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The Ideal Man: Jim Thompson and the American Way of War - Book Review Essay

By Patricia H Kushlis

Not long after arriving in Bangkok in 1973 I heard the story of Jim Thompson’s strange disappearance in Malaysia’s Cameron Highlands Easter Sunday 1967. This was the tragic tale of a prominent American businessman and former OSS officer who had founded the premier silk weaving company in Thailand at the end of WWII.  His company had brought a dying cottage industry in that country’s impoverished northeast - not just back to life - but to prominence in Thailand as well as, ultimately, throughout the world. 

By 1973, the mystery of Thompson’s disappearance was still unsolved. It remains thus today. Furthermore, it wasn’t until a few years later that his family decided to have him declared dead for legal and financial reasons.  That was, of course, a difficult emotional decision.

Yet the Thai Silk Company lived and lives on run by its talented and able staff.   Its designs and materials resulted in the most innovative and highest quality silk fabric sold in  Thailand.   Jim Thompson’s uniquely beautiful house – called the House on the Klong - which he had created from six traditional upcountry teak houses and set in a forest of tropical greenery next to one of Bangkok’s canals (klongs) was, and is, filled with antiques and artifacts he had collected during his decades living in Southeast Asia.(Above photos of Jim Thompson fabrics by PHKushlis, rose pillow cover, patterned dress, and four pillows, September 28, 2014 ).

An aside: This is not a travel post but, if you plan a trip to Bangkok, Jim Thompson’s beautiful house should be on your tour list as should the Thai Silk Company on Suriwong Rd.  

Thompson himself, though, was a mystery and that contributes to questions surrounding his disappearance. Joshua Kurlantzick’s The Ideal Man: The Tragedy of Jim Thompson and the American Way of War (John Wiley and Sons, 2011) tries hard to solve that mystery but in the end the trail runs cold.  The only thing we’re pretty sure of is that Thompson had a number of enemies as well as friends, was likely not eaten by wild tigers or other four legged predators then inhabiting the Cameron Highlands, did not commit suicide and would not have taken a fatal misstep and slipped into some ravine.

Instead, his body suddenly vanished without a trace.

So the question becomes and remains who “dunnit.” In short, until and unless the CIA opens its secret file on the Thompson case no one will ever know what the agency knew and the CIA itself will continue to be one of the suspects.   There are also other potential non-US government culprits but the CIA’s continued stone-walling just raises suspicions of an intelligence service accountable only to itself at the height of the Vietnam War – perhaps even silencing one of its own.

I’m not sure that the book’s title isn’t a bit of a misnomer because Thompson was far from “ideal” although one could certainly have called him an Ideals or Idealistic man.  I’m also not sure why the subtitle, “Jim Thompson and the American Way of War,” features so prominently except that Thompson, who had served in the OSS on the Thai border with Laos and Cambodia during World War II, had known, worked with and been largely sympathetic to the Laotian, Cambodian and Vietnamese nationalist leaders at that time and, unsurprisingly, disagreed vehemently with a post WWII US policy that sided with the then colonial powers thereafter ultimately thrusting the region into the fulcrum of an American led global militarily dominated anti-Communist crusade.

This costly war needn’t have happened if successive presidents had listened to people like Thompson, French journalist, Vietnam scholar and American academic Bernard Fall, Cornell University Professor  George Kahin and State Department official Paul Kattenburg. Kattenburg, like Thompson, had also served in the OSS.  Instead, these experts were shunted aside and ostracized as a result of their courage to speak out.

I had previously wondered if Thompson had been gay because he had been single so much of his life and kept his personal life to himself. This was, well, Bangkok, where sexual permissiveness and possibilities of all kinds were legion.  Kurlantzick set me straight on this one.  Not only was Thompson not gay but he had been briefly married and divorced to an American woman before his OSS assignment and perhaps more significantly while in Bangkok had become the lover of Irina Yost, Ambassador Charles Yost’s wife whom he had hoped to marry.  She, however, decided to stay with the Ambassador and their four children.  Later Thompson had short-term affairs with unnamed but apparently numerous diplomatic spouses including from the US Embassy.

