Location will save Thailand from itself

Location will save Thailand from itself

As Thailand's prolonged navel-gazing meanders from crisis to crisis, one of the leading questions facing this country is whether it will eventually emerge intact and be able to overcome its proven propensity to shoot itself in the foot.

This Thai-Lao Friendship Bridge that links Nakhon Phanom with Laos and Sapa in Vietnam is among many bridges and roads that connect Thailand to neighbouring countries and China, making it the centre of an economically thriving region. PEERAWAT JARIYASOMBAT

While foreseeable internal dynamics are fraught with tension, uncertainty and volatility, this country possesses built-in attributes and resources that its own people cannot take away from themselves. Chief among them is Thailand's central location in the Mekong mainland region of Southeast Asia.

To appreciate Thailand's location, it is necessary to recognise the role of geography as the paramount determinant of international outcomes.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, colonial powers erected borders and configured the international system around them. For much of the 20th century, the global system was shaped not by territories but by a battle of ideologies and conflicting ideas of socio-economic organisation. In the second decade of the 21st century, we are seeing a reversion to the distant pre-colonial past where borders matter less and the mobility of the masses, money and means is expanding inexorably. In this context, Thailand's geographic position in the Mekong mainland is an immeasurable asset.

When it includes the southern Chinese provinces of Yunnan and Guangxi, along with Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam, as the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS), this mainland half of Southeast Asia harbours more than 300 million potential consumers and a combined GDP of more than $1 trillion.

Over the past two decades, extensive road construction has enabled infrastructural corridors from north to south and east to west to connect, broaden and tighten cross-border trade and investment flows among these countries.

It is now possible to drive from southern China to Thailand's deep South and from Myanmar across the mainland all the way to Vietnam. Railway development is substantially behind road linkages but this means there is a vast space for rail expansion. Undoubtedly, the Mekong mainland is up and coming. Its collective growth trajectory is likely to be up and up for at least the decade ahead. And Thailand is the nexus of it.

When the Japan-backed Asian Development Bank initiated and propelled the GMS back in the early 1990s, it presumably did not foresee that the region would develop and evolve into a vibrant backyard of China. As the Mekong mainland countries fall increasingly under China's influence in trade, investment, aid, tourism, and Beijing's growing soft power projection, Japan feels that the region is slipping away from it, even though the Japanese have poured huge investments and resources into the GMS over the years while banking on its development success for Japan's future economic security.

The geopolitical competition on the Mekong mainland has consequently intensified. China is naturally the resident superpower with growing confidence and global leadership ambition. A major power in economic terms but a middle power in most other respects, Japan is heavily invested in this region and intends to maintain and expand its regional role. At a peak point during President Barack Obama's first term, the United States upped its game in mainland Southeast Asia, including a modest but significant funded programme known as the Lower Mekong Initiative to promote regional mainland development and maintain America's influence.

Since then, however, US exertions on the Mekong mainland are perceived to have waned and taken over by domestic distractions and foreign policy preoccupations in the Middle East, Ukraine, and elsewhere. Washington's sea power is still immense and necessary for regional peace and stability but its role in mainland Southeast Asia is not what it used to be. As for India's highly touted eastward foreign policy focus, its weight and role are nowhere close to China's and Japan's.

Thus the China-Japan relationship is most crucial to what happens in the Mekong mainland in the years ahead. If these two major Asian powers and neighbours can iron out latent hostilities from decades past and constructively manage territorial tensions, such as the islands dispute in the East China Sea, it would be conducive to the prosperity and security of the Mekong mainland countries. But if tensions persist and outright conflict arises, the Mekong mainland will suffer from greater geopolitical competition and regional divisiveness.

Here again, Thailand is better placed than its neighbours. The Bangkok-Beijing axis is nuanced, deep and dense. Thailand is also too big an economy with critical mass to come under China's domination, as compared to Laos or Cambodia, for example. However China's influence in the Mekong mainland grows, Thailand is likely to benefit from it relatively more than its immediate neighbours.

At the same time, Thailand is Japan's most special friend and partner in Southeast Asia. This bilateral relationship is not hostage to bitter wartime memories as is the case with most other countries in East Asia. Japan is the largest investor in Thailand, and Thailand is the linchpin and launch-pad of Japanese business presence in the Mekong region.

If it can get its act together at home, Thailand can play a bridging and coordinator role for the contentious China-Japan relationship, and perhaps even a foundational role in setting up an appropriate institutional framework and rules for regional governance towards peace, order and stability.

To be sure, it is not all rosy and robust on the Mekong mainland. Environmental degradation is widespread, especially concerning dam construction in upstream countries. An array of non-traditional security challenges, such as human trafficking, transnational crime, mistreatment and exploitation of migrant workers, natural disasters, and ethnic conflicts are rife. Water security is a growing concern, as tensions between upstream and downstream Mekong countries have grown. While these problems and pitfalls will hamper the Mekong mainland countries, they are unlikely to stop the region's growth story.

At issue for Thailand is not whether its self-inflicted opportunity costs at home will mount but how strong its natural and nurtured shock absorbers will be. Thailand's domestic difficulties will likely exacerbate but its resilience and resourcefulness may ultimately pull it through because of favourable and serendipitous circumstances from being located in a thriving and rising corner of the map.


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

Thitinan Pongsudhirak

Senior fellow of the Institute of Security and International Studies at Chulalongkorn University

A professor and senior fellow of the Institute of Security and International Studies at Chulalongkorn University’s Faculty of Political Science, he earned a PhD from the London School of Economics with a top dissertation prize in 2002. Recognised for excellence in opinion writing from Society of Publishers in Asia, his views and articles have been published widely by local and international media.

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