Pope Leo Discusses War in Ukraine with Russian Orthodox Church Official
Leo saw Anthony, chairman of the department of external church relations, and five other high-profile clerics during an audience in the morning, the Vatican said.
'During the conversation, numerous issues were raised concerning the state of Orthodox-Catholic dialogue, as well as the ongoing conflicts in the world, including in Ukraine and the Middle East,' the Russian Orthodox Church said in a statement.
Since assuming the papacy in May, Leo has repeatedly appealed for peace in global conflicts and this month told visiting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy that the Vatican was willing to host Russia-Ukraine peace talks.
Russian officials, however, have said they do not view the Vatican as a serious venue for talks because it is surrounded by NATO member Italy which has supported Ukraine.
The head of Russia's Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, has been an enthusiastic backer of the invasion of Ukraine.
The Russian church statement said that Kirill's congratulations were conveyed to Leo for his election as pope.
'Pope Leo XIV expressed his gratitude to his holiness patriarch Kirill for his good wishes and noted the importance of developing relations with the Russian Orthodox Church,' it added.
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The Diplomat
an hour ago
- The Diplomat
The Roots of the Thailand-Cambodia Border Conflict
On the morning of July 24, in circumstances that remain the subject of dispute, fighting erupted between Thai and Cambodian soldiers close to Ta Moan Thom, an eleventh-century Khmer-Hindu temple perched on the border between the two countries. Within hours, the fighting had spread to other parts of the border, where both armies deployed heavy weaponry, including multiple-launch rocket systems, artillery, and tanks. Cambodia fired batteries of Russia-made BM-21 rockets and artillery shells into Thailand while the Thai air force scrambled F-16 jets to bomb Cambodian military targets. As of press time, the conflict had killed more than 30 people, including 13 civilians in Thailand and eight in Cambodia, and more than 200,000 people had been evacuated from border areas. The outbreak of the conflict, which followed months of growing tensions over the nations' land and maritime boundaries, has confused many international observers. This hasn't been helped by the fact that both nations have adopted the position of victim, accusing the other of a campaign of premeditated aggression. Thailand claims that Cambodian soldiers fired the first shots at Ta Moan Thom, while Cambodia's government asserts that its troops retaliated after an 'unprovoked incursion' by Thai forces and 'acted strictly within the bounds of self-defense.' Both claim that the other has targeted civilian populations and violated international law. The two governments' views have been dishearteningly echoed by many media outlets in both countries, as well as (less surprisingly) by Thai and Cambodian netizens, who have deployed to defend their nations' honor and innocence on the battlefields of social media. As some observers have noted, the conflict involves much more than the few square kilometers of rugged terrain that are in dispute. Indeed, it is hard to understand why the conflict has broken out, and its timing, without understanding the weight of nationalist sentiments that lie behind it, as well as the ways that these have been exploited and instrumentalized by politicians on both sides of the border. Colonial Origins Like so much else, the Thailand-Cambodia border conflict is a vestige of Western colonialism – in particular, of a treaty signed between Siam and French Indo-China in 1904, which set the land border between the two polities. This treaty, which was modified by a subsequent treaty in 1907, charged a Mixed Delimitation Commission, made up of French and Siamese officials, with 'setting the new boundaries' within four months of the treaty's ratification. But the Commission would never finish its work, leaving considerable stretches of the border undemarcated. Meanwhile, the French produced their own maps that appeared to deviate from the text of the 1904 and 1907 treaties in certain respects, creating issues that have been a subject of contention ever since. Most recently, between 2008 and 2011, Thailand and Cambodia clashed over Preah Vihear temple, another Angkorian temple ruin perched on the top of the Dangrek escarpment, which the International Court of Justice (ICJ) had awarded to Cambodia in 1962. By the time it came to a halt, the sporadic border conflict had killed at least 16 people and displaced around 36,000. There are technical issues that make the Cambodia-Thailand border issue challenging, including significant divergences in the cartographic methods used in the maps that each side insists should be used as the basis for negotiations. (Cambodia prefers the old French maps, Thailand its own, more detailed charts.) But any rational attempt to resolve the crisis, such as by drawing up new maps suitable to both sides, has been complicated by the extent of the nationalist fears and passions that are attached to both nations' borders. For many Cambodians and Thais, the prospect of territorial loss, however insignificant, is closely connected to deep-seated feelings of national loss and humiliation. Writing of Cambodia in 1991, Anthony Barnett argued that due to Cambodia's gradual loss of political territory since the heyday of the Angkorian Empire, a 'fear of extinction' was unusually central to the country's national imaginary. He observed that while such a fear was present in many expressions of nationalism, it was often confined to the extremes of the political spectrum. But 'in the case of Cambodia, it is central,' he wrote. 