During World War 2, the Thai military leadership collaborated with the Japanese. After the war, the US resisted British moves to dismantle Thai military power and instead increased support for the military. Excuses given to sustain dictatorship included imaginary ‘encouraging political trends’. Brutal abuses of power are written off as ‘Asian nature’… “US influence was continuous and decisive in helping the military faction to extinguish the constitutional regime of 1946-47 and to consolidate military rule thereafter”.
1949-69 – $2 billion US aid to sustain military despotism. John Foster Dulles describes Thailand as “the Land of the Free”, i.e. American land free for American companies to exploit. Police Chief Phao “derived most of his funds from the opium trade while army chief Sarit got the proceeds of the National Lottery. Both were awarded the US Legion of Merit in 1954. On his death in 1963, Sarit left a fortune of about $140 million.
Thailand was a genuine Police State. By 1954, Phao had a Police force of 42,835 men. One policeman for every 407 people, one of the highest ratios anywhere in the world, paid for by the US-owned Sea Supply Corporation, a CIA front. Construction of US military bases began in the early sixties without the knowledge of the Thai Foreign Minister or any other civilian leaders of the civilian puppet state.
During Vietnam, 50,000 US military used Thailand as a base to bomb Indo-Chinese peasant societies (Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia). US withdrawal from Vietnam in 1969-70 brought about a short interval of democratisation which was succeeded by another military coup in November 1971. October 1973 saw the largest Thai uprising in history – 250,000 people caused the temporary retreat from power of the military police establishment. Noam Chomsky says… “one searches in vain even for verbal support by the United States for the new democracy, for the warnings to the powerful fascistic forces to restrain themselves, or for threats of any cut-off of aid or other kinds of intervention in the event of an anti-democratic turn-over”.
The Generals resumed control by October 1976, with right-wing paramilitaries and Thai police involved in the massacre of up to 100 protesters. The US supported the extreme right wing ‘Red Gaurs’ and NAWAPHON which both emerged from the Communist Suppression Operations Command, set up and funded by the US in 1965. Thadeus Flood concludes … “In the longer perspective, the entire Thai military and police structure is the creation of the US”. Anti-communist hysteria was the means to counter “indigenous democracy, national sovereignty, human rights and social justice” (Flood).
Thailand has wavered between attempts at democracy and outright military dictatorship since then. The US are comfortably in control with the Thai people unsurprisingly displaying little appetite for opposing the status quo as they settle into an existence of rampant corruption (famously amongst the Thai Royal Police), sex tourism and drug trafficking, the latter being two of the country’s most prolific industries. Wikipedia confirms the situation in a country long controlled the US … “the interplay of drugs, prostitution, political paralysis, corruption and collusion, a culture of impunity, international tourism and trade, traditional Buddhist tolerance and tendency to ignore problems has led to an increasingly multi-faceted and complex crime epidemic in the country” – an interesting track record for the US as an avowed fan and declared sponsor of democratic advancement around the Globe. Thailand, like Panama, is what a country looks like when the Americans have been in control for a long time. This U.S. client’s economic staples are child labour and tourism based on prostitution.