Us Cuts More Thailand Aid, Considers Moving Exercises

[Flashermac]

The United States said Tuesday it has suspended more assistance to Thailand in response to a military coup and was considering moving a major regional exercise out of the kingdom.

 

Washington has blocked $4.7 million in security-related aid to Thailand, which accounts for roughly half of its $10.5 million in annual assistance to the longtime ally, State Department official Scot Marciel said in testimony to Congress.

 

The United States swiftly rebuked Thailand’s military after it defied warnings not to intervene in the political chaos. The State Department announced that it had frozen $3.5 million in aid just one day after the May 22 coup.

 

The additionally suspended assistance has included a US-sponsored firearms training program for the Thai police and a study trip to the United States for senior Thai police officers, another US official said.

 

Marciel said that the United States was also considering moving next year’s Cobra Gold -- one of the largest US military exercises and a key element in the US strategy of pivoting power to Asia.

 

The United States and Thailand have held the annual exercises together since 1980, this year involving some 13,000 participants from US-friendly nations across the region.

 

"We’ll certainly be looking at it very closely. It will depend partly on what happens on the ground there," Marciel said in response to a question.

 

Representative Steve Chabot, the chair of the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on Asia, said that exercises in Thailand "could clearly send the wrong message" to Thailand and around the world "in light of the repressive nature" of the junta.

 

Chabot called on President Barack Obama’s administration to study moving the 2015 exercises, generally held early each year, to Darwin, Australia, where some 2,500 US Marines are deploying as part of the pivot to Asia.

 

’Clear’ support for democracy’

 

Thailand has been in turmoil since 2006 when the military overthrew elected prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, a billionaire turned populist champion of the poor who has shaken Bangkok’s royalist elite and its allies in the army.

 

The military has clamped down harder with the latest coup. Army chief Prayut Chan-O-Cha has suspended the constitution, assumed sweeping powers and smothered dissent.

 

While some supporters of the royalist "Yellow Shirt" protest movement have called for changes to dilute the role of elections, Marciel said he believed that Thais broadly supported democracy.

 

If Thailand does not restore freedoms and allow elections, "over time there will be more and more Thai people who will look for opportunities to express their unhappiness," Marciel said.

 

"Can’t really put a timeframe on it, but I do think the majority of Thai people have made clear they want democracy and certainly that’s our view as well," he said.

 

Marciel downplayed lawmakers’ fears that China -- which unlike Western nations and Thailand’s neighbors has not criticised the coup -- would seize on the US shunning of the kingdom, saying that the crisis was rooted in domestic factors.

 

"I don’t think there’s any outside power that has undue influence in Thailand, including us or China," Marciel said.

 

The firm line on Thailand contrasts sharply with the US approach to Egypt.

 

Washington carefully avoided calling last year’s ouster of elected Islamist president Mohamed Morsi a coup and said last week it had unfrozen $572 million in military aid after ex-army chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi won an election.

 

 

http://www.nationmultimedia.com/politics/US-cuts-more-Thailand-aid-considers-moving-exercis-30237060.html

[Flashermac]

 

 

[Guest]

http://fas.org/sgp/crs/row/RL32593.pdf

 

Thailand has aggressively pursued FTAs with countries other than the United States in its campaign to expand trading opportunities. Agreements have been signed with Bahrain, China, Peru, Australia, Japan, India, and New Zealand. Further deals are possible with South Korea, Chile, and the European Union (EU). Thailand has championed ASEAN regionalism, seeing the ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA, among ASEAN countries only) as a vehicle for investment driven integration which will benefit Thailand’s outward-oriented growth strategy.

 

Thailand is important to the region because of its large economy and, until the coup and the civil unrest, its relatively long-standing democratic rule. Southeast Asia is considered by many Asian experts to be a key arena of soft power competition between the United States and China: the loss of a democratic government, as well as any resulting friction with the United States, could be considered an opening for closer Sino-Thai relations.

 

Sino-Thailand ties, historically far closer than Beijing’s relations with most other Southeast Asian states, have continued to strengthen. Bilateral trade and positive relations have boomed over the past decade. Even while re-asserting its U.S. alliance under Thaksin, Thailand continued to court China, including inking agreements on technology, environmental protection, and strategic cooperation.

 

Military-to-military ties increased through both exchanges and arms sales: China exports major weapons and military equipment to Thailand, a practice that originated in the 1980s when both countries supported Cambodian resistance groups, including the Khmer Rouge, against the Vietnamese-installed government in Phnom Penh. Many analysts saw the suspension of several U.S. military programs following the coup as an opportunity for China to expand its influence in the Thai defense establishment. China participated as an observer for the first time in the May 2008 Cobra Gold exercises. Security cooperation has also been stirred by an October 2011 incident in which 13 Chinese soldiers guarding PRC cargo boats were killed in a raid by armed members of a Burmese minority group in a portion of the Mekong River controlled by Thailand.

 

In December 2011, China began limited joint patrols with Thailand, Laos, and Burma along the Mekong, which is increasingly used for trans-border trade. Trade and investment between Thailand and China have grown as well. Thai companies, many run by ethnic-Chinese families, were among the largest early investors in China following its economic opening in 1979. Thailand has been a strong backer of trade agreements with China. The China-ASEAN Free Trade Agreement (FTA) went into effect in January 2010, and China replaced the United States as Thailand’s largest trading partner that year. Thai-PRC trade grew 51% between 2010 and 2012, compared to 24% growth in Thai-U.S. trade.

 

Thailand’s strong relationship with China is based on a history far less antagonistic than Beijing’s past with many other ASEAN countries. After the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam, Bangkok pursued a strategic alignment with Beijing in order to contain Vietnamese influence in neighboring Cambodia. Bangkok restored diplomatic ties with Beijing in 1975, long before other Southeast Asian nations. The sizeable ethnic Chinese population in Thailand assimilated relatively easily and became a strong presence in the business world, and in the political arena as well. Thailand also has no territorial disputes with China in the South China Sea, unlike Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Brunei Darussalam. In 2013, it served as ASEAN’s coordinator of discussions with China over a potential Code of Conduct for parties in the South China Sea, which brought the restart of these negotiations after several years of stasis.