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

Greg 00:00:00 Hey, Greg here that you know that I've created a few walking tours of Bangkok using the GPS on your phone. The routes take you through some of my favorite areas of the city, exploring the fascinating neighborhoods and hidden history that give Bangkok its sweet, sweet mojo. Head to voice maps and search for Bangkok. By phone on this episode, we chat with journalist Dominic Calder about how Thailand is dealing with the terrible situation in Myanmar.

Ed 2 00:00:28 So if you've ever wondered how a country should react when its neighbour starts causing waves that are too big to ignore. You'll love this episode of the Bangkok Podcast.

Greg 00:00:51 Sawa and welcome to the Bangkok Podcast. My name is Greg Jorgensen, a Canadian who came to Thailand in 2001 to have a kid start a podcast and win the lottery. And in the words of the late great meatloaf, two out of three ain't bad.

Ed 2 00:01:06 Which to Greg?

Greg 00:01:08 Well, still up in the air. I'll let you know later.

Ed 2 00:01:11 And I made Knuth an American who came to Thailand on a one year teaching contract 24 years ago, fell in love with the shocked look on Thai students faces when I tell them you actually have to read books to get a degree in liberal arts, so I never left.

Greg 00:01:27 What? Read? Shocking, yes, my son wanted to. I said, tell the turn off the iPad. He's like, what do I do? Like read a book? He's like, what? What do you mean, talk? What are you talking about? It was funny though. It was quickly how fast he tore through a book. When I said if he did, I would buy him a video game. There you go. He knocked that thing out in, like, two hours.

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Greg 00:03:04 That's right. And before we get started, a quick shout out to our friend and former guest, Pailin, who runs the awesome Hot Thai Kitchen YouTube channel. Did you know she also has a podcast? It is called Sabai talk and Ed and I were recently honored to join her on her show to talk about moving to Thailand and setting up a life here so you can find the podcast anywhere. But it's a video podcast, so probably the easiest is just to head to YouTube and search for Sabai Talk podcast, Ed and I appear on episode seven, but all the episodes are very much worth listening to, so check that out. And thanks to Pailin for having us on. That was fun.

Greg 00:03:47 All right. On this episode, I am particularly happy to be sitting down with someone who I've wanted on the show for a long time, and someone who I admire and respect a great deal, journalist Dominic Faulder. Now Ed, you and I like to brag about our time spent here in the Kingdom, but Dominic is one of those guys who outranks us on nearly every level. He was a special correspondent for many years with the Hong Kong News weekly Asia Week, with a particular focus on Myanmar and Cambodia, and was one of the only foreign journalists on the ground during the momentous student uprising in Myanmar in 1988. He is currently an associate editor at Nikkei Asia Review, where he writes great stuff, and author of Anand Panyarachun and the Making of Modern Thailand, a biography of one of Thailand's most impactful and consequential prime ministers. Now, all of that out of the way, I want a Dominic to come on the show and give us some insight into a question that's been bouncing around in my head for a while, considering the current problems unfolding in Myanmar. What as a country does Thailand do? How do you react diplomatically, politically, militarily, economically when your neighbor starts acting in a way that makes all the other countries in Asia say, what's going on over here? Do we need to step in? It's a question I am in no way qualified to answer but our guest this week certainly is. So here is my very interesting discussion with Dominic Faulder.

Greg 00:04:51 All right, well, I'm sitting down here with someone that I have wanted to get on the show for a long time. Someone I've known for 15 ish years. 16 ish years. Something like that. Long time, a long time. And I'm, of course, talking about Mr. Dominic Faulder. Dominic is a long time journalist in Asia. One of the most, I would say respected, feared, published people around. certainly one of the most knowledgeable people I know in Asia about Asia. So, Dominic, thank you for sitting down to chat. It's a pleasure to chat with you.

Dominic Faulder 00:05:37 It's a pleasure to be here. I would say Southeast Asia, because my focus has always been, you know, Burma, Myanmar, Thailand and Cambodia, although I've done Vietnam and, Laos as well, but basically the Buddhist countries. And so it's fairly focused. And those countries are very absorbing. They are.

Dominic Faulder 00:05:59 Once you get into the, the the stories behind them and the politics. It's it's a full time occupation and it's very difficult to transport those sorts of interests and skills to another environment. I mean, I wouldn't go back to the UK and become a lobby correspondent in, in Westminster. Just I'm not qualified in any way to do that. So I've got a lot, a lot of time invested in this part of the world. Yeah.

Greg 00:06:24 And we have to say, at the beginning of the show, if you hear some thumping and bumping in the background here, I don't know what they're doing upstairs. We're recording of the Burmese.

Dominic Faulder 00:06:30 Artillery.

Greg 00:06:31 British Club. Yes. We're going to be talking about the, the geopolitics of the region. So maybe it's a bit fitting to hear some explosions in the background. I don't know what they're doing upstairs. Perhaps bowling or wrestling. But the reason we're chatting today is because, we've been going back and forth about talking, and one thing that came out of our discussions was something that I found very, very interesting and very topical.

