Let me admit from the outset that I don’t know much about Thailand’s political system. In fact, before this week, I knew practically nothing. That said, its recent military coup is a major international development — with implications for the Bush White House.
[tag]Thailand[/tag]’s up-until-recently Prime Minister Thaksin [tag]Shinawatra[/tag] was, as the Washington Post described him today, “Thailand’s most popular civilian politician.” He was duly elected through a legitimate, democratic process, and despite a series of disconcerting steps he took to undermine the political process, his party was poised to win a parliamentary election that would have been held this fall. Gen. Sonthi [tag]Boonyaratkalin[/tag], who led the coup, has named himself the acting Prime Minister, suspended the constitution, and put off elections.
Surely, the Bush administration, which has considered Prime Minister Thaksin an ally in the war on terror, and which is committed to defending democracy around the globe at all costs, will stand up to denounce this military coup, right? Not so much.
At the United Nations lectern this week, [tag]President[/tag] Bush hailed the spread of democracy. “From Beirut to Baghdad,” he said, “people are making the choice for freedom.” Yet even as he spoke, tanks were rolling through the streets of Bangkok as a military coup toppled the elected leader of Thailand, who at that moment was in New York for the U.N. session.
[tag]Bush[/tag] made no mention of the dramatic events on Tuesday and left New York yesterday without ever seeing the deposed prime minister, much less offering any public support for a onetime strong ally of the United States. The president’s spokesman later provided a strikingly mild response only after being asked by a reporter, pronouncing the White House “disappointed” by the coup.
The timing of Bush’s address on democracy to the U.N. General Assembly and the overthrow of a democratically elected government underlined the complexities and contradictions in his “[tag]freedom agenda[/tag].”
Of course, the “freedom agenda” isn’t burdened by “complexities”; it’s simply a fraud. There is no “freedom agenda”; there are only after-the-fact rationalizations for misguided war.
Indeed, if Bush is truly committed to spreading democracy, he has a funny way of showing it.
With the president’s attention focused on the Middle East, the state of democracy elsewhere in the world does not rate as high on his priority list. In the case of Thailand, the situation is complicated by growing U.S. unease with the ousted prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra.
“The president’s freedom agenda is inherently selective,” said Thomas Carothers, head of the democracy project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “We care very much about democracy in Afghanistan and Iraq, but . . . Thailand’s just not part of the story, so this falls off the map a bit.”
Thailand is hardly the only example. Bush strongly supports Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistani president who took power in a military coup, and plans to meet with him at the White House twice in the next week. Bush will also host Kazakhstan’s president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, at the end of next week despite the suppression of opposition parties, newspapers and human rights groups in the oil-rich Central Asian republic.
The administration has likewise embraced autocratic leaders in such disparate places as Azerbaijan and Ethiopia while generally tempering criticism of anti-democratic policies in Russia and China. Even in the Middle East, Bush has treaded lightly in nudging allies such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia to reform.
The truth of the matter is, over the last six years, Bush has shown no interest in strengthening democratic institutions, and has never made promoting democracy a meaningful goal of his administration.
And yet, the president and his allies tout the “freedom agenda” with a straight face all the time. It’s quite a talent.