Why Did Hun Sen Call For Regime Change in Thailand?

The Diplomat

11 hours ago

I strongly recommend readers take a look at Vu Lam's recent commentary in The Interpreter, which I cannot agree with more. Referring to the phone call with Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra that Hun Sen, Cambodia's former premier, leaked earlier this month, Vu noted that it illustrates 'what may be termed diplomatic authority drift, the growing trend of foreign policy influence shifting to individuals outside formal executive roles, often without mandate or oversight.'
So might what Hun Sen said following this leak. In a previous column, I called Hun Sen's decision to leak the phone call a supreme example of the Machiavellian instincts that kept him in power for four decades. But what he said afterwards was not so cunning. On June 24, in a Facebook post, he said that Thailand would have a new leader within three months, adding, 'I already can tell who the next Prime Minister will be, but I'll leave that to the imagination.'
Three days later, in a four-hour television address, he commented: 'I hope there will be a new prime minister in Thailand who will come out and solve issues with neighboring countries, especially with Cambodia.' Hun Sen's spokesman, Chea Thyrith, then followed this up by telling Bloomberg, 'The current [Thai] government does not have enough power to make decisions in consensus to represent Thailand in solving border disputes…We are happy to work with every new government that has enough power to represent Thailand.'
Paetongtarn shot herself in the foot by trusting Hun Sen enough to reveal her own government's opinions about its military, and Hun Sen can claim some justification for leaking it. However, to then follow this up with calls for Thailand to remove its prime minister and appoint a new one is a blatant violation of the principle of non-interference. How is this not a call for regime change? Thai Vice Foreign Minister Ras Chaleechan was being slightly hyperbolic, but not too much, when he commented, 'In nearly six decades since ASEAN's founding, there has never been an instance of one member state so openly aiming to destabilize the government of another member state. Such actions, therefore, also serve to destabilize ASEAN as a whole.'
How can Phnom Penh now claim with a straight face that it is the victim of sovereignty violation? Just last week, Hun Sen accused Thailand of violating 'ASEAN's core principle of non-interference in member states' internal affairs' by apparently allowing exiled Cambodian opposition members to operate inside Thailand. People who live in glass houses, Hun Sen. Neither does it seemingly help Cambodia's cause.
As I argued previously, Phnom Penh is eager to garner international support. It has initiated proceedings to take the border dispute with Thailand to the International Court of Justice, a move that Bangkok opposes but which demonstrates Phnom Penh's adherence to international law. The Cambodian government has also spoken about taking the matter to the United Nations Security Council. Against this, Bangkok's refusal to allow a third party to adjudicate has made it look parochial and bullying.
The second prong of this campaign has been to portray Cambodia as a victim of Thai political instability, in which the border disputes are merely an extension of power struggles between the Thai military and civilian government. Paetongtarn's comments played into this narrative, which explains why Hun Sen was motivated to leak the recording. However, explicitly calling for regime change in a neighboring country certainly doesn't make Phnom Penh appear to be the upholder of international norms, including non-interference in other countries' affairs, which is essentially the only principle the ASEAN states have ever agreed upon.
Technically, Phnom Penh can say that Hun Sen's comments were simply those of the president of the country's ruling party and Senate president, so not the opinions of the sitting government. Indeed, Hun Sen doesn't sit in the cabinet. But everyone knows he is the government; he is the power in Cambodia. So, the de facto position of the Cambodian government is that there needs to be a change of government in Thailand. Importantly, neither Prime Minister Hun Manet (Hun Sen's son) nor any other Cambodian minister has opposed what Hun Sen said.
This will have repercussions for Phnom Penh. No foreign leader will trust the Hun family again with personal information. Diplomatic relations will be set back. Hun Sen's standing in the region will be severely impacted. Moreover, the fact that Hun Manet hasn't come out to distance himself from his father's words, and the fact that Hun Sen has now seemingly taken back full control of government policy, make Hun Manet look weak. One imagines there will be strong words for Cambodia at the next ASEAN meetings. As my colleague Luke Hunt noted, it was not only an 'unfathomable breach of ASEAN protocol,' it was also a 'hard slap in the face for Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, who, as the current chair of ASEAN, did score a bounty of praise for his handling of prickly issues at last month's summit of leaders.'
But why did Hun Sen say it?
One claim is that Hun Sen and the CPP want to divert Cambodians' attention from domestic issues, such as the state of the economy, and making the narrative all about Thai politics helps. But realistically, this could have been done without calling for regime change. Another is that Hun Sen believes internal instability in Thailand will benefit Cambodia's case by diverting Bangkok's attention from the border tensions. That's possible, though Paetongtarn's government was crumbling before he made his regime-change comments.
Some more conspiratorial theories are also floating around. One is that Hun Sen wants to fast-track the demise of the Shinawatras over fear that their signature proposal to legalize gambling and casinos in Thailand would destroy Cambodia's casino industry, thus depriving Cambodia's elites of the backhanders and illicit money they garner from the industry.
Another is that the Cambodian leadership and its networks are opposed to the Paetongtarn government's crackdown on the illegal scam industry along the Myanmar and Cambodia border. By happenstance, a major Amnesty International report was released on June 26 that alleged that the Cambodian government is 'acquiescent' and 'complicit' in the abuses happening in the scam compounds. 'Scamming compounds are allowed to thrive and flourish by the Cambodian government,' it added.
The implication of this allegation, then, is that the CPP and its networks hope a new Thai government will be less eager to dismantle the scam industry and challenge Phnom Penh about its associations. Vice Foreign Minister Ras Chaleechan has made this allegation. 'As for why [Hun Sen] wants to undermine our current government,' he commented, 'part of the answer probably lies in the Thai government's serious policy of suppressing all forms of illegal businesses around our country.' Take that with a pinch of salt, though, since both sides are now trying to claim that the disputes are simply a spill-over of the domestic politics of the other country.
More likely, Hun Sen lost his composure and allowed his personal anger at the Shinawatras to spill over. The fact that he made his more inflammatory comments in a four-hour speech, as is his wont, was likely another instance (in a long list of them) of Hun Sen speaking without thinking. Maybe it's his desperation to secure his son's power. Maybe the sense of authority went to his head. After all, his leaking of the Paetongtarn phone call was an impressive power play, sparking what is likely to be the downfall of another government. Hun Sen has certainly inflated his rhetoric in recent weeks and, for the first time since the 2023 leadership handover, seems quite intent on making it known that he remains the sole power in Cambodia. But this was certainly not one of the wisest things the Cambodian leader has done in his forty-odd years in power.