WhirledView

HOW ABOUT A VIRTUAL PEACE CORPS?

By Guest Contributor Joan Wadelton

(WV editor - Patricia H Kushlis' comment:  It seems to me that many returned Peace Corps volunteers would be delighted to have the opportunity to teach and engage again with people in their countries of service over the Internet whether they be recently returned PCVs whose stays were abruptly cut short because of the COVID-19 pandemic or others who returned years ago.  Joan Wadelton's proposal below is creative, innovative and would be cost effective.  I would hope that the Peace Corps leadership would consider it seriously. )  

The Peace Corps is a wonderful organization that has sent 230,000 Americans as volunteers all over the world since 1961.  I was fortunate to spend three years in Niger as a health worker, in a village away from the capital many years ago.  My Peace Corps service prompted my life-long love of Africa.

The Peace Corps mission is:

• To help the people of interested countries in meeting their need for trained men and women.
• To help promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served.
• To help promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans.

Although countries with a Peace Corps presence have changed over the years, and the number of volunteers has fluctuated, this mission is as valid today as it was in 1961.

Generally, volunteers have been young adults just beginning their careers and not yet encumbered by family responsibilities.  Indeed, a look at the official Peace Corps website shows a skew toward this demographic.  A demographic that brings enthusiasm and a willingness to live in new places, get the job done, learn about a new culture and actively engage local populations.

This traditional model – with volunteers living and working in other countries -- has been productive and successful.  It has been refined over decades and should be retained.

But is there another way to accomplish the capacity building that is at the heart of the Peace Corps mission?

Yes, and that is remotely, through the internet.  In this approach, volunteers would remain in the United States and conduct their training and teaching activities online.

The Peace Corps would conduct its overseas and virtual volunteer programs side-by-side. 

How would the virtual volunteer program work?

Virtual volunteers would be hired under the same terms and conditions as the overseas volunteers (taking into account the fact that they would not be working overseas).   That is, they would be expected to work on a regular basis -- but not be paid.  They would need access to the internet and the ability to manage Skype, Zoom or similar programs as teaching tools. 

What would virtual volunteers bring to the table?

A virtual Peace Corps would draw from a broader universe of potential volunteers than the existing in-country programs.  For example:

• People who are older and more advanced in their careers – with more knowledge and experience to share – who would not normally move to another country;
• People whose family commitments prevent them from traveling, but who have a passion for sharing their knowledge;
• People who cannot easily travel, but who have always wanted to teach and learn about other countries and cultures.

Would the virtual program be consistent with the core Peace Corps mission?

Yes, a virtual program would reinforce and amplify the key Peace Corps’ mission goals, noted above.  It would also build collaborative working relationships, drawing on wide ranging expertise.

• Greater numbers of more experienced volunteers would add to the capacity building potential of the Peace Corps.
• A virtual program would widen the pool of Americans who would be interacting with people in other countries, thereby promoting greater understanding of the United States and its values abroad.
• And, exposing more Americans to diverse cultures, situations and peoples would strengthen US understanding of the world and enhance our interactions with it.

How would the virtual program be managed?

The virtual programs would be managed alongside existing in-country programs.  Just as with the in-country programs, Peace Corps offices overseas would work with host country officials to identify programmatic and training needs.  Peace Corps recruiters in Washington – dedicated specifically to the virtual program – would identify appropriate candidates to address those needs. 

What would be the administrative and logistical issues?

To implement a virtual Peace Corps program, Congress would need to appropriate additional funding and staff.  However, as a virtual program would not require volunteer travel and housing expenses, a large amount of new money might not be necessary.

The host countries would be responsible for providing adequate internet access and classroom facilities to support the virtual volunteers’ teaching needs.  They would not be able to charge for any training provided by the US government and would have to absorb all the associated costs.  Host countries would also be responsible for identifying gaps in local capacity that virtual volunteers could fill.

What would the host country get out of the virtual program? 

