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Saturday, Oct 14, 2023 - 20:52 SGT
Posted By: Gilbert

No Move Forward

The timekeeper's been ringing his bell - we remain too far behind the present (and evolving major Events), and in any case there's no question as to what Team Blue has to play this Action Round, given the preceding swop, so here goes:


Turn 14, Action Round 2 (Team Blue)

Team Blue plays Missile Envy...


Bigger, Stronger, Schlonger*
(Original sources: twilightstrategy.com, r/nostalgia)


Coup! (2 Ops): No change in Thailand (still 2/1).

Wait, what happened here? To be entirely honest, we're not very sure - there had just been some debate over DEFCON, which had been raised to 4 at the end of Turn 13 with no official Coups and thus Required Military Operations during that Turn, when a referee points out that a Coup had been already rolled for on the table, with a note indicating that it applied to Thailand. All eyes turn to the detained Bolton, who defensively raises his own, unused dice in return. They're trying to review the camera footage in the backroom, but "technical errors" have been reported, as in the Epstein case.

While the AV staff are trying to figure it out - but somehow I guess they won't - we might as well fill in the background here. The first Thai national elections in four years would be held in mid-May, after military Coups in 2014 and 2006 that had ousted Shinawatra clan-led elected civillian governments each time. Given that that made twelve Coups since 1932, one supposes the Thais have to be used to it by now. In any case, this autocracy/monarchy has never stopped the U.S. from engaging Thailand as arguably their primary strategic ally in Southeast Asia, with the 2-Stability Battleground State having served splendidly as a bulwark against Communism in Cold War I, without whom the battle against Team Red in then-Malaya and Singapore could well have gone a lot more badly.

With Team Blue seemingly in retreat most everywhere but Europe in the new edition of Twilight Struggle, however, they were clearly thirsting for a win in mainland Asia given Team Red's grip over Burma [Myanmar] (0/2) and Laos/Cambodia (0/3), advances in the Philippines (4/2) notwithstanding. This would have their media machine throw their weight behind the progressive Move Forward party, who would win 151 of the 500 seats in the Thai House of Representatives, ten more than the latest Shinawatra vehicle Pheu Thai, and a heck a lot more than the paltry 36 gained by the United Thai Nation party of the sitting military junta Prime Minister. Asian Spring then?



Look, this time, we really didn't do it!
(Source: nikkei.com)


Not so fast. It was pretty obvious that the (rare) elections would be a prime opportunity for foreign... Influence, as posited in Turn 13, Action Round 3 back in March, and the only-too-pro-American foreign policy direction of the Move Forward upstarts had already come under some domestic criticism. There would moreover be admittedly-limited protests against the suspected interference, which is however not entirely unsubstantiated, from the longstanding history of U.S. electoral intervention in the region (e.g. Laos, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Japan, to name but a few). These concerns were apparently taken seriously enough that the U.S. ambassador to Thailand would have to come back out to deny any involvement in late June, while professing to "support the democratic process".

But by then, it was known that Move Forward's "win" was not actually a win anyhow, as they were unable to form a ruling coalition; despite Pheu Thai initially agreeing to nominate Move Forward leader - Harvard Kennedy School (yes, again) graduate Pita Limjaroenrat - as the new Prime Minister, the only-to-be-expected maneuvering by the junta and monarchist factions would happen, and Limjaroenrat would not only be blocked from the Premiership, but also suspended from Parliament, which had to be quite the Pita. Seeing the writing on the wall, he would resign as Move Forward's leader by mid-September, leaving the Team Blue press fuming impotently in support of populism and elections previously derided as rigged for once, with the status quo with respect to Cold War II mostly unchanged.

Better luck next time, I suppose, but hey - that's two squares on the Required Military Operations track, at least...

[*It falls to us to explicate the origin of Missile Envy here, and we could find no better description than that from the Twilight Strategy site itself: A term coined by Dr. Helen Caldicott, it reflects the general feminist critique that the Cold War was driven by male ego with very Freudian undercurrents. When one examines the terminology of "deep penetration" and "multiple reentry" one wonders if she had a point. Caldicott went on to found Physicians for Social Responsibility, and her book became a rallying point within the anti-nuclear movement.]



Yeah, you guys are just, like, jealous, man
(Source: vanityfair.com)




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