Thai Governments Research Articles

The Lost Territories: Thailand's history of national humiliation by Shane Strate

Reviewed by: The Lost Territories: Thailand's history of national humiliation by Shane Strate Patrick Jory The Lost Territories: Thailand's history of national humiliation By Shane Strate. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2015. During a recent overland visit to Cambodia I was completing an immigration form at a border checkpoint near Anlong Veng in the northeast of the country, just across the Thai-Cambodia border, when a stern-looking immigration official asked me where I had entered from. I told him the name of the checkpoint on the Thai side of the border, "Chong Sangam." The official immediately corrected me, giving the Khmer pronunciation, adding in a harsh tone, "You are not in Thailand now. You are in Cambodia!" Not wanting to jeopardize my visa application I repeated the name to him, this time according to the Khmer pronunciation. I got my visa. This incident brought home to me the strength of the feelings that the drawing of borders in mainland Southeast Asia during the colonial period over a century ago still provokes. In this case feelings on both sides of the border were particularly raw, because of the escalation of the conflict between the Thai and Cambodian governments over the sovereignty of the region adjacent to the spectacular twelfth-century Preah Vihear temple, situated on a clifftop bordering the two countries. The bitterness on the Thai side is well over a century old, dating from its loss of sovereignty over this region to the French in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Memory of "The Lost Territories"—including the Lao territories on the "left bank" of the Mekong river (present day Laos), as well as much of Cambodia—is deeply etched into the Thai nationalist imagination. In The Lost Territories: Thailand's history of national humiliation we now have a book that traces how this painful episode in Thai history has become a central motif in Thai nationalism. Shane Strate refers to this as "National Humiliation" discourse. It bears a strong resemblance to a similar phenomenon in another semicolonized Asian county, China, which also seeks to end a "century of humiliation" at the hands of the European colonial powers. The phrase "Never Forget National Humiliation" has become a staple of contemporary Chinese nationalism (192). Although more subdued in the Thai case, beneath the surface of Thai nationalism there is also deep resentment at its humiliation at the hands of the European powers in the colonial period. Strate shows how this resentment has been a constant in Thai nationalism over the last century, regularly bubbling to the surface. The notion that "Thailand was never colonized"—by contrast to the remaining countries of Southeast Asia and most of Asia—is central to Thai nationalist historiography. Strate refers to it as Thailand's "chosen myth" (192). It is so central that few tourists to the country are unaware of this proud boast, since it features prominently in the tourism literature. Yet the fact that the Thai kingdom lost substantial portions of its territory to the French and British colonial empires, that the kingdom's economy during the colonial period was largely in the hands of the British, and that extraterritoriality further limited the Siamese government's sovereignty, present a problem to the coherence of this central myth. For this reason there is a counter-narrative of Thai history: that Thailand was in reality a "semi-colony." In times of tension with the west this counter-narrative often comes to the fore. Also problematic is the fact that Siam's kings, who are otherwise portrayed as the heroes of Thailand's independence in "royalist-nationalist" historiography, presided over the losses of these territories and the compromising of Siam's sovereignty. During the last decades of the absolute monarchy the authorities banned discussion of the l893 loss of Lao territories, since the image of King Chulalongkorn submitting to French demands to cede Siamese territory damaged the prestige of the Thai monarchy (42). Strate traces the process by which the "Lost Territories" have been a theme of political rhetoric and nationalist history writing from the early twentieth century through to the 1960s. The rhetoric grew stronger following the 1932 "revolution" and the...

Governance Reform in Thailand: Questionable Assumptions, Uncertain Outcomes

This article examines the nature of governance reform in Thailand. The argument is that Thai citizens are not especially benefiting from the public reform initiatives of Thai governments because government reformers made four questionable assumptions about reform which have in turn produced uncertain outcomes and provided the opportunity for government reformers to avoid responsibility for their reform choices. First, the reformers support the belief that a global reform paradigm with ready-made reform packages exists which can be easily transplanted in the Thai public sector. Second, the reformers prefer to define success largely as reform output rather than reform outcomes or long-term reform consequences. Third, Thai government reformers have overemphasized the efficiency aspects of the new public management at the expense of other governance goals. Fourth, governance reform in Thailand has been portrayed as a managerial problem instead of a political one. The author supports his arguments by drawing on theoretical debates in the international literature on administrative reform, and relating these debates to the Thai case. Governance reform in Thailand is still at an early stage, but the role of unintended consequences is important to administrative reform. Furthermore, the Thai case may reflect governance reform in other countries as well.

