Day: January 22, 2021
Thai protests make progress, but…
In 2020, a youth-led protest movement began to spread across Thailand as protestors called for fundamental political change in the Kingdom, including a new election, constitution and reforms to the structure of the monarchy. On January 19, the United States Institute of Peace convened a roundtable to discuss the political dynamics of the movement, its future, and the potential for the US government to craft a constructive response. Speakers and their affiliations are listed below:
Brian Harding (Moderator): Senior Expert, Southeast Asia, U.S. Institute of Peace
Rattaphol “Ahn” Onsanit: Thai Service Chief, Voice of America
Penchan Phoborisut: Assistant Professor, California State University, Fullerton
Jonathan Pinckney: Senior Researcher, Nonviolent Action, U.S. Institute of Peace
Desmond Walton: Senior Director, BowerGroupAsia; U.S. Army Colonel (ret.) and former U.S. Defense Attaché to Thailand
Twitter enables the movement
Throughout 2020–and continuing into 2021–a youth-led pro-democracy movement has emerged across Thailand. While the largest demonstrations have largely been concentrated in Bangkok, Onsanit notes that the emergence of symbolic protests in schools throughout the countryside indicates that the movement is more generational and ideological than it is geographic.
Social media has largely driven the movement’s momentum. Phoborisut points to the relatively high saturation of Twitter among the Thai as a particularly critical factor. Activists have used hashtags such as #whatshappeninginthailand to raise awareness for their campaign, while protestors have also used Twitter to create transnational networks with activists in foreign countries. In particular, the hashtags #milkteaalliance and #howtomob have connected Thai protestors with activists in Hong Kong, who have shared lessons learned and tactical advice from their own experiences with protests.
Positive prospects, but no guarantees
According to Pinckney, two elements of the Thai protest movement suggest positive prospects for the future. First, the movement has exhibited the tactical flexibility typical of most successful protests. By switching between mass demonstrations and dispersed tactics such as the display of banners, hand gestures, and flash mobs–a necessity due to both government repression and the COVID-19 pandemic–the movement has continued to place pressure on King Vajiralongkorn despite the trying times. Second, the movement to date has managed to largely remain nonviolent. As a result, protestors maintain popular legitimacy while government repression has sparked widespread public backlash, leading to the possibility of a more broad-based movement in the future.
However, Pinckney cautions that activists should not count on the ability of social media to generate international awareness and support in the long-term. As protests in other countries have demonstrated, international attention can quickly waver without durable, institutional commitments to the movement. Moreover, Onsanit also warns that protest leaders have so far shown an unwillingness to compromise, diminishing the prospects for a negotiated agreement between activists and the monarchy.
Limits on US support
In the past, the US government has consistently prioritized security and economic issues over political issues when developing its relationship with Thailand. The political dimension, which has included coup attempts, growing authoritarian tendencies, and human rights abuses, has been the shakiest pillar of the US-Thai relationship long before the current wave of protests. Given this history, Walton suggests that the incoming Biden administration is more likely to support reform-oriented dialogue rather than an anti-monarchy agenda. Thai activists’ current refusal to negotiate could thus complicate the US response to the protests.
Nevertheless, he also proposes concrete steps that the new administration can take to maximize its decision-making ability. First, he recommends returning to career ambassadors in Thailand with deep knowledge of the country and region. Second, the Biden administration should reconcile differences between the idealists and pragmatists in his administration as the Thai monarchy can weaponize inconsistencies in US foreign policy around the world to diminish America’s ability to support protests in Thailand. Ultimately, then, US influence will hinge on a combination of the outcome of ideological competition within the movement and strategic decision-making by the U.S.
To watch the event in full, please click here.
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Stevenson’s army, January 22
Charlie Stevenson’s writes: “So what do you do when you see a picture of yourself — from 40 years ago — on the homepage of the New York Times?
Share it, of course.” If you don’t know who the person in the foreground is, you are young:
Both House & Senate voted overwhelmingly for the waiver for Austin to be SecDef; Senate vote to confirm will come Friday 1030. Fred Kaplan explains why.
