Confirmed US Meddling in Thailand’s Upcoming Elections

As the United States intensifies its accusations against Russia for alleged interference in the 2016 US Presidential Elections, the United States itself is found engaged in confirmed political interference worldwide.

This includes in Southeast Asia where Washington is attempting to rush elections in Thailand in hopes of returning their proxy Thaksin Shinawatra and his Pheu Thai Party (PTP) to power.

US efforts to rush elections have included a concerted effort to dismiss those pointing out Shinawatra’s continued influence in Thai politics, his continued leadership role over PTP and his intentions to use PTP to return to power.

However, Reuters in an article titled, “Thai ex-PM Thaksin calls for party unity ahead of promised election,” would openly admit Shinawatra, a convicted criminal and fugitive, still controlled PTP whose leadership met with him recently in Hong Kong.

The article reported:

Fugitive former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra met lawmakers from his Puea Thai Party in Hong Kong where he called for party unity ahead of an approaching general election, party members said on Monday.

Many are watching to see how Puea Thai Party performs in a vote which the military government has promised to hold in November but which could be delayed.

The necessity of repeated delays of Thai elections is very straightforward.

Thaksin Shinawatra, a convicted criminal and fugitive still seeks to contest them through PTP. Allowing a fugitive to contest elections would be illegal and any election outcome influenced by a convicted criminal and fugitive would be illegitimate. By delaying elections, the current Thai government hopes to continue diminishing Shinawatra’s unwarranted influence and wealth as well as that of his political network inside Thailand until both are no longer an obstruction to legal elections.

Yet despite this straightforward necessity to delay elections, the United States and its European partners have repeatedly demanded rushed elections. Additionally, the US and its European partners are funding myriad opposition fronts ranging from media platforms to street protests to place pressure on the current Thai government to rush elections while it is believed Shinawatra and PTP still have a chance of winning.

US Meddling

The US accuses Russia of political interference based on activities of the Internet Research Agency a recent FBI indictment insinuated was linked to the Russian government. While no actual evidence has surfaced linking the organisation to the Kremlin, the US not only possesses its own organisations for the purpose of political interference, they are openly funded by and linked directly to the US government.

In Thailand, the United States government through the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) is funding media organisations like Prachatai which promote daily protests and demands for immediate elections.

Shinawatra also controls his own media organisations inside of Thailand. This includes VoiceTV supposedly founded by his son, Panthongthae Shinawatra, but clearly serving his father’s political agenda.

Supposed rights advocates like Fortify Rights (page 20, .pdf), iLaw, Thai Lawyers for Human Rights (TLHR), Cross Cultural Foundation, Thai Netizen Network and Isaan Record are also all funded by the US government via NED and have not only contributed toward attempts to manufacture dissent, but have also led small protests in the streets themselves.

Anon Nampa of US-funded TLHR has repeatedly led anti-government protests demanding elections while concurrently representing fellow protesters in court cases, calling into question the supposed impartiality his organisation claims to represent.

Protesting alongside Nampa are members of Thaksin Shinawatra’s own street front, the United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship (UDD) also known as red shirts. This includes UDD organiser Sombat Boonngamanong and dedicated red shirts like Yupa Saengsai.

The UDD red shirts have committed serial acts of violence and terrorism including gunning down two shopkeepers while committing widespread arson and looting in 2009, the use of some 300 heavily armed militants during protests in 2010 which led to nearly 100 deaths and also ended in widespread arson and looting, bombings including that of a Bangkok hospital and a terrorist campaign aimed at anti-Shinawatra protesters in 2014 that left nearly 30 dead.

With the reemergence of Shinawatra’s red shirts on the streets, observers have warned that violence is imminent.

Yet despite this, efforts by the Thai government to arrest leaders and prevent another round of instability and violence have been decried by the US government and its European partners as well as US-funded fronts like Prachatai, TLHR, Fortify Rights and their partners in corporate foundation funded fronts like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.

Under the guise of “human rights,” “freedom of assembly” and “freedom of expression,” these compromised organisations representing concerted foreign meddling in Thailand’s internal political affairs are setting the conditions for another attempt at violently subverting Thailand’s stability and political order.

This reflects a similar pattern seen elsewhere around the globe where the US pressures nations into holding elections Washington is confident its proxies can win. Should those elections fail to place Washington’s proxies into power, or be delayed, the US then organises increasingly disruptive street protests, then violence, before more directly involving itself in “regime change.”

Washington’s Man in Dubai and Multipolar Thailand 

Thailand’s longstanding political crisis centres around former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, ousted in a military coup in 2006, and who has attempted to return to power through a number of proxies including his own brother-in-law Somchai Wongsawat and his sister, Yingluck Shinawatra. His sister too was removed from power by a military coup in 2014 after she attempted to amend the nation’s constitution to return her brother to power.

Thaksin Shinawatra’s administration represented the peak of US influence in Thailand.

Between 2001-2006 Shinawatra privatised Thailand’s natural resources including its oil and gas reserves for the sake of US energy giants, committed Thai troops to the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, approved of Washington’s use of Thai territory for its extraordinary rendition programme and attempted to pass without parliamentary approval a free trade agreement with Washington that would have granted American corporations and financial institutions unprecedented access and control over Thailand’s population, economy and resources.

Shinawatra and his sister are both convicted criminals. Both have fled the country, evading a 2 year and 5 year prison sentence respectively, making them fugitives as well. Thaksin Shinawatra has allegedly been based in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates while his sister is supposedly being given safe-haven in London, UK.

Since Shinawatra’s ousting from office and his multiple failed attempts to return to power, Thailand has shifted its economic and foreign policy more inward toward Asia, including fostering greater ties with China.

This includes Thailand replacing its ageing Vietnam War-era US military hardware with Chinese armaments. It also includes massive infrastructure deals signed with Beijing including high speed railways that will link major Thai cities as well as Thailand with both its Southeast Asian neighbours as well as China itself.

Thailand is also forging stronger ties with its immediate neighbours in Southeast Asia in both economic and political terms. This includes cooperating with neighbouring countries in their own battle against US political meddling. Thailand’s immediate neighbour to the east, Cambodia, recently asked for the repatriation of opposition members of the Cambodia National Rescue Party which was recently revealed to have colluded with the United States to seize power.

It is clear why the US is determined to reverse its diminishing fortunes both in Thailand, and in Asia in general.

Meddling Industrial Complex: Diminishing Returns?

US attempts to meddle in Thailand’s internal affairs depends on a small but loud and well-funded number of neoliberal Thais educated in the US and Europe and working for US and European institutions, media platforms and foreign-funded organisations. It also depends on Shinawatra’s waning support base in northeast Thailand (referred to as Isaan) where his popularity depends on constant, unsustainable populist handouts.

The diminutive protests held so far are owed to a lack of genuine support for Shinawatra. Protest leaders even admitted that without supporters brought in from Shinawatra’s political stronghold upcountry, protests would remain limited.

Pro-Shinawatra newspaper Khaosod in an article titled, “Protest Just a ‘Kick-Off.’ Activists Say,” admitted:

Sirawith [Seritiwat] said that many protesters upcountry had been blocked from traveling to the capital.

“If the authorities were really brave, then take out those blocks and we’ll fill all of Ratchadamnoen!” he said, referring to road blockades reportedly erected to prevent people from traveling to the capital.

In actuality, there were no roadblocks, only bans on political activities, including Shinawatra’s PTP’s use of charted buses to bring subsidised villagers to Bangkok as it has done in past protests. Should PTP pay villagers to board charted buses now, they may face a political ban, finally barring them from elections.

That an entire opposition movement exists in Thailand solely because of the money and directives of the United States and their proxy Thaksin Shinawatra, is an example of the blatant and extensive political interference Washington is engaged in around the globe as it accuses and attempts to punish Russia for interference and collusion in its own internal political affairs.

More than mere “influence operations” as the FBI’s indictment claims regarding Russian meddling, the US is creating entire opposition movements, from media platforms to street fronts to lawyers designated to defend members of the movement as the government arrests and charges them for sedition.

For nations like Thailand facing extensive US meddling, one possible recourse might be to take pages from Washington’s own rhetoric and punitive measures aimed at Russia, and apply them to US efforts aimed at Bangkok. Vigorous laws targeting US-funded fronts in Thailand posing as nongovernmental organisations modelled after laws the US itself has created and used against Russian media could be one example of this.

However, Bangkok may also decide a more patient and reserved approach, simply delaying elections, weathering US-manufactured dissent and stretching out protests until they expose and exhaust themselves.

Joseph Thomas is chief editor of Thailand-based geopolitical journal, The New Atlas and contributor to the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

US Color Revolution Begins in Thailand as Proxy War with China Continues

The tentative first beginnings of a long-awaited US-backed color revolution has begun in Thailand, with a small protest of under 100 protesters in the downtown district of Thailand’s capital Bangkok.

Despite the diminutive nature of the protest, the Western media and Western-funded organizations posing as nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) transformed the event into headline news.

The protest leaders vowed to gather weekly until their demands were met. This is a thinly veiled threat, with the protests taking place precisely where previous protests organized by the same interests carried out gun battles with government troops, mass murder against counter-protesters, and committed widespread and devastating arson in the surrounding areas.

The protesters seek to overthrow Thailand’s independent institutions including its military and constitutional monarchy, and return US proxies to power, particularly billionaire and former prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra and his Pheu Thai Party (PTP). Thaksin Shinawatra is a convicted criminal who fled Thailand to evade a two year jail sentence and a myriad of court cases still pending trial.