Financing Japan's World War II Occupation of Southeast Asia

This paper analyzes how Japan financed its World War II occupation of Southeast Asia, the transfer of resources to Japan, and the monetary and inflation consequences of Japanese policies. In Malaya, Burma, Indonesia and the Philippines, the issue of military scrip to pay for resources and occupying armies greatly increased money supply. Despite high inflation, hyperinflation hardly occurred because of a sustained transactions demand for money, because of Japan's strong enforcement of monetary monopoly, and because of declining Japanese military capability to ship resources home. In Thailand and Indochina, occupation costs and bilateral clearing arrangements created near open-ended Japanese purchasing power and allowed the transfer to Japan of as much as a third of Indochina's annual GDP. Although the Thai and Indochinese governments financed Japanese demands mainly by printing large quantities of money, inflation rose only in line with monetary expansion due to money's continued use as a store of value in rice-surplus areas.

韓国とタイにおける二つの金融危機と政治変動

This article explores the causal relation between crisis and political change through a case study on the two financial crises in South Korea (Korea) and Thailand: the Asian financial crisis in 1997 (AFC) and the global financial crisis in 2008 (GFC). In the AFC, the two countries suffered great losses and political change was brought in their respective government-business relations. However, when the GFC or the Lehman shock hit their financial markets in 2008, its impact was quite different from the AFC. Almost no crisis happened in the two countries. We address this contrasting result, focusing on how the crisis affects the political change, and vice versa. This paper argues that political change in the government-business relations, or financial liberalization, in 1980s-1990s was inconsistent with institutional legacies that had persisted from the pre-liberalization period, thereby driving the two countries to the AFC. Subsequently, because of this endogeneity of the AFC, the Korean and Thai governments tackled the financial restructuring and changed their relation with business. In contrast, as the GFC was an exogenous crisis for both countries and their economies became more resilient after the financial restructuring, they could avoid the impact of the GFC.

Safe Migration, Dilettante Brokers and the Appropriation of Legality: Lao-Thai “Trafficking” in the Context of Regulating Labour Migration

This paper sets to explore the interrelations between safeguarding migration flows between Laos and Thailand and dual models of migrant brokers' subjectivity. Within the anti-trafficking community in the Mekong region there is a tacit dual imagery of insider and outsider categories, where external brokers are associated with risk, whereas friends and personal networks within village communities constitute possible avenues for migration. The Thai and Lao governments have over the past years attempted to legalize migration flows. An important rationale for this which is advocated by international organizations in the Mekong region and elsewhere is the claim that will dry out a market for dubious brokers, making labour migration safer. This paper suggests that what sustains this legalization model is an implicit utilitarian view of migration which projects ideal-type depictions of traffickers and brokers. In light of ethnographic data from the commercial sex industry along the Thai-Lao border, this paper suggests that migration networks do not replace brokers, as brokering services are embedded within these very same networks where legality is appropriated as a resource with mixed results. Yet, although legality is being manufactured through the migration process, both consensual and deceptive recruitment (i.e., trafficking) of young Lao women, is taking place within a context where sex workers themselves play a central role as dilettante-brokers within wider informal social networks. In other words, legality does not alter brokering services, but rather the reverse holds true. Trafficking, then, is taking place in the very same contexts that are deemed safe by anti-trafficking programs.

