Thailand 2014 : The Year of Living Dangerously.

The vocal condemnation of the Thai army coup by the West could be a diplomatic mistake as might the US decision to suspend about one third of the aid provided to Thailand. None of it can affect events in Thailand nor determine the outcome of the power struggle for control after King Bhumibol Adulyadej dies.

The willingness of Washington to make a principled stand against a military coup reflects the fact that since 2011, the year of Yingluck Shinawatra's election, the Obama administration has pursued its Pivot To Asia strategy in which Thailand is considered a key regional partner in the quest to contain China.

General Prayuth, the head of the army and leading figure in the 2006 coup, is part of Thailand's 'monarchy-military nexus' which has felt pushed out of influence with the rise of Thaksin's party as it keeps winning elections and has been tacitly supported by the US since 2011

The reason for that is the authoritarian government of Abhisit Vejjajiva, the PM from 2008 to 2011, one backed on the streets by the Yellow Shirts, had not proved as pro-US as Washington had hoped after the 2006 coup and raised the prospect of Thailand turning closer to China as a regional partner.

With the dispute between Vietnam and China over the oil and fish of the South China Sea reaching crisis point, Beijing could be posed to exploit the growing rift between the US and the interim coup government to step in to offer arms deals and military aid to the beleaguered monarchy-military nexus.

An authoritarian government in Bangkok dominated by former members of the Democrat Party would be far more congenial to China which has been attempting to cultivate its 'soft power' ties with Bangkok's Sino-Thai business and political elite as a means of rivalling the US for influence.

China has no interest in watching Thailand become closer to Cambodia and Myanmar as part of a coalition of states hostile to China's claims to dominate the South China Sea within the nine dash line just as Thailand and Cambodia have no oil interests at stake in these maritime waters.

By contrast with Washington, Beijing has been mute in response to the coup. Being far more pragmatic, diplomats in Beijing realise that the Thai elites, whether supporters of Thaksin's party or the opposition, would not take kindly to lectures or direct meddling from the West.

The dilemma for Washington now is if tried using punitive sanctions stronger than those after 2006 it could end up pushing whichever faction wrests control after the 2014 coup closer towards Beijing and, in effect, lose a military alliance it has had since the height of the Cold War in the 1950s.

As Ernie Bower of the Center for Strategic and International Studies made plain, “You could lose an alliance and if you don’t lose an alliance, you could in effect lose the primacy of a friendship with one of ASEAN’s anchor countries". Having Myanmar is the US orbit would hardly be compensation.

2014 is going to be a year of living dangerously. Thailand is the second-largest economy in Southeast Asia. But the impact of higher fuel and food prices in an oil import dependent economy is widening social divisions and creating political polarisation between the old elites and the rural masses and urban wage earners.

With the US and China vying for influence, it could be that an authoritarian regime emerging from out of the military coup would be backed by either Great Power, more likely China, and that this, and the reactionary stance of the Sino-Thai elites backing the Yellow Shirts,  could add ethnic enmities to class resentments.

The Egyptian Coup : Causes and Consequences

The Egyptian military coup of July 3 was a turning point in the history of the Arab revolts. However, the 'Arab Spring' of 2011 was, to use AJP Taylor's phrase' on Germany in 1848, more generally the point where Arab history 'reached its turning point and failed to turn'.

The Egyptian 'deep state' that developed under post colonial dictatorships and the dominance of the army was not really affected by the Egyptian uprising. It was a 'people power' demonstration; there was never a revolution against the deep state and so no actual revolution as in Iran in 1979.

Essentially, what has happened is that the old elites allowed Mubarak to fall in order to appease popular opinion and to try to introduce a measure of controlled democratic representation. That was in continuity with rather more limited experiments in that direction in the 1990s and 2000s.

Set against the background of the disintegrating economy and food crisis, one brought about by a lethal combination of longer term climate changes and demographic pressures, the Egyptian army was able to protect the deep state by allowing the Muslim Brotherhood to take responsibility for the worsening chaos.

A trap was set for the Muslim Brotherhood in having the Supreme Court declare electoral regularities in their seats as a pretext to dissolve the Egyptian Parliament in June 2012.  That was two weeks before an election between a Mubarak era PM and Morsi to vote president who would be the only democratic representative.

That benefited the deep state as it meant that either an old regime appointee would be elected or else a leader without experience who would prove too weak to challenge vested interests. Morsi approved IMF austerity measures and the torture and beatings in Egyptian prisons were not stopped. Nothing changed.

Army grandees such as General Sisi have taken a gamble on a coup because there was mass popular support to be rid of Morsi from those who believed his presidency was leading towards Egypt becoming ungovernable and descending into further economic chaos.

In addition, Salafi jihadists were causing havoc in North Sinai along with Bedouins. The Muslim Brotherhood were portrayed as a danger to Egypt's 'stability' by beings allegedly indulgent towards Islamist terrorists. That has seemed to threaten the basis of the settlement agreed in 1979 between Egypt and Israel.

General Sisi also knew he could execute a coup because the US would be hardly likely to withdraw the $1.3bn it provides to the Egyptian army to provide 'stability' and protect its geostrategic interests. These include preserving peace on the Israeli borders, oil and gas pipelines against attack and the Suez Canal.

