Competing Diplomacies: Thailand amidst Sino-American Rivalry

Thailand’s domestic political crisis that began in the final year of the Thaksin Shinawatra administration (2001–06), culminating in the military coup of September 2006 and continuing into the current period of the Democrat-led government under the leadership of Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, has also influenced the country’s foreign policy, especially its relations with the great powers. The crisis has provided a platform for these powers — in this case, the United States and China — to compete with each other in order to preserve their strategic ties with Thailand at a time when the kingdom has been experiencing political turbulence. It is however necessary to see the role of Washington and Beijing in Thailand’s protracted crisis in the wider context of competition for influence and supremacy in Southeast Asia. This chapter examines the different approaches of the United States and China in dealing with the Thai crisis. It asks: Which approach is more effective to win influence in Thailand? It investigates the way in which the competition between the two great powers has come to influence Thailand’s foreign affairs. In the final section, the chapter briefly discusses the standing of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in Thailand’s polarized politics and seeks to elucidate whether Thailand has been able to exploit its position in ASEAN to dilute the power of the United States and China over its domestic and foreign affairs.

The Eagle versus the Dragon

Ian Bremmer has rightly observed that the United States and China are growing dangerously hostile towards one another. He questioned: Could this be worse than the Cold War?¹ The fact that the “list of irritants” in Sino-U.S. relations has grown in past years seems to validate Bremmer’s point. For example, throughout 2010, burgeoning bilateral tensions almost led to a trade and currency war. U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner claimed that China’s refusal to rapidly increase the value of its currency was hurting America’s economic recovery. Rejecting the claim, Chinese leaders stressed that the United States was wrong to blame China for its own economic woes.² On top of this, the United States accused China of failing to protect the intellectual property of foreign companies. But economic issues were not the only flash points in Sino-U.S. relations. The two countries disagreed on sanctions against Iran over its nuclear programme. The United States kept a watchful eye on the power transition in North Korea — a country which has enjoyed a special relationship with China. Meanwhile, China criticized the United States for interfering in the Sino-Japanese dispute over the ownership of the Diaoyu/Senkaku islands — the issue that stole the limelight during the 17th ASEAN Summit in Hanoi in late October 2010. In the Southeast Asian context, the United States was uneasy about the closeness between the Chinese leaders and their counterparts in Myanmar. Besides, the resurgence of the territorial disputes in the South China Sea, which involve China, Taiwan, and four members of ASEAN — Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, and the Philippines — has threatened peace and security in the region. The United States perceived developments in the South China Sea as a threat to its own interests: the right to freely navigate the area of disputes. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called the conflict “a leading diplomatic priority” for the United States during the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) meeting in Vietnam in July 2010.³

But these problems are merely symptoms of an illness in Sino-U.S. relations. The real underlying cause is the power rivalry between the two countries, one that has maintained its status as the world’s sole superpower and the other that has emerged as a new challenger to the current international order. This chapter supports the general argument that China’s rise, economically and militarily, will inevitably shift the regional order which the United States has helped sustain since the end of the Cold War. John Mearsheimer argued in 2005, “A much more powerful China can also be expected to try to push the United States out of the Asia...