Khmer Times, Opinion, 23 January 2026 (Link)
The deadly border wars between Cambodia and Thailand in 2025 beg a serious question: Would the permanent neighbours prefer to build an iron curtain or a legal border between them?
There are several border models that Cambodia and Thailand should contemplate, considering they are eternal neighbours who cannot move away from each other unless one of them is wiped off the world map.
First, there is the iron curtain which was manifested in a few models during the Cold War.
For instance, there was the wall that divided Eastern and Western Germany, the heavily fortified Berlin Wall that stood for 28 years from 1961 to 1989.
And then there was the iron curtain in Hungary that was described in detail in a documentary entitled 1989 – The fall of the Soviet Union, produced by Anders Ostergaard and Erzsebet Racz.
In the documentary, the Hungarian reformist communist Prime Minister Miklos Nemeth (1988-1990) played a crucial role in dismantling the Hungarian Iron Curtain by opening the border with Austria in 1989.
He described how he had uncovered secret financial mismanagement by the communist state in the construction and maintenance of the electric border fence, which was constantly triggered by intruders, including wild rabbits, and thus constantly woke the border guards, depriving them of sleep.
Unnecessary spending, particularly on the construction of a superfluous border fence, had left Hungary bankrupt and heavily indebted.
Other models Cambodia and Thailand might want to emulate are the old Franco-German border model or the new Franco-German border.