From 'Melayu Patani' to 'Thai Muslim': The Spectre of Ethnic Identity in Southern Thailand

It would appear to be a simple question: Who are the people at the centre of the violent conflict in Thailand's southern provinces? Judging by the coverage of the issue by the Thai and international media, the statements by the Thai and Malaysian governments, and the work of a large number of academics, particularly those in the field of security studies whose opinions have been widely sought after, most appear to have concluded: Muslims. Despite the Thai government's attempts to characterize the conflict as not a religious one, the mere use of religious labels to represent the actors involved in the conflict make it difficult for the Thai public to imagine it otherwise. Since the conflict has been viewed predominantly in religious terms it is inevitable that the solutions that are offered tend to be based on religious considerations. Yet if the conflict were essentially religious, it begs the question why hundreds of thousands of Muslims all over Thailand who reside outside the three southern provinces where the violence has been concentrated have not shown greater solidarity with their co-religionists in their apparent struggle with the Thai state. Why then is this conflict consistently represented today using religious terminology?This paper is an attempt to present a brief historical background to a number of discourses of identity regarding the people in the region. It assigns particular attention to the struggle between competing discourses of Thai national identity, Malay ethnic identity, Muslim identity, and a more localized identity centred around the memory of the former sultanate of Patani and its associated linguistic and cultural elements.

Tsunami Survivors Sue

PARIS— About 60 European survivors of the 26 December 2004 tsunami and relatives of victims have sued the U.S. and Thai governments for failing to issue appropriate warnings before the monster waves came ashore. A preliminary hearing is expected next month on the suit, which was filed 4 March in a New York district court and targets the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii. Patricio Bernal, executive secretary of the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission, says the center “was not in a position to issue a tsunami warning” for the Indian Ocean because the region lacks a monitoring network.

US and Thai Governments defend HIV/AIDS vaccine trial in Thailand.

Public health officials and scientists from the US and Thai Governments have countered accusations by a group of HIV/AIDS researchers who questioned the scientific rationale behind a Thai and US Government-backed trial of an HIV/AIDS vaccine in Thailand. The phase III trial is testing a vaccine combination that critics say has no reasonable of protecting anyone. In an article in Science magazine (2004;303:316), 22 HIV researchers contend that scientific evidence for the vaccine is extremely weak, and they doubt whether these immunogens have any prospect of stimulating immune responses anywhere near adequate for these purposes. They also argue that any new scientific knowledge that the trial might produce is not worth the US$ 119 million cost and effort. However, in a rebuttal published in Science (2004;303:961), John McNeil and other scientific officers from the sponsoring agencies argue that the decision to proceed with the trial is scientifically justified, morally correct and strategically important. In the same issue of Science (2004;303:954-5), Charal Trinvuthipong, Director General of the Department of Disease Control in Thailand's Ministry of Public Health which is co-sponsoring the trial, pointed out that the critics' argument was flawed and that is no such thing as wasting time or money in researching an AIDS vaccine. In September 2003, the first of 16 000 young, heterosexual volunteers began receiving the vaccine which comprises Aventis-Pasteur's live canarypox virus vector ALVAC combined with VaxGens genetically engineered HIV surface protein gp120. The Aventis-Pasteur vaccine is designed to stimulate cellular immunity by promoting the growth of cytotoxic T cells. VaxGen's gp120 vaccine aims to induce antibodies against HIV. According to the critics, phase and 11 clinical trials revealed that the ALVAC vector alone was poorly immunogenic, and trials in the US and Thailand indicated that the gp120 component was completely incapable of preventing or ameliorating HIV-1 infection. The prime-boost combination vaccine was designed to strengthen cellular and humoral immunity to prevent and or control HIV-1 more than either vaccine does alone. The critics argue that are no persuasive data to support this idea. I don't think there's anyone who thinks this will be protective, said Beatrice Hahn of the University of Alabama in the US, a co-author of the critique in Science. For a phase III trial to be justifiable, there should be a reasonable that the vaccine will benefit the study population but this prospect is lacking, argue the authors. The article accuses the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the agency of the US Department of Health and Human Services backing the trial, of not consulting closely enough with independent experts. …

The Politics of Economic Reform in Thailand: Crisis and Compromise

What explains the varying responses by Thai governments to changes in the international economic environment over time. To answer this the paper emphasizes the link between the nature of the political structure/policymaking environment and the government's reform capacity. Thailand's political structure typically undercuts the government's reform capacity in two way. First, it is difficult to get needed reforms on the political agenda. Second, it is even harder to push reforms through the policy process to implementation. During the 1980s, Thailand was able to overcome some of the challenges inherent in its political system via an informal compromise between party politicians and technocratic reformers. This 'pork-policy compromise' gave the government the capacity to adopt certain reforms - reforms that laid the foundation for the economic boom of the late 1980s and early 1990s. Changes in the political structure in the late 1980s brought an end to this compromise, thereby reducing the government's reform capacity.