The universe of volunteers available on a virtual basis is likely to be larger and more experienced than the number of Americans willing to relocate to another country.  Host countries would therefore be able to provide a broader array of training programs to their citizens.  It would also be an opportunity for host countries to forge closer, long-term ties with a wide range of US business, educationa,l civil society and technological entities.

Conclusion

The Peace Corps should transform into a two-track organization.  Peace Corps missions overseas would administer both the in-country and virtual programs.  Peace Corps headquarters in Washington would recruit for, and support, both programs.  In this way, a venerable institution could continue on its successful and traditional path, while simultaneously moving into the 21^st century.

The Rohingya Tragedy: Why and Why Now?

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

Most Western observers have attributed the ongoing tragedy in Myanmar’s Rakhine province to ethnic and religious intolerance: a Buddhist majority zealously reclaiming its land from Muslim interlopers. Is this the whole story? I don’t think so. For reasons that have received more attention in non-Western media, it makes more sense, I believe, to consider economic motives.

First, let’s agree that Myanmar’s military and civilian leaders are guilty of a thoroughgoing ethnic cleansing of the coastal province of Rakhine. Slaughter. Rape. Village burning. The terrified, desperate flight of those left alive to Bangladesh. There’s plenty of evidence for charging Burmese leaders with crimes against humanity, but the applicability of the term genocide is still being debated. Why might it not apply? Because the goal of this horrendous policy is not to wipe out an entire culture, but “only” to clear the land of its long-despised Muslim inhabitants so that big money can be made by the right people, meaning those already running the country: the military brass, drawn largely from the Bamar Buddhist majority. Think of graft and real estate deals on a scale to make even a Donald E.Trump blush.

Anyone accustomed to thinking a nation’s army should exist only for defense against foreign threats needs to understand that the army in Myanmar is very much a business enterprise with a good grip on the national wealth. Lumber, for instance. And the jade trade across the border with China. So far as I know, Rakhine, until recently, offered little of interest to anyone who didn’t live there.

That wasn’t always the case. Historically, this stretch of coastal land with trade-attracting, wealth-creating deep water ports has known Muslim, Hindu and Buddhist rulers, but the openness to the world that commerce requires ended shortly after Myanmar (then Burma) achieved independence from the British. A grim period of military dictatorship ensued. So thoroughly was an increasingly impoverished population sealed away from the world that foreign aid was largely refused even after a high casualty typhoon swept through. Only in recent years has the Army been constrained to allow a carefully limited civilian role in governance and to invite foreign investment.

At that point, Rakhine was back on the map, and soon it was attracting the attention of a rapacious military.

But first, it seems to have attracted the attention of China.

China, as I have noted elsewhere, has been developing a “string of pearls,” investing in harbor-building and port-leasing ventures creeping along the Southern perimeter of Asia and coming mighty close to connecting with—you guessed it!—the South China Sea, to which China strenuously lays claim these days. This has not filled Indian maritime strategists with glee. Rakhine, therefore, has also attracted the attention of India.

Voila! A real estate boom in the making!

So here’s what India has been up to: (1) Having already built and turned over to Myanmar a deep water port at historic Sittwe at the mouth of the Kaladan river, India now plans a Special Economic Zone 60 kilometers upstream. (2) A highway of economic and strategic importance will connect the port to the interior of Myanmar as well as to India’s landlocked, hard-to-reach Northeastern states. ( 3) Finally, there is a proposal to build a 1575 km long pipeline from the Sittwe gas field to Gaya in the North Indian state of Bihar via Mizoram and Assam. Before this vision is wholly realized, there’s much work to do, but if I were a general I’d be grabbing up that increasingly vacant Rakhine land.

As India’s Commerce and Industry Minister Nirmala Sitharaman noted this past February, “If Sittwe is connected with our Bay of Bengal ports [like Kolkata], a lot of trade from India can... land in Sittwe and from there go to Myanmar or CLMV.” That’s Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam. Road building and trade. Oh, the money to be siphoned off from big bucks contracts! Oh, the traffic to be milked for safe, rapid passage!

