Thailand

After 67 years of diplomatic relations and two decades of collaboration in connecting India with Southeast Asia in January of 2012, Thailand and India finally signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on Defence Cooperation. This effort to deepen defence and military ties between the two countries emerged relatively late when compared with those between India and most other Southeast Asian countries.

• Sasiwan Chingchit
• Occasional Papers

थाईलैंड में लोकप्रिय लोकतांत्रिक मांगों के बरक्स वर्चस्वशाली शासन संरचना ।

• Om Prakash Das
• September 25, 2023
• Issue Brief

The Shan state of Myanmar is the largest producer of illegal drugs within the infamous Golden Triangle—a tri-junction at the Myanmar, Laos and Thailand borders.

• Akash Sahu
• July 28, 2022
• Issue Brief

This article examines how regime types shape security sector reforms, that are integral to the peace processes in Thailand’s Patani and the Philippines’ Mindanao.

• Dr. Janjira Sombatpoonsiri
• July 2018
• Strategic Analysis

BIMSTEC needs to build on regional synergies and work towards utilising the available resources optimally by focusing on fewer priority areas and undertaking projects that are economically feasible.

• Sampa Kundu
• June 20, 2017
• IDSA Comments

This article analyses two security challenges facing the Royal Cambodian Government (RGC) and the Cambodian Defence Organization at the strategic level for the next decade. The first obvious challenge relates to the stalemated territorial dispute along the Cambodia–Thailand border, particularly the question of ownership of the Preah Vihear (called PhraViharn in Thailand) temple and its surrounding area since October 2008.

• Veasna Var
• March 2017
• Strategic Analysis

With the take-over of power by the military on May 22, 2014, under General Prayuth Chan-O-Cha, the chief of army, Thailand has gone full circle in coup d’états, from democratic deficit to fractious political struggle between different social groups leading to acute and irreconcilable political instability that gives leverage to the army to finally intervene and seize power by suspending the constitutional processes. Democracy in Thailand is not only a recent phenomenon, but is also periodic and short-lived.

• Baladas Ghoshal
• March 2015
• Strategic Analysis

While the main purpose of the protest movement is to end Thaksin Shinawatra’s influence and expose corruption, the sense of animosity and mistrust towards other countries among the Yellow Shirts and Democrat Party supporters is the by product that is severely affecting Thailand’s external relations with the US, other key partners, and its overall position in Southeast Asia.

• Sasiwan Chingchit
• January 22, 2014
• Issue Brief

Piecing together Thailand’s fractured polity and society will not be an easy task especially given that the Shinawatra government has to live up to the expectations of its supporters while allaying the opposition’s apprehensions.

• Rahul Mishra
• September 20, 2011
• IDSA Comments

The central question is whether democracy or semi-democracy should be subordinated to the personal ambitions of a few leaders like Thaksin or should the rule of law prevail.

• Pankaj K Jha
• April 12, 2010
• IDSA Comments