'There can be few countries where the theme has been accorded such weight both by its inhabitants and by foreigners.' This, too, is a legacy of French colonial rule. As Penny Edwards details in her book 'Cambodge: Cultivation of a Nation, 1860-1945,' it was during the French protectorate that a small group of 'French and Cambodian literati' helped shape an emergent Cambodian 'national' culture. This took the legacy of the Angkorian Empire, and the image of the magnificent temple of Angkor Wat, as its touchstone. The French encouraged Cambodians to identify themselves as the inheritors of Angkor, but also described them as a 'vanished race' whose straightened existence offered a living reminder of the potential of national erasure. This embedded a paradox at the heart of the Cambodian nationalist discourse that would take shape by the 1930s. 'Idealized in national anthems, flags, and ceremony,' Edwards wrote, the image of Angkor Wat 'came to stand as political shorthand for two enduring nationalist tropes, symbolizing faith in Cambodia's past glory and fears of that country's future disappearance.' Historically, most of this anxiety has focused on Vietnam, which, from the eighteenth century onward, had slowly absorbed the territories of Kampuchea Krom ('lower Cambodia'), in what is now southern Vietnam. But perceived Thai transgressions have also been combustive, in spite (or perhaps because of) the greater cultural affinities between the two nations. In 2003, Khmer-language press reports claimed that a Thai actress said that Cambodia had 'stolen' Angkor Wat, and that she would not visit the country until it was 'returned' to Thailand. In response, mobs of protesters sacked the Thai Embassy and numerous Thai businesses, causing millions of dollars in damage. The riots may have been inflamed by the country's leader, Hun Sen, for his own political purposes – the riots took place six months before a national election – but he was dealing with politically flammable materials. While the current conflict cannot easily be reduced to a 'dispute over temples,' the presence of Angkorian ruins along the border with Thailand undoubtedly heightens the emotional and political stakes for many Cambodians. Thai nationalism contains a parallel anxiety about the integrity of the nation's borders. While Thais routinely express pride in the fact that they were the only Southeast Asian nation not to be colonized by the West, the Kingdom of Siam nonetheless experienced 'continuous, sometimes violent confrontations with Western powers,' according to the historian Shane Strate. In his 2015 book 'The Lost Territories: Thailand's History of National Humiliation,' Strate argued that Thai pride in having avoided colonization by the West co-mingles with a second, more baleful theme: one that 'identifies the costs and consequences of survival, often portraying Siam as victim rather than victor.' In Strate's telling, this political narrative identifies and fixates on a series of 'lost territories': tracts of land that 'once belonged to the Thai state but that were taken away by hostile powers through deceit or aggression.' These include the territories of what is today Laos, which were ceded to France at the point of a naval gun in 1893, the western Cambodian provinces of Battambang, Sisophon, and Siem Reap (including Angkor Wat), which were ceded to France in the border treaty of 1907, and the Malay provinces of Kelantan, Terengganu, Kedah, and Perlis, which Siam signed over to Great Britain in 1909. This narrative of national humiliation helps to explain why Thai nationalists are so apparently unnerved by the actions of their objectively much weaker neighbor: behind Cambodia's contemporary territorial claims lie memories of humiliating capitulations to Western powers. In both nations, these resonant narratives have played an important role in politics, where they have been used both to assert and to challenge governments' legitimacy – and to provide a distraction from more material concerns. For decades, opponents of the hegemonic Cambodian People's Party (CPP), which was installed in power by the Vietnamese army after it removed the Khmer Rouge regime in 1979, have accused it of being a 'puppet' of Vietnam and a collaborator in Hanoi's supposedly never-ending quest to absorb Cambodian territory. For this reason, the CPP has historically shied away from anti-Vietnamese rhetoric, but as the anti-Thai riots of 2003 showed, whipping up sentiment against Thailand has offered a 'safer' means of buttressing the government's patriotic credentials. Similarly, in Thai politics, as Strate writes, 'an effective way to discredit political opponents is to associate them with territorial loss.' In 2008, Thai conservatives and royalist 'yellow shirt' activists successfully ginned up a conflict over the Preah Vihear temple, after Cambodia requested that UNESCO list it as a World Heritage Site. They did so at least in part to bring down a government aligned with their nemesis, former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. The current conflict bears many features of this earlier clash. Overlapping Anxieties Last year, Phnom Penh and Bangkok announced plans to resume negotiations over an Overlapping Claims Area (OCA) in the Gulf of Thailand, an area rich in oil and gas deposits. The chances of resolving this protracted dispute – the 27,000 square kilometer area had been contested since the 1970s – seemed favorable. Thailand was led by the Pheu Thai, a party associated