A Nobel Prize for band-aid peace deals?

The Bangkok Post editors suggested I revisit the topic of Thailand's border conflict since I had written about it for the newspaper earlier this year, and since the conflict was heating up again.

- Sally Tyler

I wondered with a sense of irony how it was possible that the conflict was escalating when it is one of the "many wars" President Donald Trump publicly claims to have ended in his first six months in office. In fact, Mr Trump is so proud of this self-proclaimed accomplishment that he referred to himself as the "President of Peace" when he posted about the Thai-Cambodian ceasefire agreement on July 28.

Though the ceasefire is an important step, it is only a precursor to a negotiated agreement for a lasting peace in this long-simmering border conflict. Mr Trump's online implicit threat to scuttle trade negotiations may have jump-started the ceasefire, but it hardly qualifies as the kind of diplomatic peace-brokering worthy of the Nobel Prize for which the US president has publicly yearned.

Since the latest eruptions of the border conflict have already been thoroughly reported in this paper and other outlets, it seems timely to take a broader examination of performative gestures of peace and conflict exacerbated for political gain. Examples abound in both Thailand and the US.

Of the recent accords that Mr Trump says he has achieved to end wars, at least two (Armenia-Azerbaijan, and Democratic Republic of the Congo-Rwanda) were primarily economic deals predicated on the US acquisitive hunt for rare earth minerals and energy resources. The African deal did not even include one of the primary parties to the conflict, making it even more inaccurate to characterise it as a peace agreement. At best, they might be considered band-aid peace agreements, reflecting an emphasis on superficial appearance consistent with the current US administration.