In essence, US-backed protesters seek to return a fugitive to power by proxy, a similar scenario to 2011 when Thaksin Shinawatra’s sister, Yingluck Shinawatra, openly ran as his proxy in elections his political party won. The 2011 campaign slogan, “Thaksin Thinks, Pheu Thai Does” openly flaunted the extralegal nature of PTP’s bid for office. After assuming power, senior PTP members would regularly leave Thailand to consort with Thaksin Shinawatra in person, further highlighting the fact a convicted criminal and fugitive was running Thailand’s government rather than his nepotist appointed sister – a fact either omitted by Western media reports, or excused.

By 2014, after over half a year of protests and the collapse of PTP’s rice subsidies it used in 2011 to lure voters, the military once again staged a coup and ousted Yingluck Shinawatra from office. Since the coup – Yingluck Shinawatra, like her brother – has been convicted of corruption and sentenced to 5 years in prison. She too has fled Thailand and joins her brother in exile as a fugitive.

Despite a political party run by convicted criminals and fugitives, Western diplomats and a collection of faux-activists they fund and organize in Bangkok demand expedient elections in which Thaksin Shinawatra’s Pheu Thai Party will still run in and will likely win. Elections have been repeatedly delayed precisely to prevent this scenario from happening, with each delay designed to give the government more time to diminish the power, wealth, and influence Shinawatra and his foreign backers still wield to grant themselves impunity from the rule of law.

While a party openly run by a fugitive contesting elections in the United States or Europe from abroad would be unthinkable, this is precisely the proposition US and European diplomats demand of Thailand to accept.

Who are the Protesters? 

The Western media has intentionally covered up the true nature of Thailand’s protesters, just as they have done throughout other US-organized regime change campaigns around the world from the so-called “Arab Spring” in which “pro-democracy activists” turned out to be members of extremist groups including the Muslim Brotherhood and even Al Qaeda, and in Ukraine where “Euromaiden” mobs were led by literal Neo-Nazi fronts, particularly Svoboda.

Admitting who Thailand’s supposedly “pro-democracy activists” are would immediately dash the nascent protest’s legitimacy against the rocks of international public opinion, which is precisely why the Western media is intentionally mischaracterizing the protests.

In 2014, the day after the military officially removed Yingluck Shinawatra from power, the US Embassy in Bangkok helped organize the creation of the Thai Lawyers for Human Rights (TLHR) front. Funded by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) – appearing on NED’s Thailand 2014 list – the front is one of several components of Washington’s regime change machinery in Thailand.

TLHR itself specializes in advocating and defending other US-funded agitators seeking regime change. TLHR members themselves have been repeatedly arrested for serial acts of subversion. In answering the question of who defends those charged by the West to defend its agitators, the answer is foreign embassy staff themselves from the US, Canada, UK, and EU.

TLHR head Sirikan “June” Charoensiri has repeatedly posed in pictures with foreign embassy staff on her way to face questioning regarding her foreign-funded activity. In many instances, foreign embassy staff will actually accompany her – and other recipients of foreign funds – to police stations in a sign of open support for their ongoing sedition.

In one picture – which included Western diplomats from multiple nations – posted by UK embassy staffer Dan Fieller, the following caption would read:

Supporting [ Sirikan Charoensiri] from [TLHR] in Thailand as she faces criminal charges for doing her job as a [human rights] lawyer.

Fieller and others, including Charoensiri herself, have refused to respond to multiple questions concerning the conflict of interest of posing as human rights lawyers while receiving foreign funding and representing foreign interests unrelated, even opposed to real human rights advocacy. This is particularly so when considering those these “human rights lawyers” are defending and the fact that they are supporters of Thaksin Shinawatra, his political party, and his street front, the so-called “red shirts” who have regularly resorted to intimidation, violence, mass murder, and systematic terrorism which included the bombing of a hospital just last year.

In addition to individual diplomats working at Western embassies in Bangkok, the UK Foreign Office itself has openly and repeatedly provided support for Charoensiri and others across its official social media accounts.

Like in Syria and Libya where crackdowns on overt terrorism were condemned by Western governments, Western media, and Western funded fronts posing as nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), the West is hiding a violent movement and its supporters behind the thin veil of “democracy” and “human rights” advocacy.

Also funded by the US government via NED are media fronts like Prachatai, the Cross-Cultural Foundation (CrCF), and the Isaan Record. All three have repeatedly covered up their foreign funding, refusing to disclose it to their readers, at other times denying it, while still at other times attempting to dismiss any sort of conflict of interest regarding receiving foreign funds and representing foreign interests through their so-called “journalism.”

Despite denials and deflections regarding US funding, all three platforms are openly listed as NED recipients on NED’s Thailand 2011 and Thailand 2017 lists. In addition to Prachatai’s extensive NED funding, its “executive director” Chiranuch Premchaiporn is also officially an NED fellow.

And while the actual protest leaders themselves – including Sirawith Seritiwat and Jatupat “Pai Dao Din” Boonpattararaksa of the “New Democracy Movement” and Rangsiman Rome of the “Democracy Restoration Group” – have not disclosed financial support provided to them by foreign governments, they openly consort with, receive political support from, and eagerly represent the interests of foreign governments – particularly the US, Canada, the UK, and the EU.

Like June of TLHR – these protest leaders regularly pose for photographs with foreign diplomats, and regularly receive direct support from them when facing legal charges.

Sirawith Seritiwat, alongside fellow foreign-backed agitators Arnon Nampa, Than Rittiphan, Songtham Kaewpanpreuk, posed with Sandra De Waele, an EU diplomat. The official “European Union in Thailand” Facebook account published the following caption under the photo:

The head of the Political Section of the Delegation, Sandra De Waele, met with a group of students and activists, namely Songtham Kaewpanpreuk, Sirawith Seritiwat, Arnon Nampa and Than Rittiphan. Arnon and Sirawith were briefly detained on 14 February for peacefully expressing their political opinion. The European Union is strongly committed to the principle of freedom of expression and has consistently called upon the Thai authorities to respect that freedom.

The EU delegation regularly and very openly supports and collaborates with pro-Shinawatra supporters posing as “activists.” When Shinawatra’s supporters attacked anti-Shinawatra protesters in 2014 with assault rifles, hand grenades, and 40mm M-79 grenade launchers, Western diplomats were either entirely silent, or worse, attempted to defend the violence as mere expressions of “frustration.”

Jatupat Boonpattararaksa, now in prison for his role in spreading Western propaganda, regularly receives backing from foreign embassies in Bangkok demanding his release. Canadian diplomat Shawn Friele would meet and pose for pictures with Jutupat Boonpattararaksa’s parents he then posted across social media. The caption for the photo read:

Honoured to meet with parents of Pai Dao Din. Pai’s 200 plus days in detention shows challenges to rule of law and due process in Thailand. 

Rangsiman Rome, in addition to allegedly seeking “democracy,” in no coincidence attempted to pressure the current Thai government regarding rail project deals being struck with Beijing that the United States also wants delayed or entirely disrupted.

Before creating this latest collection of proxies, Western embassies including representatives from the US, openly provided support to Thaksin Shinawatra’s previous street front, the United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship (UDD) better known as “red shirts.” The UDD has suffered a crisis of legitimacy after committing serial acts of mass murder and terrorism. Despite having “redressed” the UDD for this latest push for regime change, many protesters can still be seen wearing their red shirts to events.

While the thin pretext this collection of faux-activists and NGOs is “democracy” and “human rights,” it is clear that they serve as an extension of Western influence in Thailand. While they demand “elections,” it is clear that they merely demand elections they are confident will return Western political proxies like Shinawatra and his PTP to power. And in addition to demanding regime change, these proxies are also openly assisting the US in attempts to disrupt growing ties between Bangkok and Beijing, serving Washington’s interests, not Thailand’s.

Why Thailand? 

US designs aimed at Thailand are part of a much larger strategy of encircling and containing China either with US-controlled proxy states, or a ring of destabilized nations incapable of providing China constructive economic, military, and political ties.

The “activism” of supposedly “pro-democracy” groups funded and/or backed by Western governments in Thailand are already openly questioning, condemning, and actively seeking to disrupt these ties.

Thailand is a pivotal Southeast Asian state with a large population and a strong economy that has been incrementally building ties with Beijing at the expense of US regional hegemony.

Once considered a stalwart ally of the United States, since removing Thaksin Shinawatra from power in a 2006 military coup, the Thai establishment has begun a sweeping shift in foreign policy, replacing its aging arsenal of US military hardware with Chinese, Russian, and European equipment, including hundreds of Chinese tanks and armored personnel carries and even Chinese naval vessels including the nation’s first acquisition of submarines.

Bangkok has inked deals with China regarding metro rail systems as well as national rail networks including high speed rail systems that will connect not only Thai cities, but connect Thailand to its neighbors to the north and south, and to China’s Yunnan province.

Thailand has also begun conducting joint military exercises with China, balancing what had been for years Washington’s exclusive domain represented by its annual Cobra Gold exercises.

Under Thaksin Shinawatra between 2001-2006, Thailand pursued a decidedly pro-US foreign policy, which included sending Thai troops to participate in the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, the hosting of the US CIA’s rendition program, attempts at sealing a US-Thai free trade agreement without public or parliamentary support, and the selling off of Thailand’s nationalized natural resources to Western oil corporations.

