Thai
military resists political
pressure By John Cole and Steve
Sciacchitano
Thailand recently released
its autumn list of senior military officer
promotions and reassignments, an annual exercise
that determines the balance of power among
competitive factions inside the armed forces.
While many analysts expected self-exiled
former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra to push
for his known military allies to take key
positions, Royal Thai Army (RTA)
Commander-in-Chief Gen Prayuth Chan-ocha appears
at first blush to have maintained the upper hand.
The main annual reshuffle, which came into
effect on October 1, is a key indicator of the
strength of political loyalties inside the Thai
military and a broad barometer of political
stability in the year
ahead. Reshuffles have
been especially closely watched since 2006, the
year the military overthrew Thaksin and his then
ruling Thai Rak Thai party in a bloodless coup.
This year's list reassigned 811 senior
officers, up from a normal 500-600 rotations,
representing the largest military reshuffle
recorded in Thailand.
Some Thai press
reports interpreted this year's reshuffle as a
victory for Defense Minister Air Chief Marshal
Sukamphol Suwannathat, a known Thaksin ally
appointed to the post earlier this year. To be
sure, Sukamphol's position was strengthened when
he prevailed over three senior army officers
serving at the Ministry of Defense (MoD) who had
refused to accept their reassignments and
protested directly to Prime Minister Yingluck
Shinawatra, Thaksin's younger sister.
Sukamphol created a staggering 210 new
senior positions ranking colonel and above in the
MoD's Office of the Permanent Secretary. He also
arranged for the transfer of an unprecedented
number of officers from the Air Force, his own
branch of the armed service, to the MoD.
This was an apparent effort to create a
large number of generals with personal loyalty to
Sukamphol and expand the MoD as a counter to the
traditionally dominant RTA. The move also possibly
reflects an expansion of some kind of unexplained
special activity within the MoD.
A deeper
examination of the reshuffle list, however,
indicates that the Prayuth-led RTA maintained a
large measure of its political independence.
Prayuth, a staunch royalist and perceived opponent
of the Yingluck-led government, was able to
maintain his top spot and elevate many of his
known loyalists to key RTA command positions. Some
have speculated that Yingluck's government felt
too weak to manage the potential fallout from
elevating too many of its own loyalists within the
RTA.
Others believe that Prayuth and
Sukamphol reached an accommodation whereby the
army commander supported the minister in his
public spat with the three generals in his office,
including the husband of a known provincial
powerbroker in Thaksin's camp, in return for a
free hand over the broader reshuffle.
Thailand's army commander, rather than the
minister of defense or commander of the Royal Thai
Armed Forces (formerly known as the Supreme
Command, the joint headquarters that superficially
controls all three branches of the armed services)
has historically been the predominant influence
inside the military. It is thus significant that
Prayuth maintained his top position despite
Thaksin's and Yingluck's Peua Thai party's
electoral dominance and earlier veiled threats
that Sukamphol might orchestrate his removal.
There are two likely main reasons for this
outcome. First, and most obvious, is the fact that
Thailand's army commander exercises direct
authority over the major combat units that
traditionally have been deployed to launch coups.
Second, and less obvious, is that the army
commander controls an extensive internal
intelligence, civil affairs, and psychological
operations network that has been used in the past
to monitor politicians' activities and influence
major political events, including democratic
elections.
Thailand's military tends to
view itself as the ultimate defender of the Thai
nation and royal family, rather than the
constitution or a particular civilian government.
This somewhat vague but strongly felt sense of
duty has often led the military to put it's
institutional interests - and in many cases the
personal interests of senior officers - above
those of the civilian administration that it
nominally serves.
Against this backdrop,
Prayuth accomplished several important objectives
during this year's reshuffle. First and foremost,
Prayuth was able to put Lieutenant General Udomdet
Setabut on a track to succeed him as army
commander after Prayuth's mandatory retirement in
September 2014. Udomdet, previously the commander
of the 1st Army Region and a known royal palace
favorite, was promoted to a full four-star general
and reassigned as the RTA's powerful Chief of
Staff.
Udomdet is a royal aide and
recipient of the Ramathibodi Medal for valor in
combat, the equivalent of the US Congressional
Medal of Honor. That designation represents a
strong tie to the royal family, as King Bhumibol
Adulyadej and Queen Sirikit are known to maintain
close personal contact with recipients of the
medal throughout their military careers. Like
Prayuth, Udomdet spent many years serving in the
21st Infantry Regiment, a unit dedicated to
protecting the royal family.
Second,
Prayuth managed to replace many other senior RTA
command and staff positions with his own younger
supporters from various up-and-coming military
academy and military prep school classes. These
changes included all corps commanders, who usually
move up in subsequent reshuffles to command the
various army areas, a level of command just below
Prayuth, as well as six division commanders.
