December 16, 2025
JAKARTA – The renewed clashes between Thailand and Cambodia along their common border this past week has again exposed ASEAN’s impotence when it comes to dealing with serious threats to the peace and stability of Southeast Asia.
While the regional organization may not be designed to deal with wars between members, it should not stop Indonesia, as the largest country in the region, from intervening and restoring peace outside the ASEAN mechanism.
The only initiative to try to stop the war so far has come from United States President Donald Trump. But like many of the wars Trump claimed to have resolved, this one too is made more for stealing the media spotlight, without changing the situation on the ground.
Like the truce he secured in July when the first round of clashes erupted, anything he pulls off now will not likely last. On Saturday, Thailand vowed to continue its military operation along the border hours after Trump’s announcement that he had brokered a new ceasefire.
It is an irony that ASEAN has always bragged that peace and stability in the region have allowed member countries to focus on development to bring prosperity to their people for much of the last 50 years, yet it has no effective mechanism when members fight one another. The ASEAN High Council is designed more as resolution mechanism for trade and economic disputes while political and territorial disputes have been resolved bilaterally.
This is a second recent major let down from ASEAN, having failed to stop the civil war in Myanmar.
At least, ASEAN gave it a try when the war broke out in February 2021, with Jakarta hosting an emergency summit that included a representative of the Myanmar junta which had just seized power from the elected civilian government. Mindful of the challenge facing ASEAN, then Indonesian foreign minister Retno Marsudi, declared “to do nothing is not an option”.
How we wish to hear that phrase again now from the current government with the war erupting between Thailand and Cambodia.
Which raises the question, why isn’t President Prabowo Subianto lifting so much as a finger? As president, he has a mandate, as Indonesia’s constitution calls upon the nation to “participate in establishing a world order based on freedom, perpetual peace and social justice”. What is he waiting for?
Do not underestimate what we can do. Indonesia is not without a track record in peacemaking.
Our top diplomats worked relentlessly for years to bring peace in Cambodia, at the time not an ASEAN member but whose civil war was affecting regional stability. The efforts culminated with the signing of a peace agreement in Paris in 1992.
Indonesia again played a key role as mediator and facilitator in the Mindanao peace process that led to the signing of the peace agreement in Jakarta in 1996 between the Philippine government and the armed Moro separatist rebel group in southern Philippines.
Prabowo rather than Trump has a better chance of pulling off a peace agreement in the Thailand-Cambodia war. Not only do we have the experience and the diplomatic skills as peace mediators, we also understand the region and the people much better.
We laud President Prabowo’s initiatives for Indonesia to take a more active role in the search for peace between Israelis and Palestinians. If he feels Indonesia could contribute to the efforts, he should go for it. Lately, the President has spent much of his time and energy on the Middle East situation, and has come up with initiatives such as offering to take up 2,000 Gazans who need medical assistance, and offering up to 20,000 soldiers to join the International Stabilization Force to enforce Trump’s Gaza peace plan.
But should he not devote equal if not more time and resources to help resolve a war that is happening right in our backyard?