It is clear that the United States would like to return to such an arrangement. After providing over a decade of support via Washington’s largest lobbying firms, allowing Shinawatra free travel across the US and Europe despite his criminal conviction and his status as not only a fugitive, but as a human rights violator, and the mobilization of the Western media in support of Shinawatra’s multiple bids to seize back power – it is clear that should Shinawatra or his proxies ever return to power, they have an immense debt to Wall Street, Washington, London, and Brussels to pay back.

Part of repaying the West – including for the current color revolution the US is attempting to organize in Bangkok – will be reversing growing ties with Beijing.

Future Scenarios 

It is unclear precisely how the current government will handle these protests. The government allowed the protests to go forward with the only stipulation being to avoid violence and disrupting the public.

One scenario is that elections are likely to be postponed until next year, and possibly even later than that.

The longer these protests continue, the more difficult it will be for the Western press, Western embassies, and their collection of faux-NGOs to cover up the nature of who is leading them and why. Over this period of time, the government and media can begin exposing and undermining the credibility of claims these protests are “pro-democracy” and not merely foreign funded mobs seeking to place a party run by Shinawatra – a fugitive hiding abroad – back into power.

It will also be difficult to sustain the protests without expending larger amounts of money and resources and thus exposing those financing them. While the alleged protest leaders pose as “students” and “independent activists,” it will become abundantly clear that large well-financed interests are really organizing and sponsoring them.

Ultimately, the protests can be perpetually ignored by the current government, unless protesters decide to disrupt local businesses, the public, and/or once again resort to violence as the UDD has done repeatedly throughout its existence. However, as in the past, the use of violence by supporters of Thaksin Shinawatra will simply deepen the crisis of legitimacy the opposition already suffers from and perhaps even provoke a much larger, publicly supported backlash against the protesters as was seen in 2013-2014.

In this scenario, the government may simply give the protest the time necessary to destroy itself while continuing to fulfill its pledge to delay elections as long as necessary to carry out reforms – in other words – make it impossible for Pheu Thai to win elections as long as Shinawatra – a fugitive hiding abroad – openly runs the party.

The second scenario is where elections are eventually held, and if Shinawatra’s proxies come back into power, Thailand’s institutions patiently wait for the government to once again misstep and provoke protests, and once again invite the military to intervene. With each intervention – while there carries a variety of risks – the military has successfully cut down Shinawatra’s political power and influence while exposing the role of Western interests meddling in Thailand’s internal political affairs.

In the case of either scenario, one factor remains constant – the rise of China and with it the rest of Asia. Each passing year marks a decline in US regional primacy and a more equitable balance of regional power driven by Asia’s interests, not Washington’s.

In either scenario, as long as Thailand’s independent institutions avoid a major misstep and patiently and carefully deal with Western-backed subversion, the shifting dynamics of geopolitical power in the region will eventually make Western-sponsored regime change altogether impossible.

However, with the prospect of regime change taken off the table as an effective tool of coercion used by the US, Thailand is likely to suffer greater incidents of terrorism, as seen in 2015 during the Erawan Shrine bombing carried out by Uyghur terrorists linked to NATO’s “Grey Wolves” militant organization. Western-funded faux-NGOs are already increasingly shifting their attention toward Thailand’s ongoing turmoil in its deep south, attempting to leverage the isolated conflict into a national crisis used to divide and destroy the nation just as Western interests are doing in neighboring Myanmar.

US color revolutions depend on widespread public ignorance, lightning fast chaos, and inexperienced governments unable to cope with the instability and eventually violence the US uses to pursue regime change. Thailand’s government has had plenty of time to contemplate its strategy with examples around the world of how to successfully defeat US-backed subversion, and how not to. Only time will tell how much Thailand has not just learned, but mastered in repelling this type of geopolitical attack.

Tony Cartalucci, Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine“New Eastern Outlook”.   

New Year, New Turmoil as US Targets Thailand

Washington’s Asia-Pacific strategy has gone from maintaining primacy over the region for decades to increasingly desperate attempts to salvage its now waning influence.

This is in part due to China’s rise as an economic, military and political regional power as well as the increasing self-reliance of smaller but still pivotal Asian nations. This includes the Southeast Asian Kingdom of Thailand.

In Washington’ Shadow 

The height of contemporary US influence over Thailand was in 2001 when Thaksin Shinawatra became prime minister. His administration eagerly catered to US interests at Thailand’s own expense, including sending Thai troops to participate in the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq, hosting the US Central Intelligence Agency’s extraordinary rendition programme on Thai soil, attempts to sign a US-Thai free trade agreement without approval of Thailand’s parliament and the privatisation of Thailand’s natural resources.

He also indulged in a wide spectrum of human rights abuses including a 2003 90 day “war on drugs” that left nearly 3,000 innocent people extrajudicially executed in the streets, a 2004 crackdown on protesters in Thailand’s restive deep south that left over 80 dead in a single day, the assassination or disappearance of his political opponents and a concerted campaign of fear and intimidation waged against the Thai media.

By 2006, Shinawatra had overreached in his ambitions. Between increasingly bold attempts to consolidate his power and the abuse of that power, the Thai military was finally prompted to oust him from office in a swift and bloodless coup.

In the aftermath, he would be convicted for corruption and sentenced to 2 years imprisonment. Rather than face jail, he fled Thailand and has attempted to run his political party remotely as a fugitive since.

Shinawatra, a multi-billionaire enjoying widespread support from foreign sponsors including in Washington, was able to return to power through a variety of proxies openly serving as his nominees at the head of his political party, Pheu Thai. These proxies included his own brother-in-law Somchai Wongsawat and by 2011, his own sister, Yingluck Shinawatra.

In a brief period between 2009-2010 when Shinawatra’s political opponents took power, he deployed protesters and armed militants in the streets of Thailand’s capital of Bangkok where they promptly fought gun battles against police and soldiers, carried out grenade attacks on counter-protesters and engaged in citywide looting and arson leaving nearly 100 dead.

During the 2011 election, Yingluck Shinawatra’s campaign signs literally read, “Thaksin Thinks, Pheu Thai Does,” an open admission that a convicted criminal and fugitive was running for office and that his sister was merely a placeholder.

Yingluck Shinawatra was ousted from power in 2014 in another coup following months of mass protests against Shinawatra’s government and Shinawatra’s systematic use of terrorism to target and attempt to quell the protesters.

Since the 2014 coup, Shinawatra has once again turned to violent coercion. His supporters have targeted tourist destinations and even a hospital with bombings.

Washington, for its part, has attempted to place considerable pressure on Thailand to quickly hold elections it hopes returns the Shinawatras and their proxies to power.

This pressure takes the form of both the US and European media engaging in a constant and concerted campaign to undermine the credibility of the current interim government. The US also uses a large collection of organisations it funds posing as a human rights advocates, pro-democracy activists and academics to add credibility to this disinformation campaign.

Fronts posing as Thai nongovernmental organisations including media platform Prachatai and rights advocates Thai Lawyers for Human Rights are openly funded by the United States government via its National Endowment for Democracy (NED) as well as convicted financial criminal George Soros’ Open Society Foundation.

Thailand Making a Break 

Thailand’s refusal to accept Shinawatra despite the risks of confronting him and the interests he represents fits into a larger regional trend where Asian states are increasingly reasserting themselves over enduring US primacy.

In addition to confronting Shinawatra, Thailand has begun to actively diversify its ties and dependencies away from the US and Europe and toward its immediate and growing neighbours in Asia. This includes not only its neighbours in Southeast Asia, but also China.

Thailand has begun replacing what has for decades been a military arsenal dominated by American equipment with tanks, armoured vehicles and even naval vessels from China. Thailand has also inked deals and begun construction on a number of infrastructure projects with Beijing, including high-speed rail that will link major Thai cities together and link Thailand itself with both its immediate neighbours and China’s southern Yunnan province.

Thailand’s geopolitical pivot is more than mere posturing to counter pressure placed on it after removing Washington’s political proxies from power. It is a new, permanent reality that other nations across Asia are also contributing to. Thailand is not alone in its quest to replace Washington’s enduring and coercive influence over the region with tangibly constructive ties with Beijing and others.

China Offers an Alternative 

China has helped relieve a number of pressure points the US has maintained against the rest of Asia for decades. This includes Washington’s ability to leverage economic pressure against Southeast Asia to coerce it along America’s desired path. After the more recent 2014 coup, the US attempted to once again leverage economic pressure against Bangkok to return the Shinawatras back to power.

This included attempts to target Thailand’s seafood industry and tourism. Despite these attempts, Thailand has endured. In terms of tourism, attempts by the American and European media to scare off potential visitors failed spectacularly, thanks to China’s regional rise.

Perhaps at one point in Thailand’s history, its tourism industry which accounts for about 17% of the nation’s GDP, depended on Western visitors who, if convinced to avoid Thailand, could inflict damage to both the industry and to the economy. However, today, Chinese tourists make up the vast majority of visitors entering Thailand. In 2016 approximately 8.7 million Chinese tourists entered the Kingdom, followed by 3.5 million Malaysians and 1 million Russians.

American travellers numbered less than 1 million, and the combined number of tourists from major North American and European nations still amounted to less than those arriving from China alone. It is safe to say that Chinese tourists were not moved by horror stories planted by the US and European media regarding Thailand, if they viewed them at all in the first place.

It is curious to note, however, that terrorist attacks targeting a downtown Bangkok shrine popular with Chinese tourists and bombings targeting other tourist destinations around Thailand followed the US and European media’s failed campaign to sabotage Thailand’s tourism industry.

