One objective of this blog is to highlight good writing about Thailand and the region. I won’t try to be comprehensive, but when I read a good book or article, I will try to provide an objective assessment of it. Sometimes the authors will be friends or acquaintances, so I may not be entirely without bias. I hope, however, my main bias will be in favor of well-researched and useful writing that addresses important issues.
This first book blog looks at an important effort to document Thailand’s fast-changing relationships with the United States and China. These changes are important for both Thailand and the United States. For Americans they should raise alarm about the loss of former allies to the power and allure of China, loss that cannot be halted without investment of intelligence, money and expertise. For Thais this move towards China raises the danger of Thai leaders becoming enamored of China’s authoritarian style of government and guided by the Chinese government’s all-too-successful efforts to control its people through technology and fear.
Benjamin Zawacki, whom I have known for several years, provides a thoroughly researched account of the alarming shift of a US ally and friend into the orbit of China. Thailand: Shifting Ground between the US and a Rising China details the US diplomatic blunders and inaction that have accelerated this move. With extensive interviews of senior officials and access to embassy dispatches, the book piles up details that are compelling. Shifting Ground should be required reading for every US diplomat and every policy maker dealing with Southeast Asia and China. The book, however, ultimately points to an even more serious problem at the center of US foreign policy–the conflict between American ideals of democracy, human rights and rule of law and the practicality of dealing with governments and dictators that respect none of these. The US attempt to have it both ways–American ideals and effective real world advancement of US national interests, Zawacki argues, delivers neither.
In the case of Thailand, Zawacki shows how US posturing during Thailand’s frequent bouts of political violence and military takeovers eroded US influence. It is not just that the US government criticized Thailand’s democratic failures, but that such criticism went missing where immediate US interests seemed more important. He quotes former prime minister, Anand Panyarachun saying “What happened in Egypt in 2013? They (the US) helped the army dismantle a democratically elected government. If you go back, the US did that in Guatemala, in Panama, in Nicaragua, in the Dominican Republic, in Cuba. Yet, they keep on carping about this timetable, about a roadmap for when we will have democracy. It’s absurd.”
Zawacki writes that this unequal posturing has led many Thais to conclude that US policy is hypocritical at its core. This perception of hypocrisy has been heightened by the failure of the US government to back up its idealistic words with effective action. The Obama government’s announcement of a ‘pivot’ to Asia displayed an awareness that US interests require effective action to compete with China for influence in the region. However, Zawacki documents how, in the case of Thailand, the actions intended to implement the pivot were too few, too weak and too inconsistent to be effective. Worse, the announcement of the pivot energized China’s efforts in Thailand. Zawacki writes: “US policy was finally spot-on, but its architects and agents could not get out of their own way. Causing China to pivot even further into the country and region. America’s non-pivot would backfire.”
In contrast, China’s approach has been to keep quiet about Thailand’s internal problems and focus on concrete actions to build influence through business, trade, infrastructure projects, education, and a well-funded and consistent program of soft diplomacy focused on Thailand’s royal family. From Zawacki’s detailed account of China’s clearly successful effort to become the dominant foreign friend of Thailand, it might appear that he thinks the US should follow such a pragmatic, real-politic approach. That, however, is not what he proposes.
He writes in his concluding chapter that: “A solution will come, in Thailand, as elsewhere, only when the US decides to consistently treat democracy, human rights and the rule of law as national interest—not merely perceive or proclaim them as such, but invest strategic resources toward their protection and advancement.”
Such a change in US foreign policy has been mooted in the past under presidents such as Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama, but there has never been effective and consistent implementation. There has always seemed to be a dictator that had to be mollified, human rights abuses that had to be ignored or a military takeover that had to be accepted for perceived short-term national interests. It is in this critique that this book about China and Thailand offers a wider warning about all US foreign policy. Despite being the most powerful military and economic power in the world, US influence is declining, in Thailand, in Southeast Asia and elsewhere.
Zawacki shows how this decline was accelerated by blunders in dealing with Thai political conflicts, in failing to conclude a free trade agreement with Thailand, in doing little to help Thailand in the 1997 economic crisis, and in omitting Thailand from the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The TPP blunder, was, of course, later magnified by abandoning the trade agreement entirely. This was a blunder by President Trump, but Hilary Clinton was an accomplice, failing to build understanding and support for the Partnership that could have reduced China’s allure for nations around the Pacific.
Zawacki’s account, however, is not relentlessly negative about US efforts to maintain its influence in Thailand. He cites American assistance after the Indian Ocean tsunami and other disasters, the establishment of a police officer training institute in Thailand and the efforts of some American diplomats, such as former ambassador Skip Boyce. He also acknowledges that China has key natural competitive advantages in its proximity to Thailand, the large number of ethnic Chinese in leadership positions, and the benefits of business links to the large and growing Chinese economy.
