Journalist Dominic Faulder on the Complex History Between Thailand & Myanmar [S7.E34]

Greg interviews Dominic Faulder, associate editor at Nikkei Asia,
long-time journalist in Southeast Asia and observer of the
political and diplomatic machinations of Myanmar, and Thailand
and Vietnam over the past 40 years. 


The main thesis of the episode is this: How should a country such
as Thailand respond when its neighbor Myanmar is in the midst of
a destabilizing civil war? Dominic begins by pointing out what's
different about the current situation compared with events in its
turbulent past. Myanmar has suffered various military coups, but
traditionally the opposition to those coups has been splintered
and factionalized. However, after the most recent 2021 military
takeover, opposition groups unified, plunging the country into a
genuine civil war. 


So what does this mean for Thailand? According to Dominic, the
long jungle border between the two countries is essentially
impossible to police, opening up the real possibility of a
massive refugee crisis in Thailand. In the long run, the military
cannot succeed in running the country, and no exit strategy seems
apparent for the generals. Dominic notes that if an even more
severe food crisis occurs, as it did in Pol Pot's Cambodia in the
years after the Vietnam War ended in 1975, hundreds of thousands
of Burmese could spill across the Thai border.


Greg and Dominic continue discussing the perilous situation and
what it means for the business-minded generals and
military-minded diplomats in charge of Thailand in terms of
diplomacy, military and economic outcomes as Dominic recounts
Burmese history since independence and clarifies the difference
between past instability and the current all-out civil war. 


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