This example illustrates how once useful “soft power” weapons at Washington’s disposal have been defused by Thailand’s and Asia’s ability as a whole to diversify their economic and political ties, and move out from under the shadow of Washington’s primacy. It is also an example of how Washington is apparently willing to use much more drastic options, including terrorism, to gain with blood what it has failed to gain through “soft power.”

China’s development of infrastructure both within its territory and connecting its economy with nations well beyond it is another example of an alternative to Washington. US free trade agreements are transparent grabs at a nation’s economy and natural resources. The text of most US free trade agreements read like updated versions of concessions forced upon nations by “gunboat diplomacy” during the height of the British Empire.

By developing China’s neighbours through massive infrastructure projects, Beijing is not only empowering itself, but empowering those nations hosting this new infrastructure. Not only will nations like Thailand be able to develop more constructive ties with Beijing as an alternative to Washington, it will be able to develop its own economic capacity negating previous dependencies on and vulnerabilities to concepts like “free trade.”

2018: A Year of Thai Turmoil

The US and Europe are visibly ratcheting up pressure on Thailand in 2018. Elections following the 2014 coup have been repeatedly pushed back, primarily because the cause of the coup, Thaksin Shinwatra and the immense power, influence and impunity he enjoys, has yet to be removed from Thailand’s political landscape making real free and fair elections an impossibility. For Washington, no election that even remotely puts Shinawatra and his Pheu Thai Party at a disadvantage will be recognised as “free and fair.”

The US and Europe have signalled that delaying beyond 2018 will not be tolerated and is already creating “space” for Shinawatra’s supporters to begin preparing for 2009-2010-style protests.

With the US and European media still denying violence carried out by Shinawatra and his supporters in 2009-2010 and again in 2014, the Thai opposition will have a clean slate from which to stoke murder and mayhem at the cost of Thailand’s political and economic stability.

Time is on Thailand’s side however. With each year, Thaksin Shinawatra and his political networks grow weaker while their sponsors in Washington, London and Brussels wane in terms of both real geopolitical power and their ability to influence public opinion at home and abroad. But while some in the US and European media appear to be making peace with the fact that Shinawatra is unlikely to ever make a comeback, where they have decided to retrench is particularly concerning.

Thailand’s deep south hosts an ongoing militancy led by nebulous separatists. Violence erupted in 2001 with Shinawatra taking office after two decades of enduring peace. The conflict has since cost thousands of lives but has remained at the fringe of both domestic and international media attention.

However, as it becomes clear that Shinawatra and his political supporters have exhausted themselves, US government-funded organisations attempting to undermine Thailand’s peace and stability have increasingly turned their attention toward the conflict in the deep south. Some such organisations are participating in “workshops” in the deep south aimed at “empowering” locals to legally contest the Thai government and impede ongoing security operations. The US used so-called nongovernmental organisations in and around Russia for similar purposes during Moscow’s protracted security operations in Chechnya.

The US has leverage terrorism everywhere from Afghanistan in the 1980’s to Libya and Syria beginning in 2011 to the Philippines just last year as a pretext for political and military involvement in the sovereign affairs of foreign nations. The US openly seeks a military presence on mainland Southeast Asia to augment its military presence in Korea, Japan and the Philippines in the east and its ongoing military occupation in Afghanistan in the west as part of a larger strategy of encircling China.

Inflaming Thailand’s deep south while attempting to return a US proxy to power could produce in the future circumstances that finally see US troops permanently stationed on Thai soil and along China’s peripheries. Similar efforts are ongoing in neighbouring Myanmar where the US is fanning the flames on both sides of the current Rohingya crisis. There exists a real prospect of US troops stationing themselves in Myanmar, even in small numbers, to serve an “advisory role” for “anti-terror” operations against militants US ally Saudi Arabia is arming and funding.

A true breakthrough for US policy in Asia would be linking isolated conflicts in Myanmar, Thailand and the Philippines together, creating synergies similar to those serving US interests across the Middle East and North Africa.

Thus, 2018 will not only see a concerted attempt to undermine the current Thai government and force it to hold elections the US will do all in its power to ensure Shinawatra wins, but also will see US-funded organisations in Thailand increasingly attempt to leverage violence in Thailand’s deep south to endanger not only Thailand’s peace and stability, but peace and stability across Southeast Asia.

Joseph Thomas is chief editor of Thailand-based geopolitical journal, The New Atlas and contributor to the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

EU “Restoring” Ties with Thailand Symbolic, Foreign Interference Will Continue

A mid-December announcement by the European Union was made stating that the EU had agreed to restore ties with the Southeast Asian Kingdom of Thailand “at all levels” after suspending them in 2014 in the wake of a military coup which ousted the government of Yingluck Shinawatra.

AFP reported in its article, “EU resumes official contacts with Thai junta,” that:

The bloc said developments in Thailand this year, including the adoption of a new constitution and a pledge by junta chief Prayut Chan-O-Cha to hold elections in November 2018, meant it was “appropriate” to resume ties.

The announcement however, was conditional. AFP  also reports:

But the European Union repeated its call for the restoration of full democracy and said it was still concerned about harassment of human rights activists and the curtailing of free speech in Thailand.

What the AFP article and the EU statement both fail to mention was the context of the 2014 coup, the nature of the government it ousted from power and precisely which groups have been subjected to the so-called “curtailing of free speech.”

The EU’s move, which was immediately supported by the US embassy in Bangkok, is likely an attempt to pressure the current interim government from further delaying elections and holding them prematurely, thus likely returning political proxies associated with Yingluck Shinawatra to power.

Returning a US-European Proxy to Power 

Yingluck Shinawatra was sister to ousted former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra. Thaksin Shinawatra held office from 2001-2006, committed serial human rights abuses including the extrajudicial killing of nearly 3,000 in a “war on drugs” in just under 90 days in 2003. He also eagerly censored his political opponents and critics in the media either through courts or through physical intimidation and violence. Several of his critics were either assassinated or disappeared over the course of this time in office.

In 2006, the Royal Thai Army swiftly and without bloodshed, ousted Thaksin Shinawatra from power. Since Shinawatra’s removal from power in 2006, he and his supporters have conducted an on-and-off campaign of terrorism, violence, arson, political assassinations together with a concerted propaganda campaign attacking Thailand’s independent institutions including the nation’s courts, its military and its constitutional monarchy. Together, these institutions represent insurmountable roadblocks to Shinawatra’s return to power. They also, by no coincidence, impede foreign interests from entering and fully exploiting Thailand, its population and its natural resources.

It has been groups associated with Shinawatra’s efforts to attack and undermine Thailand’s institutions that have been targeted by the “curtailing of free speech.”  These groups also so happen to enjoy extensive funding, political and material support from the embassies of the United States, United Kingdom, Canada and the EU.

The aforementioned AFP article also characterised the ousted government of Yingluck Shinawatra as representing a certain level of “democracy.” However, Yingluck Shinawatra openly campaigned in 2011 as her brother’s admitted proxy. Thaksin Shinawatra currently resides abroad evading jail after a criminal conviction for abuse of power was handed down by Thai courts in 2008. In other words, the “democracy” AFP claims Yingluck Shinawatra’s government represented in reality amounted to a convicted criminal running the government remotely through a nepotist-appointed proxy. In truth, it represented neither “democracy” nor adhered to even the most elementary underpinnings of rule of law.

As to why the EU seeks elections in Thailand prematurely before reforms can be fully implemented and Shinawatra’s return to power blocked indefinitely, it is necessary to examine Shinawatra’s utility to US and European interests both in Thailand and in a wider context, in Asia Pacific vis-à-vis China.

During Shinawatra’s time in office, he eagerly supported US-European foreign policy both in Asia and globally. He committed Thai troops to the invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003 and hosted the US Central Intelligence Agency’s extraordinary rendition and secret detention programme on Thai territory. He also attempted to pass a US-Thai free trade agreement by sidestepping both public opposition to it and any form of Thai parliamentary review and approval.

The most recent EU statement also included mention of “free trade.”

With years of US-European support for Shinawatra’s efforts to return to power accumulating a substantial political debt, any possibility of his actual return would be accompanied by an even more zealous commitment to US-European interests at Thailand’s and the region’s expense.

Containing China, Maintaining US-Euro Primacy in the Pacific 

In a wider context, the time period Shinawatra held power saw the US and Europe cultivating other client regimes in the region including Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy party in Myanmar, Anwar Ibrahim in Malaysia and before a very recent falling out, Hun Sen in Cambodia. Together, this collection of client regimes was to constitute a united front against the growing influence of Beijing.

From the turn of the century to present day, it is clear that US and European plans have suffered immeasurable setbacks. In Thailand, Shinawatra’s ouster in 2006 followed by his sister’s ouster in 2014 represent a downward trend in both Shinawatra’s political staying power and the influence of US-European-funded organisations, media platforms, institutions and opposition fronts.

And as US-European influence via clients like Shinawatra wanes, ties between China and Thailand have grown substantially. While Washington offers “free trade” and ambiguous “military ties” to Thailand, Beijing offers nationwide infrastructure projects including high speed rail, new rolling stock for Thailand’s existing mass transportation networks, military hardware to replace Thailand’s ageing US-made inventory and above all, a partnership absent of preconditions regarding Thailand’s internal political affairs.

These deals have been sealed by the political order opposed to Shinawatra and currently holding power in Thailand.

Despite hopes fading of ever reestablishing primacy in the Pacific, it is clear that the US and its European partners have not abandoned efforts to try. And while their primary objectives may never be achieved, slowing Beijing’s ascent enough to integrate it into the existing Washington-London-Brussels dominated international order rather than having Beijing find itself at the head of an alternative model of international relations, in their minds, may still be possible.

