Japan and the US in Thailand: do cooperation strategies differ?

Abstract

The article analyses and contrasts Japan-Thailand and US-Thailand relations. It attempts to prove a thesis that the Japanese leadership formulates the policy towards Thailand in its own way, without regard for its key ally, namely the US. This problem tends to be of high relevance, since currently Thailand is attempting to cautiously maneuver between the PRC and the so-called “collective West”. The author insists that, although Japan's and the US approaches towards the Southeast Asia countries have never substantially contradicted each other (due to the previously existing bipolar system and China's currently increasing presence in the region), they imply different methods of influencing other countries, including Thailand. It is characteristic of the US to practice military-political cooperation, while Japan rather resorts to economic cooperation. Furthermore, Japan and the US, due to the confrontation during the Second World war, had different starting points for modern relations with Thailand. In order to showcase that bilateral dialogues have evolved independently, the author examines Japan's and the US main driving forces when building relations with Thailand in a chronological order, from the Second World war onwards. The author concludes that Japan's key interest in Thailand is economy, while the US has consistently prioritised human rights, which laid the foundation for the US to criticise the military coups of 2006 and 2014 in a harsher way.

Keywords

• japan
• thailand
• the us
• japan-thailand relations
• us-thailand relations
• japan-us relations
• the autonomy of japan’s foreign policy
• thai military coups