A Plastic Nation – The Curse of Thainess in Thai-Burmese Relations
By Pavin Chachavalpongpun
Published by University Press of America Inc, 2005
Reviewed by Paul Dorsey

Bending over for Burma

Musings on ‘the artefact of Thainess’, in which kings and prime ministers stand accused of manipulating relations with Rangoon for their personal gain

The Nation
“A Plastic Nation” could make a fine textbook for Thai students, and hopefully it’s finding its way onto their reading lists, but the country’s rulers are unlikely to endorse such a provocative work. There are lines like this: “The supremacist nature of Thainess makes Thai people less aware of how their leaders only pretend to be Thai, even though their real actions are illegitimate.”
And, of course, the plastic nation of the title is Thailand, not Burma.
Pavin Chachavalpongpun, 34, an academic lecturer currently based in Singapore who has often written on social and political topics in The Nation, takes it as a given that Burma is a dictatorship to be reviled and instead sets upon his homeland for helping keep it that way.
Thais have for generations been the (usually unwitting) dupes, Pavin stresses over the course of 190 pages, as kings and prime ministers have manipulated history and human emotion to portray Burma alternately – depending on the leader’s need for legitimacy or cash – as a friend or foe.
What do you want to make in Burma, consecutive leaders have asked themselves – money or democracy? Either way they could show their Thainess: money helps the country, Chatichai Choonhavan and Chavalit Yongchaiyudh said. Democracy is an essence of Thainess, Chuan Leekpai said. All were eventually ousted, ostensibly for being “un-Thai”.
Pavin does a fine job on background, though readers other than academics might be slowed by his lengthy explanation of the semantics behind Thai virtues and norms, which, given their suppleness, can be cannily marshalled to contradictory ends. These factors – and the fact that khwampenthai, or Thainess, boils down to “otherness” (being different from everyone else) – have seen government’s attitude sway wildly on the ethnic insurgencies on the border, the illicit drugs trade and Burma’s admission to Asean.
That’s since the 1988 democracy crackdown in Rangoon. The same cynical manipulation dates back to the first gleanings of nation-building nearly 200 years ago. Sukhothai, Pavin is at pains to point out, only became “a former capital of Siam” when later rulers were laying a fictitious groundwork for nationhood.
“Thai nationhood is a story of illusion and cover-up,” he writes. “It appears it was constructed less through any heartfelt desire of Thai leaders to materialise the Thai national identity than a more politically motivated effort to preserve their interest as power holders.”
By embracing the modernism of the West, Pavin says boldly elsewhere in the book, “Chulalongkorn [King Rama V] … primarily aimed to acquire power for his own sake.” And again later: “The manner in which Chulalongkorn and [Field Marshal Phibun Songkhram] accommodated themselves to the foreign powers puts in doubt whether Thailand should be considered as a non-colonised state.”
Phibun, who was twice prime minister in the 1940s and ’50s, seized an opportunity to gain legitimacy in Western eyes when he helped the CIA help the Kuomintang fight the Chinese communists during the Cold War. Rangoon was of course incensed, Pavin notes, so Phibun “solidified” Thailand’s alliance with Burma’s ethnic insurgents. It was the grand buffer scheme that was deployed again under Chuan Leekpai, having been dismantled by Chatichai and Chavalit, when the minorities were shunted aside so the Thai premiers could make business deals with the Burmese generals.
But “despite submerging himself into the free world,” Pavin writes, “Phibun simply rejected [as un-Thai] the international norm of democracy. His policies and activities implicitly suggest that his alliance with the free world was an ideological pretence, used to conceal the operation of his military dictatorship.”
With no one to defend Thailand against in the years after World War II, the military governments “attempted to preserve a traditional enemy to provide a veneer for their power interests and, in the meantime, to begin internal colonisation through the moulding of Thainess.”
As Thatcher had the Falklands, Reagan Grenada and the Bushes Iraq, Thailand’s despots gave their citizenry an unforgiven enemy in the shape of Burma, 200 years after it sacked Ayutthaya and affronted Buddhism. Within another generation, Chavalit was embracing the Burmese and saying they were better Buddhists than were the Thais. Chatichai and Chavalit evoked social “norms” to justify their favouritism and nepotism. Thus, says Pavin: “Being Thai is being generous and loyal – in order to exploit others and make money.”
It’s rather mystifying why he is annoyed that Chuan’s motivation for pursuing a democratic Burma was to gain political points. Surely Chuan would deserve more than points had he been successful.
Pavin is all too willing to present statement as fact (though references abound).
There’s a not-particularly-edifying chapter on the drugs trade that has a “list” of 13 suspected Thai drug barons (many of them MPs), only one of whom is named.
And some facts go askew. Pavin gives the distinct impression that 12-year-old twins Johnny and Luther Htoo were among the God’s Army rebels killed when Chuan put an abrupt end to the hostage situation at a Ratchaburi hospital in January 2000. And among the “hidden” reasons for Asean admitting Burma as a member in 1997 was that, already at odds with Beijing over South China Sea territories, the grouping wanted to stem China’s influence on Rangoon. This rationale was in fact a widely known fact at the time, if not an officially acknowledged one.
The book’s denouement is a bit of a blur, ranging from the “bogey-man of tham khon farang” (following in the West’s footsteps) to singer Todd “Thongdee” Lavelle’s non-farangness, and Pavin shows his disdain for the “puzzling” sight of Thais halting in mid-stride in the street when the national anthem plays and rising to their feet in cinemas when the royal anthem sounds. Both of these practices, he notes, originated in the West, yet while they’re “set in stone, Thainess itself is plastic”.
In the end there are no recommendations, only the conclusion that Thainess is a malleable and often misused phenomenon that has laid the basis for cross-border insecurity. Readers might have hoped for more than this after their long roadtrip with Pavin.
But despite its flaws, “A Plastic Nation” motors along. Even if the tyres wear thin and the engine occasionally sputters, it’s got a full tank and the ride is smooth enough.