Thailand—relatively prosperous, relatively stable, if mainly in relation to Myanmar—is the role model to which that country’s generals aspire. Should it be?
It sounded like a bleak joke. But the generals do not do irony. General Min Aung Hlaing had just smashed what fragile democracy had taken root in Myanmar. In 2014 Mr Prayuth, then Thailand’s army chief, had seized power from an elected civilian government. Before a general election in 2019 in which Mr Prayuth put his army-led party forward, a military-appointed committee rewrote the constitution to entrench the role of the armed forces in politics and to neutralise popular parties.
And that, to the generals in Myanmar, is the point. They envisage something very similar when they talk about a “disciplined democracy”. That is, re-engineering the political system to stay in charge. Thailand—relatively prosperous, relatively stable, if mainly in relation to Myanmar—is the role model to which that country’s generals aspire, argues Thitinan Pongsudhirak of Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok.
Yet the affinities are stronger—as the generals see it. Pavin Chachavalpongpun of Kyoto University describes how in both countries the top brass claim to act as the ultimate guarantors of the state’s integrity and as protectors of a Buddhist majority. Do not underestimate the personal ties, either. The epitome of the royalist-military nexus under Thailand’s previous monarch, King Bhumibol Adulyadej, who died in 2016, was the late Prem Tinsulanonda, another army chief and prime minister.
For how much longer can the generals ignore reality? After all, Myanmar’s coup has produced a failed state. Far from being the bulwark of national unity, the Tatmadaw, as its army is known, is under attack from new, armed-resistance movements even in the ethnic-Burman heartlands from where it has traditionally drawn recruits.
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