Meanwhile, here’s what China has been doing just 80 kilometers south of the Indian SEZ: establishing a port and setting up a Chinese Special Economic Zone at Kyaukphyu.  For what purpose? “To provide China with a direct overview of busy shipping lanes of the Indian ocean,” according to the Economic Times. Plus, equally at Kyaukphyu, “an oil and gas pipeline that connects to China’s Yunnan province.”

Thai and Japanese investors are also developing port facilities in Rakhine. And so, as the Economic Times further observes, “A great game is unfolding in the region.”

Noting all these ambitious plans and projects, Atsuko Mizuno, a Japanese scholar from Kyushu University, warned this past spring of inevitable slips between cup and lip as well as another little  obstacle. “Beyond taking a long time, there are other problems lurking for India’s planned SEZ, similar to that of the Chinese," he writes,"such as issues with relocating residents [my emphasis].”

Indeed!

Which is why I’m smelling a rat. The scorched earth retribution for two police station raids by alleged Rohingya terrorists has gone beyond any normal, rational response to such incidents. It’s been collective punishment on an indiscriminate, horrendous scale. SO: What if the “insurgents” weren’t Rohingya? What if the attacks were schemes devised to provide a pretext for seizing valuable lands occupied by politically marginal people? It’s worth considering.

The Empires Strike Back

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

Imagine waking up tomorrow and discovering that Matteo Renzi’s Rome—I mean Italy—had sent several legions—I mean an army—to recapture Brittania—I mean, England—and some triremes—I mean freighters—are heading to Carthage—I mean, Tunis—to confiscate the year’s wheat harvest.

That would seem pretty weird, wouldn’t it?

But isn’t it equally bizarre to find that Turkey is justifying its participation in the effort to drive ISIS out of Mosul not only on the pretext of protecting itself from potential PKK safe havens in the Kurdish Autonomous region of Iraq but on historic grounds. Once upon a time the Ottoman Turks controlled all the Middle East, including Egypt—Watch out, President Sisi!—and much of southeastern Europe. Meanwhile, says Nensur Akgun, director of the Global Political Trends Center in Turkey: “A century ago [Mosul]was Turkey.” But alas! Turkey chose the wrong allies during World War I, leaving France and The U.K to squabble over the territorial spoils that seem to be up for grabs once again.

Meanwhile, China is belligerently devoted to claiming every islet or outcropping of rock in the South China Sea, plus every cove from which a Chinese fishing boat may have brought up a catch over the past several millenia. So watch out, Indonesia! Some Javan rulers once paid tribute to a Chinese emperor. Of course, Beijing is still trying to digest Tibet and Xinjiang, both of which had the misfortune of coming under Chinese control for various discontinuous periods in the past. But maybe Comrade Xi should be a little more circumspect. Some extraordinarily well-preserved, 4000-year-old Caucasian mummies dressed in European textiles have been disinterred from the Taklamatan desert. Surely the European Union can claim rights to this portion of the old Silk Road.

And need I mention Vladimir Putin’s appetite for reclaiming truant SSRs? Perhaps he forgets that Sweden has an earlier claim to the Baltic nations. Finland, too, was Swedish, once, with plenty of Swedes left to testify. Fortunately Sweden prefers cooperation to annexation these days. Russia, meanwhile, has been nibbling away at Georgia and Ukraine with some success, so when Putin dropped in on Tashkent after the Group of 20 meeting in China, he clearly expected Uzbekistan to behave like a Russian fief again. The feedback I got from the locals: no way! They’ve been corrupted by 25 years of independence, as Moscow no doubt perceives it.

