The Cambodia-Thailand Border Conflict and ASEAN's Legitimacy Crisis: Structural Constraints, Norm Contestation, and the Limits of Regional Institutionalism
Abstract The recrudescence of armed hostilities between Cambodia and Thailand in 2025, manifested in sustained artillery exchanges, aerial bombardment, and reciprocal accusations of sovereignty violations, constitutes a critical juncture for the ASEAN Political-Security Community (APSC). This article contends that ASEAN's circumscribed crisis-management efficacy derives from three mutually reinforcing pathologies: (1) institutional design deficits—specifically, the consensus requirement codified in Article 20 of the ASEAN Charter and the dormancy of the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation's High Council; (2) domestic legitimation imperatives that incentivize nationalist brinkmanship over compromise; and (3) the systemic pressures of intensifying Sino-American strategic competition, which fracture intra-ASEAN cohesion by creating asymmetric external dependencies. Drawing upon neoclassical realist frameworks and Putnam's two-level game logic, the analysis demonstrates that ASEAN...