A press conference held by navy commander Admiral Adung Phan-iam earlier this week to defend the ministry’s decision to go ahead with the purchase of Chinese submarines despite long delay and key alteration where the submarines would not be equipped with the superior German engines was an eye opener.
Adung said: “China did not deceive us, and we were not deceived by China.” The navy commander added that 80 percent of the money has already been paid (during the dictatorial military regime of Gen. Prayut Chan-o-cha), and “if we don’t get the submarines, it will be 10 wasted years for the navy, and we will fall to the last place in ASEAN.”
There are at least two things worth elaborating here:
First, the navy chief must have felt that the Thai public do not trust both the Thai navy and the Chinese seller – thus he felt it necessary to publicly state that China did not deceive Thailand and stressed yet again right after that Thailand was not deceived by China.
Well, if you are not convinced, then Adung followed it up by resorting to scare tactics, telling us that Thailand would have the least capable navy among the 10-member ASEAN states, never mind if the reality is that our neighbor, Laos, is a landlocked country and effectively has no more than a few small vessels on the Mekong river.
Meanwhile, U.S. Ambassador to Thailand Robert F. Godec has been working onerously over the past few weeks trying to sell as many F-16 Block 70 fighter jets to Thailand as possible despite the U.S. last year’s high profile turning down Thailand’s request to purchase two F-35 jets because it would take a decade to deliver, blah, blah, blah, only to see Singapore announcing this February they are buying eight and the U.S. has no problem delivering it in 2028, or just four years from now.
U.S. deceptions, or lack of sincerely to put it more diplomatically, aside, one must asks why Thailand needs to be on an arms race with its ASEAN neighbours – buying more and more expensive deadly toys from China, U.S., and other nations, particularly given the struggling economy and the World Bank just earlier this month cut GDP growth outlook from 2.8 percent to 2.4 percent, and consumer confidence very low. Who will these purchases benefit most? Can we not put on a moratorium on new arms purchase for three years given the state of the economy and good relations with our neighbours?
Unlike Singapore, being very small and perpetually feeling on the edge due to her much larger immediate neighbours, Malaysia and Indonesia, and dependent even on water supply on Malaysia (960 million liters per day from Johor River) and very dependent on food imports, we in Thailand are not on the edge.
The much needed budget from people’s taxes can and should be better spent on social welfare, health care, education, homeless people, and anything but perpetually buying more expensive war toys from the U.S. and China.
This is easier said than done, however. Thailand is basically a society perpetually held hostage by its own armed forces, which is a state within a state, to the point where any civilian government feels most compelled to keep on keeping the generals and admirals happy by buying more new toys for them. Never mind if the F-16 jets will be no match to Singapore’s F-35 squadron or the Chinese-made submarines will be most useful once a year, on National Children’s Day, where they could be put on display to wow kids. Keeping the rogue Thai armed forces happy is ‘necessary’ to reduce the chance of yet another military coup.
In a way, the Thai military is like a mafia. The same can be said about superpowers like the U.S. and China. Small countries like Thailand feel ‘compelled’ to keep on buying their expensive war toys, no matter how irrational it may be, to keep them happy.
Dealing with domestic and foreign mafias is no easy or happy task, particularly for ordinary Thai citizens, as we have little say while watching our precious tax money used to buy more and more expensive war toys with no end in sight.