Foreign Direct Investment, Linkage Formation and Supplier Development in Thailand during the 1990s: The Role of State Governance

During the 1990s inbound foreign direct investment (FDI) became a significant factor in Thailand's industrial transformation. At the same time there were increasing concerns about whether the new transnational comporation (TNC)-driven export industries actually contributed to the long-term competitiveness and a sustainable pattern of industrialisation in Thailand. This led in turn to the formulation of TNC–small and medium-scale enterprise (SME) linkage policies as well as a set of broader SME and supporting industry policies to supplement unfolding liberalisation of trade and investment policies. The article is concerned with the extent to which the Thai government was able to formulate and in particular implement a credible and adequate set of linkage and supplier development policies. It is generally argued that the Thai governments failed to implement such policies and thereby missed an early opportunity of supporting upgrading among Thai-owned parts producers. Mistaken policies were mainly due to a r...

Les "Việt kiểu" du Nord-Est de la Thaïlande dans le contexte des relations entre la Thaïlande et le Viêt-nam au cours de la seconde moitié du XXe siècle

The Viêt kiêu of northeastern Thailand and Thai- Vietnamese relations in the second half of the 20th century. The word "Viêt kiêu" is used by the Vietnamese residing in Vietnam and the Government to refer to Vietnamese living outside of the country. Viêt kiêu settled in Thailand at different periods of History. This paper will focus on the ones who arrived in the country in 1945-46 and settled mostly in the northeastern provinces of the country. Throughout the Cold War and the Vietnam War, these Viêt kiêu were victims of the anticommunist policies of the various Thai governments and later on, following the invasion of Cambodia by Vietnamese troops, had to suffer from the deterioration of the relations between Thailand and Vietnam. Their situation changed only at the end of the 80s when diplomatic and economic ties between the two countries were restored and started to improve for good.

Governance Reform in Thailand: Questionable Assumptions, Uncertain Outcomes

This article examines the nature of governance reform in Thailand. The argument is that Thai citizens are not especially benefiting from the public reform initiatives of Thai governments because government reformers made fourquestionable assumptions about reform which have in turn produced uncertain outcomes and provided the opportunity for government reformers to avoid responsibility for their reform choices. First, the reformers support the belief that a global reform paradigm with ready‐made reform packages exists which can be easily transplanted in the Thai public sector. Second, the reformers prefer to define success largely as reform output rather than reform outcomes or long term reform consequences. Third, Thai government reformers have overemphasized the efficiency aspects of the new public management at the expense of other governance goals. Fourth, governance reform in Thailand has been portrayed as a managerial problem instead of a political one. The author supports his arguments by drawing on theoretical debates in the international literature on administrative reform, and relating these debates to the Thai case. Governance reform in Thailand is still at an early stage, but the role of unintended consequences is important to administrative reform. Furthermore, the Thai case may reflect governance reform in other countries as well.

Thai-Malay Conflicts in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries

The southernmost provinces of Thailand, Pattani, Yala, Narathiwat, and Satun, can be seen, ethnically and culturally, as a part of the Malay world. The fact that this region now belongs to Buddhist Thailand is above all the consequence of a long conflict between the Thais and the Malays. The conflict can be summarized as the efforts of Thai governments to take hold of the Malay region and dominate Malay society and the resistance of the Malay Muslims against these efforts. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the roots of this conflict. Some scholars date the conflict since the end of the eighteenth century. However, origins of the conflict can be traced back at the latest to the sixteenth century when the conflict began to concretely emerge. The conflict eventually became very serious in the seventeenth century. This study will focus attention on this period.

