Trump Solves Thai-Cambodian Conflict - Or Does He?

[vinapu]

43 minutes ago, PeterRS said:

When Pol Pot's forces massacred a million (or was it much more?) of its own citizens, even with the border dispute Thailand set up camps near the border to house hundreds of thousands of Cambodian refugees. Had these not been in existence, who knows how many of those refugees would have been killed?

 

and after Vietnamese chased Khmer Rouge to jungles on the border, Thailand , along with whole West, to their eternal shame did her best to support them including keeping UN seat even if all their  atrocities become well known. Indeed great brotherhood.

[PeterRS]

2 minutes ago, vinapu said:

and after Vietnamese chased Khmer Rouge to jungles on the border, Thailand , along with whole West, to their eternal shame did her best to support them including keeping UN seat even if all their  atrocities become well known. Indeed great brotherhood.

I'm not sure how you can call it "great brotherhood" when most of the rest of the world was doing precisely the same. The reason of course was realpolitik. Most of the world still basically hated the Vietnamese who had so badly beaten the Americans and it was the Vietnamese who had invaded Cambodia to stop the Khmer Rouge. Even China voted to keep the Khmer Rouge seat in the UN since it had beeen an ally of Cambodia and a foe of the Vietnamese for decades. How you can consider this as a particular "shame"  on a developing country like Thailand rather beats me!

Nothing is ever simple in global politics.

[vinapu]

34 minutes ago, PeterRS said:

 How you can consider this as a particular "shame"  on a developing country like Thailand rather beats me!

 

and how you can not, beats me for a change

[Keithambrose]

5 hours ago, vinapu said:

and how you can not, beats me for a change

I agreevwith you, but, as said, politics trumps everything.

[unicorn]

10 hours ago, PeterRS said:

...The dictator Honeker died in Chile in 1993.

I always thought it was shameful that Honecker was never held accountable for his actions. They should have hanged Jefferson Davis, too. He was also allowed to live a normal life and die a natural death without so much as a day of incarceration.

[Keithambrose]

1 hour ago, unicorn said:

I always thought it was shameful that Honecker was never held accountable for his actions. They should have hanged Jefferson Davis, too. He was also allowed to live a normal life and die a natural death without so much as a day of incarceration.

The list of such people is endless! Look at the tiny percentage  of Nazi war criminals  who were prosecuted. 

[PeterRS]

14 hours ago, unicorn said:

I always thought it was shameful that Honecker was never held accountable for his actions. They should have hanged Jefferson Davis, too. He was also allowed to live a normal life and die a natural death without so much as a day of incarceration.

Agreed. Honeker was an ultra-strict harliner and his regime in East Germany was arguably harsher on the people than any in the western communist bloc, with the exception of the loathed Ceausescu in Romania. In this respect he followed almost exactly his predecessor, the staunch Leninist Walter Ulbricht. Ubricht's first job was to call in Soviet troops to put down a widespread uprising. For whatever reason, he twice made it on to the cover of TIME magazine, once around the start of his regime which the west assumed might be relatively liberal, and once when the Wall had just gone up and the country locked down.

His attempts to build a Stalinist state failed miserably leading to mass migration to West Berlin. Hence his decision to build the Wall and shoot anyone trying to escape. Increasingly he failed to follow Moscow's directives. He was finally forced out of office in 1971 and replaced by his fellow dictator Honecker. He died two years later.

Although the Wall was not built under his regime, Honecker was given responsibility for it and was exceedingly proud of what he had achieved. Yet, like his predecessor, we should recall that by the time he departed Germany, Honecker was a very sick man. He was suffereing from liver cancer. Arrested in 1990, he was released when his medical condition became known. He was quickly spirited to Moscow where he could  not be touched by the Arrest Warrant issued in West Berlin. He was in fact brought back to Berlin in July 1992 to face 75 criminal charges and put on trial. It was in January 1993 that he was released on medical grounds and permitted to fly to Chile. A very sick man, he died the following year. Although it is thought he lived a normal life after his ouster, it was in fact very different. For him it must have been a miserable few years.

He would have been better off suffering the fate of Ceausescu - capture by his own people three days after fleeing in a helicopter and shot.

[vinapu]

33 minutes ago, PeterRS said:

He would have been better off suffering the fate of Ceausescu - capture by his own people three days after fleeing in a helicopter and shot.

its why Thai- Cambodia conflict is still not resolved

[unicorn]

6 hours ago, PeterRS said:

...He would have been better off suffering the fate of Ceausescu - capture by his own people three days after fleeing in a helicopter and shot.

I'll never forget the words of those who killed him: "It's a pity he can only be killed once!". Ceaușescu was indeed a monster. I felt the same when Jeffrey Dahmer was killed.