9/11 From A Thai Perspective

[Flashermac]

The terrorist attacks against the United States a decade ago have wrought permanent changes that have impinged on individual freedom, expanded the role of the state and non-state actors simultaneously, and reinforced and reshaped broad dynamics in the global landscape.

 

States that led the Global War on Terror (GWOT) - the United States most singularly - ultimately shouldered debilitating costs that have come home to roost. Other states that had to take sides after former president George W Bush framed 9/11 as "either with us or against us" mostly returned to business as usual. As leaders of a movement known as al-Qaeda, Osama Bin Laden and many of his ilk have been eliminated or captured. Yet there is no evidence that terrorism is in terminal decline as the flipside of freedom-fighting and liberation movements everywhere.

 

For global citizens, the most visible cost of the GWOT is the restrictions and safeguards on their movement and mobility. It is more of a nuisance than ever to travel internationally. Even before legacy airlines began to cut costs and feel like no-frills jetliners, domestic travel within the US was being squeezed by new laws and screening procedures. The United Kingdom has suffered similar outcomes to a lesser degree. Most emblematic of the GWOT in the US was the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, which is unlikely to go away even when its original urgency and rationale no longer hold. Much of America's bureaucratic apparatus is geared for the GWOT even while the country is determined to exit its two theatres of war in Iraq and the Afghanistan/Pakistan region.

 

For several years after 9/11, American policy-makers and "neoconservative" intellectuals converged in an effort to refashion the Middle East through democratisation under the idea of "democratic globalism". While the invasion of Afghanistan was a direct retaliation for 9/11, the rationale for war in Iraq was fudged. Saddam Hussein was said to be linked to al-Qaeda and in the business of making weapons of mass destruction. Although both justifications proved hollow, the Bush administration went headlong into Iraq, seemingly for an unfinished business from 1990 when a US-led coalition of the willing reversed Saddam's invasion of Kuwait but left the autocratic brute in power; the new objective was to democratise Iraq to spark democratisation in the Middle East. It was a foolish, hubristic and ephemeral grand strategy. Saddam is long gone, Iraq is much less stable, and the costs of the Baghdad misadventure continue to mount for Washington.

 

It is ironic that the Middle East and North Africa are now encountering dramatic upheavals and downfalls of entrenched autocrats due to new media technologies and aspiring voices of new generations bent on getting rid of the status quo without knowing what comes next.

 

Despite America's post-9/11 "neocon" meddling, the Middle East and North Africa may yet democratise on their own terms. But the two regions may also descend into tribalism, internecine strife within societies, and interstate conflicts. The post-World War Two order in the Middle East and North Africa based on dynastic and tribal autocracies is unravelling.

 

The knock-on contagion for the US comes with high stakes in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Jordan, among other autocratic sultanates benefiting from US support. Egging on the uprisings to overthrow some of the Middle East and North Africa regimes, while coddling others, will beget charges of hypocrisy for Washington.

 

For Southeast Asia, the GWOT initially made a portentous call. Home to the largest Muslim population in the world, Southeast Asia was seen as a potential breeding ground - a "second front" - in the GWOT. For several years after 9/11, deadly terrorist acts under Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), an outpost of al-Qaeda in Southeast Asia, gathered momentum. It gained vibrancy and potential in three regional hot spots, namely in the Moro region in southern Philippines, large swathes of Indonesia's archipelago, and in the Malay-Muslim region of southern Thailand. Owing to official counter-terrorism suppression, most effectively by Indonesian authorities, lack of sustained support from al-Qaeda and deep-seated ethno-nationalism, JI's take-off fortuitously fizzled. Neither the Acehnese nor Thailand's Malay Muslims ever signed up for al-Qaeda's agenda.

 

For Thailand, 9/11 was an external shock that initially put Thai defence obligations in a tailspin as the Thai-US treaty alliance was put to the test. Then-prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra's first impulse was to stay "strictly neutral" but the Thai defence and security establishment quickly went into action and kept Thaksin's preferences at bay.By March 2003, Thailand was fully on board the GWOT and sent troops to both Afghanistan and Iraq to join US-led forces. The Thai government under Thaksin capitalised on the opportunity by recalibrating Thai-US relations and reinforced the move away from patron-client ties to genuine partnership. A package of deals was brokered in June 2003 that included negotiations for a free trade agreement and Thailand's designation as a major non-Nato ally in return for Thai efforts in the GWOT and Thai concessions on the Container Security Initiative and International Criminal Court jurisdiction.

 

The fear that the Malay-Muslim insurgency in southern Thailand would be fanned and germinated by al-Qaeda and JI has so far proved unfounded. The violence in the deep South has remained confined geographically as an ethno-nationalist movement, enmeshed with longstanding criminality and illicit trade.

 

Yet the Thai-US FTA negotiations were politicised, discredited and bogged down under Thaksin, and became a plank for his opponents when they deposed him for corruption and conflicts of interest.

 

Thailand did its part as a loyal treaty ally. The Thai-US alliance passed the GWOT test and its military-to-military pillar remains the backbone of the bilateral relationship.

 

The US suffered spectacularly a decade ago on 9/11, but its response has proved misguided and costly, as evident in two intractable wars with runaway burdens and mounting debts that will constrain America's resources to remain the pre-eminent world power in the coming decades. For Washington, 9/11 will remain an emotional scar, a hang-up in its foreign and security outlook for many more years. For Bangkok and the rest of the world, 9/11 was a passing phase in the international system. It is high time to move on.

 

............

 

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

 

 

Bangkok Post

[Julian2]

Um.... a rather Bangkok Postish piece of writing.

[gobbledonk]

Thailand did its part as a loyal treaty ally. The Thai-US alliance passed the GWOT test and its military-to-military pillar remains the backbone of the bilateral relationship.

 

 

Really ?

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Security_Assistance_Force

 

Troop contributors include from the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Turkey, Poland, Romania, Denmark, Belgium, Czech Republic, Norway, Bulgaria, and many other members of the European Union as well as South Korea, Azerbaijan, Singapore and a few other non-NATO members. The intensity of the combat faced by contributing nations varies greatly, with the United States, United Kingdom, Canada and Denmark sustaining substantial casualties in intensive combat operations.

 

No question that committing troops to Afghanistan may have inflamed tensions in the South, but many of the other countries mentioned above have sizeable Muslim populations. Not sure what the backlash was in Turkey, but it cant have been universally applauded.

[Flashermac]

I'd never heard of any Thai troops going to Afghanistan, but I googled and found that a 109-man Army unit had been deployed there. I knew Thai troops served in Iraq - an engineer unit and medical personal - since several Thai soldiers were killed in an attack on the Thai base.