Thailand’s reversal of fortune with Vietnam

First, it was Myanmar that took over the democratic space that Thailand used to occupy. Now, it is Vietnam that has eclipsed Thailand as a major regional player in regional trade and geopolitics.

It is not a lot of fun for Thais to be counting the costs of their country’s sagging political fortunes and sliding economic prospects but doing so is necessary to remind Thailand’s ruling generals that we are in bad shape and that they are not quite up to scratch in coming up with what we want to do and where we need to go.

The Myanmar case is clear. After five decades of international isolation and domestic repression under junta-style rule with soldiers in charge, Myanmar turned over a profoundly new leaf, eventually holding free and fair elections in November last year, with a new democratic government now headed by Ms Aung San Suu Kyi from the opposition National League for Democracy. As a military-civilian compromise takes hold in the fragile interim, Myanmar is moving ahead with a popular government and economic development, picking up the pieces left behind by the abuses of military-authoritarian decades.

Thailand had several stages of such democratic transition that saw the back of military rule, most notably in 1973 and 1992. But now, it is back where Myanmar used to be, with the top brass governing as they see fit rather than how the populace would like to see governance.

Myanmar’s democratic progress is an inconvenient and contradictory outcome for the official narrative that the Thai people are told to heed — that somehow military rulers know better than civilian representatives how to govern. Another inconvenient truth that does not fit the Thai official narrative is Vietnam.

It would have been better for the Thai narrative had President Barack Obama, on his recent three-day visit to Vietnam, faced popular protests by the Vietnamese people for America’s undue influence and interference in luring Vietnam into the now-premier regional trade bloc known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and in ending the United States’ arms embargo so that Hanoi can buy America’s weaponry in future. But the Thai narrative was ill-served in Vietnam.

Unsurprisingly, the Thai official media coverage of Mr Obama’s Vietnam visit — Thailand’s radio and television stations are predominantly state-owned — was relatively muted because it just did not fit the local narrative. Mr Obama enjoyed rock-star treatment up and down Vietnam’s streets, in society and the corridors of power. Washington did not have to twist arms for Hanoi to sign up to the TPP because Vietnamese leaders see it as the gateway to secure domestic economic reforms, export growth and overall development. Nor did Mr Obama let the Vietnamese elites have a free ride. The US President must have jarred the ears of Vietnam’s leaders by harping on about human rights, civil liberties and fundamental freedoms.

The Obama visit completed Vietnam’s normalisation with the outside world and reconciliation with itself. The ideological civil war in Vietnam that ensued for two decades after North Vietnam dislodged its French occupiers in 1954, where the US backed the South to repel its northern communist brethren, has come full circle.

The US lost then. It has won now, as Mr Obama consolidates his administration’s “rebalance” strategy towards Asia.

The Vietnamese communists won then; it is still winning now by seizing TPP membership and moving relatively away from both China and Russia’s orbits.

In regional geopolitics, Vietnam’s new posture and rebalance among the major powers will be at the expense of Beijing’s intention to carve out its self-entitled sphere of influence. Geopolitical ripples from the upgraded US-Vietnam partnership will be felt for years to come.

It is an ironic and poignant turn of events for Thailand when the US and Vietnam, previously bitter enemies that fought one of the ghastliest wars in contemporary memory (with American GIs doing it from Thai soil), are now in a deepening partnership. While Thailand is a formal US treaty ally, with two documents from 1954 and 1962 to prove it, the Bangkok-Washington axis has been unaligned. Vietnam sounds like a partner but it feels and behaves increasingly like an ally. Such is Bangkok’s reversal of fortune.

While Mr Obama was feted in Vietnam, his country can be the kiss of death in Bangkok’s corridors of power. Sulking in Thai “exceptionalism”, peddlers of the Thai narrative have fingered Vietnam’s authoritarian rule.

Indeed, it is a communist-party rule that flagrantly violates rights and freedoms routinely. Vietnam has no civil society to speak of. Its leaders move in unaccountable ways. Its official corruption is as prevalent as elsewhere in the region. So, Mr Obama was really there to sup with communist dictators, so goes this narrative. This is a fair view. Mr Obama’s admonishments on rights issues will need to be verified. Vietnam’s TPP obligations will spawn labour activists and unionisation. Civil society has to be visibly nurtured and vocal if America’s huff on rights and freedoms is to avoid hypocrisy.

But Thailand and Vietnam come from different points of departure and pathways. Vietnam was always communist and authoritarian, first from 1954 and then 1975. Its people have lived under communist-party rule, which comes with its own legitimacy standards. Its government was driven by a coterie of elderly comrades in politburo-style dictating from the top.

Now, some Vietnamese people want a voice and change. Even the leadership has shown signs of allowing more openness by joining major international agreements like the TPP and becoming a bedfellow with the US, its once-sworn enemy. It is just good economics and smart geopolitics.

Thailand comes from the other end where people have been finding their voice over several decades, with growing openness and a vibrant society. Authoritarian governments gave way to popular rule in fits and starts. By the late 1990s, Thailand was a showcase of democratic transition, of how a democratic society respects and upholds rights and freedoms.

It is this standard that the outside world where democracies reside have come to expect of Thailand. It is because of the high regard they have for Thailand’s democratic development that many foreigners compare the government in Bangkok not with those in Cairo and Hanoi but with Jakarta, Manila and even Naypyidaw.

It is also the same regard and standard that many Thai people have come to expect and demand of their own country and rulers. BANGKOK POST

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Thitinan Pongsudhirak is associate professor and director of the Institute of Security and International Studies, Faculty of Political Science, Chulalongkorn University.