There are some other possibilities that haven’t surfaced yet. Brexit may actually happen, but isn’t it time for the sun never to set on the British empire again? Surely India sees the glory in that.  But wait! There’s a prior claim on India. The Timurid descendants of Mongol conquerer Genghis Khan (b.1163) ruled in Delhi for centuries. In fact, the octopus-like Mongol empire encompassed Russia, took in Persia, threatened medieval Europe and controlled China as well.  Has Mr. Xi forgotten this?

And maybe we shouldn’t wait for ISIS to invade Spain. Since Muslims were ruling much of the Iberian peninsula before Ferdinand and Isabella kicked out the Jews, why not get the re-reconquista over without bloodshed? But wait on that, too. The Romans were in Spain before the Moors.

And this is where we began.  Don’t throw away your old maps and globes.

Saudis Playing with Fire

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

If the documents recently made public on Wikileaks are authentic, and they appear to be, then Saudi Arabia seems to be doing a more ambitious job of public diplomacy than the U.S., its originator and once thoroughly competent practitioner.  There’s a major difference, a troubling difference, however.  The U.S. didn’t fool around with religion.  The Saudis do.  They are playing with the most sensitive, most explosive political dynamite available these days: Islamic sectarianism.  They’re even meddling in Kerala, one of the most peaceable, prosperous states in India.  Anyone who knows anything about the history of South Asia—e.g. the slaughter during Partition—notes this with trepidation.  

Wahabi Missionaries

Actually, the fact that Saudi Arabia is sponsoring missionaries to promote its brand of Islam throughout the world is not news to anyone who’s been following the history of religion in India, pre and post independence.  Before oil was discovered, Saudi Arabia was poor, but already there were “barefoot” mullahs pushing Wahabism in Northern India, where Sufism (heresy to Wahabis and other modern salafists, including the violent sort) had already become a major form of Islam.

But India hasn’t been the only target for Wahabi missionaries.  I saw evidence of Wahabi influence all around me when I was BPAO in Medan, Indonesia, in the 1980s. Visiting madrassas there, I saw teachers clad in traditional arab dress, long white gown, desert sheik headdress.  New mosques weren’t being built in the local fashion, like pagodas.  No.  Arab money was building cubistic little mosques whose prototypes I’d seen earlier in Kuwait.  Because I thought it a shame that a tolerant version of the faith was being subverted by a harsher one,  I reported all this back then.  No one was interested.  

Washington's Blind Eye

Oddly enough, official Washington has also shown little interest in following up on the many hints of money trails from royalty-connected, Saudi moneybags to fanatical sects seeking to impose Wahabism (or worse, including its I.S.I.S. descendent) on the rest of the Muslim world.  Long dependent on Saudi oil (though no more) the U.S. developed a habit of looking the other way when it came to violations of human rights within Saudi Arabia.  As for the funding of terrorism by Saudi citizens, many of whom are wealthy enough to take on the role of  bankrolling jihad when it would have been been impolitic for the monarchy itself to do so, the U.S. government was more interested in cutting off support  to Hamas and Hezbollah, as if the U.S. were no more than an arm of the Israeli government.  Instead of outing major terror-supporters, the U.S. has jailed petty contributors to charities which political innocents might well have believed to be wholly committed to humanitarian causes.

We are perhaps sadder now, but not much wiser.  Have we really taken in the fact that Wahabism is a precursor to Al Qaeda and to the various even more violent sects that are succeeding it—and which, irony of ironies, might end up by toppling our “good” friends in Riyadh?  The royal family and its fabulously wealthy inner circle have a life style that is pretty close to decadent.  So serious blowback is possible.  Meanwhile, these “friends” who are also the financers of a violent new Caliphate, have operated under the implied stamp of  U.S. approval, while the U.S., ironically, is trying to counter an extraordinarily successful  I.S.I.S.  