Political Institutions and the Economic Crisis in Thailand and Indonesia

The economic crisis in Southeast Asia has not been driven only by factors such as pegged exchange rates, heavy short-term foreign borrowing, and hopelessly inadequate financial sector regulation; politics has also been important. Indeed, in any case where there is a massive loss of investor confidence it would be difficult for politics not to be involved. In arguing for some attention to be paid to political factors, this article seeks to focus on one particular variable: political structure. In both Thailand and Indonesia, political structure greatly compounded the task of responding to the crisis and thereby served to intensify the economic destruction even though this common problem originated in different ways and stemmed from different institutional problems. When a diverse set of countries is hit by economic crisis at the same time, it would be foolish to suggest that there were not some powerful common factors at work. We know, for instance, that engagement with the global financial system was a critical factor. Vietnam and China both have deep and systemic problems in their banking sectors but were much less hurt by the crisis because their financial systems were only partially opened-up to international capital flows. Deep financial liberalization was a precondition for this crisis. In the context of the highly-liquid global financial markets of the 1990s, this permitted the massive inflow of mostly short-term foreign capital that fuelled the growth of foreign debt, and then created such havoc when it departed even faster than it came. In Thailand and Indonesia these and other problems, such as widespread bad debt among local financial institutions, combined to create serious vulnerabilities. The popular wisdom in both Thailand and Indonesia is that the incumbent governments were responsible for making matters very much worse. I will argue that the popular wisdom is not wrong: governments in both Thailand and Indonesia did greatly compound the economic damage by exacerbating the underlying problem of investor confidence. The key to government mishandling in these two cases lay in the political structure - the institutional configuration - of each country. Nevertheless, the institutional features that caused both governments to make matters much worse were very different; Thailand's political problems were not Indonesia's political problems. Thailand As Thailand sank further and further into economic difficulty through 1997, the recently elected government led by Chavalit Yongchaiyudh was subject to mounting vilification for immobility, indecisiveness, and corruption. Justified though these criticisms were, they were nothing new. Chavalit's government was not unusually incompetent, divided, or corrupt. With some slight differences from one to the next, this broad characterization applies to all fully-elected governments in Thailand. The strong rate of economic growth enjoyed by Thailand from the late 1980s until the mid-1990s owed very little to policy initiatives by any of these governments. Rather it was the two brief post-coup caretaker administrations led by the highly technocratic Anand Panyarachun that were the policy innovators in the 1990s. Unelected and not being a career politician, Anand and the team working with him were subject to few of the normal constraints of Thai Governments. This is not an argument that economic governance in Thailand has declined with democratization; rather it is an argument that the particular institutional configuration Thailand has had in place (until the constitutional overhaul in late 1997) was bound to produce serious problems of policy management and political leadership. Chavalit's government was no more venal or inept than its predecessors, indeed part of the difficulty it faced was the accumulated legacy of reforms not made by previous administrations. The indecisiveness of political leadership in Thailand was fundamentally a function of weak coalition governments. …

RESIDENTIAL PHOTOVOLTAICS APPLICATIONS: THE RELEVANCE OF NON-TECHNICAL ISSUES

This work investigates the relevance of non-technical issues of PV systems in residential applications. The points of view of different groups - consumers, utilities, society, and others (e.g. architects) - are taken into account. Each group may have different benefits and different costs. Of major interest is what influences consumers' willingness-to-pay (WTP) for PV systems. This argues that technical reliability, environmental benignness, affordability, and other non-technical issues are more important than simplified economic assessments using “artificial” interest rates. Therefore, progress has to be made with respect to (i) further reduction in investment costs especially Tor non-module cost components; (ii) an enhancement of technical reliability and system efficiency, and (iii) system standardization, e.g. module-integrated inverters. The most important conclusion is thai governments, municipalities, utilities, and others like NGOs should offer joint and coordinated programs. Then the overall effect could lead to a cost reduction as well as to a removal of other barriers and to an increase in the motivation of consumers to purchase a PV system.

