Law and World Order

President Donald Trump's intervention in Cambodia's clashes with Thailand plus other conflicts shows a global shift to arbitration via pure might

- by MATTHEW TOSTEVIN

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.”

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 Russia-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.

"Trump's involvement...places and prioritizes powerful states as the raw handlers of global power."

“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.

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