with Thaksin Shinawatra, who had recently returned from Cambodia after more than 15 years in self-exile. In August, Thaksin's daughter Paetongtarn, then 37, was appointed prime minister after her predecessor, Srettha Thavisin, was removed from office for an ethics breach. Cambodia was led by Hun Manet, the eldest son of Hun Sen, who had ruled Cambodia for 38 years before transferring power to his son a year earlier. The Hun and Shinawatra families had been friendly since Thaksin's time as prime minister in the early 2000s – Hun Sen had reportedly described Thaksin as his 'god-brother' and appointed him an economic advisor during the Preah Vihear dispute – boding well for the resolution of the maritime dispute. As one observer had noted a few months earlier, 'the time may be ripe for finally unlocking natural resources in the Gulf of Thailand.' Instead, much the opposite was the case. After the announcement, the Thai government came under immediate fire from royalist conservatives, who remained hostile to Thaksin despite the political compromise that allowed him to return to Thailand in August 2023. This had seen his Pheu Thai party form a government with a number of conservative and military-backed parties, in order to block Move Forward, a more progressive (and therefore threatening) party, from forming a government in the wake of the general election that had taken place in May. These critics, who included both conservative political parties and 'yellow shirt' ultra-royalists, claimed (incorrectly) that a resolution of the OCA could force Thailand to give up its claim to Koh Kut, an island in the Gulf of Thailand, which Cambodian nationalists continued to claim on the basis of the 1907 treaty. In particular, they fixated on Thaksin's friendship with Hun Sen, suggesting that the former Thai PM might sell out Thai interests in a mutually beneficial backroom deal with the Cambodian strongman. This naturally prompted reactions from Cambodian patriots, including exiled opposition figures, who reasserted their own dormant claim to Koh Kut and pressured Hun Manet's government to defend the claim. Both governments hardened their stance. The talks on the OCA stalled. At a certain point, the tensions then migrated to the Thailand-Cambodia land border. In February of this year, as Thai and Cambodian nationalists traded barbs over Koh Kut, a video of Cambodian troops and family members singing a patriotic song in front of Ta Moan Thom temple was posted on social media. The song reportedly included the lyrics, 'all Khmer people are happy to sacrifice their lives when the nation is at war and shedding blood.' The incident prompted Thailand to send a formal protest to the Cambodian government, and Defense Minister Phumtham Wechayachai, referring to the earlier clashes over Preah Vihear temple, and expressing worries 'that history will repeat itself.' The incident led both sides to begin reinforcing infrastructure along disputed stretches of the border. According to satellite analysis conducted last week by Nathan Ruser of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), these preparations intensified after May 28, when Thai and Cambodian soldiers engaged in a brief exchange of gunfire at Chong Bok, an undemarcated area close to the triborder junction with Laos, a clash that left one Cambodian soldier dead. The following day, Ruser noted, Cambodian forces 'began a significant movement of elite troops and strategic assets towards the Cambodian border,' including artillery. Thailand responded in kind. In the first week of June, Hun Manet announced plans to bring the issue to the ICJ, requesting that it rule on the Chong Bok area as well as the areas adjacent to the Ta Moan Thom, Ta Moan Toch, and Ta Krabei temples. Phnom Penh's unilateral decision to approach the ICJ, a body whose jurisdiction Thailand does not recognize, and whose past rulings on Preah Vihear temple it does not accept, did little to calm the situation. Bangkok viewed the proposal as a violation of an understanding that border issues should be resolved bilaterally, via the Joint Border Commission (JBC) that had been established for this purpose in 2000. A meeting of the JBC on June 14 did little to calm tensions. Then, on June 18, Hun Sen dropped a bombshell, leaking a recording of a phone call that he had had with Paetongtarn three days earlier. The release of the call was politically damaging to the young Thai leader. In the recording, she can be heard pressing Hun Sen, whom she refers to deferentially as 'uncle,' for a peaceful resolution to the dispute and vowing to 'take care of whatever' he needed. Most explosively, she effectively accused Lt. Gen. Boonsin Padklang, the commander of Thailand's Second Army Region, of inciting anti-government sentiment on the border issue and of being 'completely aligned with the other side' (i.e., her domestic political opponents). The leak, which Hun Sen followed with 'revelations' that Thaksin had criticized the monarchy, violating Thailand's harsh lese-majeste law, was clearly intended to bring down his daughter's government. Sure enough, a major conservative party promptly withdrew from her coalition, while conservatives and liberals alike demanded her resignation. On July 1, Paetongtarn was suspended from office by the Constitutional Court pending an investigation of her conduct during the call. Under fire from the nationalist fringe, the Pheu Thai government toughened its stance on the border, tightening border crossings and announcing its intention of combating online scam operations that continue to flourish inside the Cambodian border. In mid-July, Thai police issued an arrest warrant