Greg 00:06:51 And we're recording this in the middle of August in 2024 and things in Myanmar Burma are not going very well. Everyone knows the things over there are very tenuous and they are sort of like two steps forward, ten steps back kind of thing for them. there's some horrifying stories coming out of Myanmar, but I really wanted to talk because this is the Bangkok Podcast. I find it interesting to wonder, what does a country like Thailand do? What does a country do when its neighbor goes off the rails and starts to disrupt the status quo and starts to do things that other countries start noticing and putting pressure on? There's diplomatic repercussions, there's economic repercussions, there's social and cultural repercussions. And you've written extensively about this. So I thought it would be a very, very interesting chat to to see what's going on and what your perspective is. So just can you open with a little bit about what you're writing about recently and what your perspective of the situation is?

Dominic Faulder 00:07:46 Well, you say Burma's gone off the tracks lately, but it's basically since 2021.

Dominic Faulder 00:07:53 In February, when there was this coup, that the military perpetrated unexpectedly. I mean, there have been talk about it, but it was basically unexpectedly and it was very clinical. And the elected NLD government, which was just coming in, National League for democracy, was removed and its leaders imprisoned. and I think Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, who's the head of the the Junta State Administration Council, thought that he could perpetrate a Thai style coup, and take over, and there'd be a lot of squawking in the short term. And basically people would then settle down and live with it and, and wait for a best day. And that's not what happened. What happened was that the population went into complete revolt and would not accept, a coup. And this meant, basically that you had a huge civil disobedience, program, that began that's never been seen before. and they linked up with the ethnic insurgents who've been fighting with the military since the end of the Second World War. and they are now more cohesive than they have ever been.

Dominic Faulder 00:09:15 So they're capable of mounting simultaneous strikes on the military. And a lot has changed. So we've got to a point where this year there's a lot of talk about the military actually failing that, they cannot succeed. and I would argue that if you look at it in the long term, they cannot succeed. The macro economics are against them. They cannot afford to sustain this, and they're simply losing territory. So we have this remarkable situation where they are progressively losing control of their borders. The border with Thailand. They still have to elect nominally, but May is is is just not controllable in the way that it was. They've got huge problems on the Indian border. The Indians are actually talking about shutting down fencing off an area where you used to have ethnic minorities basically going backwards and forwards, just as you would have in Thailand with with Koreans on both sides of the borders. These people.

Greg 00:10:18 Day traders.

Dominic Faulder 00:10:19 Trading. I think they're related, and it's kind of dealt with in a very soft way.

Dominic Faulder 00:10:23 But the Indians are now rethinking that because it's destabilizing. You've got enormous problems along the Bangladeshi border because of the Rohingyas, and also because of the ethnic forces within Burma that are getting active. But Thailand has a particular problem, and it's got this enormous border. It's two and 2400km, and you've got to travel along it to to appreciate how wild it is, how impossible it is to Felisa. So if you have a situation where the country is internally destabilized in a way that's never happened in living memory, this is far worse than anything that's preceded it. You have this constant concern that displaced people are going to come to the border and come across and create all sorts of problems, refugee crisis. Yeah, a huge one. And the thing that would kick that off is a food crisis. So if you go back to Cambodia, 79 Vietnamese invasion, and you think of all the refugees that poured into Thailand, hundreds of thousands of refugees. What was it that brought them across? Well, the Vietnamese invasion was certainly a part of it, but it was food shortages that did it.

Dominic Faulder 00:11:36 And that when people go without food, they've got to find it. They will do anything to get to it so that it is the most destabilizing thing on earth. So if you get failures in the country in terms of Production and what have you. then that's going to happen. so this, this coup that occurred in, 2021 brought to an end a political process, an economic process that had taken Myanmar to the best point that it's known, its modern history. You can look at the politics and the power sharing with the military and everything and say, well, there was there was a lot a long way to go on those fronts. That's true. But you have to remember that was better than anything they'd had before, right? Yeah. And that is why you have the civil disobedience movement is because the people had tasted what freedom, economic opportunity was all about, and they're not going to accept it. They are not going to go back to to the Burma that we knew pre 2010 when things started to change a bit, or the Burma that I knew very well in the 80s and 90s, which was so economically damaged you wouldn't believe it.

Dominic Faulder 00:12:51 So I would argue that Senior General Min Aung Hlaing has done almost incalculable damage to his country on all fronts, and that he can't win. He must be a very worried man. You know, he if he sleeps well at night, I'd be amazed. You want to know a secret? It's not good. So if you look at the history of Burma, which is since independence in 48, it's very troubled. You know, there's been all this insurgency, all these, these huge numbers of different ethnic minorities that feel disenchanted. The Burman majority is not a majority. It's less than 40% of the population. But they control the central part of the country and the military. But if you look at that, you had the coup in 1962 that brought in General Nguyen, and General Nguyen was the guy that isolated the country, cut cut it off from foreign contacts. This is a country that is self isolating. I mean, it's one of the few countries from the British imperial period that didn't join the British Commonwealth.

