Bangkok, May 2010: Perspectives on a Divided Thailand

2. The Culture of the Army: Matichon Weekly, 28 May 2010

Nidhi฀Eoseewong 10฀ 2 THE฀CULTURE฀OF฀THE฀ARMY Matichon฀Weekly,฀28฀May฀2010 Nidhi Eoseewong Say what you’d like, but I’ve thought for a long time that being a soldier in today’s regular Army is a very odd occupation. This is because the soldier is willing to risk life itself to kill a stranger for absolutely nothing. Moreover, you have as much of a chance of being killed as of killing someone else. Human society created the soldier a long time ago, but soldiers in various societies constituted a caste in the sense that they were born into a lineage of soldiers, for example, the knights in medieval Europe or the samurai during the Edo period in Japan. These people enjoyed many special economic, social, and political privileges and were also feared and respected by the population at large. Soldiers were willing to risk their lives in battle in order to protect their privileges, or they fought duels to defend their own honour and dignity and to instil fear and respect in others. They did all this entirely This piece originally appeared in Matichon weekly magazine, issue 30, 1554 (28 May–3 June 2010), under the title “Watthanatham kongthap”. It appears here with the permission of the author, in English translation by Craig J. Reynolds. 02฀BangkokIT.indd฀฀฀10 9/8/11฀฀฀7:03:43฀PM The฀Culture฀of฀the฀Army 11 for their personal benefit, which is little different from the hired gunman nowadays who is willing to kill for a fee. But soldiers in the regular armies of today gain nothing by risking their lives in that way. They are required to go into battle if ordered to do so by their superiors with the full understanding that they may face the most terrifying dangers. In the midst of a hail of bullets from enemy machine-gun fire causing their mates in battle to be cut down before their very eyes, or shrapnel from artillery fire all the time blasting people into pieces, and so on and so forth, their commanding officers order them to move forward to attack the enemy. In those extremely dangerous conditions there is a real person in uniform who might react according to ordinary human instinct by looking for a way to escape from the danger and return home to his wife and family. Thus the enormous challenge that all modern armies have to confront: how are they going to retain soldiers in such conditions of extreme danger and keep them from deserting and returning to civilian life? If this cannot be managed, they cannot possibly engage the enemy in battle even for an instant. Soldiers will all break ranks, scatter, and run back to bury their heads in the bosoms of their wives and mothers. Some readers may object and say that soldiers give their lives to defend their country, so the ideology of nationalism is more than enough to keep an army fighting forever. These nationalist feelings have been instilled in us from an early age, and military training arouses these feelings in soldiers even more intensely. Yet regular armies in modern times know full well that love for the nation alone is not powerful enough nowadays to keep soldiers from running away from the dangers of the battlefield. Do not forget that the nation is something in the imagination that cannot be compared to the concrete realities of peoples’ lives. The nation is not like wives and children who are real and who affect a person’s life in a concrete way. Therefore, all regular armies in modern times must rely on two methods that will induce human beings to overcome concern for their own lives and be bloodthirsty enough to perform the cruellest acts in battle. One method is to make the enemy into a devil (Eng. “demonization”). We can talk about this in a way that Thais today understand very well, namely, that the enemy must be dehumanized. Why is it that the Centre for the Resolution of the Emergency Situation found it necessary to release 02฀BangkokIT.indd฀฀฀11 9/8/11฀฀฀7:03:43฀PM Nidhi฀Eoseewong 12฀ information about the plan to overthrow the monarchy (lom jao) many weeks before it set about dispersing the crowds? This was to demonize “the enemy” first. In addition to the notion of loyalty to “the royals”, the institution of...