Tensions Between Partners

"The present marriage between the U.S. and Thailand," says Thai Foreign Minister Thanat Khoman, "is a marriage of necessity, I think, for both sides." Like most such marriages, it has its strains, and they are beginning to show up with considerable frequency. The Thais face a dilemma: they want and need U.S. help in fighting off Communism in Southeast Asia, fearing that their country may be the next victim; yet they are disturbed by the effects of the American presence in Thailand on their traditional manners and morals.

Now that they see the U.S. moving toward peace talks in Viet Nam, they are also afraid that it may be preparing to reduce its commitment to them. The result is a widening rift in U.S.-Thai relationships that will be one of the principal topics of conversation when Thai Premier Thanom Kittikachorn visits Washington this week for talks with President Johnson.

Public Uproar. The frictions between the U.S. and Thailand range from the conduct of U.S. soldiers to the conduct of the war against the Communists in Thailand's North and North east. Permissive in private but somewhat puritanical in public, the Thais resent freewheeling, free-spending American ways with women; they even frown on G.I.s holding hands with Thai girls in public. In an increasingly bitter campaign, the state-guided press is attacking Americans for consorting with "hired wives," siring "redhaired babies" and "deceiving girls and making them become prostitutes." Reflecting the public uproar, the Thai Cabinet two weeks ago ordered that the clusters of bars, bordellos and massage parlors that have sprung up alongside U.S. military installations be removed to less conspicuous locations so that they will no longer bring "moral and social decline to the people."

American and Thai tensions have been increased by the fact that, although 45,000 U.S. troops are stationed in Thailand and another 6,000 visit Bangkok each month on leave from Viet Nam, there is still no status-of-forces agreement. U.S. and Thai diplomats have been haggling for more than a year over who should try misbehaving G.I.s, with the Thais pushing for an agreement that would limit the rights of U.S. soldiers in Thailand. Two weeks ago, in an effort to settle the dispute on their own terms, the Thais haled into court a U.S. Air Force sergeant who had been in an argument with a Thai taxi driver; they slapped him in jail for five days until he agreed to pay a $50 fine. Says General Pra-phas Charusathien, strongman of the Bangkok regime: "There is no question that foreign servicemen are under the jurisdiction of Thai courts of law. Of course they are."

Relations between the two allies have become so strained that Thai officials, in fact, seem increasingly to consider it a point of pride to refuse to heed U.S. advice. "Having governed themselves for more than 700 years," says U.S. Ambassador Leonard Unger, "the Thais feel no need to adjust their way of doing things to meet foreign concepts of how things should be done." Upset by continual U.S. prodding for faster social and economic reforms, the Thais have decided to cut down the number of U.S. advisers upcountry, have removed the Peace Corps from all future work in community development. After nine years of delays, the government has at last produced a draft of a new constitution that would provide a measure of representative government for the Thais, but no date has been set for the promulgation of the new law or for elections.

Massive Force. The Thais seem intent on ignoring U.S. advice about a new Communist-inspired insurrection that broke out a few months ago among the 12,000 Meo tribesmen in Thailand's rugged far north near the Laotian border. Though U.S. military men have maintained that an even-handed approach could win back the formerly loyal Meos, the Thai army, already plagued by Communist guerrilla warfare in the Northeast, has insisted on using massive force. It has indiscriminately bombed and strafed Meo villages and forced the hill people into refugee camps in the lowlands, treating the 50% who refuse resettlement as the enemy.

The result has been that, while only a few started the insurrection, many more are being forced onto the Communist side. Last week, in the most violent incident of the revolt, some 100 Meo tribesmen hit a government outpost in the northern province of Chain-grai, killing 14 police and wounding three. The attack was likely to bring harsh Thai reprisals that will probably lead to a new escalation in what began as only an insignificant outbreak of tribal unrest.

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