The obvious flaw in this plan is that the coup is likely to ensure that Islamist radicals are more likely to resort to terrorism because they can be sure that more alienated and unemployed young men will see the crushing of the Muslim Brotherhood as a sign that only armed resistance can remove the corrupt elites.

If Egypt descended into chaos, it is likely that global jihadists could find a foothold just as they have in Syria. Arms are awash in neighbouring Libya and many jihadists went from Libya to fight in Syria and could also enter the fray in Egypt. This would pose severe threats to world peace.

Egypt is the largest and most influential Arab nation and its collapse would trigger off collapse elsewhere. Yet the move towards a democratic transition in Egypt is bound to be stalled by the coup because it is impossible to see when elections could be held in conditions of anarchy and violence on the streets. 

Events in Egypt may well now spill beyond a turning point at which the course of history did not turn. It , and the entire Middle East, could be heading beyond the point of no return towards violence and civil war which will shake the foundations of the entire global order.

US Foreign Policy in Egypt.

'America's primary concern, as always, is how best to preserve its interests in the region. Calling a coup a coup would legally bind the US to withdraw $1.5bn in aid to the army – and it's the army, whose chief attended America's top military academy, that keeps the US and its regional ally Israel happy'. ( Rachel Shabi , In Egypt, Barack Obama's approach is like that of a spread better. July 10 2013 ).

The US is 'hedging its bets' on events in Egypt in order to minimise the geopolitical risks in the Middle East that would result from Egypt descending into civil conflict. The current 'cold peace' between Israel and Egypt is based on the strategic need for a stable and continued supply of oil from the Gulf region.

This arrangement dates back to the aftermath of the Fourth Arab-Israeli War in 1973 and the crisis caused by the oil price shock on the West. The continued prosperity of high octane Western consumer economies has been premised on preserving relatively stable and cheap oil supplies.

The excessive shift in the 1980s from production to service based economies in the US and UK has led to the need for dampen down the in built inflationary pressures of a narrowly based debt financed capitalism through securing access to oil and cementing strategic military alliances with the Gulf States.

As worldwide industrialisation proceeds apace in the emergence of economic super states such as China and India, the assumption that the US cannot necessarily depend on falling or stable oil prices to shore up economic growth has meant greater involvement in the internal affairs of the states of the Middle East.

The defence of the US-Egypt alliance through funding the Egyptian military is primarily a policy to ensure that there can be no instability in the most populous of the Arab nations that would destabilise the region. If Egypt collapsed ino civil war it would potentially draw in other regional powers as in Syria.

The policy is based on the assumption that if Egypt can make a transition to a democracy with no potential for instability, ,as was not clear under Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood, then the US and the region will benefit. This assumption, however, looks increasingly doubtful when set against longer term trends.

Egypt faces a growing crisis that any new government following the army's military takeover is going to find it difficult to resolve and, given the scale of the popular opposition to both Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood regime and its overthrow, it is not clear that time is on it side in lessening the dangerous food shortage.

A potentially lethal combination of climate change, overpopulation and peak oil has led in recent years to Egypt becoming the world's largest importer of wheat. Social chaos has only been averted by half of that wheat being used to subsidise bread for the poor.

The events of the last month in Egypt cannot be seen to be a consequence only of US foreign policy hypocrisy and mistakes. It the longer term consequence of having propped up dictatorship for far too long and having retarded the Egyptian economy via the IMF's funding of a dysfunctional economic model.

The Arab Uprisings: 'Interesting Times' Ahead.

Compared to the impact of the 1973 oil crisis, the potential for one in 2011 or 2012 grows more ominous. Marks Almond has written ( Middle East uprising will put oil giant Saudi Arabia in peril The Daily Mail 20th February 2011 )

The oil-rich autocracies on which we depend are now facing full-throated revolution....it is the rising tide of violence around Saudi Arabia which could ignite a political blow-out of terrifying proportions in the world’s biggest oil producing country.

Even people who hope to see the end of the Saudis’ hand-chopping, wife-beating Wahhabi fundamentalist regime must realise that its downfall will create a global economic earthquake.

The situation in neighbouring Bahrain is a microcosm of what might happen in Saudi Arabia.

Don’t let Bahrain’s tiny size mislead you.This island kingdom sits on the fault-line separating the tectonic plates of the Muslim world and is the fulcrum of American power in the Middle East.

The U.S. Fifth Fleet is based on the island –which is attached to Saudi by a causeway – and pro-Iranian Shi’ites who make up 70 per cent of the population are seething with rage against the pro-Western king.

The remaining 30 per cent of Bahrain’s population are Sunni Muslims, and the bitter Sunni-Shi’ite infighting there could spark a religious civil war which could quickly spread to Saudi Arabia.Outsiders would pour in. Not just jihadi fanatics. Iran would support the ‘oppressed’ Shi’ites of Bahrain and Saudi.

What would America do? Could Obama abandon the pro-Western rulers of Bahrain and Saudi if Iran got involved?And how then would people in other Arab states such as Egypt react if the West put stopping Iran ahead of People Power? And how might Israel react?

In the long term, democratising the Middle East must be a good thing – that is, if we can get to the long term. In the short term, the world is in for its bumpiest ride for decades.

Set against the background of the global crash of 2008 and the recession, the consequences could be global instability and within Europe the potential for social conflict as the faltering economy crumbles further and consumer comforts that have been taken for granted give way to an era of privation and hardship.