Revisiting Bamboo Diplomacy: A Literature Review for Rethinking Thailand’s Postwar Diplomacy

• Published in: Ajia Keizai Vol. 64; no. 2; pp. 23 - 43
• Main Author: Aoki-Okabe, Maki
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: Japanese
• Published: Institute of Developing Economies, Japan External Trade Organization 15.06.2023
• ISSN: 0002-2942; 2434-0537
• DOI: 10.24765/ajiakeizai.64.2_23

This paper reviews the literature to explore the nature of Thai diplomacy after World War II.Studies on Thailand’s postwar diplomacy have focused on security issues, including the confrontation with communist forces supported by the alliance with the United States as well as the shift toward China that occurred in parallel with the detente between the United States and China, the Cambodian conflict, and its demise.Based on changes such as the Cold War and democratization, the previous studies have described changes in the alliance, the shift of foreign policymakers from the military and bureaucracy to the politicians, and the shift of diplomatic agendas from security to the economy. They characterized Thailand’s diplomacy as “bamboo diplomacy,” describing it as Thailand’s diplomatic tradition and explaining it as the flexible balancing among powers to maintain Thailand’s independence. Recently, Jittipat countered that bamboo diplomacy is not a Thai tradition but rather a new approach invented by the Thai Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) in the mid-20th century. He reconstructed the history of postwar Thai diplomacy as the process by which the MFA established bamboo diplomacy as a norm.However, the characterization of bamboo diplomacy needs to be revised because it uncritically applies findings from the case of postwar security diplomacy, especially that with major powers, to diplomacy on other issues such as the economy and social development. The studies that focused on security with major powers treated economic and social issues such as bilateral trade and investment negotiations, international trade rule formation, and development cooperation as a part of security issues or placed them outside the analytical scope. Considering the emergence of studies such as Jittipat’s that question the origins of bamboo diplomacy, it is necessary to reexamine whether Thai diplomacy, including that related to economic and social issues, can be explained by the theory of bamboo diplomacy.Through a literature review, this paper presents a new perspective on postwar Thai diplomacy studies, described in terms of security during the Cold War period. By analyzing studies on modern foreign relations, economic history, and contemporary politics in Thailand, and this paper presents areas of research that needed to be adequately discussed in the past. As a task for future research, the paper concludes by presenting “pluralistic diplomacy” by various diplomatic actors as a new hypothesis to replace bamboo diplomacy, based on the diversity of issues (security and economy) and the diversity of actors.