Foreign policy change of Thailand under Chatichai Choonhavan's administration : from a cold war style to a regional power style

Thailand’s foreign policy toward Indochinese states drastically changed under Prime Minister Gen. Chatichai Choonhavan’s policy of turning Indochina “from battlefield to a market place”. Under this policy initiative, the Chatichai administration introduced new philosophy into the kingdom’s Indochina policy that economy preceded politics. Before he came to office, Thailand’s policy toward the neighboring socialist states, in its formation as well as practice, was almost unitary and security concerns and issues took primacy over other issues on hierarchy of policy options. Behind this traditional modality of diplomacy, there was a stern external environment of international politics of Cold War. Accordingly, the political structure of Thailand also assumed to be highly security-conscious and successive governments inclined to consider internal instability as being related with external threats. Under this modality, Indochina was regarded as the primary source of the instability and the kingdom calculated her relations with Indochina formulated on such perception. When Chatichai came to power in August 1988, the situation, however, began to change. As he placed economy first in his Indochina initiatives, the hitherto hierarchy of security-dominant policy toward Indochina appeared to collapse. The rapidly growing Thai economy and development of democracy contributed to the policy shift, i.e., the number of business-cum-politicians had increased during the years of previous Prem Tinsulanonda administration and they asserted their business interests even over the neighboring states and Chatichai, who was the first popularly-elected premier since Seni Pramoj in 1976, reacted to their in favor. To achieve the new policy in the Indochina relations, Chatichai installed his Private Advisory Group who had different perception of Indochina from that of Ministry of Foreign Affairs and allowed the advisers to involve themselves not only in policy making but also in its practice. This new apparatus in the government finally attained power in the venue of Indochina policy. With the collapse of highly-security-concerned policy hierarchy, Thailand’s relation with Indochinese states came into a new phase in which problems related with the socialist states were resolved by issue areas, from the traditional monolithic realist approach.