Factional divides Prayuth also
deftly balanced the interests of competing
factions inside the RTA. This factionalism, a key
determinant of intra-military stability, cuts in
two main directions. First, there is the
ever-present competition between members of the
various military academy prep school graduating
classes, whose members tend to remain loyal to one
another and often either rise to high rank or
stagnate in unison.
Second, two broad
groups of officers, loosely translated into
English as the "Angel Descendents" and "Eastern
Tigers", now fiercely compete for promotions and
assignments to key positions within the 1st Army
Region, the pivotal command which oversees the
security of Bangkok and the central region.
The Angel Descendent, or Wong
Thewan, group tends to represent the RTA's
traditional side. It is comprised of officers with
high-level family connections, usually in the
military but also sometimes from powerful
political clans. The careers of the these officers
is usually centered around the 1st Infantry
Division, or King's Guard. The present roster of
serving battalion and regimental commanders in the
1st Infantry Division indicates it is still the
unit of choice for well-connected officers.
Over the years, Angel Descendent officers
have benefited from what some view as a
disproportionate number of promotions and key
assignments. In the fall of 2004, however, this
trend changed dramatically with the assignment of
General Prawit Wongsuwan, a prominent Eastern
Tiger alum, as army commander for his final year
of active duty.
The Eastern Tigers are
comprised of officers who often lack special
family connections and whose careers have centered
around service in the 2nd Infantry Division,
especially its subordinate 21st Infantry Regiment.
The 21st Regiment is a special RTA unit that ever
since the 1981 April Fool's Day coup has been
tasked with protecting royal family members.
While many analysts believe that the shift
away from the Angel Descendants towards the
Eastern Tigers was initiated by the 2006 coup,
which overthrew Thaksin, it actually began two
years earlier. The dominance in promotions and
assignments that Eastern Tiger officers have
recently enjoyed has been a major factor in
pushing many Angel Descendent officers to support
Thaksin and his ruling Peua Thai party.
Several of Thaksin's military prep school
Class 10 classmates hail from this group,
including Preuk Suwannathat, who recently retired
after serving as commander of the 1st Infantry
Division, and his two brothers. All three officers
are the sons of the late Gen Tuanthong
Suwannathat, a key ally of former Prime Minister
Kriangsak Chomanan in the 1970s.
The Angel
Descendent group clearly hoped that Peua Thai's
electoral victory in 2011 would translate into
more promotions and key assignments for its
members. While this has not transpired, Prayuth's
balanced handling of key promotions and
assignments at this year's reshuffle likely helped
to defuse tensions. It has also reportedly earned
him a new measure of respect from the Angel
Descendants, despite Prayuth's personal background
as an Eastern Tiger. This will have left little
opening for Thaksin and Peua Thai politicians to
exploit the rivalry and play divide-and-rule
politics inside the armed forces.
Significantly, Prayuth promoted an
unprecedented 103 officers from the rank of
special colonel (the RTA equivalent of brigadier
general) to major general at this year's
reshuffle. The number of officers promoted to
major general never exceeded 62 at previous fall
reshuffles. Like the 210 new senior positions
Sukamphol created within the MoD, this is another
eye-popping figure and is undoubtedly related to
Prayuth's believed success in satisfying the
ambitions of various younger military prep school
classes for promotion.
Given that most
Thai military officers remain on active duty until
their mandatory retirement at age 60, many of
these newly promoted major generals (who are 52 to
53 years old) have another seven or eight years
remaining on active duty. They will now likely
view Prayuth as an officer to whom they owe a
major debt, one that could possibly be repaid
should the royalist army commander decide to enter
politics after his retirement in 2014.
Cultivating loyal allies among the
commanders of key combat units could also
represent an important strategic advantage in any
future political conflict, including new rounds of
street protests or another push for the criminally
convicted Thaksin to return from self-exile
through some sort of amnesty. (The effect of all
these promotions on the RTA's efficiency and
effectiveness as a fighting force, however, is
another matter.)
Prayuth, who previously
had a reputation for favoritism towards his own
Class 12 loyalists, has likely managed through the
reshuffle to maintain RTA unity in the face of
growing factionalism. While the big question
looming over Thai politics is whether Thaksin will
soon push again to return from exile, the fact
that Prayuth maintained his position and
strengthened his hand at the reshuffle means the
RTA will remain a potent countervailing force in
the year ahead.
John Cole
and Steve Sciacchitano spent several
years in Thailand while on active duty with the US
Army. Both were trained as Foreign Area Officers
specializing in Southeast Asia and graduated from
the Royal Thai Army's Command and General Staff
College. They are now retired and the views
expressed here are their own.
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