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The fourth theory is that it may be all of the above. Thaksin, says this school of thought, may be worried that stirring political trouble as the nation celebrates HM the King's birthday - after his own political setback in the wake of Hun Sen's mad-dog diplomacy, and following the Dubai debacle, which must have drastically devalued any of his investments over there - may be a really bad idea.

And we can't ignore the government's fresh claims that the United Arab Emirates has vowed to kick Thaksin out of its territory if he is found to use it as a political base to attack Thailand. We've heard similar claims before, but this time they sound different, not least because they coincided with Thaksin's call for a red-shirt retreat, his renewed plea for a negotiated settlement, and his subsequent, low-key trip to Europe.

Pheu Thai, meanwhile, has all but declared a cease-fire. In ambiguous press statements that, at the same time, seemed to admit and deny the party's involvement with red-shirt protest rallies, its leaders said that from now on the "war" would be waged on the parliamentary floor. While the Pheu Thai leaders insisted that nobody could tell the red shirts what to do, they practically guaranteed that there would be no street trouble, at least in the foreseeable future.

Where do all these Thaksin travails leave the Abhisit government and his other rivals? They may want to steamroller ahead and finish him off for good. The timing and other factors have greatly undermined Thaksin's last-ditch struggle to save his frozen Bt76 billion as the final court ruling on the massive fortune draws near. He's a wounded tiger with fewer and fewer places to go.

By all indications, that tiger had expected to pounce before the Supreme Court could decide whether to return his Bt76 billion or keep it in the state coffers. But the Cambodian antics backfired and someone as well versed on opinion polls as Thaksin must have read the latest surveys and known what they meant. He may have recovered from Songkran in April, but triggering the worst Thai-Cambodian row in recent memory and following that with street violence in December would have pushed his luck way too far.

Yet his rivals are like German soldiers in World War II who virtually strolled through Stalingrad. They were in a position to do two things - leave the city alone and head for Moscow, or try to hold it just for the sake of humiliating Hitler's arch-rival. We all know what they did and what was the outcome.

This is not a call for a secret deal to be struck. This is simply a caution that action against Thaksin must be strictly for justice's sake. Against the current backdrop, the lines between justice, humiliation and revenge have been blurred.

When the Thai crisis began, it wasn't too difficult to define how much Thaksin deserved. He needed to pay some massive taxes and probably should be forced out of office and banned from politics. But now there's a jail term awaiting him and Bt76 billion ready to be seized by the state.

Then again, this is a war for which he is as responsible as anyone, and it will have casualties. The question is how to contain the damage and limit the victims. Not just the money, but everything that has been damaged or threatened by this prolonged showdown.

The law allows for the largest asset seizure in Thai history, if the Supreme Court is convinced that Thaksin was the active patriarch of Shin Corp while he was prime minister, and the business empire benefited unjustly from government decisions. This had stirred all kinds of fears for the month of December, and has now made the sudden red retreat a very significant development.

We have been given a reprieve this festive season, but we're unsure whether to thank Hun Sen or suicidal Dubai investors. But there's a climax waiting to happen, and the calmer the situation is now, the more we fear that the climax will be a very stormy one later.