What does the reformist-led 2006 military coup suggest regarding the state of security sector reform in Thailand? This chapter highlights a profound contradiction between the logic and direction of superficial ‘fine-tuning’ reforms and the (more influential) underlying military culture that promotes military involvement in politics. Greater attention must be paid to internalising and embedding the basic ideas of SSR within Thailand’s security sector. Future security sector reform in the country will need to be incremental and will require proactive external support.
For most of its history, the Royal Thai Army has been the country’s preeminent institution and has seen its role as nation building. Military officers have collaborated with the civilian authorities, including politicians and business leaders. Although formal civilian control of the military was established in 1992, a number of deeply embedded obstacles have hindered genuine reform. These include: 1) no tradition of civilian or democratic control of the military; 2) no tradition of transparent, merit-based promotion; 3) significant politicisation and military appointments as a determinant of national political struggles; and 4) a tendency for the military to be inward-looking and to protect regime security rather than national security. While the decade prior to 2006 witnessed an ostensible demilitarising of politics and the spread of democratic ideas among the officer class, depoliticisation did not occur within the military.
The Thai military assumed a major role in national unification and economic development, which encouraged and legitimised its intervention in politics. This role was made possible by alliances between civilian and military elites, patron-client relations running in both directions, and significant business support for the military. Further findings include the following:
- The military’s formal legal and bureaucratic structure has not changed since 1960. Its role remains focused on internal threats associated with minorities.
- The military has been internally divided; most of Thailand’s 18 coups pitted military factions against each other, and military appointments have been highly politicised.
- Following the failed 1992 coup there was a protracted struggle to bring defence spending and the military under civilian control. The military leaders acquiesced in reforms to assert the primacy of the constitution and to formalise the idea of parliamentary scrutiny, but tried to manipulate the process.
- Attempts at major restructuring initiated by the reformist General Surayud, including military downsizing, were stalled by lack of support from individual service chiefs.
- Sarayud achieved ad hoc ‘fine-tuning’ reforms that addressed specific problems (such as corruption, the size of the officer corps and dealing with insurgents) but these did not alter basic aspects of strategic and bureaucratic culture. The security sector still perceived itself as the guardian of the monarchy and ‘Thai-style democracy’ with an important role in domestic politics.
- Sarayud was removed from office in 2002 by the new prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra. Thaksin reversed the reform process, filling senior military and police positions with allies and family members to secure support for his regime.
- Thaksin was able to circumvent scrutiny because both parliament and civil society lacked military expertise. This lack of expertise also precluded informed public debate.