If US-EU Cannot Have Thailand, No One Will… 

While any sort of substantial and enduring return to power for Shinawatra or a US-European proxy like him is highly unlikely, as the United States and the European Union have done elsewhere, particularly in the Middle East in regards to Iran’s rising influence and its enemies’ inability to contain it, where client states cannot be created, chaos is created instead to deny opponents economic and military partners, or any semblance of peace and stability along their peripheries.

A variety of gambits have been put into play simultaneously alongside efforts to return Shinawatra to power aimed at sowing discord within Thailand and producing synergies with similar destabilisation efforts in neighbouring Myanmar and Cambodia. These include efforts pursued by the US and EU member embassies in Thailand itself to prop up and perpetuate protests against the current Thai government. They also include efforts to expand conflict in Thailand’s troubled southern provinces and foster inter-religious conflict between Thai Buddhists and Muslims who have coexisted for centuries.

In other words, if the US and Europe cannot have Thailand, they have cultivated multiple options to ensure the nation can provide no one else, particularly Beijing, constructive ties or contribute to wider regional peace and prosperity.

This explanation goes far in illustrating why media organisations like AFP and the European Union in its recent statement so disingenuously portray Thailand’s current political crisis as a battle between “democracy” and a “junta.” The truth is far more illuminating as to who, what and more precisely why Thailand is unable to enjoy political stability and move forward together with the rest of the region into economic prosperity Europe and its partners across the Atlantic see disappearing into the distance as the global balance of power shifts.

The EU “restoring ties” with Thailand is mostly symbolic. Bangkok is unlikely to receive any benefit from these “ties,” and regardless of the current government’s timetable for elections or any signal from Bangkok in appeasement to Brussels, EU member embassies have every intention to continue creating and sustaining opposition fronts aimed both at fostering short-term instability and the long-term undermining of Thailand’s sovereign institutions.

For Thailand, continuing to foster real partnerships and ties beyond the US and EU while building up its own independent capacity to ensure economic prosperity and national defence is essential to overcoming the challenges EU “ties” really represent. Anglo-American and European foreign policy for centuries has been predicated on dictating terms from a position of uncontested strength. As the global balance of power shifts, this position of strength has eroded. Whatever Thailand agrees to, it must be done in the wider context of further eroding US-European primacy in regions thousands of miles from their respective capitals and striking a more equitable and mutually beneficial balance in international relations.

The EU’s offer to “restore ties” with Thailand is empty and will only serve as a thin veil over continued efforts to coerce Bangkok into rushing ahead with elections the EU and its partners in Washington hope to influence.

Joseph Thomas is chief editor of Thailand-based geopolitical journal, The New Atlas and contributor to the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

Thailand: US Creating “Space” For Destabilisation

In late November, the US, Canadian and British embassies along with several other European partners as well as the US National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and Amnesty International, organised what they called the “Isaan Human Rights Festival” in northeast Thailand.

US National Endowment for Democracy (NED) funded media front, the “Isaan Record” in its article, “Rare human rights event gathers Isaan communities and foreign diplomats,” claims (our emphasis):

The 8th Annual Isaan Human Rights Festival brought together 17 communities from across the region, activists, scholars, and international and Thai students. Ambassadors from Finland, Sweden, and the United Kingdom were in attendance, as well as political officers from Canada, the European Union and the United States. National Human Rights Commissioner Angkhana Neelapaijit also attend the event. 

Hosted by Mahasarakham University’s College of Politics and Governance, the festival opened a rare space to discuss the human rights situation in the Northeast.

While the US-funded media outfit mentioned funding provided by the Germany-based Heinrich Böll Foundation, it failed to mention other sponsors whose logos were clearly visible in media used throughout the event.

Creating Space for Destabilisation and Conflict 

The foreign-sponsored “festival” takes place against the backdrop of a currently dormant Thai political crisis. In 2014, the Thai military ousted then Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, sister and publicly admitted proxy of Thaksin Shinawatra, a convicted criminal hiding abroad to evade a jail sentence and who was himself ousted in 2006 in a similar coup.

Since Thaksin Shinawatra’s ouster in 2006, he has led a campaign of terrorism, street violence, armed insurrection and assassinations. This includes riots in 2009 that saw sections of Bangkok lit ablaze and at least two shopkeepers gunned down by looting Shinawatra supporters. The following year, Shinawatra organised up to 300 heavily armed militants who fought for weeks in the streets of Bangkok against the military, leaving nearly 100 dead and culminating in citywide arson.

The most recent coup was precipitated when Shinawatra’s militants began murdering anti-Shinawatra protesters in the street. Armed with assault rifles and grenade launchers, hit-and-run attacks targeted protest camps across Bangkok and even those that sprung up in other provinces. Over 20 would die, including women and children.

Such violence is backed by complicit foreign governments, the Anglo-American and European media, and an army of foreign-funded fronts posing as nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) who help cover up, spin and excuse the violence and the military’s reaction to it, portraying Thailand’s armed forces as heavy-handed and oppressive.

The November 2017 festival itself had many of the NGOs lobbying for Shinawatra and his supporters in attendance and was eagerly promoted across social media by those unable to attend.

The US-funded “Isaan Record” would go on to report:

The festival kicked off with a panel on human rights in the Northeast. Representatives of five regional non-governmental organizations voiced their concerns about the shrinking space for popular representation and the military regime’s repression of community voices.

It also claims:

After taking power in a coup in May 2014, the military junta had banned gatherings of more than five people. Violation of the ban a maximum penalty of six months in prison or a fine of 10,000 baht (about $300 US). Several northeastern activists have been prosecuted for exercising their right to freedom of assembly and freedom of speech between May 2014 and September 2015, according to a report from Thai Lawyers For Human Rights.

Thai Lawyers for Human Rights (TLHR) is another US State Department-funded front, created with direct assistance from the US Embassy in Bangkok the day after the 2014 coup.

The “activists” arrested were likewise from foreign-backed fronts opposing the coup, many of whom enjoy direct ties to diplomats from the US, British and EU missions. And while the “Isaan Record” claims gatherings of more than five people have been banned, this is not entirely true. Gatherings that have been banned are those sponsored by foreign interests on behalf of the ousted government of Thaksin Shinawatra and his proxies.

Other events and gatherings, including those petitioning the government on a wide variety of practical issues have gone forward, including gatherings by groups that have opposed government decisions, but who constructively proposed solutions to specific problems and were willing to work with the government to achieve them.

In other words, the “space” the US embassy and its European partners seek to create in Thailand’s political landscape is for supporters of the ousted government merely under the guise of addressing “human rights.”

The US Condemns “Russian Interference” as it Interferes Globally 

Even at first glance, the notion of foreign embassies “opening space” to discuss the internal politics of a foreign nation is a blatant violation of that nation’s sovereignty. That the event was held in Thailand’s northeast region, known as “Isaan,” the former political stronghold of Shinawatra, is no coincidence.

The “festival” was organized to breath life into what has been an otherwise dormant opposition since Shinawatra and his sister were both removed from power.

Without a constant torrent of monetary and material support, this “opposition” would atrophy and perish.

By providing this “space” with Shinawatra’s supporters condemning the Thai government from behind a line of foreign ambassadors, the lifespan of Shinawatra’s opposition is artificially extended until some time in the future when it can be once again funded, rearmed and unleashed in the cities and villages of Thailand to sow another decade of political crisis, destabilisation and bloodshed.

One could imagine the reaction from Washington should the Russian ambassador and a front of Russian-friendly nations organise a similar event in America’s Midwest and how quickly it would be condemned as foreign interference, all in attendance arrested and tried for sedition and diplomatic ties with Russia severed entirely.

The unfortunate reality for Thailand and nations like it is the prevailing geopolitical maxim of “might makes right.” Thailand lacks the ability to move against overt foreign-funded subversion conducted directly on its own soil by still powerful and influential nations like the US and the UK. Barring the event, arresting its attendees, expelling diplomats or cutting ties with those nations sponsoring such activities are not realistic options for Thailand.

Instead, patience and asymmetrical responses are required, including the reformation of Thailand’s media which is currently overrun by foreign-trained Thai journalists,  many of whom serve merely as scribes for US and European talking points. Filling Thailand’s political space with genuine Thai NGOs, thus displacing foreign-funded fronts posing as NGOs, and addressing legitimate concerns regarding everything from the environment to human rights concerns, working with the government on these issues rather than exploiting them to subvert political stability, is also a viable and constructive option.

What is perhaps most ironic of all about those involved in this brand of foreign interference in another nation’s internal affairs is that their personal social media accounts are awash with headlines about “Russian interference” in American and European politics. It is ironic because what the US accuses Russia of without evidence, is something each and every one of these diplomats and NGO workers are demonstrably guilty of on a daily basis.

US and European pressure on Thailand stems from an ongoing long-term effort to encircle and contain China with a united front of nations along its geopolitical peripheries. By replacing Thailand’s sovereign government with a reliable client state or a divided, failed state, would deprive Beijing of an economic and political partner in the region.

The current government of Thailand has forged strong ties with China, including through the acquisition of weapons to replace its ageing US-made arsenal and mega-infrastructure projects including a high-speed rail network.