US-Thai Relations too black and white

I am troubled by much of Kurlantzich’s characterizations of US-Thai relations during the 1950s and 1960s or that, in particular, the US should be so heavily blamed for causing successive military governments in Thailand to the detriment of promoting democratic governance. This criticism is simply too black and white and relying perhaps too heavily upon information from and about the businessman Willis Bird, a contemporary of Thompson’s who profited enormously from the US military build-up in Southeast Asia, and the Thai democracy leader Pridi Banonyong who was deposed in a military coup early on and spent the remainder of his life in exile.

I’d like to see State Department documents and Embassy reporting cables for additional parts of the story – documents Kurlantzich did not research.  What were the options? Was Thailand yet ready for multiparty government? And where did the royal family fit into all of this?  Strangely, Kurlantzich hardly mentions the Thai royal family at all – yet it was clear to me that the palace held important political strings as it operated from behind a veil of secrecy before, during and after my tenure in Bangkok – although that veil may not be as opaque today and the counsel as wise as during my time there from 1973-1975.

True, I wasn’t in Thailand during Jim Thompson's years there but neither was Kurlantzich.  Yet when I worked at the US Embassy – in a traditional Thai compound on Sathorn Tai as a member of the US Information Service staff – the US troop build-up was near or at its peak and the US military relationship with the Thai government rested on a handshake (or wai).

Does Vladimir Putin Dream of Attu?

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

Does Vladimir Putin have fantasies about making it easier for Sarah Palin to see Russia clearly from her home in Alaska?   Might be.

Back in 2008, when asked about her expertise in the area of foreign policy, the Republican Vice Presidential candidate seemed to think her ability to glimpse Russia on a clear day  gave her an electoral advantage.  Although, at its narrowest, there’s only 50 miles of Bering Strait between Russia and Alaska, this quip earned Palin more guffaws than votes, mostly because she wasn’t playing it for laughs.  But maybe she was on to something.  Maybe we should pay more attention to the location of the fiftieth state.

For some time now, Russian aircraft have been buzzing the fringes of Alaska.  The Russians have also been extending their claims to the North, which is a matter of real concern to Canada.   In most cases, countries enjoy exclusive sea rights only out to a 200 mile limit, but where the ocean beyond is exceptionally shallow special exceptions may apply.  Thus, the Lomonosov shelf comes into play.  It extends well across the Arctic Ocean toward Canadian shores, which is why Russia has planted a flag underwater at the North Pole, a ploy which would have been ludicrous in the days before global warming.  Those were the days when valiant explorers died or got iced in while attempting to force a Northwest Passage from Europe to Asia.  Now, ogling and photographing polar bears, tourists by the thousands  cruise safely through waters that are open for several months in the summer.  And thinner ice makes oil exploration feasible, too, which is probably why the Russians are laying claim to as much of the sea bottom as they can snatch.  That and other as yet undisclosed mineral deposits.

So far there are no Russian claims to the Alaskan city of Barrow or to the oil fields American companies are exploiting on the North Slope.  But maybe the U.S. Navy should start  paying special attention to the most far flung island of the Aleutian chain, which arcs out toward Russia.  Attu, the most distant of the Aleutians, is closer to Russia than to the U.S.   Once this forbidding bit of land was of interest to whalers.  It also had a permanent population of Aleuts, all of whom where imprisoned when Japan occupied Attu during World War II.  These days Attu is uninhabited, but what if the Russians decided to copy the Chinese, who have a tendency to occupy vacant rocks and reefs in the East and South China seas, preparatory to reviving ancient claims to the seas around them?

After all,  Russia has just snatched Crimea from Ukraine. Not so long ago Moscow gobbled up segments of Georgia, which used to be an important part of the Russian-dominated Soviet Union.  Revanchism at work.  Now all the ex-satellites of the U.S.S.R. are worried that clusters of Russian speakers will give Putin an excuse to take bites of their territory, too, to say nothing of stirring up unrest and violence.  

Meanwhile, I’m sure it hasn’t escaped Putin’s attention that Alaska was Russia’s North American possession until 1867.  In that year the heavily indebted tsar sold it to the United States.  Americans at the time dubbed the sale  [Secretary of State] Seward’s Folly.  That was well before oil was discovered on the North Slope, of course.