Dominic Faulder 00:13:56 It's a very well known example. It was a founding member of the Non-Aligned movement, and it pulled out of the Non-Aligned movement because it was that extreme. It didn't believe it was non-aligned enough. Right. Extraordinary stuff. But anyway, so 62, no wind takes over. I think most people would agree that Nguyen's legacy is that he prevented Burma as it was then going forward economically. So by the time you had the pro-democracy uprising in in 1988, which was all the country, it was absolutely on its knees. It was the least developed status. And you're talking about a country that doesn't have a population problem. There's no pressure or population there. That is fundamentally, well endowed with natural resources and can more than adequately feed itself. Like Tyler, Tyler never has to worry about feeding itself. That's not not one of the issues that confronts. It's not Africa or Middle East. Right. You can always eat and that eases a huge amount of problems. Yeah. So 88, the military came in, they stamped down this overwhelming nationwide demand for reform.

Dominic Faulder 00:15:11 And very gradually we came back to something more normal so that by 2015, 2016, the NLD government of Aung San Suu Kyi was elected. All sorts of problems. But they they they kind of danced around the military and there was a relationship that went on. Then we had another election. NLD won even more powerfully than was expected, convincingly. And then we had the coup right. And the difference between the coup in 62 and the coup in 21 is that the coup in 21 pushed the country back. No one's coup prevented it going forward. This one pushed it back. Oh, interesting. And it undid literally all the economic development that we'd seen in this century, which was really significant. And, it destroyed, an incredibly promising tourism industry. I think they were up to 5 or 6 million per annum. So it was growing at a sensible rate. Right. And the country's just it's made for tourism. It's just wonderful.

Greg 00:16:18 This is one of the things is so maddening about it is that Myanmar has such potential for tourism, not only tourism, but yeah, culturally, you know, soft power, whatever.

Greg 00:16:29 Like it's just a beautiful, beautiful place that has just, just sort of sitting there spinning its wheels. Yeah.

Dominic Faulder 00:16:36 And you, you just wonder why. Yeah. And not only that, it's incredibly rich in resources. I mean in the natural gas has been powering Thailand this century. You know, it's now winding down. Those fields are depleting. So they need to find new deposits and bring in the investment that's required to to develop it. And, they have oil fields that they can't get at because they don't have the technology. So you have a very interesting situation whereby this there's a country that's held back by its history that it has to interact with the outside world to develop. It needs that money to come in. And this coup has has damaged investor confidence in a way that you wouldn't believe that the Japanese companies and Chinese companies that want to stay, talk it up and try and say, it's not that bad. It's devastating. Yeah. And so you have a company like Telenor that had put in $0.8 billion kind of goodwill investment.

Dominic Faulder 00:17:35 Good opportunity should work telecoms. I just had to write it off and walk away.

Greg 00:17:41 Geez Jeez.

Dominic Faulder 00:17:41 Terrible.

Greg 00:17:42 Well, you mentioned something earlier that was interesting. And you said that they saw what they wanted, a friendly coup, quote unquote, like Thailand did.

Dominic Faulder 00:17:50 The military.

Greg 00:17:51 Yeah. The military. Yeah. And and you also mentioned something an interesting spin on it is that when people get a taste of what is possible, they don't you can't put the genie back in the bottle or the toothpaste back in the tube. Choose your metaphor. and we've seen that as we saw that in the when, when, when the Russia, when Russia broke up. When Soviet Union broke up. So in North Korea, when the sort of underground market capitalism, you know, they couldn't stamp it out, they realized it was better to allow a little of that because people got a taste of that and they didn't want that taken away again. That's a really powerful thing to. So I think Thailand has managed to sort of thread the needle with its political coups and bullshit, whatever and what have you over the past, you know, 20, 30, 40 years.

Greg 00:18:36 I have they been just lucky with that.

Dominic Faulder 00:18:39 No, no I haven't I mean, the time military is is a very business minded military. I mean, if you think about the coup in 91 of such kinda that these guys were talking about what's good for the stock market, right? As well as it's really extraordinary stuff. The generals. Yeah. So they're very business minded and the time military, you know, they're a little funny, bones. If you bang them, they will react. But they they don't like anything that will damage the business prospects. And of course, you know, you have the very wealthy, business oligarchs in Thailand that are knitted into that establishment. And they'll be sitting around saying, watch it. That's hurting us. You don't have that in Burma, right? You have, tycoons who've come back from abroad, and most of them are now sitting in Singapore waiting for this nonsense to clear itself up. Right. and they don't have the same level of, say, and also, the Burmese military are not as involved in business.

Dominic Faulder 00:19:37 They have two big military corporations where they have all their, you know, joint ventures and stuff. But it's not the same. It's not developed in the way that it is in Thailand. And, so the parallels are not inexact. And when you see fraternal relations between the Burmese military and the Thai military, who are historically, you know, enemies like you wouldn't believe.

Greg 00:20:05 That's a whole recent bank. I used to.

Dominic Faulder 00:20:06 Go to war over white elephants and that kind of stuff. Exactly. And we all know what happened to Ayutthaya. Yeah, yeah. But, you know, you think about all that. And when I first started covering, Burma in the 80s, you know, putting stories into the Bangkok Post and places without a byline because I couldn't reveal that I was covering the country. there were lots of sort of warnings from editors. Be careful you're not. You know, they don't. The government does not want us to discuss. They don't want to antagonize this troublesome neighbor. And, you know, had the ethnic wars, the Koran, the shams, everything going on, kind of buffering the situation with Thailand and a fair amount of refugees.