Joseph Thomas is chief editor of Thailand-based geopolitical journal, The New Atlas and contributor to the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

Look Who’s Interfering: Tillerson’s Thai Election Comment

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson released a press statement regarding Thailand’s National Day. In it he expressed diplomatic greetings and well-wishing to the Thai people, but failed to resist also expressing American exceptionalism – stating, “we look forward to Thailand holding elections next year.”

While the statement may seem rather innocuous at first glance, it is anything but.

Returning a Murderous Proxy to Power 

Thailand’s elections have been put on hold, following a 2014 military coup ousting the US-backed regime of Yingluck Shinawtra who served openly as her brother Thaksin Shinawatra’s proxy.

Thaksin Shinawatra resides abroad in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, a convicted criminal evading a 2-year jail sentence for abuse of power. He too was ousted from power in a military coup in 2006.

Before being removed from power, he oversaw a brutal “war on drugs” in 2003 that left nearly 3,000 extrajudicially killed in the streets over the course of just 90 days. He also attempted to unilaterally sign a US-Thai free trade deal without parliamentary approval, sent Thai troops to participate in the US invasion of Iraq, and allowed Thai territory to be used as part of the US CIA’s extraordinary rendition program.

Since being deposed from power in 2006, Shinawatra has organized street mobs, militants, and terrorists, killing scores of people, conducting campaigns of mass arson, bombings, and assassinations as part of his bid to seize back power.

He regularly meets members of his Pheua Thai Party (PTP) in Hong Kong, and has been allowed to travel across Europe, to the UK, and even to the US to conduct business despite being a fugitive and despite his human rights record.

When Shinawatra’s sister contested elections in 2011 as head PTP, the campaign slogan was literally, “Thaksin Thinks, Pheua Thai Does,” an open admission that Thaksin Shinawatra, not his sister, would be  running Thailand upon taking office. Despite the obvious illegality of a convicted criminal remotely running Thailand from a hotel room in Dubai, the immense impunity Shinawatra enjoys thanks to his foreign sponsors made it more than possible. The 2011 election results were heavily defended by the Western media and the legitimacy of Shinawatra’s proxy government never questioned.

The military removed his sister from power in 2014 after Shinawatra’s militants began killing protesters in the streets.

Elections have been pushed back repeatedly ever since. The reason is relatively simple – as long as the largest opposition party contesting Thailand’s next election is openly led by a mass murderer and convicted criminal waging a campaign of terror against the Thai state from abroad, elections are untenable.

US Directly Interfering in Thailand’s Elections

A process is well underway to uproot Shinawatra’s criminal influence over Thailand’s political landscape before elections are held, but this process is continuously hampered by pressure from Western governments and the myriad of NGOs they fund. Shinawatra’s networks of agitators, propagandists, lobbyists, and functionaries are being protected under the guise of “human rights” advocacy. Overt criminals and even terrorists are being labelled “political prisoners” by familiar names in the West’s regime change machinery like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

The US State Department itself is first and foremost in eagerly funding media fronts, agitators, and faux-rights advocates in Thailand who work in concert to excuse Shinawatra and his followers for their serial abuses and in support of returning Shinawatra to power.

US-funded fronts like Prachatai, Thai Netizen, the Cross Cultural Foundation, Forty Rights, Thai Lawyers for Human Rights, and many more, repetitively demand expediency in holding Thai elections, knowing full well the likely victor at the polls will be Thaksin Shinawatra’s PTP. They decry any legislative move that would make it more difficult for Shinawatra’s proxies to return to power, or limit their power should they take office.

Absent from these demands for expedient elections to “restore democracy” is any explanation as to how a government openly run by a convicted criminal and mass murderer from a hotel room in Dubai is in any sense “legal” or  “democratic.” Nor has any explanation been provided as to how removing Shinawatra’s sister from power – who openly served as his proxy – was “illegal” or “undemocratic.”

It is yet another example of American exceptionalism and the tools of “rights advocacy” and “democracy promotion” it wields to advance it.

At a time when US ties with Russia are strained by repetitive accusations of “Russian interference” in Western politics – specifically elections – the US Secretary of State obliquely demanding expedient elections in Thailand knowing full well who will take power  and whose money and influence is responsible for such an outcome -illustrates just how one-sided America views respecting national sovereignty and staying out of foreign elections.

For Thailand, preventing Thaksin Shinawatra from returning to power in any form is certainly a priority, but if the network of money, power, and foreign sponsorship that has maintained Shinawatra’s staying power is not dealt with, another “Shinawatra” will simply take his place. A process of forging ties with other nations to reduce the amount of dependence on and influence form the West is already well underway in Bangkok. It must continue and expand.

The frustrating hypocrisy of the US and its real-world implications is owed to its unwarranted power and wealth. Nations collectively taking steps to minimize that power and wealth in the form of a multipolar world order is key to confronting and dealing with those implications.

Tony Cartalucci, Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine“New Eastern Outlook”.  

 

West Already Targeting Thailand’s New King

Not even a day had passed after the funeral rites for Thailand’s revered and respected former head of state, King Bhumibol Adulyadej before the Western media began launching attacks on his heir and current Thai head of state, King Maha Vajiralongkorn.

It is a development widely predicted – with the United States and its European partners long-eager to pursue regime change in Thailand as part of a wider strategy to either control or destabilize Southeast Asia as a means of hindering China’s regional and global rise.

First Shots 

The AFP in its article, “Protected by draconian law, King Rama X begins to make his mark,” would cite rumors and half-truths in an attempt to depict Thailand’s new head of state as a shadowy, unpopular, and despotic figure that remains “unpredictable.”

The article claims that Thailand’s “draconian law” prevents criticism of its highest institution, citing the arrest of a “student activist” for sharing a BBC article slandering the head of state.

What AFP and other articles consistently and intentionally fail to mention is that these “student activists” are US and European funded and directed agitators, enjoying direct support from the US, British, and EU diplomatic missions in Thailand. Embassy staff often accompany their agitators to police stations and appearing in public with their family members.

In other words, those targeted by Thailand’s “draconian law” are engaged in both treason and sedition and could easily be charged and sentenced for either – or both – and are instead granted lesser sentences, many of which are pardoned long before they are fully served.

Similar articles have been appearing in the BBC, CNN, AP, and other mainstays of Western propaganda before and after the passing of King Bhumibol Adulyadej last year and upon the succession of his son and heir.

The Reality of Thailand’s Monarchy

Thailand’s monarchy represents an entire institution and spans centuries with the current dynasty being nearly 300 years old. It has united and protected Thailand from foreign domination – leaving Thailand as the only nation in Southeast Asia to avoid colonization.

When French, British, and later American imperialism swept through Asia, finding and exploiting socioeconomic and cultural fault lines in each nation to divide and conquer them along, the unifying nature of Thailand’s highest institution and its cunning geopolitical maneuvering left Thailand a bastion of stability and strength that remains to this day unconquered.

Over the centuries, the monarchy has reinvented itself. Thailand – then known as Siam – voluntarily abolished slavery in a period of time when in Western nations conflict and race wars were waged – the effects of which still reverberate in modern Western society. The Thai monarchy has also – for over 80 years – been a constitutional monarchy unlike the West’s closest allies in the Middle East – several of which are some of the last absolute monarchies on Earth.

As is in the case of any nation targeted by Western destabilization – any attempt at all to rein in agitators and even outright terrorists is condemned by the West’s network of faux-rights advocates and its media as “draconian.” At a time when the United States bemoans alleged Russian interference in its own domestic political affairs, its meddling abroad in places like Thailand and its neighbors in Southeast Asia continues unabated.

Today, the unity and geopolitical maneuvering characteristic of earlier heads of state continues.

Thailand has incrementally shifted away from the United States and its influence in Asia Pacific toward its regional neighbors including China.

At a time when the United States’ Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) lies in ruins, major infrastructure projects have been inked between Bangkok and Beijing and are beginning construction including a network of high-speed railways that will interlink Thailand’s major cities as well as link Thailand with its neighbors and with China.

Thailand is also systematically replacing its Vietnam War-era US-made arsenal with Chinese, Russian, and European equipment. It is replacing its main battle tanks with Chinese VT-4s, as well as its armored personnel carries with Chinese-made systems.

The acquisition of Chinese submarines, joint-development of multiple rocket launcher systems with China, and an increasing number of joint Thai-Chinese military exercises marks a dramatic shift away from the West, and focused more within Asia itself. It is a process that has been unfolding for years, carefully cultivated by Thailand’s independent institutions at a time when its “elected leaders” backed by the West sought to bankrupt, divide, and derail the nation.

The transition from King Bhumibol Adulyadej to King Maha Vajiralongkorn will have no impact on this process. The Thai monarchy is above all, an institution that consists of not only the head of state, but a circle of highly skilled and experienced advisers whom King Maha Vajiralongkorn has retained from his father’s council ensuring continuity for this well-thought out policy.

The only real change that has occurred is the perceived window of opportunity the West has to target and sow doubt in the minds of Thais and the world regarding Thailand’s sensitive transition as a means to once again attempt to destabilize and divide the country.

In the Following Months 

The United States and its European partners maintain an extensive network of foreign-funded fronts in Thailand posing as “nongovernmental organizations” (NGOs). They include media fronts and faux rights advocates like Prachatai, the Issan Record, Thai Netizens, iLaw, and Thai Lawyers for Human Rights – all funded  by the US State Department via the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and US-based corporate foundations like convicted financial criminal George Soros’ Open Society.

The majority of their activity focuses not on actual rights advocacy, but on attacking and undermining Thailand’s independent institutions – namely the military and monarchy – and both promoting the opposition as well as covering up the abuses, impropriety, violence, and the foreign-backed nature of the opposition.