for Kok An, a prominent Cambodian tycoon and CPP senator, accusing him of money laundering and involvement in a transnational criminal organization, and raided numerous Thai properties linked to his family. Hun Sen's breach of regional diplomatic protocol also destroyed the relationship with the Shinawatras, both intensifying the crisis and complicating its resolution. As the Cambodian and Thai armies traded fire along the border last week, the two leaders exchanged rhetorical salvoes on social media. In a post on X, Thaksin claimed that Hun Sen had ordered the attack on Thai territory 'after laying explosive traps along the border,' a reference to two landmine blasts that injured Thai soldiers on July 16 and July 23. The Cambodian politician shot back, accusing Thaksin of initiating the war 'under the pretext of taking revenge on Hun Sen.' Thaksin later said that many countries are 'offering help to mediate' in the Thai-Cambodian border clashes, but said that 'we need to let the Thai army teach that wily Hun Sen a lesson.' Getting Inside Hun Sen's Head While the political dynamics in Thailand are familiar – royalist conservatives and army men weaponizing the 'lost territories' narrative to attack a government associated with Thaksin – those on the Cambodian side are more opaque. Complicating the puzzle further is the fact that while appealing to international law and calling for the intercession of the ICJ and the U.N. Security Council, Phnom Penh has arguably played a disproportionate role in escalating the conflict. In his satellite analysis for ASPI, the closest thing we have to an objective accounting of the lead-up to the outbreak of the conflict, Ruser noted '33 escalatory events instigated by Cambodia, 14 escalatory events instigated by Thailand, and 9 joint de-escalatory events.' It is unclear if this includes Hun Sen's inflammatory leak of his phone call with Paetongtarn. A number of plausible theories for Hun Sen's behavior, including the leak, have been floated. One is that Hun Sen wished to bring down the Pheu Thai government in order either to scuttle its casino legalization bill, which threatened to reduce the profits of Cambodia's own gaming sector, and/or to forestall its crackdown on Cambodia-based cybercrime operations upon which his government's patronage networks allegedly rely. (Thailand's decision to go after Kok An, an important ally of Hun Sen, may well have been a red line.) Another theory holds that Hun Sen fomented the crisis in order to burnish his son's nationalist credentials, although this has been undermined somewhat by the fact that it is Hun Sen, rather than Hun Manet, who has been depicted as leading the country through the crisis. The one clear thing is the unanimity of public sentiment that the conflict has created within Cambodia. The government's position – that Cambodia is a victim of premeditated Thai aggression – has reflexively been adopted by most of Cambodian public opinion, from social media users to journalists, civil society leaders, and exiled opposition figures living in exile. At the very least, anyone opposing the current course of events is loath to say so publicly. This may point to the real reason why Cambodia's leaders have encouraged the conflict. Since a contested election in 2013 in which opposition forces came close to victory, the CPP government, backed increasingly by China, has eliminated most sources of opposition and reverted to ruling more openly by force. In this context, stoking nationalism may be a good way of rallying the nation around the flag and compensating for the government's dearth of democratic legitimacy. It may also serve to distract attention from more pressing concerns, including the stagnating economy, which is threatened by U.S. President Donald Trump's tariff war, and the crime and reputational impacts stemming from Chinese-run scam operations. Robust Chinese support has also arguably made the Cambodian government more confident in asserting its interests vis-à-vis its two larger neighbors. This is even the case with Vietnam, as the recent frictions over Cambodia's planned Funan Techo Canal have shown. However, as in 2003 and 2008, Thailand remains a safer and more manipulable target of nationalist brinkmanship. How far things will go remains unclear – but if elements in both Thailand and Cambodia have had a political interest in pushing the dispute to the point of conflict, neither government has much interest in a full-scale war. Cambodia would likely lose any such conflict badly, which, in addition to its large human costs, would potentially threaten the CPP's hold on power. For Thailand, victory would be double-edged. A war in which Thailand's military beats up on its much weaker neighbor, after refusing to open the dispute to adjudication by the ICJ, would embitter its relations with its major Western partners and compound the already serious problems facing the Thai economy. All this suggests that the two nations will sooner or later find a face-saving way to pull back from the precipice. The fact that Hun Manet and Thailand's acting Prime Minister Phumtham Wechayachai have agreed to meet in Malaysia for talks this week suggests that a ceasefire may be in the offing. But a comprehensive solution, which would require both nations to make concessions on issues that touch on keen nationalist sensitivities, would require more political capital than either government currently possesses. If the history of the past century is any indication, the border issue will then return to a state of dormancy. Like a landmine in the underbrush, it will remain concealed, awaiting the next incautious political footfall.