Aerial Nationalism: A History of Aviation in Thailand by Edward M. Young

644 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE of the genre: a dense, dry writing style and a clumsy chapter struc­ ture. He includes antiaircraft missiles in the subtitle, but his treat­ ment of that complex topic is completely inadequate, as it is con­ fined to one section in the last chapter, with backtracking to cover the earlier history. It would have made more sense to mention these missiles only in passing. Finally—and he cannot really be blamed for this—Schabel missed sources for the mid-1930s origins of rocket aircraft in Army Ordnance/Peenemunde records in the Bundesarchiv /Militararchiv Freiburg. These show that, contrary to Heinkel’s memoirs, it was the Air Ministry that started an energetic program in 1935 to develop reaction-propulsion systems for high-speed flight, which explains why Ministry officials so quickly took up the turbojet idea once they found out about it in 1938. These caveats should not, however, be allowed to obscure the im­ portance of this book to all those interested in the “turbojet revolu­ tion” in Germany. MichaelJ. Neufeld Dr. Neufeld is a curator at the National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution. His history of Peenemunde and the V-2, The Rocket and the Reich, has now appeared in paperback with Harvard University Press. Aerial Nationalism: A History of Aviation in Thailand. By Edward M. Young. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995. Pp. xxix+330; illustrations, maps, tables, appendixes, notes, bibli­ ography, index. $55.00. Aviation is acknowledged as one of the most important influences on 20th-century culture, and a great deal has been written about its genesis and development in North America and Europe. Historians of colonialism will also be aware that aviation played an important part in maintaining colonial power in the interwar period, partly through the development of colonial air forces and pardy through the development ofcommercial airways linking colonial possessions. Very little has been written, however, about the use of aviation by non-Western nations or its local effects. Edward Young’s AerialNationalism describes and analyzes in detail the development of aviation in Thailand from 1912 to the end of the Second World War and deals in more cursory fashion with the postwar period. Thailand is perhaps atypical of the majority of na­ tions in the non-Western world because it preserved its indepen­ dence from colonizing powers and so its use of aviation took place against a background ofnational needs rather than colonial develop­ ment. These circumstances have, however, given us an opportunity to see something which was probably unique for this period, a coun­ try which had not made a technical innovation and did not have the technical skills to contribute to the development of that technologi- technology and culture Book Reviews 645 cal form, but still used it in a developed form to suit its own needs as far as possible. Thailand managed to retain its independence between two colo­ nizing powers, France and Britain, but remained wary of their inten­ tions. When aviation developed, the Thai governments—at first a very supportive absolute monarch and later an even more supportive military government—became interested in aviation as a way of de­ veloping sufficient military strength to deter threats to Thailand’s sovereignty and as a way of developing a national spirit. A military Aeronautical Service was established which was entirely Thai, em­ ploying no foreign advisers and making a point of being as selfsufficient as possible. Thais travelled the world to learn of overseas developments and to select new designs, but there was a continuing emphasis until the late 1930s on construction in Thailand and on the development of a completely indigenous air force, which might study overseas developments but did not rely on overseas help and advice. As a result a highly effective air force developed within the restrictions of resources available to it. The Thai Air Force was al­ most entirely defensive, intended to deter colonial aggressors. It was successful when it finally fought a war of that nature, but when it was drawn into the Second World War those resources were insufficient. The development of commercial air services originally took place under the control of the military service...

