Being at the centre of the vital Asia-Pacific region, Thailand is important. But, despite its large population and powerful military forces performing significant roles in state and society, Thailand has little military power. Why is this? Using strategic culture as an analytical framework, this book portrays the Thai state as an accommodative actor. When Western empires dominated in Asia, Thailand 'bent in the wind' to preserve its independence by a limited trading of territory and sovereignty. This policy continues today in different forms. A key feature is that military organizational culture reinforces a state ideology of royalist nationalism, in turn reinforcing the national strategic culture. Significant here is internal political acceptance not just of military domination in civil-military relations but also of the Thai military's limitations in state-on-state combat. The author finds such 'underbalancing' - not responding to threat, or responding inadequately - elsewhere in Southeast Asia, too.
"Thai politics is driven by actors and actions of paradox such as anti-election movements for accountability or independent, partisan organizations. This lucidly written book uncovers the 'military-led civil affairs' that earn the armed forces the omnipotent role in Thai society. It enriches our understanding of the Thai military in both empirical and theoretical ways. Empirically, the book illuminates how the soldiers have been intensively involved in supposedly civic activities ranging from forest land management to poverty reduction. Such long-lasting and extensive involvement means the military could mobilize the organized mass of over 500,000 strong when necessary. Theoretically, readers will learn how an ideological discourse (“threats to national security”) has been continuously redefined to serve the military’s evolving political and rent-seeking missions from the Cold War era to the twenty-first century. It also traces the persistence and mutation of this highly adaptable organization, the one that knows when to roar and when to camouflage. Still waters run deep; Thai military operations run deeper and wider."--Veerayooth Kanchoochat, Associate Professor of Political Economy, National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies (GRIPS), Tokyo “A truly monumental work about Thailand’s military from the 1960s until today, this solid study focuses upon the armed forces’ internal security role across Thai society, how the military has succeeded in legitimizing itself and boosting its power as a counterinsurgency force, guardian of monarchy and engine of development. The book also valuably looks at the military’s establishment of mass organizations beginning during the Cold War and mobilization of royalists since 2006. The book thus illustrates how the military has been able to enhance and sustain its overwhelming influence and is thus a valuable study for anyone wanting to understand key power-brokers in Thailand.”— Dr Paul Chambers, Center of ASEAN Community Studies, Naresuan University, Thailand.
Praetorians, Profiteers or Professionals? contributes to the ongoing renaissance in scholarship on Southeast Asia’s armed forces and their political, social and economic roles. This renaissance comes in an era in which the states of the region, and the societies and economies that they govern, have grown complex beyond all recognition. Nevertheless, understanding those states’ armies remains crucial. Emphasizing the ideologies and economic activities of the militaries of two large Mainland Southeast Asian neighbours, this volume transcends clichés about coups, coercion, caudillos and kings. Its findings will challenge the thinking of even long-time observers of the region, not least through its comparative perspective and the fresh understanding of the roles and orientations of the armed forces of Myanmar and Thailand that that perspective suggests.
"Although Southeast Asia has seen the emergence of civilian rule, the military continues to receive a large chunk of the national budget and, with significant assets and economic activities, often possesses enormous economic clout -- enhancing its political power while hindering democratization or civilian rule. The political economy of the military in less developed countries is thus a crucial subject area in terms of democratization. This study examines such "khaki capital" in seven Southeast Asian cases -- Thailand, Myanmar, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, the Philippines and Indonesia. Each chapter analyses the historical evolution of khaki capital in the given country case; the role of internal and external factors (e.g. military unity and globalization) in this trajectory; and how the resulting equilibrium has affected civil-military relations. This work is important for understanding how and why military influence over parts of the economy in Southeast Asia has remained an impediment to achieving civilian control and democratization. Ultimately, this book tells the story of how militaries in Southeast Asia have benefited economically and the extent to which such gains have translated into the leveraging of political power." --
First published in 1986. This book integrates current knowledge about the military, political, economic, and cultural roles of the armed forces in sixteen Asian countries, examining the interplay of these factors and their bearing on each society's civil-military relations. The authors explore the history, current status, and potential future course of each country. Analyzing all key Asian armed forces, they provide a comprehensive view of the military's domestic role-a crucial factor in assessing the foreign and defense policy options facing Asia as a whole.