Nikkei Asia
an hour ago
- Nikkei Asia
Japan tries to track US tariff deal progress without written agreement
Japan aims to have the new, lower U.S. tariff rate take effect Aug. 1. © Reuters TASUKU IKEDA TOKYO -- Japan is working on a framework to monitor progress on implementing its tariff agreement with the U.S., as the Trump administration says it may raise tariffs again if it deems Tokyo has not made enough headway on purchasing and investment commitments. The two sides agreed last week to lower "reciprocal" U.S. tariffs on Japanese goods to 15% from the planned 25%, and total import duties on autos from 27.5% to 15%.
Nikkei Asia
3 hours ago
- Nikkei Asia
US, China hold new talks on tariffs, easing path for Trump-Xi meeting
STOCKHOLM, Sweden (Reuters) -- Top U.S. and Chinese economic officials resumed talks in Stockholm on Monday to resolve longstanding economic disputes at the center of a trade war between the world's top two economies, aiming to extend a truce by three months. U.S. Treasury Chief Scott Bessent was part of a U.S. negotiating team that arrived at Rosenbad, the Swedish prime minister's office in central Stockholm, in the early afternoon. China's Vice Premier He Lifeng was also seen at the venue on video footage. China is facing an August 12 deadline to reach a durable tariff agreement with President Donald Trump's administration, after Beijing and Washington reached preliminary deals in May and June to end weeks of escalating tit-for-tat tariffs and a cut-off of rare earth minerals. Trump touched on the talks during a wide-ranging press conference with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer in Scotland. "I'd love to see China open up their country. So we're dealing with China right now as we speak," Trump said. Without an agreement, global supply chains could face renewed turmoil from U.S. duties snapping back to triple-digit levels that would amount to a bilateral trade embargo. U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said he did not expect "some kind of enormous breakthrough today" at the talks in Stockholm that he was attending. "What I expect is continued monitoring and checking in on the implementation of our agreement thus far, making sure that key critical minerals are flowing between the parties and setting the groundwork for enhanced trade and balanced trade going forward," he told CNBC. The Stockholm talks follow Trump's biggest trade deal yet with the European Union on Sunday for a 15% tariff on most EU goods exports to the United States. Trade analysts said another 90-day extension of a tariff and export control truce struck in mid-May between China and the United States was likely. An extension would facilitate planning for a potential meeting between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping in late October or early November. The Financial Times reported on Monday that the U.S. had paused curbs on tech exports to China to avoid disrupting trade talks with Beijing and support Trump's efforts to secure a meeting with Xi this year. Meanwhile, in Washington, U.S. senators from both major parties plan to introduce bills this week targeting China over its treatment of minority groups, dissidents, and Taiwan, emphasizing security and human rights, which could complicate talks in Stockholm. Previous U.S.-China trade talks in Geneva and London in May and June focused on bringing U.S. and Chinese retaliatory tariffs down from triple-digit levels and restoring the flow of rare earth minerals halted by China and Nvidia's H20 AI chips, and other goods halted by the United States. So far, the talks have not delved into broader economic issues. They include U.S. complaints that China's state-led, export-driven model is flooding world markets with cheap goods, and Beijing's complaints that U.S. national security export controls on tech goods seek to stunt Chinese growth. "Geneva and London were really just about trying to get the relationship back on track so that they could, at some point, actually negotiate about the issues which animate the disagreement between the countries in the first place," said Scott Kennedy, a China economics expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. Bessent has already flagged a deadline extension and has said he wants China to rebalance its economy away from exports to more domestic consumption -- a decades-long goal for U.S. policymakers. Analysts say the U.S.-China negotiations are far more complex than those with other Asian countries and will require more time. China's grip on the global market for rare earth minerals and magnets, used in everything from military hardware to car windshield wiper motors, has proved to be an effective leverage point on U.S. industries.
