Thailand: Tensions Between Partners

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"The present marriage between the U.S. and Thailand," says Thai Foreign Minister Thanat Khoman, "is a marriage of necessity, I think, for both sides." Like most such marriages, it has its strains, and they are beginning to show up with considerable frequency. The Thais face a dilemma: they want and need U.S. help in fighting off Communism in Southeast Asia, fearing that their country may be the next victim; yet they are disturbed by the effects of the American presence in Thailand on their traditional manners and morals.

Now that they see the U.S. moving toward peace talks in Viet Nam, they are also afraid that it may be preparing to reduce its commitment to them. The result is a widening rift in U.S.-Thai relationships that will be one of the principal topics of conversation when Thai Premier Thanom Kittikachorn visits Washington this week for talks with President Johnson.

Public Uproar. The frictions between the U.S. and Thailand range from the conduct of U.S. soldiers to the conduct of the war against the Communists in Thailand's North and North east. Permissive in private but somewhat puritanical in public, the Thais resent freewheeling, free-spending American ways with women; they even frown on G.I.s holding hands with Thai girls in public. In an increasingly bitter campaign, the state-guided press is attacking Americans for consorting with "hired wives," siring "redhaired babies" and "deceiving girls and making them become prostitutes." Reflecting the public uproar, the Thai Cabinet two weeks ago ordered that the clusters of bars, bordellos and massage parlors that have sprung up alongside U.S. military installations be removed to less conspicuous locations so that they will no longer bring "moral and social decline to the people."

American and Thai tensions have been increased by the fact that, although 45,000 U.S. troops are stationed in Thailand and another 6,000 visit Bangkok each month on leave from Viet Nam, there is still no status-of-forces agreement. U.S. and Thai diplomats have been haggling for more than a year over who should try misbehaving G.I.s, with the Thais pushing for an agreement that would limit the rights of U.S. soldiers in Thailand. Two weeks ago, in an effort to settle the dispute on their own terms, the Thais haled into court a U.S. Air Force sergeant who had been in an argument with a Thai taxi driver; they slapped him in jail for five days until he agreed to pay a $50 fine. Says General Pra-phas Charusathien, strongman of the Bangkok regime: "There is no question that foreign servicemen are under the jurisdiction of Thai courts of law. Of course they are."