The US has been behind all the political turmoil in Thailand, including violence in the south, coups, the burning of the country, etc., to create instability so that it can install its military bases to block China’s influence, said Dr Thianchai Wongchaisuwan, a self-styled analyst of global trends and a staunch supporter of the People’s Alliance for Democracy.
On 3 Feb, Thianchai, whose penname ‘Yuk Sri-ariya’ means ‘utopian era’, said in a programme on ASTV that the US so dreaded the expanding power of China that it wanted to block it.
Once the US had a military exercise near North Korea’s borders ‘in a bid to have some bombs land on North Korea’, but when retaliated against, the US condemned North Korea for attacking South Korea. The US tactically said that Japan and South Korea had to cooperate to counter North Korea, hoping that China would give support to North Korea. But China, seeing through the game, remained neutral and told South Korea and Japan that the only way to prevent a North Korean nuclear attack was to build an alliance among them. China was successful and the US failed, he said.
Southeast Asia is another strategic area of contention between China and the US. Thailand, once a key strategic base for the US in fighting the Vietnam War, would be used by the US as the fore line to counter China, he worried.
When the US invaded Iraq, the Thaksin government did not initially send troops to join the allied forces [but later did]. However, after the US had won the war, Thaksin went to the US and, after shaking hands, the US called Thailand a non-NATO ally, he said.
‘We just sent our troops to Iraq like every country did. How could this be special, if there’s nothing more than this? So I think that this must have to do with the issue of getting rid of terrorists, to which the US was giving so much importance. I have followed this issue and have been suspicious that the killings in the south are the result,’ he said.
In the incident at Krue Se mosque [a massacre of Muslims in Pattani in 2004], despite an order from Gen Chavalit Yongchaiyut, then Deputy Prime Minister of the Thaksin Shinawatra government, a general [Gen Panlop Pinmanee, then Deputy Director of the Internal Security Operations Command] ordered military troops to attack the insurgents allegedly hiding inside the mosque. A CNN camera crew broadcast this incident to the world, and shortly afterwards the US Vice President announced that the US was ready to send its forces to help Thailand fight against terrorists, he said.
He suspected that the US was behind the coup on 19 Sept 2006, because two generals who had closely worked with the US, including [Gen Pallop], had ‘clearly been with yellow shirts’. And they were influential in ISOC, whose personnel were the first to start an operation against Thaksin, he said.
He believed that the US had employed a ‘divide and conquer’ strategy. For example, in Libya, the US, after overthrowing Gaddafi, has not supported any group to rule and let them fight on, because as long as the Libyans continue to fight, they have to buy weapons from the US and the US has wanted to occupy the oil fields in the country. In Kosovo, the US instigated Muslims to clash with Christians so that it could install a military base there, he said.
Dubai, where Thaksin has been based, is connected to Saudi Arabia which is close to the US. A news outlet in Singapore has repeatedly propagated news about red shirts in support of Thaksin, he said.
When the red shirts ‘torched the country’, a general [Gen Pallop] was recruited to draw up the plans with Thaksin and Seh Daeng [Gen Khattiya Sawasdiphol]. This general, who had been with the yellow shirts, suddenly switched sides for unclear reasons, but this was for certain a special military operation. Then appeared the men in black, who, according to intelligence, were mercenaries based in Ratchaburi and Kanchanaburi under the control of the CIA.
It was hard to believe that Thaksin did not realize that the red shirts, even with the help of the men in black, could never defeat the military. What they could do at best was to create riots in the hope that many people would be killed, so that the government would have to resign and the US could enter Thailand under the guise of the UN, to oversee the general elections, he said.
The US does not give full support to Thaksin, however. If Thaksin can secure power, the US would turn to support Thaksin’s opposition instead. The US wants Thailand because Thailand is the best front against China, which has already encroached upon Burma and Laos. He viewed the conflicts between Thailand and Cambodia as another possible case in which the US wanted a war to erupt so that it could sell arms and intervene in the name of the UN.
Referring to former Rector of Thammasat University Charnvit Kasetsiri’s support of Nitirat’s proposed amendments to Article 112 of the Criminal Code, he said that Cornell University in the US had been a major hub of bright international students, including Charnvit.
In expanding its power, the US has also extended its intellectual domination and manipulated those students’ thoughts, using Charles Darwin’s Evolution Theory which dismisses ‘old things as backward and authoritarian.’
Works on Southeast Asian history produced by Cornell scholars have always been about wars between this king and that, making them look authoritarian and barbarian. These people like to read ‘The Face of Thai Feudalism’ by Jitr Bhumisak, who was brilliant but very pessimistic, showing only negative aspects of the monarchy, he said.
Thianchai himself graduated from Binghamton University in the US.