NPR says many veterans were part of attack on the Capitol.
As expected, administration seeks extension of New START, which doesn’t require Senate approval.
Steve Coll warns of problems facing Biden in Afghanistan.
Last week I sent NYT article questioning the promise of hypersonic weapons. Here’s the study on which that was based.
Just Security has some good ideas for a new AUMF.
A bit of history: how a 1930s populist got de-platformed.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to republish here. To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
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Unity isn’t what it sounds like, but two new states would help
The main theme of Joe Biden’s inauguration as 46th President was unity. He repeatedly appealed to it, as did others who came to the podium. But what does it really mean?
It can’t mean unanimity. In a democracy, disagreement, dissent, and debate are the norm, not the exception. If “reaching across the aisle” is to be a reality, on most issues it will mean bringing a few from the other side over to vote with the Democratic majorities in the House and Senate. Most Democrats and most Republicans won’t agree on most things, which is why we have Democrats and Republicans.
Nor can “unity” mean reconciling with the most extreme forces. No one is suggesting that the rioters of the 1/6 insurrection are part of whatever is meant by unity. Many are felons who belong in prison rather than in a political dialogue. Nor are those in Congress who de facto supported the insurrection with their votes against accepting the election results a force to be unified with. One of them has already filed impeachment charges against Biden, for his son’s alleged misdeeds. That won’t go anywhere, but there is no bridge to be built in that direction.
Biden did not specify what he meant by unity, but I think I know. He means agreement on the rules of the political game. That’s where things went haywire in the 2020 election and its aftermath. Republicans refused to accept many of the election procedures, even in states where they control the legislature and the electoral mechanism like Georgia and Arizona. After failing in more than five dozen court challenges, they continued to deny the validity of the election results. Their votes against certifying the electoral votes in the House and Senate were the last straw, especially following the attack on The Capitol.
The strife over electoral procedures and results is going to get worse, not better, despite Biden. Covid-19 created an obvious need for more readily accessible voting, by drop box and mail. Republicans will try to get rid of that accessibility before the 2022 election by requiring voter IDs, limiting absentee voting, and eliminating same-day registration. Reacting to one version of the Covid-19 relief bill the Democrats proposed, Trump himself said this:
The things they had in there were crazy. They had things, levels of voting that if you’d ever agreed to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again,
The proof is in the pudding: Trump lost to Biden by almost 7 million votes, more than twice the margin of popular votes by which he lost to Hillary Clinton in 2016. Four years hence, given the aging of the Republican base and the Democratic predilections of younger people, that margin could be even larger. This makes the Electoral College, where a difference of 44,000 votes in three states could have given Trump victory, a growing problem.
But it can’t be solved readily. The more immediate, and less difficult, issue is the Senate, where the 50 Republican members represent 41 million fewer people than the 50 Democratic members. This is crazy. But there are some partial solutions readily available: admit the District of Columbia (whose 700,000 residents would be represented by two senators and one member of the House) and Puerto Rico (whose 3.2 million residents would be represented by two senators and four or five members of the House). Both the District and Puerto Rico have voted in favor of statehood. The District would become the [Frederick] Douglas Commonwealth (hence still DC).
It takes only a majority vote in both Houses to admit a new state, but in the Senate this proposition would face the filibuster, which can be overcome only with 60 (out of 100) votes. The filibuster has been abolished for particular issues (most Federal appointments and Supreme Court Justices), so why not do it for admission of new states to the Union? That is a narrowly defined category. There are four more US territories (other than PR), but the largest of them is Guam, with 168,000 people. Even if the other territories want statehood, their odds of getting 50% of the Senate to agree to it are minimal.
The House and Senate Democrats could do worse than put DC and PR statehood at the top of their priority list. Admission to the Union would partially redress gross inequities and give the residents of both places the voices in Congress that their numbers merit. The Republicans will vote against, but once admitted they will be compelled to do what they don’t do now: try to win the votes of nearly 4 million people they now ignore. That would be a most welcome kind of unity.
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