Dominic Faulder 00:20:52 I mean, probably in terms of the Thai effect, you look at the number of Burmese workers that have come into the country since 21 and are doing great jobs. How many restaurants do you go into? The waitresses and the waiters are Burmese.

Greg 00:21:11 I have noticed that. I've noticed that and not just noticed it because I've been asking. It's just there's so many of them, it's hard not to notice. And, I was at dinner with someone a while ago, and the waitress was. Her English was near fluent. Yes. Yeah. And I remember, like, oh, and my friend noticed that she had a different accent. My friend was Thai and said, are you Burmese? And she said, yeah, I know, and I've noticed a lot of that. And they're very well spoken. They're very. Their English is very good. They're service minded. They're very professional. And my friend joked he's like Thailand. Better hope that the, you know, the Burmese don't take over the service industry because then Thailand won't be known as the land of smiles, I mean.

Dominic Faulder 00:21:50 When we came out of Covid, the big problem that the hospitality industry had here was recovering their workers.

Greg 00:21:57 Sure, they all went off back to the farmers.

Dominic Faulder 00:21:59 Well, where did they go? That's a very big question. I mean, we can have another podcast on that. I have I have some fairly colorful theories. But the point was there was a shortage and it was very difficult to get those people in. So for the Burmese, it's a lifesaver. They get a job. Yeah, they're treated decently on the whole. And and the Thais benefit because they get access to, to labor that they need to run their industries. Right. So it's a win win for everybody, but it's not in the long term. If you always if you talk to Burmese refugees or workers abroad, they're all waiting for the day to go home, right? They don't want to go to the US or be relocated to Australia. It's not, it's not. This isn't a Vietnamese boat, people. Right.

Dominic Faulder 00:22:46 and they want to go home and they, you know, their country, their culture is locked in next door. So everybody is waiting for it to stabilize and the day to come when they can all go back. But there needs to be some kind of crisis inside the country for that to happen. There needs to be a conclusion. At the moment, you're seeing a lot of punditry saying the ethnic minorities, the insurgencies, the armed ethnic organizations, whatever they call themselves, are doing better than ever. And that's absolutely true. And they're using, you know, asymmetric warfare drones. They've got all the power of the internet and telecoms to do things they never used to be able to do.

Greg 00:23:30 And where are they getting this stuff from? Who's supplying these things?

Dominic Faulder 00:23:33 Oh, that's the Some drones. You can buy a drone in any department store, I guess. So, yeah. and there are much cheaper sources. So that stuff is, is is, as I say, it's asymmetric, it's extremely cost effective.

Dominic Faulder 00:23:47 And you've got a military in, in, in the country that has, has modernized. So when I first did Burma in the 70s, eight, sorry, the 80s, you had these light infantry divisions that would go on long patrols into Korean state and finally get to the border, but they're basically doing it on foot. Yeah. And now you've got flip flops. Well, I remember once they they attacked a border town. Wally and I went up there, and one of the things that I found was all these Burmese uniforms on the ground, because they had literally rotted off them in the jungle, and they had killed the Korean and stolen their uniforms.

Greg 00:24:31 Oh, wow.

Dominic Faulder 00:24:31 It was spectacular. But it took it took I couldn't work out quite what was going on. It was a hell of a firefight had taken place there.

Greg 00:24:38 Well, you know, let's be honest here about about this podcast. Like when we were discussing doing it, I was I was a little bit nervous, as we always are, about about saying the wrong thing about the wrong person or the wrong topic in Thailand, which you do have to be careful of just the way things are.

Dominic Faulder 00:24:52 Greg, you do it all the time.

Greg 00:24:53 Well, yeah, but behind your back. But what what is the relationship like between the politicians in Thailand, the business leaders in Thailand, the military in Thailand? What is what is their relationship like with their counterparts in Myanmar? well.

Dominic Faulder 00:25:09 In in Syria, the top level, it's good, but I'm not sure how much that counts for, frankly. Really. the, you've got all sorts of corrupt business people. you know, there's a particular senator that has got into trouble over Burma. We don't need to name names, but, the casino activity that you've got along the border then you've got, All sorts of black market activities going on. You've got the scam centres along the Murray River.

Greg 00:25:41 You've written some very interesting stories on.

Dominic Faulder 00:25:42 That terrifying stuff. Yeah. And, so that all that is bad and that feeds the border stuff feeds off Thailand. I can't state this too clearly. You know, even energy is being supplied to these, these criminal enclaves.

Dominic Faulder 00:25:59 And you go up along the border and you find that all the, you know, the cell towers, communication, communication tools are pointing across the border, and nobody's under any illusion about what's coming back. The other way is it's scam scamming that's going through Thailand, and hitting the rest of the world. So hugely serious problem that has not been addressed.

Greg 00:26:23 So when when things get bad in Burma and, you know, recently we've seen some military strongholds fall to the, to the rebels for lack of a better word. things. Things are getting worse there when things start going bad. I imagine it's sort of like a lot of side eyes and sort of flop sweat coming out from a lot of people in Thailand here. Diplomatically, what should they do? What are they doing? How do they react when something like that happens?