Did I say something about Putin’s tender concern for Russian-speakers in other countries?  So how about this: the Aleuts and Inuits and other native Alaskans share a genetic heritage with the indigenous peoples of Siberia.  Like the Russian speakers of Donetsk, they would no doubt be eternally grateful for a chance to be linked up with their relatives, in this case on the other side of the Bring Strait.  Or so Tsar Vladimir must imagine in his imperial fantasies.     

Meanwhile, like Russia under Putin,  China under Xi is as unhappy with his country’s land borders as with his lack of absolute control over traffic in the East and South China seas.  The informal boundary between China and India, for example, dates back to the days of the British raj and allocates a good number of people of essentially Tibetan stock to India.  China insists that all such peoples rightly belong to China.  India disagrees.  India would like to formalize the existing boundary.  China resists.  Just as Putin dreams of Russia’s once again controlling the ex-satellites of the Soviet Union, China dreams of regaining suzerainty over all the territory that once paid tribute of imperial China.  

I don’t want to overdo the similarities between Russian and Chinese foreign policy, although they are striking.  Nor do I wish to suggest that Vladimir Putin is about to pull a Crimea stunt on Attu Island.   But I do think that his activities in the Arctic bear watching and responding to—and I have little confidence that Washington is imaginative enough to be doing so.  All too many Americans, including more than a few foreign policy specialists,  really believed that history stopped about 25 years ago.  That turned us into a stodgy status quo power repeatedly surprised by events that departed from script.   

And speaking of scripts, maybe the U.S. should worry less about the border with a friendly Mexico and pay more attention to Tsar Vladimir’s game in the Arctic.  

Lawrence Freedman’s Strategy: A History - A Book Review Essay

By Patricia H Kushlis

Before I began Professor Freedman’s book on strategy, I didn’t realize that I would be embarking on a painstakingly detailed 751 page historical journey of the meaning and applications of an increasingly popular - yet too often poorly defined term - that has evolved over time to become far more flexible than it was fifty years ago.  

I also didn’t consider that if I had still been studying for my PhD comprehensive exams in political science or public administration, this book would have served as an excellent reference because many of the chapters summarize and analyze the works of major western political thinkers.  Remember that – those of you who are still in graduate school or are thinking about graduate school and need a handy historical resource.  This book is a keeper for review at exam time.

The major reason I decided to embark upon Freedman’s journey – and see it through to the end – was because the term strategy (or lack thereof) has become one of those words that are tossed around all too easily by people complaining that so and so or such and such organization has no strategy.  But they then fail to define what they mean or they give it such a rigid, outdated meaning that they, in essence, render the term useless.

Freedman argues that strategy (the word, he tells us, derives from the Ancient Greek word “strategoi” or the 10 members of the Athenian War Council) is basically a plan that is flexible enough to change as unforeseen events (or the fog of war or uncertainty) alter the reality of the playing field.  He argues that strategies are usually developed in response to the need to respond to some form of adversity – whether in a wartime environment, in business or in government.  He also points out the importance of coalitions in strategy formation for good or ill as well as the role of language as a strategic instrument. 

This means that strategies are far from immutable.  Successful ones are not set in concrete that do not change in response to changing environments. Quite the opposite: Whether an unforeseen opportunity presents itself, the pursuit of the strategy itself may trigger an unforeseen consequence, or something else suddenly arises so the strategy and strategist must adapt to the new realities.  In this sense, the concept of strategy is very much a part of the realist school of thought – and action – and, in Freedman’s words, much of strategy is “about getting to the next stage rather than some ultimate destination.” (p 628)        

Strategic thinking is not bean counting or quantitative simplification

Freedman is critical of the numbers games played by the quantifiers and games theorists – the people who have relegated strategic thinking to bean counting and simplification – who have, for the sake of the ease of quantification, turned evaluation into a game in which nothing consequential is measured because, well, the consequential doesn’t lend itself to quantification.

Hillary Clinton’s Hard Choices: A Must Read

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

Take the time to read Hillary Clinton’s Hard Choices.  Read it carefully and take it seriously, as many critics have not.  Instead, having salivated in anticipation of  its publication date, they swooped in, intending to gorge on juicy (but highly unlikely) revelations, then panned the actual book.  It isn’t the tell-all exposé they’d prayed for.  