There is the Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand (FCCT) based in downtown Bangkok in which most Western media outlets house their offices and where they regularly hold joint events aimed at “making news” rather than reporting it. This includes providing Western-funded agitators with a platform and an international audience, as well as inviting Western diplomats to come and comment on Thailand’s internal political affairs.

There is also US proxy Thaksin Shinawatra, his Pheu Thai Party (PTP), and his ultra-violent street front, the United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship (UDD) also known simply as the “red shirts.” Shinawatra – ousted from power in 2006 and his sister ousted from power in 2014 – has been the recipient of US support since the 1990s. Since 2006 he has received lobbying services from some of the largest firms in Washington while his political network receives Western support and funding within Thailand.

Often, all three – foreign correspondents from outlets like AP, AFP, and the BBC, along with PTP and UDD leaders, and members from America’s network of faux-NGOs can be seen meeting at the FCCT at the same time along with foreign diplomats from the US, British, and EU diplomatic missions in Thailand.

This interconnected network has and will continue over the next several months to mount pressure on the military-led government to rush through with elections the US hopes it can sufficiently manipulate to place a PTP-led government into power. From there, the continued division and destruction of Thailand will continue.

What the West fears most is further delays in Thailand’s next election, further eroding its proxy’s political momentum which is already suffering greatly as its populist policies have been put on hold and as the current, military-led government addresses many of the socioeconomic plights PTP has exploited for well over a decade to acquire political dependence from the nation’s populous northeast region.

And as Thailand’s new head of state fulfills his role, the window will close on doubts – real or imagined among the Thai population – over “unpredictability.” A diminished PTP together with a stable economy, military, and monarchy will close the window of opportunity further still for would-be regime changers in Washington, London, and Brussels.

With the facts in hand, articles pushed out by the Western media attempting to malign Thailand’s leadership can be exposed and their effect on manipulating public perception diminished. Ensuring that such propaganda gains no traction is the best inoculation against the firestorm of violent regime change that has consumed other nations. While genuine activists and media members have helped expose and derail US plans in places like Syria, preventing conflict from erupting in the first place is better still.

Tony Cartalucci, Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”  

China and Thailand: Tank Tracks and Train Tracks

While Thailand undergoes a sensitive transition with the October funeral for its head of state, the widely respected and revered King Bhumibol Adulyadej, the Southeast Asia constitutional monarchy, home to 70 million and one of the strongest regional economies, continues forward with solid footing in its, and the region’s realignment with its neighbours and East Asia, particularly China.

The Royal Thai Army took delivery this month of the first 28 Chinese-built VT4 main battle tanks (MBTs), with possibly over 100 additional tanks to be acquired in the near future. The growing fleet of VT4 MBTs joins other Chinese-built armoured vehicles in Thailand’s inventory including over 30 VN-1 and over 450 Type 85 armoured personnel carriers.

The acquisition of Chinese military equipment by Thailand’s armed forces also includes 3 submarines as well as joint-development of multiple rocket launchers. There is also a growing number of joint Thai-Chinese military exercises including Blue Strike 2016, which followed Falcon Strike 2015. The exercises involved both nation’s marine and air forces respectively and represent an alternative to what was once the United States’ exclusive domain in Southeast Asia.

In addition to growing Thai-Chinese military ties, both nations are moving forward with infrastructure projects including massive railway initiatives. Construction is set to start in November of this year on the Thai-Chinese high-speed rail network. The first stage will link Thailand’s capital of Bangkok to the northeast province of Nakhon Ratchasima. Eventually, China and its Southeast Asian neighbours plan to create a high-speed rail network running from China all the way to Singapore via Laos, Thailand and Malaysia. Construction in Laos is already underway.

American Counterstrokes 

It is clear that Bangkok benefits from its growing relationship with Beijing. Washington, which openly and for decades has sought to hinder Beijing’s regional and global rise, has little to offer as an alternative. Worse still, Washington has filled the void left by its inability to offer constructive military and economic ties with a regiment of political interference, coercion and even confrontation.

Bangkok is home to numerous foreign governmental organisations posing as “independent” nongovernmental organisations (i.e. Prachatai, Thai Netizens, Thai Lawyers for Human Rights, the New Democracy Movement and iLaw) fully funded by the United States government and a number of private US and European-based foundations, serving US and European interests. These foreign fronts seek to pressure the Thai government to adopt a system of economics and government that interlocks with and is subservient to US and European institutions, while overwriting Thailand’s own independent institutions, particularly the military and the constitutional monarchy.

Additionally, the US has attempted to push through one-sided free trade agreements including the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) which eventually unravelled and was abandoned by Washington itself.

Thailand, which possesses a unified population, a formidable military and a strong, resilient economy, has weathered multiple attempts by the United States and its European partners to impose a client state through politicians like the recently ousted Yingluck Shinawatra and her brother, Thaksin Shinawatra.

However successful Thailand has been at thwarting these attempts, the Shinawatra’s political party, Pheu Thai Party (PTP), still enjoys impunity from the law, both because of the wealth and influence the Shianwatra family and its political allies still hold within Thailand through their many and immense business holdings, as well as the party’s foreign backing, primarily through the large and growing network of foreign governmental organisations posing as nongovernmental organisations in Thailand.

It is likely that attempts to once again install a PTP-led government and roll back progress the Kingdom of Thailand has made out from under US hegemony over the past decade will begin in earnest after October when funeral rites for King Bhumibol Adulyadej are completed.

US and European funded organisations have already spent the last year attempting from various axes to find and exploit various divides in Thailand’s sociopolitical landscape, including through student groups, sectarian divides and tired “pro-democracy” themes that have long since played out elsewhere around the world as an insincere façade used by special interests to advance their own agenda, not the agenda of actual representative governance.

With the relative success for US and European interests in Myanmar in hindering joint Chinese progress, including the reversal or delay of several major infrastructure projects and the ongoing violence in Rakhine state precisely where Beijing had hoped to create one of many hubs for its One Belt, One Road initiative, Washington, London and Brussels perhaps believe there is still time to replicate similar obstacles in neighbouring Thailand as well as in Cambodia, and even Laos.

What the Success of Thai-Chinese Relations Will Mean for Asia Pacific 

In essence, Thai-Chinese ties represent constructive but cautious steps toward creating a new political order in Asia Pacific, one in which nations in the region, not beyond it, determine the socioeconomic norms within and between each nation.

Infrastructure projects will transform the face of Asia much in the way they have transformed China itself. The creation of ultra-modern mass transportation, energy projects, the economic growth that will result from both, coupled with local, efficient and modern defence technology will first incrementally force foreign influence from Washington, London and Brussels to the peripheries of Asia Pacific’s socioeconomic landscape, before permanently pushing them out all together.

In the future that Thai-Chinese relations represents, Washington, London and Brussels will approach Asia Pacific with mutual respect and for mutual benefit, with the poor habits established by centuries of first European, then American colonisation finally exorcised from the policies executed by each nation’s respective foreign affairs offices, and their embassies dotting the Asia Pacific map.

More than that, the rise of Asia illustrates how alternative economic circles of power in turn create alternative political circles of power. It illustrates the necessity of nations acquiring and leveraging technology to drive economic progress, a process essential both for prosperity, but also in terms of national security and peace. It also illustrates how the rise of Asian corporations, institutions and enterprises (both state and private) and the preservation of well organised national institutions like those in Thailand have created the very sort of global balance of power unipolar globalisation had promised but ultimately, and some may say predictably, failed to deliver.

For China and Thailand, both nations face concerted efforts by the Western proponents and chief benefactors of globalisation to hinder real progress and instead perpetuate their existing international political order. Thai-Chinese cooperation, and similar cooperation within Asia Pacific will continue this shift and balance of power, one that even Washington policymakers are beginning to admit is inevitable and who are already shifting from preventing it, to merely delaying it for as long as possible.

Joseph Thomas is chief editor of Thailand-based geopolitical journal, The New Atlas and contributor to the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

How the West is Trying to Recreate Myanmar’s Crisis in Thailand

Media platforms either directly funded by the United States government or by their political proxies in Thailand, including US-funded Prachatai and Khao Sod English, have begun investing increasing amounts of energy into fueling a currently non-existent sectarian divide in Thai society.

They are concentrating their efforts in promoting the activities of a small anti-Muslim movement in Thailand’s northeast region often referred to as Issan. Issan – it is no coincidence – is also the epicenter of previous US efforts to divide and overthrow the political order of Thailand via their proxy Thaksin Shinawatra, his Pheu Thai Party, and his ultra-violent street front, the United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship (UDD or “red shirts”). Shinawatra and his political proxies were ousted from power in 2014 by a swift and peaceful military coup.

Today, temples affiliated with Shinawatra’s political network are turning from a tried and tired, primarily class-based narrative, to one targeting Thailand’s second largest religion – Islam, in hopes of dividing and destroying Thai society along sectarian lines.

From northern cities like Chiang Mai to the northeast in provinces like Khon Kaen, suspiciously identical movements, with identical tactics, organized across social media platforms like Facebook are protesting Mosques, calling for specific acts of violence against Muslims, and using the same sort of factual and intellectually dishonest rhetoric peddled by veteran Western Islamophobes used to fuel the West’s global campaign of divide, destroy, and conquer everywhere from the US and Europe itself, to Libya, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and more recently, Myanmar and the Philippines in Southeast Asia.