Dominic Faulder 00:26:50 Well, let's talk about what I said earlier. It is a huge problem for Thailand. And you have to be sympathetic. I mean, they are a frontline state in Asean, Indonesia, Singapore.

Dominic Faulder 00:27:03 They can take a more principled position if you like. And I use the word advisedly because they don't have it on their doorstep. so the Thais, you know, deserve respect for, for the help that they have actually given. Don't forget that there's a, you know, a resident population of Burmese north of May sort of refugees. Kurenai Shan Karen who number perhaps 100,000, and that that had been coming down during the NLD period. And there was good reason to hope that they would all be able to go home and that that would basically phase out. The Tigers are very anxious not to create, you know, a UN crisis situation, as we had with the Cambodians around Iran to protect Bori, all those areas in the 80s, because they don't want it institutionalized. They want that flexibility to deal with it on their own terms and ultimately allow those people to go back. But they've given them sanctuary, so they deserve credit for that.

Greg 00:28:07 Yeah, Thailand must be in an incredibly difficult position, and not only with the problems in Myanmar.

Greg 00:28:12 But, you know, there's this issue right now where they're trying to stop this, this incredible tidal wave of cheap Chinese goods. There's they're sort of stuck diplomatically between Chinese and the US interests. there's membership in Asean, there's North Korea. I don't I don't envy them You know, it must be a hell of a, I've used the phrase needle to thread. You know, every day there must be a new one to try and sort out.

Dominic Faulder 00:28:36 Sure. But, I mean, it's a difficult world for everybody. Yeah. And, and but I do think you should see you should be empathetic. You should see the problems they're having to deal with. but this is particularly serious Burma because if you recall, Asean, the regional grouping got together very quickly in Jakarta and condemned the coup essentially, and said we put in place this five point program to try and stabilize the situation, which simply went nowhere is the junta just ignored it. And, what has happened is that that has had the effect of splitting Asean so that you've got countries, that want to go in one direction and others that are much more critical So the more critical countries are Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore and Malaysia.

Dominic Faulder 00:29:35 And Singapore is very, very interesting because it's it's the, the second largest trading partner with Burma in the region. China is the big one, Thailand is third. And Singapore, you always think of it as this entrepot, you know, free trade. Keep away from the politics. Remember that it was Goh Chok Tong that led Asean into Burma in 1994 and the first investments that went in banking, and then Singapore became the banking center for the generals.

Greg 00:30:11 Yeah, right. They've got to rely.

Dominic Faulder 00:30:12 On the tycoons. You know, it's it's a lot. Yeah. And and Singapore was really, really annoyed about the coup. I mean, this is something that shouldn't have happened, and it's screwed up It's. Pardon my French. It's messed up. Normal business relations, right, with Myanmar. And if you think about it from a Singaporean or a Thai perspective in the long term, what do you want? Well, you want a stable relationship with a country of that size so that you can have a normal, activities and development and all all the great business synergies simply not happening.

Dominic Faulder 00:30:57 So I think the Singaporeans have looked at it and said, this is getting us a really bad press, particularly banking, which they've tightened up on. And they've they're very sensitive about being accused of supplying weapons that weapons go through Singapore but they've tightened up on it. And so and that's I think that's very interesting. It shows that there's new thinking. And Thailand is at the moment benefiting benefiting a little from that. So transactions that used to go through Singaporean banks have been going through Thai banks. Right. And these have been called into question by the United Nations. What are these transactions is. Are they weapons. Are they what are they. And the times have been very sensitive about it. They really thought, well, just a minute. But the problem the Thais have is knowing who they're dealing with. Who are the these companies that you that have names that you know nothing about when all the the reference, references online for checking who owns companies have all been shut down so you can't check. You don't know whether you're dealing with military, military cronies, what have you.

Dominic Faulder 00:32:04 So it's very difficult. And you might imagine that something's pretty innocuous. And it's not at all innocuous. It's it's quite bad. Right. And one of the things that I was writing about recently was this very interesting situation with fuel. And the argument I was making basically, was that, the junta is going to fail, not because of sanctions, but because of simple macroeconomics. That you can't run a trade deficit, and not generate foreign income, when you are totally dependent on imported fuel, they don't produce any of their own fuel. And at least 66% of that comes through Singapore through one port in in the country. So this is an extraordinary vulnerability. Wow. But when I was trying to put this piece together and explain why it's significant that ultimately, this will come back and bite them, the military at the moment can take, its pick of the, the imports. So it takes all the jet fuel that it needs, all the gasoline and all the diesel to run its, its modernized army.

Dominic Faulder 00:33:11 But but overall, the, the imports of those, those fuels are declining, which means that the civilians who get sick and pig are constantly losing our factories are failing. Your farmers can't run their tractors or their harvesters or anything like that, and it's all going backwards. And you're seeing situations like people going from the countryside into cities like Mandalay to find food. This is madness, right? You don't go into a city to find food, but that's what's happening. Wow. So it's it's very it's very it's unsustainable. And that's why I say the war is unwinnable. The military, even though it's it's large by the standards of the region, cannot hold the country. It cannot physically hold the territory. If everybody in those areas are hostile and they are hostile and they're becoming increasingly effective. So it's kind of sinking in on itself.

