Oliver Conway

The government in Bangkok is saying to the military, do what you need to do.

And their view is that they need to hit the Cambodian military very hard to degrade its capabilities.

Their argument would be to reduce the threat that populations along this border face.

But I think also the Thai military has in mind some high points along the ridge that divides the countries, which they've been trying to take and were trying to take in July when they were stopped by President Trump's intervention and that ceasefire.

Obviously, that ceasefire was always fragile, and we've seen just how fragile it is from what's happened in the last few days.

Yeah, and President Trump has been speaking about it, saying he will have to pick up the phone again.

Will he be able to do anything this time?

I'm not sure.

I mean, there's always a lot of leverage the US can apply, but the mood in Thailand is pretty tough.

The prime minister is not giving any sense that he's willing to rein in the fighting right now.

The Thai argument is that Cambodia has not shown sincerity.

It's produced compelling evidence that Cambodian soldiers have continued to lay landmines.

Seven Thai soldiers have lost limbs to those landmines this year.

They say you can't have peace if a country does that.

On the Cambodian side, they have 18 of their soldiers still being held here.

They argue should have been released when the ceasefire happened.

And they argue that Thailand is essentially a much bigger country and therefore bullying them.

It's interesting.

Cambodia makes regular appeals to international intervention and sympathy.

They're very, very keen on President Trump to get involved again.