Tools of Empire: Divide and Conquer 

Myanmar, which borders Thailand, currently finds itself at the apex of nationalist and racist-driven violence targeting its primarily Muslim Rohingya ethnic minority. Groups of supposed “Buddhists” who form a more deeply rooted version of what the US and its proxies are trying to create in Thailand, were used to both create a deep sectarian divide where once there was coexistence, and to help put the US and European-funded political network of Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy (NLD) party into power.

The humanitarian crisis created in Myanmar serves several functions for the US and its European partners who have meticulously cultivated it over the course of several decades.

First, it allows the West to continuously hold significant leverage over the current government – one who at any moment may be tempted to break away from its decades-long Western sponsors and collaborate with a more local, sustainable, and constructive partner like China.

Second, because the Rohingya crisis is highly localized to Myanmar’s western state of Rakhine, it also presents a highly controlled conflict the US can use to introduce foreign-funded terrorism, and in turn, create a pretext for Western “counter-terrorism” assistance in the form of US and European troops, military assets, and even bases on the ground.

A small contingent of Saudi-funded and directed militants has already been introduced into Myanmar’s ongoing crisis and will likely be expanded until US military “assistance” and thus the first stage in establishing a permanent military presence in Myanmar can be justified.

This would fulfill a long-term goal the United States has sought to achieve in Southeast Asia – the permanent positioning of US military assets in a nation directly bordering China.

A similar scenario is unfolding in the Philippines – a nation that was decisively shifting away from Washington – a one time colonial power over the Philippines – in favor of closer and more constructive ties with Beijing. The nation is now faced with a sudden surge in foreign-funded terrorists – a surge so significant, militants managed to take over the southern city of Marawi resulting in full-scale military operations including airstrikes in order to retake it.

Amid the manufactured crisis featuring terrorists sponsored by the United States’ closest Persian Gulf allies – specifically Saudi Arabia – the US found itself with the perfect pretext to reassert itself militarily and geopolitically over an increasingly independent Philippines.

The Daily Beast in its article, “The Philippines Is Destroying the City of Marawi to Save It From ISIS,” would attempt to portray the US-Saudi engineered crisis and subsequent pretext for the US military’s expanded role in the Philippines as more ironic and coincidental than part of a cynical plan, claiming:

The Mautes have pledged allegiance to the so-called Islamic State, and use many of the tactics that the terror group honed in years of conflict in Iraq and Syria. 

Despite vehement antagonism toward the U.S. and its military expressed by Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte back in December, after the Mautes moved on Marawi in May, The New York Times reported U.S. Special Operations Forces were here as advisers supporting Philippine operations in June.

The Philippines represents the future of Myanmar once the crisis there reaches critical mass. For Thailand, the downward spiral of both the Philippines and Myanmar represents its own future should it allow the sociopolitical rot of sectarian divide take root at home.

For the US – it has sought for decades to encircle and contain China along multiple fronts. This includes across Southeast Asia where US policymakers envision a united front composed of US-backed client states used to box China in – or a series of failed and dysfunctional states that prevent China from developing any beneficial ties with its neighbors to the south.

Considering the success the US is having in the Philippines and Myanmar regarding its use of terrorism and reactionary sectarian division, it is logical that signs of US efforts in Thailand to do likewise are now appearing.

How the US and its Proxies Seek a Sectarian Divide in Thailand  

Muslims and Buddhists have coexisted in Thailand for centuries, with Thai Muslims an integral component of Thailand’s history and cultural fabric. Halal restaurants stand side-by-side Thai and Thai-Chinese cuisine, including those serving pork, in markets across the country. Mosques stand side-by-side with Buddhist temples. Buddhists and Muslims work side-by-side in businesses big and small nationwide.

While Thailand has a violent insurgency raging in its southernmost Muslim-majority provinces, of Thailand’s 7.5 million Muslims, only 1.4 reside in the deep south. The conflict is also seen as being primarily political, with militants targeting both Buddhists and Muslims in pursuit of their separatist goals. The rest live scattered across the country, and with significant communities coexisting in the capital of Bangkok itself.

For most Thais, the notion of Islamophobia is another facet of intolerance associated with a corrosive and declining Western culture – not Thai. Yet there are still fertile grounds of profound ignorance, gullibility, poor education and lacking economic prospects that make a fraction of the population still vulnerable to otherwise childish, crass propaganda seeking to divide and destroy Thai tolerance, unity, and culture – primarily among the dwindling support base of US proxy Thaksin Shinawatra.

Khao Sod – an unabashedly pro-US, pro-Shinawatra newspaper – recently published an article titled, “Rising Islamophobia in Thailand Irrational and Dangerous Scholars,” written by veteran pro-West commentator Pravit Rojanaphruk, which would claim:

After Muslims in Khon Kaen registered a converted home as their place of worship – the northeast province’s seventh such venue – a local Buddhist group cited terrorism in its petition asking the governor to deny it.

The article continues by stating:

Last week, a Thai monk who has called for mosques to be destroyed in revenge for Buddhist deaths in the Deep South was seized by the military and flown to Bangkok to be forcibly expelled from the order. 

Pages such as No Mosques in Bueng Kan mix stories of violence in the Deep South with anodyne news stories involving Thai Muslims and toxic internet conspiracy theories about Muslims plotting to displace non-Muslim populations worldwide. The comments are filled with Muslim-bashing messages in Thai.

And while the article appears at first to be laying the ground work to unequivocally condemn calls for specific acts of violence, bigotry, and hate speech, it adds an essential caveat – one used by the United States and its front of faux-rights advocates worldwide to shield both terrorists it sponsors, and reactionary fronts it encourages to divide and destroy nations.

The article states – in regards to the “monk” who called for the destruction of mosques, who was detained and defrocked by the current Thai government – that:

Ekkarin said the junta’s detention and defrocking of radical anti-Islam monk Apichat Punnajanatho last week was wrong despite the hate preached by the monk because it resorted to using special power of the junta by detaining the monk at military camps first instead of going through the proper channel of having the Sangha Order investigates the matter. This, Ekkarin added, could lead to resentment by some Buddhists, particularly his supporters, and backfire.

The article, along with US-funded media front, Prachatai, appear to condemn the Thai government for its zero-tolerance stance on terrorsitic speech, bigotry, and hate.

As the US and its network of media fronts around the world have done elsewhere, it is expected that attempts by the Thai government to stifle manufactured sectarian division will be systematically condemned by Western-funded fronts as violations of “human rights” and in particular, violations of “free speech.”

Prachatai – a supposed “independent media platform” entirely funded by the US government – published its own article regarding Punnajanatho and his calls to burn down mosques titled, “Buddhist authorities to defrock monks with ‘inappropriate’ online behaviour.”

In it, systematic complaints about the Thai government’s interference with Buddhism are made, in an apparent attempt to call government intervention inappropriate and unwarranted. For the US-funded scribes at Prachatai, Thailand’s best course of action appears to be to let the rot of sectarian division spread under the auspices of Western-style “free speech,” just as it has in neighboring Myanmar.

Yelling Fire in a Crowded Theater is not Free Speech  

In even the most liberal nations on Earth, threats of specific harm against others or their property is considered a crime. Threats of death can be punished under US law with up to 20 years or more in prison. Likewise, deceiving people – particularly in a manner that causes physical harm – is also illegal and not protected under free speech. The classic “yelling fire in a crowded theater” example illustrates the very real harm intentionally deceitful words have and why it is not protected by free speech.

Similarly, networks suspiciously overlaying US-proxy Thaksin Shinawatra’s political networks, buried deep within his former political strongholds making specific threats of violence toward Thailand’s Muslim communities is not “free speech.” It is a crime and it must be punished swiftly and severely.

Likewise, these networks propagating elementary lies about Islam in general, and about Thai Muslims more specifically, are designed to create social division and discord that will inevitably and intentionally lead to violence – as similar lies have done everywhere from across the West itself to neighboring Myanmar. It is the equivalent of “yelling fire in a crowded theater” with the specific goal of provoking dangerous and unwarranted hysteria, chaos, division, and bodily harm to those subjected to these lies.

US-funded media fronts attempting to frame this reality in any other way – particularly in a manner meant to hinder the government from addressing it before it spirals out of control – is merely another example of how the US and its proxies hide their self-serving political agendas behind the principles of human rights advocacy rather than genuinely upholding them. They position themselves as accessories to criminals using threats and lies to divide and destroy peace and stability in Thailand, and should likewise be held accountable.

The Other Side of the Divide  

While US-funded organizations and political networks run by their proxies in Thailand attempt to work one side of this engineered sectarian divide, the Thai government must be quick to spot and address US-Saudi attempts to spur similar lies, deceptions, and provocations from the other side – among Muslim groups or those posing as Muslims provided with foreign cash and directives to help fulfill the lies being used to divide Thai society.

Just as is done in the US and Europe – where Western governments fund and perpetuate both terrorists and anti-Islam movements to create a sustainable strategy of tension between both, they seek to likewise create a self-feeding crisis in Thailand where eventually staged provocations on both sides transform into real violence fueled by reprisals and growing distrust among previously coexisting communities.

Thailand and other nations facing foreign-funded attempts to divide their society must take a proactive stance on exposing these efforts through intelligence operations and national media that serve national interests, fostering national unity, and creating clear and effective laws to unambiguously define and punish threats and hate speech – especially speech specifically designed to divide society and create violence.

Failing to stop this sectarian divide from swallowing Southeast Asia may make the difference between a prosperous and peaceful future for the region, or perpetual violence and division as the West has successfully maintained in the Middle East since the end of World War 1.

Tony Cartalucci, Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.