Greg 00:34:09 There's also we mentioned it briefly before, too, the refugee situation here. And you mentioned the coming across from Vietnam and what a nightmare that was. I just I just have an image in my mind.

Greg 00:34:18 So sorry. From.

Dominic Faulder 00:34:19 Yeah. No, it's very much the same period.

Greg 00:34:21 Yeah. But the image I have in my mind is just of, of, of Thailand, just sort of like like rubbing its temples like, oh my God. Like, now I got to deal with this. You know, just like going to a party with a friend. And then he hits on the wife of your friend at the party or something like that. Just the the party gets about this, the party guests just shows up and makes everyone go, oh, man, who brought that guy? But what do you do? Like, they're they're your neighbor. They're your trading partner for their, your, you know, geopolitical.

Dominic Faulder 00:34:48 Well, they're not going to go anywhere. Exactly.

Greg 00:34:50 Because you've got to deal with it. Yeah. Exactly. So no it's a.

Dominic Faulder 00:34:53 It's a huge problem. Wow.

Greg 00:34:54 What do you think it's going to look like as we're wrapping up here. What do you think it's going to look like in the next year five years?

Dominic Faulder 00:35:00 Well I think the writing's on the wall for the military in that they cannot win.

Dominic Faulder 00:35:05 So there are two options. One is that, there's some kind of negotiated settlement and people constantly talk about dialogue in a very sort of, you know, superior way, as if, you know, why haven't we considered this and help me doing this. Well, the answer is very simple. We are dealing with people who won't talk to you and they have rebuffed the UN. They have rebuffed Asean initiatives. the ties are probably whispering in their ears to be more pragmatic and sensible. They're being ignored, basically, because if they weren't, we'd be seeing more results. So there's that or there's total kind of defeat, which is very unusual in these conflicts. They usually grind to a halt. Yeah. And then something has to be sorted out. And that's the really interesting question because I think what's important about Burma is that this did not happen because of any outside powers. It's not China meddling. The US didn't cause it. India is appalled by it. It doesn't need this problem. Bangladesh is horrified.

Dominic Faulder 00:36:12 The Thais and Asean didn't want it. This was done by the military. It was perpetrated on the civilian population Who have made it absolutely clear that they are not going to stand for it. So the military are not going to be allowed to win. so, I mean, would they suddenly one day sweep into Naypyidaw and execute all the top generals? Who knows? It's not something that's imminent. And you should not underestimate the Burmese military's ability to hang on against all the odds and in defiance of any logic, because we saw that happen all through the 60s and 70s. And then we had the uprising in the 80s, and it happened again for the next 22 years before any kind of development happens. So if if the military was somehow defeated, what would be the mechanisms that would come into play to recast the country? Yeah, and that's really the question, because what we see now is, is that no outside force has caused it and no outside forces Have particularly strong influence. To be constructive, to play a constructive role.

Dominic Faulder 00:37:26 Would they be listened to? And I think the interesting thing that's been happening in the past, since the end of last year, is that the China's got really fed up with this. It's a no hope situation, and they've got very fed up with the scamming that's been going on along their border and the crime levels like that. So they actually went in with the local armed ethnics and started clearing things up. And then more recently, they deported nearly a thousand Chinese nationals through May sort took them back to China. And these were all people allegedly involved in the scamming industry, but we don't know whether it was along the border or whether these were people that were sweeping down from the north. Right. And basically on their way out. But, I mean, the word now is that the scamming industry is moving out of Burma, back into Laos and Cambodia. It's not going anywhere. But that's a different story.

Greg 00:38:19 Well, whatever happens, it will be interesting to see who sweeps in, in what proportions to do what, when, when, when that, when that bow breaks, when that tipping point comes.

Greg 00:38:33 Yeah. And I imagine Thailand will have a pretty big role in that as well.

Dominic Faulder 00:38:36 I think they'll play a constructive role and they have to it's in their interest too. And the ties are pragmatic, and they're much better at finessing these sorts of things.

Greg 00:38:48 As we've seen many times internally. Yeah.

Dominic Faulder 00:38:50 And it's not always palatable or, you know, the way people would like things to be, but they are good at it. Yeah. And so that that's something to hope for. But my caution would be this idea that it's just going to happen suddenly and I could be proved completely wrong, and there'll be a breakthrough and a routing of Naypyidaw or something like that. I think it's unlikely. I think this is going to be a painful process. It's going to take quite a few more months, if not years to get there. But I think the thing that's come out of it is, is this resolution in the in the civilian and in the ethnic population that this will not stand. We are not going to accept this.

Dominic Faulder 00:39:33 Right. And they then have to find a way of accommodating each other, because one of the things that's been seen is that as ethnic areas fall and the sack, the Burmese military pull out, you get these local squabbles breaking out between the minorities. And that's not a healthy thing. So they're not focused in that sense, very difficult to get everybody to go in the same direction. but the, the I was talking with one particular, individual and she, she was pointing out that the lesson that has already been learned is that power sharing has not succeeded. So this idea that you have a mixed military, civilian, civilian government With, with a kind of lock on it. in Naypyidaw is not going to fly. So that now we're talking about a more federal approach to it, and that could be a way forward. But then I go back to the problem. Who presents this? You know, do you fly in the Norwegians and lecture people about this is not the way it should be. or does ASEAN's finally get its act together and come in? Asean is not a good, it's not good on instruction.