A Two-Faced Ally

Yes.  Pretending to be a U.S. ally and a buffer against Iran for Israel, official Saudi Arabia has watched benignly as money has flowed from Riyadh to violent extremist jihadis. Islam, like Christianity, is a universalist religion.  There’s nothing intrinsically evil about the goal of uniting all in reverence for the one God, Islamist version, but I.S.I.S. methods are reprehensible, and most Muslims are no more eager than Westerners to submit to Islamist intolerance and misogyny. Wearied of corruption and incompetent leadership, however, they are susceptible to calls for a more just, more moral society.  American Christians are  susceptible to similar blandishments from equally narrow-minded Christian preachers.

The Not So Scary Iran Agreement

The U.S. Congress has sixty days to vote the recently signed accord with Iran up or down.  One conservative argument against this fiercely-negotiated, multi-lateral agreement (now U.N. approved) is that ending sanctions will free Iran to spend more money on supporting Shia-sympathetic forces outside Iran, thus further threatening an already vulnerable Israel.  Others fear that Iran seeks to become a regional super power, which it obviously should be.  A strong Iran happily respected within the world system is surely more desirable than  a not inconsequential Iran acting out because it’s been prevented from taking its proper place in the spectrum of world power.  

And think of this: if Israel ended its occupation of the West bank, Iran wouldn't need to support Hamas, a Sunni group that is now being challenged by Islamists who make Hamas seem like a pussy cat.  Time marches on.  I tend to agree with Israeli thinkers who argue that even a nuclear-armed Iran would not threaten Israel’s existence, since a guaranteed return strike from Israel would destroy Iran as well.  It’s the old familiar M.A.D. story.  As many observers have noted, Iran’s leaders have behaved rationally despite their dramatic rhetoric.

In short, it’s quite possible that the U.S. has more to fear from Saudi Arabia’s missionary activities than from going whole hog and  normalizing relations with Iran.  But that’s for the future.  Now Congress must act.  It can support the President—or sabotage the nuclear agreement.   Israel will lobby hard to undermine it for various reasons, among them the fact that it provides safeguards for “only” ten or fifteen years, or a bit more, depending on the  clause.  But no human agreement works for ever, whether or not it is still “officially” in effect.  Another perspective also makes sense: ten years allows plenty of time for positive developments.

And maybe we should also be asking why Saudi Arabia is not working to create a more peaceful world instead of stirring up sectarian animosity.  Perhaps this relationship, too, needs to be renegotiated.  A little more distance would seem to be in order.

The US and Southeast Asia: Then and Now

By Patricia H Kushlis

In three days, the international media will have long forgotten last week’s centenary of the Armenian “genocide” and moved on to the fortieth anniversary of the fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975, an event in history which still reigns as a defining moment in the memories of the hundreds of thousands of the mostly young Americans who fought there and in the families and loved ones of those who did not make it home alive. (photo by PHKushlis, 2002:  Cambodia war memorial to the killing fields.)

Yet before the fall of Saigon to Ho Chi Minh’s forces and the messy US evacuation from South Vietnam, came the US evacuation of its embassy in Cambodia, an event that has, for the most part, sunk into obscurity. In fact, the US government had already left Phnom Penh – evacuating its remaining embassy staff - and the killing fields of Cambodia 18 days before the Saigon departure began.   Perhaps had this first US evacuation from French Indochina also been as chaotic - more media attention would have been paid to it. In contrast, it occurred smoothly and proceeded with few if any a ripples.

So what did happen that Saturday 18 days before and why was it significant?  

Forty years ago on April 12, 1975, the US evacuated its remaining staff from US Embassy in Phnom Penh. The staff left by military helicopters – most of the rest had flown to Bangkok by fixed-wing several days before.  Their departures signaled the beginning of the end of American military intervention in French Indochina.  The great US military Southeast Asia draw-down thus began. 

The US left Saigon in a much more troubling, heart-wrenching and photogenic way 18 days later and Vientiane quietly fell to the Pathet Lao in May but, in stark contrast, the US never broke diplomatic relations with the Laotian   government unlike it did with Vietnam and Cambodia. 

