CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

The USS Lincoln’s ‘Leisure Trip’ to Thailand: A Port Call of US Neocolonialism and Femicide

Photograph Source: U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Clint Davis – Public Domain

The arrival of the USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72) for a ‘leisure trip’ in Thailand before returning to its campaign of destruction against the people of West Asia demands immediate interrogation and opposition. For us Thai people, and those in sites of American plunder across the globe, this a rattling of the US’ cold war colonial chains on its most loyal lap dog, while conducting a war of aggression in Iran and the ongoing genocide in Palestine. In allowing the USS Lincoln to dock, the Thai ruling elites are once again facilitating a system of imperial violence that extends far beyond Southeast Asian borders, a system which in our case, is predicated on sexual violence and femicide.

Thailand has a long history of being a colonial vassal of the US today a ‘major non-NATO ally’ since 2003. While Thailand has sought to balance its relationships by pivoting toward China in recent years, the US continues to invest heavily in maintaining influence over Thai politics and military institutions, viewing the kingdom as strategically vital. The visit from the USS Lincoln is thus a confirmation of the ongoing alliance maintenance: an embarrassing reminder of the rulers of the Kingdom of Thailand’s bootlicking tendency to American military ambitions. This is a tendency not shared by the people of Thailand, in particular the country’s women, who have most suffered from US violence in the course of this relationship.

It is the continuation of a long history of imperial violence, where women’s bodies have served as currency for Thailand’s relations with the west. The USS Lincoln will arrive in the port in the eastern seaboard of Thailand which was established as the primary American staging post and Rest & Relaxation site of its assault on Vietnam from the 60s to 70s. Today, the city of Pattaya is perhaps the largest site of sex tourism, of imperial rape, in the world, thanks entirely to its history of accommodating the American GI. The war machine docks itself to the structural legacy of American neocolonialism, a legacy of plundering Thailand into a site of sexual exploitation, and a legacy of femicide, where the state and capital work hand in hand to systematically render women’s lives as expendable in the name of profit and US geopolitical hegemony.

The Myth of Thailand’s Sovereignty

Official Thai histories celebrate the kingdom as a rare Southeast Asian nation that has managed to escape the claws of European colonisation through the diplomatic acumen of our brilliant monarchs. However, this narrative obscures the people’s reality. As early Marxist Thai historians recognised, Thailand was a ‘semi-colonial’ state, beginning with the Bowring Treaty of 1855, which granted extraterritoriality to British subjects and monopolised trade into colonial hands. The treaty, signed under gunboat diplomacy – akin the the Unequal Treaties with China, rendered Siam a de-facto buffer state between British and French colonial interests,........

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