Dominic Faulder 00:40:47 Just think about the difference in the governments around the region. Right. You've got an elected government in Malaysia and the Philippines. Yes. Okay. You've got a communist government in in Hanoi. And then, Chan, you've got quasi democratic, whatever it is here, which is endlessly interesting. Yeah. Cambodia's basically a kleptocracy, one party state. so there's. And Brunei is the sultan, so there isn't there isn't a model of government that you could turn around and say, well, this is the Asean way of doing it because it doesn't exist. Yeah.

Greg 00:41:19 That's fascinating.

Dominic Faulder 00:41:20 So how would you set about that? And the United Nations has been deplorable in its absence politically, the, the, the agencies that operate inside the country are very defensive about this and say, we're doing a good job. No, the the political role of the United Nations has not, been seen in action. you see, you see the UN basically go to Kyiv, talk a lot about Gaza and what have you, but have you seen them coming around here?

Greg 00:41:56 No, that's and that's the kind of the silence is deafening, isn't it? And even if they.

Dominic Faulder 00:42:00 Weren't allowed in.

Greg 00:42:03 make some noise.

Dominic Faulder 00:42:04 What is actually. Why not go and talk to the Thais and say, well, what are the problems or the Bangladeshis, for goodness sake? We've got a million people, that they're having basically to look after.

Greg 00:42:16 Right. Well, they've got their own problems right now and.

Dominic Faulder 00:42:18 Then they've got their own problems. And, you know, one of the things that the Burmese military tends to do is something absolutely awful that you're not expecting when everybody's attention is elsewhere. Right. So watch out. Something, something nasty could happen in, in Myanmar just at the wrong time.

Greg 00:42:36 There are no easy answers, but I guess, I mean, all we can do is watch and wait and hope for the best, whatever that is, for whoever you're talking to. Yeah, fascinating issue, and thanks for sitting down and discussing it. yeah, it'll be interesting to see how it plays out. Where can people find more of your work online?

Dominic Faulder 00:42:55 Well, mainly. so mainly, I mean, I write for Nikkei Asia.

Dominic Faulder 00:43:02 so I'm an associate editor there. And this year I've been doing a lot of stuff on Burma, and I've been trying to find stories that fill gaps. You know, you can report on atrocities, the bombing of village halls and schools and all the stuff. And it needs to be reported. But I think if you're a features writer like me, you need to be looking in different areas. So the sort of stories I've done this year would focus on, the fuel issue, which I think is incredibly important, which should not be ignored. what's happened to Suu Kyi? Poor old Suu Kyi, who made such a mess of the Rohingya issue and got vilified internationally. But she's been locked up in an air conditioned, rat infested prison in Naypyidaw since it happened. She's a lady of 78. She's not in good health. Right? This is wicked. Yeah. And, you know, I'm not saying that Suu Kyi is the solution, but she's a very interesting personality. And she's she's manages to be the single most unifying personality in modern Burmese politics, as we have seen, and also the most polarizing.

Dominic Faulder 00:44:15 So you know, this is this is a really interesting case studies. So it's those sorts of stories, that interests me. And I'll be doing stories on the the bombing campaign, which is this is a country that has an air force that bombs its own people, something the New York Times pointed out. It's a very good observation. This is absolutely indefensible. Yeah, yeah. And, so I've been looking at the fuel issue so far. They can they can as far as I can see, the sanctions have not prevented them getting their jet fuel and they can go and bombing, people indefinitely. In terms of fuel, aircraft are extremely expensive to operate. They need big ground crews. and so there are lots of issues there that need to be reviewed. And, you know, is it sustainable? So I'm looking at that.

Greg 00:45:13 Well, keep up the good work and everyone. Yeah. Check out Dominic's work online. It's it's it's it's sometimes horrifying. Always interesting. And, if I may say so myself.

Greg 00:45:22 Very well written.

Dominic Faulder 00:45:23 Oh, thank you very much.

Greg 00:45:24 Yeah, well, thank you, Dominic, for coming on. Is a pleasure to sit down. Very interesting conversation. And, let's get together soon. I'll let you buy me a beer.

Dominic Faulder 00:45:32 What should we put right next?

Greg 00:45:35 Let's solve the issues one at a time. Thank you very much.

Ed 2 00:45:49 Man, I love this interview. I love this topic. you know, I've been teaching international relations for more than 12 years, but I. I personally don't focus on Southeast Asian stuff, so I teach classic stuff. I teach the Peloponnesian War and, and kind of, er, theory and, I just don't do local stuff. And, as you know, I have made an effort to get more into Thai politics, so I certainly not. Certainly not an expert. But you and I have talked before about our our ignorance of Myanmar, and it's kind of embarrassing.

Greg 00:46:23 Yeah, it is. And it's funny that Dominic came on the show and I mentioned it in the interview, but for some reason over the past, you know, 3 or 4 months, we've just happened to have a lot of guests who are specialists in the issues going on in Myanmar right now.

