Though I rather prefer my portrait of him, don't you. Probably not worth £2000 like the other, though
While I was burbling about Thailand:
Could Thailand ‘Unravel’?
Could Thailand become a ‘failed or failing state’?
The present rather more than usually ‘byzantine’ state of politics makes one wonder..
All of us who live and work here, permanently, or are on visa runs, or on regular (or even irregular! visits), have a more than vested interest in the health and security of the Thai state.
The insecurity and hazardousness of many countries outside some of Europe, Australasia and N. America have shown Thailand to be a haven of security, prosperity and well being for many of us—whatever moans on the Forum might indicate.
It has always appeared to me that Thailand has developed a rather unusual symbiosis
whereby things generally work. Banks, hospitals, airlines, hotels function. There is a judiciary, a civil service and a tax system. Until the New Year there were no bombs on the street unlike London or Madrid, the country was not ghetto-ised like the US, there were almost no ‘no-go’ areas unlike France, you can buy a house, or at least rent one, without the death of an aged aunt or a 200KGBP mortgage unlike the UK. Food is abundant and cheap as are most goods and services.
It would be very sad were this situation to deteriorate or disappear.
But do you think it could happen?
I have listed some of the main resources on this rather contentious topic:
Failed States
Foreign Policy
Fund for Peace
While there have been episodes of violence and bloodshed here in recent history, there has been no equivalent to what happened in Vietnam or Cambodia; and the military coups have not engendered the kind of events that took place in Burma or even Laos. The communist insurgency of the 1960s was not on a scale of that in Malaysia-and besides there was not the complicating factor of British colonialism.
But there has been, neither, one of the kinds of coloured popular protest movements resulting in political change that have been seen in Eastern Europe and in The Philippines.
There is a present continuing danger to the artificiality of the Thai State of the Southern Insurgency, but it is difficult to see how, without foreign intervention, that could seriously threaten the core of the State.
The real dangers could therefore, variously, be organised soldiers or policemen who perceive their influence under threat and maybe an unresolving and continuing war of attrition between, and within, elements of those two power groups, a resurgent or new demagogue, a proxy conflict between various cliques that have been described as ‘old’ and ‘new’ money with the attendant threat to legal and illegal business interests, and any challenge that might be addressed to the monarchy.
There exists considerable wealth in Thailand; but as with other countries in, say, Latin America let alone the emerging situation in the PRC there is also a great disparity between the wealthy and the relatively poor.
As I understand it one of the perceived reasons for support for the deposed Prime Minister Taksin Shinawatra was his program for an apparent redistribution of wealth. One of the problems seems to have been was that he was distributing wealth that was either non-existent or not available for ‘redistribution’ and that simultaneously he was enriching his family and his supporting ‘clans’, through the corruption of the state contract system.
There also exists a latent xenophobia which, while no where as near the surface as in Indonesia or Malaysia could be fanned or exploited. And while there is little of the anti-western fervour of some Islamic states there, again, is a slack noose on foreigners that can be easily tightened from time to time.
Critically there is the health of the Thai economy. Presently, whatever moans there may be about exchange rates, the exporting strength of raw and processed goods is considerable and the domestic ‘self supporting’ economy appears strong also. Of concern is what we notice as a weakening of both those strengths as a result of diminished global demand for Thai products and the relatively unremarked consequences of natural phenomena, particularly flooding. In the North and North centre of Thailand it would appear there as been significant damage to the economy as a result of flooding
Were there to be an accompanying diminution of revenues as a result of a coming together of a significant downturn in tourism, whether as a result of weather or politics, a strong currency damaging exports, further damage to the agricultural sector, a lessening of Japanese, Chinese and western capital investment, an increase in the Islamic insurgency, a perceived insecure situation in Bangkok, further increase in oil prices, etc.etc. then that economic health might not look so blooming.
And were there to be any significant damage to the labour market and distress to both the rural and urban poor it is easy to see that social unrest might be the thing that started the ‘unravelling’.
It is difficult to see Thailand going the way of the kind of failed state where interpersonal and state violence are endemic, or the kind of failed state where foreign intervention and war destroy institutions and structures. In many ways the economy is already too advanced for that; and the culture would seem to preclude the violence associated with ungovernable states.
But that really raises the question of what success and failure are in a state or country. Citizens are leaving the UK at an unprecedented rate-does that suggest some perceived or real failure? The US appears entirely dependent on its so called military-industrial complex, which requires the waging of wars to bolster production and employment and with serious inter ethic problems-is that a failure? Where is ‘successful’?