Thai-Japan Monetary Relations at the Start of the Pacific War

In the wake of their rapid advance into Southeast Asia after 8 December 1941, the Japanese began to implement a new monetary policy in the region to replace the long-established Western financial order that was being swept away. The purpose of this article is to discuss aspects of this monetary policy, in particular how it was carried out in regards to Thailand during the first year of the war, the period during which Thai–Japan wartime relations became established. In the wake of their rapid advance into Southeast Asia after 8 December 1941, the Japanese began to implement a new monetary policy in the region to replace the long-established Western financial order that was being swept away. The purpose of this article is to discuss aspects of this monetary policy, in particular how it was carried out in regards to Thailand during the first year of the war, the period during which Thai-Japan wartime relations became established. With the outbreak of war the most urgent need of the Japanese in their relations with Thailand was to convert that country into a suitable rear area for their campaign in Malaya and for the one upcoming against Burma. To this end the Japanese and Thai governments signedon 8 December an agreement permitting Japanese forces to pass through Thai territory to attack Malaya; but equally important the agreement also stipulated that Thailand would afford the Japanese forces all necessary convenience for their passage through Thailand. This stipulation was the key that opened the way for the Japanese to pursue their plans towards Thailand. By passage, of course, the Japanese did not simply mean the travel of their army through Thai territory to attack Malaya and later Burma (although superficially this is what was implied).

The development of academic libraries and librarianship in Thailand, I950-I976

The period 1950-1976 has seen encouraging developments in the field of Thai academic libraries and librarianship. In 1951 there was no trained librarian in the country. During the 1950s and 1960s, in schemes supported by the Thai and American governments and various international agencies, expansion took place and has led to a present situation of great potential. This article discusses the development of academic libraries and librarianship in the twentieth century and looks at some of the difficulties yet to be overcome in a country with many economic problems and no "second language" tradition.

Two Styles of Military Rule: Thailand and Burma

THE DIVERSE POLICIES OF BURMESE A ND THAI GOVERNMENTS obscure the similarities between these two countries. To contrast their political styles highlights these similar features and also reveals a general political change that applies also to much of Asia. That trend is towards the politization of military leaders and their creation of political parties to sustain their power base. Civilian experts and civil organizations increasingly serve these military governments and thereby tend to bolster their legitimacy.It is two decades since the European powers commenced their withdrawal from Southeast Asia. Considerable political experimentation followed as leaders of these states adjusted their freshly won sovereignty to fit their weakened condition. Democracy burst on the region like a river in spate. Without exception every central government employed elections to legitimize itself. Then (but for the Philippines, Malaysia and Singapore) military juntas moved to seize power from impotent legislatures. Liberals saw military totalitarianism sweeping Asia, conservatives viewed the nationalization practices as statism that crushed private initiative.

Thailand's New Course

THERE IS A NEW flexibility Thai politics, both external and internal. The reason for this is clearly to bring Thailand more into line with changing conditions. The previous policy suited its times, at least from the point of view of a military-dominated, security-conscious, conservatively-inclined regime. There was then a community of interest between Thai governments headed by Field Marshals Phibun Songkram (i948-57), Sarit Thanarat (i958-63), and Thanom Kittikachorn (from i963) and successive United States administrations, whether Republican or Democratic. This was reflected U.S. commitments: mutual security (military and economic aid) 1950; Seato membership 1954; and the Dean Rusk-Thanat Khoman joint statement i962 of the U.S. obligation to help Thailand, regardless of the attitude of other Seato members, in case of Communist armed attack. The Thai-American was extended to the full by President Johnson's massive intervention Vietnam. It was shown by American use of Thai bases, at first not openly acknowledged by the Thais, to bomb North Vietnam and Communist-held areas of Laos. (The previous extreme of Thai commitment had been Phibun's war-time collaboration with the Japanese, admittedly as a result of force majeure; this alliance collapsed 1944, Phibun's downfall coinciding with Japan's decline.) Thus Johnson's dramatic reversal of his Vietnam policy i968-from the confident expectation of military success, revealed General Westmoreland's Four Phase plan, to the acceptance of peace talks with the enemy'-presented the Thai leaders with an entirely new situation. First, over the next few years the Thais face the prospects of United States disengagement from Vietnam and perhaps from mainland Southeast Asia. The current de-escalation of the Vietnam war cannot make sense unless it is seen as part of a policy of withdrawal (the alternative, resuming bombing the North and sending thousands more soldiers to bolster the South, is no longer feasible). Yet President Nixon has no more than two or three years which to carry out a substantial military disengagement-presumably as a result of a settlement of sorts-if he is to make a good showing at the next presidential elections. Next, there is the possibility of instability Vietnam.