He accepts that many of the developments that have reduced US influence are the results of the poor political decisions by the Thais themselves. The abuse of power by civilian politicians, the refusal to abide by reasonable rules for political competition, the resort to political violence by multiple parties, the corruption of officials, both civilian and military and the welcome given to military dictatorships have all had a negative effect on the US-Thai relationship.
The book does not deal with the election of Donald Trump, but the dangers Zawacki documents of inconsistent US policy, failure to understand local context, lack of expertise and allowing domestic political interests to determine foreign policy appear likely to worsen. Certainly it is already apparent that his recommendations of more effective action on democracy, human rights and law are unlikely to be a priority for a Trump administration that persists in its simplistic focus on a tariff-based trade confrontation with China.
Zawacki warns that the case of Thailand shows that the US is failing to meet the challenge of a rising China more broadly. He writes: “In a strategically located Thailand, the US has not been competing with China for influence in how Thai leadership perceives power, treats its people and applies its laws.”
In contrast, many in the Thai leadership have come to look with admiration on how China is governed. Over the past four years government actions to suppress dissent, control electronic communications, rule by decree and set rules to favor the military’s political power are consistent with what Zawacki calls the “China Model.” The economic aspects of that model, focused on a large and protected state sector and government-directed economic development, has gained credibility through China’s remarkable economic growth. Its use of state power to repress dissent and ensure order looks good to many Thais after a decade of violent political conflict. The China Model appears to have a strong appeal for Thai military leaders who have now held power for more than four years.
Zawacki shows how China gained influence with the Thai military through offers of training, cheap material and special equipment, such as submarines. In contrast, US military influence, once dominant, has declined rapidly with fewer officers trained and less equipment provided. China has successfully increased its role in joint military exercises with the Thais. US legal requirements to cut military aid after each coup has further antagonized the Thai generals.
Zawacki makes it clear that China’s strategic interests in Thailand are not altruistic, though many of their actions furthering those interests may appear to be. Thailand is a key piece in China’s long-term geopolitical strategy for dominance. That strategy, according to Zawacki, seeks ways to avoid the chokepoint of the Straits of Malacca through which much of China’s energy supplies and raw materials must pass. Currently that chokepoint is controlled by the US Seventh Fleet. China, therefore, seeks access to the Indian Ocean through Myanmar and Thailand. China’s support for rail and road infrastructure through Thailand is part of this strategy. Zawacki predicts that no later than 2025 China’s influence will be sufficiently powerful to induce Thailand to start the construction of a canal through southern Thailand to provide Chinese shipping with an alternative to the Malacca Straits. Such a canal would come at a huge environmental, social and possibly financial cost to Thailand.
So, Zawacki’s book serves not only as a warning to the US but also to Thailand. Thai leaders, both military and civilian, should pay particular attention to the struggles of the current Malaysian government to reduce the burden of Chinese-initiated infrastructure projects along the Malacca Straits. Those projects include multi-billion dollar ports, industrial parks, artificial islands, rail links and gas pipelines that benefit China’s regional strategy with the local taxpayers picking up most of the bill.
This is an important book, but it is not an easy read. Zawacki supports his key points with an accumulation of details that can be mind-numbing. He moves back and forth in time in ways that can be confusing. His writing style is complex and lawyerly. At the same time, however, he sometimes omits the names of key sources or players, referring to them only by a title. This practice does not seem to be meant to protect anyone, but to spare readers more unfamiliar names – names that Thai specialists would like to see.
The detailed account is supported by more than 1,300 footnotes, but some of the footnotes seem unfortunately cryptic. Zawacki makes excellent use of the embassy dispatches found on the WikiLeaks website, but the footnotes for these references include only a document number and a date, forcing the reader to go to the website to see who signed the dispatch.
There are occasional, mostly minor errors, such as the misspelling of Chinese Premier Li Peng’s name and the statement that China built Thailand’s first warship. In general, however, Zawacki gets things right in his account of the twists and turns of the US-Thai relationship. His accumulated evidence and his conclusions deserve serious attention from both Americans and Thais. The rise of China may be impossible to stop, but the US failure to compete effectively is opening the path for China to gain easy regional domination.
“Thailand Shifting Ground between the US and a Rising China by Benjamin Zawacki
Published October 2017 by Zed Books and The University of Chicago Press ISBN: 9781783608690 Paperbacks $26.95
On Amazon at: https://www.amazon.com/Thailand-Shifting-Ground-between-Arguments-ebook/dp/B075ZXNLH5/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1546773355&sr=8-1&keywords=Zawacki
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