Uneasy Military Encounters presents a historically and theoretically grounded political ethnography of the Thai military's counterinsurgency practices in the southern borderland, home to the greater part of the Malay-Muslim minority. Ruth Streicher argues that counterinsurgency practices mark the southern population as the racialized, religious, and gendered other of the Thai, which contributes to producing Thailand as an imperial formation: a state formation based on essentialized difference between the Thai and their others. Through a genealogical approach, Uneasy Military Encounters addresses broad conceptual questions of imperial politics in a non-Western context: How can we understand imperial policing in a country that was never colonized? How is "Islam" constructed in a state that is officially secular and promotes Buddhist tolerance? What are the (historical) dynamics of imperial patriarchy in a context internationally known for its gender pluralism? The resulting ethnography excavates the imperial politics of concrete encounters between the military and the southern population in the ongoing conflict in southern Thailand.
This book is open access under a CC BY-NC-ND license. This volume analyzes the economic, social, and political challenges that emerging states confront today. Notwithstanding the growing importance of the ‘emerging states’ in global affairs and governance, many problems requiring immediate solutions have emerged at home largely as a consequence of the rapid economic development and associated sociopolitical changes. The middle-income trap is a major economic challenge faced by emerging states. This volume regards interest coordination for technological upgrading as crucial to avoid the trap and examines how various emerging states are grappling with this challenge by fostering public-private cooperation, voluntary associations of market players, and/or social networks. Social disparity is another serious problem. It is deeply rooted in history in the emerging states such as South Africa and many Latin American countries. However, income distribution is recently deteriorating even in East Asia that was once praised for its high economic growth with equity. Increasing pressure for political opening is another challenge for emerging states. This volume argues that the economic, social, and political problems are interwoven in the sense that the emerging states need to build political consensus in order to tackle the economic and social difficulties. Democratic institutions have not always been successful in this respect.
This book is offered for consideration and critical reflection primarily by political science scholars throughout the world from beginning students to professors emeriti. Neither age nor erudition seems to make much difference in the prevailing assumption that killing is an inescapable part of the human condition that must be accepted in political theory and practice. It is hoped that readers will join in questioning this assumption and will contribute further stepping stones of thought and action toward a nonkilling global future.
In Buddha’s Company explores a previously neglected aspect of the Vietnam War: the experiences of the Thai troops who served there and the attitudes and beliefs that motivated them to volunteer. Thailand sent nearly 40,000 volunteer soldiers to South Vietnam to serve alongside the Free World Forces in the conflict, but unlike the other foreign participants, the Thais came armed with historical and cultural knowledge of the region. Blending the methodologies of cultural and military history, Richard Ruth examines the individual experiences of Thai volunteers in their wartime encounters with American allies, South Vietnamese civilians, and Viet Cong enemies. Ruth shows how the Thais were transformed by living amongst the modern goods and war machinery of the Americans and by traversing the jungles and plantations haunted by indigenous spirits. At the same time, Ruth argues, Thailand’s ruling institutions used the image of volunteers to advance their respective agendas, especially those related to anticommunist authoritarianism. Drawing on numerous interviews with Thai veterans and archival material from Thailand and the United States, Ruth focuses on the cultural exchanges that occurred between Thai troops and their allies and enemies, presenting a Southeast Asian view of a conflict that has traditionally been studied as a Cold War event dominated by an American political agenda. The resulting study considers such diverse topics as comparative Buddhisms, alternative modernities, consumerism, celebrity, official memories vs. personal recollections, and the value of local knowledge in foreign wars. The war’s effects within Thailand itself are closely considered, demonstrating that the war against communism in Vietnam, as articulated by Thai leaders, was a popular cause among nearly all segments of the population. Furthermore, Ruth challenges previous assertions that Thailand’s forces were merely "America’s mercenaries" by presenting the multiple, overlapping motivations for volunteering offered by the soldiers themselves. In Buddha’s Company makes clear that many Thais sought direct involvement in the Vietnam War and that their participation had profound and lasting effects on the country’s political and military institutions, royal affairs, popular culture, and international relations. As one of only a handful of academic histories of Thailand in the 1960s, it provides a crucial link between the keystone studies of the Phibun-Sarit years (1946–1963) and those examining the turbulent 1970s.
Thailand’s politics has been contentious in recent years. With a military coup in 2006 and another in 2014, the country has moved from being a promising electoral democracy to a military dictatorship. Electoral politics was embraced enthusiastically by some groups, including those in rural areas of the north and northeast, but came to be feared by groups variously identified as the old elite, royalists and the establishment. The transition to authoritarianism saw large and lengthy street protests and considerable violence. This book examines the background to and the sources of conflict and the turn to authoritarianism. It addresses: the return of the military to political centre stage; the monarchy’s pivotal role in opposing electoral democracy; the manner in which sections of civil society have rejected electoral politics; and the rise of powerful non-elected bodies such as the Constitutional Court.
