A New Era of Thailand-France Relations? – The Diplomat

Whereas the absence of high leaders from america and Russia at this week’s Asia-Pacific Financial Cooperation (APEC) Leaders’ Assembly in Bangkok is disappointing, there are many different issues to concentrate to. One intriguing level of statement is the relations between Thailand, the 2022 APEC host, and non-APEC nations invited as Thailand’s “particular visitors.”

Prime Minister Hun Sen of Cambodia, the present ASEAN chair, rapidly and predictably confirmed his attendance as a particular visitor (his deliberate journey, nevertheless, needed to be canceled after he examined constructive for COVID-19). Saudi Crown Prince and Prime Minister Mohammad bin Salman’s attendance on the APEC Leaders’ Assembly, reportedly with 800 followers from Saudi Arabia, additionally doesn’t come as a shock amid information of bettering Thai-Saudi relations. Probably the most surprising visitor is French President Emmanuel Macron, who has loved cordial but restricted ties with the Thais and has by no means as soon as visited Thailand since changing into France’s chief in 2017.

The Thai-French relationship goes again a great distance and is a deeply troubled one. In response to the French Ministry of Europe and Overseas Affairs, Thailand is France’s oldest “companion” in Southeast Asia. The primary French missionaries arrived in Siam (Thailand’s outdated identify) round 1662 and Siamese diplomats had been dispatched to satisfy Louis XIV at Versailles in 1686. However the seemingly heat relations, France’s daring try to convert the then-Siamese monarch, King Narai, to Catholicism pissed off many Siamese nationalists. This ultimately contributed to the 1688 coup and the eradication of France’s political affect from the Court docket of Siam.

France made a grand return within the late nineteenth century as an enormous, if not the largest, menace to Siam’s independence. The interval between 1886-1896 noticed Siam struggling to thwart off French (and British) enlargement into its territory. Emeritus Professor Murashima Eiji from Waseda College, who focuses on fashionable Thai historical past, wrote in one in every of his articles that Thailand, although by no means a colonial topic, “misplaced greater than half of its territory to France and Britain by 1909,” and was due to this fact decided to play an lively position in liberating Indochina from French management within the early Forties.

Quick ahead to the current, bilateral cooperation between Thailand and France could be very a lot confined to the financial and sociocultural realms. France is presently Thailand’s twenty fifth largest buying and selling companion and has round 280 firms, largely service-related companies, working within the nation, whereas Thailand is a number one Southeast Asian investor in France’s agrifood and polyurethane manufacturing industries. Past enterprise and tourism, the people-to-people trade between Thailand and France has been characterised by training and scientific analysis collaborations.

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What, then, has motivated Thailand to abruptly pursue a more in-depth diplomatic engagement with France? And what explains Macron’s eagerness to hitch the Thailand-hosted APEC Leaders’ Assembly when america, as a longstanding treaty ally of Thailand and subsequent yr’s APEC chair, shouldn’t be significantly involved about sending President Joe Biden over?

A rising convergence between Thailand and France on strategic points is probably the reply. Within the Indo-Pacific theater, each Thailand and France search to border the narrative away from the zero-sum U.S.-China competitors and try to hedge by forging deepening cooperation with “third events” like India.

Thierry Mathou, the French ambassador to Thailand, famous in an interview with the Bangkok Submit upon taking his position final Might that he was the drafter of France’s Indo-Pacific blueprint and that he “selected to come back to Thailand to implement it,” believing that Thailand must be one in every of France’s main regional companions. Stressing France’s standing as a maritime nation within the Indo-Pacific – a reference to France’s remaining abroad territories – Ambassador Mathou vowed to improve Thai-French relations “to a strategic degree” and contain France in ASEAN’s efforts “to foster a multipolar Asia.”

France is, in fact, an instrumental a part of the U.S.-led Western liberal order and is extra crucial of China. However on the finish of the day, as Eric Frécon identified in a latest evaluation printed by ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, France has not answered calls to “stand clearly behind Washington” and the French Indo-Pacific imaginative and prescient is basically inclusive. The AUKUS partnership (between Australia, the UK, and the U.S.) that led to the cancellation of the Franco-Australian submarine deal and triggered a way of betrayal amongst French (and EU) officers must also speed up France’s efforts to pursue nearer engagement with impartial nations in Southeast Asia.

Moreover, it’s price noting that each Thailand and France have resorted to dialogue when coping with “problematic” neighbors. Thailand has remained dedicated to utilizing backdoor diplomacy to handle the Myanmar disaster. As I wrote in these pages late final yr, the Thais imagine that publicly humiliating Myanmar would solely be counterproductive to the peace course of. This sentiment seems to be shared by Macron in his dealings with Russia.

Total, the blossoming Thai-French engagement past financial and sociocultural issues is a mirrored image of the shifting geopolitical panorama. How the “strategic partnership” between Thailand and France will develop, and whether or not previous historic trauma will play any position in Thailand’s calculation, stays to be seen.