The costly and mistaken domino theory

The specter of Communism taking over the rest of Southeast Asia - if we were to leave – otherwise known as the “domino theory,” however, proved false.  None of the ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) five – Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines and Brunei – were taken over by Communist insurgents despite the fact almost all had, or had been, threatened by home grown versions helped from elsewhere – most notably the PRC or the Soviet Union.  Time, of course, proved the domino theory wrong. 

For the fun-loving, king-revering Thai who had never experienced European or American colonization, at least, Communism was far too austere to be attractive for long.   In the Philippines, the Marcos regime was too strong and lasted for another 11 years.   But truth be told, the histories, cultures and peoples of the various countries that make up the patch-work quilt of Southeast Asia are as different as they can be from one another. Had the US government recognized the differences, understood the nationalist forces at work and responded differently it’s likely that the ignominious retreat of US forces and cessation of diplomatic relations with China’s underbelly would never have happened at all.

My story:  what I saw    

Since I arrived in Bangkok in early 1972, the US Embassy in Phnom Penh had been operating under siege conditions.  The city was only accessible by aircraft - planes flown over combat zones by experienced military pilots.  On the ground:  all roads to Thailand or Vietnam were controlled by the Khmer Rouge as their noose tightened around the capital.

Embassy spouses and families lived in Bangkok and as the Embassy in Phnom Pen was evacuated, its staff moved into US Embassy Bangkok – lock, stock and files.  We knew the evacuation was coming beforehand:  the question was the day, not if.  

Unlike the evacuation of US Embassy Saigon during which far too many American and Vietnamese employees were left to their own devices to flee or be captured and interned by the Viet Cong, the evacuation of Phnom Penh was a well-oiled professional job directed by the Embassy in coordination with the US military and enacted over weeks.  It included Cambodians – from high government officials to gardeners who had worked for Americans – people who felt their lives were endangered.  Not just American staff almost clinging to the blades of the last helicopters as they lifted off. (photo by PHKushlis 2002:  US helicopter on roof of the "reunification palace."

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).

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.

But What Will China Choose? A Review Article

 By Patricia Lee Sharpe

Hugh White’s 180-page book The China Choice: Why We Should Share Power has an important point to make, but terseness is not always a virtue. Primers can be as off-putting as tomes, and this primer is more like a plumped up outline or a script for a power point presentation.  As policy prescription it rejects the least grain of anecdotal or narrative sugar to help the message go down—and even the statistics are pretty skimpy. And yet, short as it is, a constricted, severely non-emotive vocabulary makes The China Choice tedious to plow through to its final iteration of the power-sharing “choice” that, White asserts, isn’t so much as considered by many American policy makers (a doubtful proposition, since ruminations aren't always trumpeted). And, yes, I do question White’s clinging to the word “choice.” To his mind, there’s no intellectually-respectable challenge to his really quite sensible prescription, which would have been more convincing, substantively as well as rhetorically, did he not undermine it by mind-numbing reiteration as well as condescending oversimplification. All in all, I was so exasperated by White’s approach that I wanted to disagree with him even though, benighted American that I am, I’d managed to reach much the same conclusion without benefit of his superior Australian thought-processes.

Here’s the first of many restatements of White’s argument. It appears in the first chapter:

 It is...quite wrong to see America as a country in decline, because in itself America remains a remarkably vibrant and innovative society and economy. But it is equally wrong to imply, as American political leaders often do, that its relative position in the world of power is not changing. This overlooks the simple mathematical fact that when we talk about relative power, America’s trajectory is only half the story, and not the half that matters right now. The shift in power is being driven by China’s rise, not by America’s decline [and] there is not much America can do about it.....[That being the case,] America has three options. It can resist China’s challenge and try to preserve the status quo in Asia. It can step back from its dominant role in Asia, leaving China to attempt to establish hegemony. Or it can remain in Asia on a new basis, allowing China a larger role but also maintaining a strong presence of its own.