Gossip’s Not the Point

For one thing—and wisely, not coyly, as some critics believe—Clinton, in these pages, limits herself to confessing she’s still weighing the pros and cons of making another run for the presidency.  Whether she’s even leaning this way or that, she doesn't tell.  And thank goodness for that!  Spring 2014 is way too early for presidential hat-tossing. Her reticence is a grace note for ordinary Americans who feel that presidential campaigns are much too long.  

Meanwhile, others sneer that Hard Choices is “merely” a campaign tool allowing Clinton to test the waters while ostensibly just signing books.  But there’s nothing wrong with that.  Nor with the fact that little or nothing on any page can hurt her much.  What kind of an idiot commits political suicide?  Should she decide to run, however, there’s much worth gleaning here.  Above all, voters would know beyond a doubt that  we’d have with her, for the first time since George H.W. Bush was on the scene, a president who understood from the get-go how the world works and how to work with it.
    
So Hard Choices is not gossipy. It's certainly not a long delayed sob story, even as Monica Lewinsky attempts to rake up the sordid sex life of the 42nd  president.   Never ever expect Hillary Clinton to spill her guts about her partnership with Bill, although she does expose her deep love for her daughter Chelsea.  Unlike the recent memoirs of Robert Gates, it’s not sprinkled with snarky put downs of erstwhile colleagues either.  Yet, for all that she avoids gratuitous personal pot shots at political opponents, Clinton does, as relevant,  acknowledge differences of opinion on policy-making.  

 What’s Wrong with Solid and Reliable?

Some would say that Clinton is simply playing it safe in Hard Choices.  I don’t think so.  The Hillary we get here is the real thing.  Intelligent.  Conscientious.  Earnest.  Hard-working.  Intense.  Straightforward.  Principled and pragmatic.  Not flamboyant.  Not bombastic.  Not vicious.  And so, maybe, a trifle boring, as serious people are often held to be.  

No, Clinton’s not a drama queen, and thank god for that.  There’s already enough drama in today’s world.    To those who think they’d prefer a more exuberant political performer at center stage, I suggest a hard look at a powerful  politician who dominates Europe without pizzaz or a wasp waist: Angela Merkel.  She doesn’t seem to have a unified grand theory of diplomacy either, but wow!  Whether or not you agree with her all the time, Merkel, these days, puts every other European politician in the shade.

What!  No Grand theory?

Hillary Clinton set out to write a book about her role in the formation (maybe not so much) and carrying out (tirelessly) of U.S. foreign policy as Secretary state in the first Obama administration, a task at which some say she failed.  The dreadful deficiency?  She never evolved a grand theory to guide the Obama administration’s encounters with the rest of the world.  The touchstone for this criteron?  Something on the order of George Kennan’s policy of containment, which worked so well during the Cold War.   

These critics don’t seem to have noticed how much simpler the world was back then.  Bipolar is the modern word for it.  Facing a credible threat of nuclear war, it fell to the U.S. to blunt the U.S.S.R.’s geographic and ideological ambitions until that sudden implosion in 1989.  To a very large extent the richer state won, although it feels much better to say that the better system won, which I can’t help thinking was no less true.  Unfortunately, today’s world is anything but  the harmonious unipolar system imagined by American triumphalists contemplating the rubble of the Berlin Wall.  For one thing, they overlooked the possibility that countries getting richer—China, Brazil, et. al.—would seek the equivalent in power and influence as well.  Worse, who dreamed that the U.S. would also have to deal with a proliferation of non-state actors whose tactics, weapons and dedication make for a serious threat? 

Time to Remember Munich

 Patricia Lee Sharpe

The appeasement goes on and on.  

Ukrainian ships legally in the Sea of Azov have been fired upon by pro-Russian forces, but the French are still determined to sell warships to Russia.   French president François Hollande is so unpopular he can’t be sure that anything he proposes will be supported by his countrymen, but an exhibit of backbone on Ukraine (or anything else)  might galvanize public opinion in his favor.   

Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel, who grew up in the Soviet Union’s East German satellite, has spent an extraordinary amount of time playing footsie with Vladimir Putin, whose purveying of lie after lie after lie makes Pinocchio seem like a paragon of truth-telling.  The good news is that Merkel is finally waking up.  It’s increasingly obvious, she says, that Russia has been behind the rebellion all along.  Welcome to the real world, Frau Merkel.  Stronger sanctions might be a good idea, she adds.  Late conversions are better than none, I suppose.

The new Chairman of the European Council, a Pole who has argued all along for a stronger response to the Russian-instigated rebellion in Eastern Ukraine, is going to have a hard time.  The definition of his new job is herding cats.  Not even all the ex-Soviet satellites in the European Union agree on how to approach the catastrophe in Europe. 

The United Kingdom, in the process of disuniting, can’t be relied on for much of anything.

Some time ago I was delighted that a united Europe promised to be a significant economic and political bloc with which the U.S. could work in relative harmony.  What a fantasy!  Europe’s economy is in shambles, and it’s political health is so frail it’s been appeasing Russia as enthusiastically as the European powers appeased Hitler.  As for the United States, Obama’s sanctions have always been so feeble as to be laughable.  

Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin has proceeded with amazing prudence, pausing after every big step to see if there would be any serious repercussions.  Finding none, he takes another audacious step.  Remember Hitler.  Is anyone surprised?  Now he’s saying we should consider some sort of statehood for Eastern Ukraine.  

Even as I am writing, Russian captives are being repatriated in exchange for Ukranian captives, but U.S. President Barack Obama, the Great Ditherer, still prefers to call the Russian invasion an incursion—this in spite of ariel photography that also leaves no doubt of the Russian role in strengthening pro-Russian forces in Eastern Ukraine!  Although the script for the takeover of Eastern Ukraine is playing out pretty much like the script for Crimea, the Obama administration tells us that more time is needed to figure things out.  This is standard operating procedure for Obama.  By the time he makes up his mind the world has moved on—and whoops!  Maybe we’ve entered yet another phase of Russian machination.  Maybe all that Putin wants is a puppet state—or a puppet half-state.  Given the trillions that the U.S. spends on gathering intelligence, it’s amazing how little we know of Russian intentions.   Have you even tried to catch a cricket with bare hands?  Just when you think you’ve got it, it leaps in a totally unexpected direction.  On the other hand, maybe Americans are covertly advising the government in Kiev, which would seem like a very bad way to go about building a credible, stable independent Ukraine.   But who knows?   I’m only a voter who depends on the random appearance of whistle blowers to keep me informed.  

From day one Moscow has been stirring the pot in Eastern Ukraine. Russians have taken the lead on the ground and  Russian propaganda has been making the Americans seem like simpletons in the realm of public diplomacy at which they once excelled.  Even I could defend the notion that Crimea had to be relinquished on grounds of indefensiblility.  Real politik.  But this was also obvious: swallowing Crimea would inflate Putin’s imperial ambitions, making Eastern Ukraine all the more vulnerable to similar tactics.  If ever there was a time to draw a line, that was it.  What did Obama do?  He froze a few Russian bank accounts, shook his finger and said, “Bad boy!”

In recent days, the Ukrainian army has been in retreat and on the agenda is a meeting between Kiev and the rebels mediated by Moscow.  Laughter invited.  

Clearly neither the E.U. nor the U.S. has ever cared enough about Ukraine  to slap strongly hurtful sanctions on Russia or encourage Ukraine’s leadership to design a federalism that would preserve Kiev’s full sovereignty vis-à-vis the Russian state while calming the fears of Russian speakers who cherish their cultural identity.  The Quebec solution comes to mind.  Die hard independence promoters persist in calling for new votes, but the French-speaking people of Quebec have yet to choose separation.  Maybe such a federalism isn’t possible in today’s Ukraine, but the Obama administration’s commitment to opacity creates an impression of doubt and confusion about its goals and means.  No wonder allies are so hard to come by.  No wonder his poll numbers at home are so low.    

The consequence of appeasement in Munich was a bigger war, which ultimately had to be fought.  Ukraine isn't unique.  Lots of Russians were marooned in the Baltic states and elsewhere.  Think about it.   And think about this, too.  If Ukraine gets neutered à la Finland (see the just previous WhirledView post) , who'll be foolish enough to trust U.S. promises of protection (as after Ukraine gave up its stock of nuclear weapons) in the future?