Handicapping the Gap (Thailand)

Datelineóabove the garage, Portsmouth RI, 21 April

Reference: "U.S. Ally in Asia May Have Crossed Line in Terror Fight: Thailand Admits Its Police Abducted Muslim Suspects In Wake of Brutal Attacks," by Shawn W. Crispin, Wall Street Journal, 21 April, p. A1.

Such are the trade-offs of working with key seam states such as Thailand, which has become a key U.S. ally in the Global War on Terrorism since 9/11. This country hosts a joint counter-terrorism intell center with the U.S.. The Thais are credited with the capture of the Bali bombing mastermind Hambali (Riduan Isamuddin). Thailand has been declared a "non-NATO ally" of the U.S., meaning it gets access to state-of-the-art military technology restricted to others. And the markets have liked it too: last year its stock market was the world's best.

But now there's evidence emerging of more than 100 Thai Muslims disappearing in police raids, and that sort of stink, coming on the heels of the government's very bloody crackdown on drug dealers last year in which more than 2,500 lives were ended with extreme prejudice, is beginning to have an effect. The stock market, for example, is down for the year, and the Muslims are up in protest.

What have we gotten into here? Thailand has battled with drugs (Golden Triangle area it shares with Laos and Myanmar) and Muslim separatists for decades, but that violence has flown under our normative radar the vast majority of the time. It's only when we really need Thailand's help in security, like during the Vietnam War or now in the GWOT, that we tend to notice. So the State Department issues a human rights report in February and notes the "worsening" situation there, and the local PM responds by calling the U.S. a "useless friend."

Hypocrite would be a better term.

America needs to be realistic about what it can expect from allies whose geography places them between the Core and Gap. If we want them to tighten their security rule sets enough to make sure bad things don't come out of that Gap and into the Core, we cannot simultaneously hold them to the standards of human rights security that we may enjoy deep inside the Core (and yeah, America is basically a long ways away from the serious trouble spots of the world, Colombia being about the closest).

On the other hand, we don't turn a blind eye either, because too much stickóespecially if it gets clearly out of hand or is wielded corruptlyóends up making the situation inside the country or region even worse. For example, there are signs that Muslims in Thailand are more restive as a result of these crackdowns, but then again, who wouldn't beóMuslim or not?

My larger point is this: the security rule sets we enjoy inside the Core simply do not penetrate much of the Gap, and along the Seam things can get very cloudy. We need to keep these distinctions in mind as we deal with friends and foes alike.