Strategically, according to White, the power-tilting factors are essentially two: (1) China’s increasingly productive use of a population that is three times that of the U.S.; (2) China’s possession of enough missile-mounted nuclear weapons to seriously threaten the U.S. mainland and reduce the value of the once overwhelmingly superior American arsenal. Wealth, says White, is power, but the scope of China’s reach, even with its massive increase in national wealth, its economic domination of much smaller neighbors and its creation of a blue sea navy, cannot threaten America’s status as a great power. China, like it or not, will have to deal with the U.S. as an equal.

Meanwhile, White cautions, in the matter of countering Chinese hegemony and maintaining presence, influence and/or power in Asia, America cannot count on much help from China’s pygmy neighbors to form an “iron wall” to contain the dragon. The neighbors, as rational players, will be looking after their own interests first.

All of them [the Southeast Asian powers] want America to stay engaged in Asia to balance China’s power [and]not all of them have an equally strong interest in good relations with China [but they]will not sacrifice that interest to offer the U.S. substantial support against China—unless they are directly threatened themselves.

Worse, from the U.S. point of view, “all of them threaten to entangle the United States in their own quarrels with Beijing.”  For America to stay involved with Asia as China’s power increases will require some pretty tricky diplomacy and produce some pretty patchy results, if White is to be believed.

And yet I’m not so sure that the neighbors will be quite as docile and compliant as White expects. Japan is remilitarizing. Not-so-small Indonesia is a sleeping volcano for which ASEAN is an underutilized tool. While avoiding aggression, India continues to defend its contested borders and play host to Beijing’s nemesis, the Dalai Lama. Chinese control of rocks and reefs in the South China Sea is being fiercely resisted. Even backward, poverty-stricken Myanmar is already pushing back, having indefinitely postponed the Myitsone hydroelectric project at the headwaters of the country’s lifeblood Irrawaddy River. China needs the power and is reported to be furious, but the locals can see little or no benefit and considerable harm to their own interests.

Since all of these countries as well as all the others ringing China trade extensively if not exclusively with China, as does Australia, White argues that economic dependence will bind them more or less helplessly to China’s sphere of power. That being the case, given Australia’s increasing dependence on trade with China, I can’t help wondering if it isn’t White himself who’s feeling the gravitation and hoping that a little Sinophilia will protect the economic future of his own country. A fanciful thought, perhaps, but there it is. The hope that a still powerful U.S. will retain a countervailing interest in Australia’s Asian context would be entirely consistent.

Be that as it may, if it would be disastrous for America to go to war with China and self-defeating for America to pull out of Asia entirely, White insists that there’s only one realistic policy path for America now and in the near future: to work toward a cooperative sharing of power in Asia such that all, great powers and small, will benefit. Harking back to nineteenth century European history, he calls it a Concert of Asia.  Whatever it’s called, cooperation would seem to be a no brainer.  Except for the details, of course, where the devil resides.   But sadly there’s no room for elaboration in The China Choice.

Which brings us to a critical gap—or disappointment. As appealingly as he paints his Concert of Asia, White refuses to plumb very deeply its likely appeal or otherwise to Chinese policy makers and population:

Within a few years...China’s economy will be bigger than America’s on some measures. Within a couple of decades, it will be bigger...on any measure....[A]s China’s power grows, I believe it will want to be a great power again, and to be treated as a great power by others....That raises a question for the Chinese and for the rest of the world. How will China use its power? Will it be a harsh bully or a cooperative partner in a regional order? The answers are not clear One thing, however, is clear. China’s ambitions are not compatible with the old order [enforced by U.S. power.]

Do we already have a hint of an answer as we listen to Beijing's bellicose language and watch repeated and sustained efforts to expand China’s maritime boundaries to their historic maximum? What does White think? Or must we simply hope and pray for the best?  Perhaps that's what White means when he concludes his book with a phrase that's no less out of place when uttered by American presidents these days: “May God bless the United States of America.” Given White's advocacy of concerted power-sharing, wouldn’t it make more sense to invoke blessings on all peoples and nations?