the drop falls," Vannak said. "You have to become like a Singapore or like an Israel that have enough capacity for their self-defense. I think many Cambodians realize Cambodia also has to be strong by itself one day."
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