Greg 00:46:37 And we have one more, one more coming up in a in the soon to be airing show. right now, another person who's written a lot of books on on Myanmar, but it just just happens to be that these people who are available and ready to talk right now are specialists in this. But it's a very interesting question. And, you know, coming from the quote unquote, stable area of North America where nothing ever happens, really, it's it's weird to think of your next door neighbor experiencing something so tragic and so disorienting and so, so, so monumental in terms of how it affects.

Ed 2 00:47:10 No, it's a great question. It's a great question and a difficult one. I mean, the simple truth is, and I know this came up in the interview somewhat. I mean, Thailand in general is pretty non-interventionist. Like they tend to just try to be neutral about everything. Like I'm not sure I'd call them. Like, I'm not sure I'd call them the Switzerland of, of Asia, but they tend not to take strong stances on anything, you know? So, for example, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, they kind of just play it neutral.

Ed 2 00:47:38 We want peace, you know, that that kind of thing is a very pragmatic. Yeah, a very right, a very pragmatic thing. But you would think being right next to something, it's like this is something that would be very important for them to take a clear position on. It's not some far away problem, but they still managed to seem to be neutral in a way and not be super clear on who they're supporting.

Greg 00:48:02 Right? Right. But at the same time, you know that all these guys talk behind closed doors like they have to. And there's a significant amount of of, you know, military and economic cooperation and trade between the two countries and among, you know, the members of of Asean and Southeast Asia. So it's extremely complicated. And, you know, I don't envy the the people in charge of Thailand who are sort of like, you know, chill out guys, you know? But, of course it's it's very interesting. And the more I learn about what's happening in Myanmar, just, God, it's such a such a tragedy because the place has so much potential, which I think Dominic and I talked about.

Greg 00:48:41 But, you know, all you can do is hope that things get better. I agree there, agreed. But many thanks for coming on, Dominic. It was very nice to sit down with you again. A great conversation and hopefully he'll be back and, in the near future to talk about some of his other projects coming up, which are also very, very exciting and interesting. So thanks again for sure.

Ed 2 00:49:00 Thank you Dominic.

Greg 00:49:01 All right. Let's get into some love, loathe or live with where one of us picks a particular aspect of living in Bangkok, which we discussed to decide if it's something that we love about living here, loathe about living here, or have come to accept as something that we just have to learn to live with no matter how we feel about it. And this weekend, it's my turn to ask you something. racked my brain for something cool and creative, but couldn't really come up with anything. So I defaulted to something pretty simple. And, it was because someone who was new to Thailand, I was having lunch with him the other day, and we ordered some drinks at a restaurant, and they didn't have what we wanted.

Greg 00:49:32 So then I got into the whole the whole discussion of why this particular drink exists. So what do you think of est cola?

Ed 2 00:49:43 Oh, yeah. Oh, this is an old school question. I remember talking about this a lot when it first came out, and, I forget the exact details, but like the I think the original story was something like there was a local distributor of Pepsi, and then something happened with the contract and who knows what happened. And then and then and then the local Thai company decided, hey, let's just copy it. So and again, I don't I don't know if this is accurate. This is just pure, pure same.

Greg 00:50:14 Same story I heard, but no idea if it's true or not.

Ed 2 00:50:16 Yeah. Scuttle scuttlebutt. Is that the right word? Like scuttle. What's the right word?

Greg 00:50:21 No, I never actually used that word. Scuttlebutt. Is that what I mean?

Ed 2 00:50:23 You know, just kind of rumors. Speculation? Yeah. but it's funny, as as as someone with long experience of Pepsi and Coke and Diet Coke and di Pepsi, like, you know, I'm an American from Ohio, so it's like I have I have decades of experience, like drinking soda that I probably should not be drinking.

Ed 2 00:50:46 and, I never, I never liked it. It's like, I'm just it's just, I don't know, allegedly. It's supposed to be a copy of Pepsi, but I think Pepsi is better. And then a long ago, I kind of made the switch to drinking diet. You know, I'm like a Diet Coke guy or Coke Zero, either one. But I prefer Diet Coke. so I don't know. I've never been a fan. I mean, what's your take? I mean, I, I to me, it's not as good as Pepsi.

Greg 00:51:13 No, I find it, the word I use it to describe it to my friend was aggressively average. There's, you know, it's just it tastes like sugar water with a little bit of cola flavor in it. There's nothing, nothing unique or special about it. It doesn't have an edge. It's just a very it's like the, you know, the RC Cola, the generic brand that used to get for $0.69 for a two liter, two liter bottle back in the day.

Ed 4 00:51:38 Right.

Greg 00:51:38 But yeah, I do not prefer it's a far, far third choice to Pepsi and Coke.

Ed 2 00:51:44 Yeah, I've never quite understood it. I mean, I kind of assume that they that they can't just copy Pepsi like, literally 100%. I mean, you know, you know, Thailand, you know, is not the best at, at, at respect and copyright. But officially they, they try to like officially they're supposed to be respecting copyright So I figured they tried to do something that was similar to Pepsi, but not exactly the same. And then to me, it's just I agree with you, it's just not it's not special.

Greg 00:52:13 Yeah, it's far down on my list. It starts with coke and then goes to Pepsi, and then it goes 3 or 4 more steps, and then finally it's like, fine, bring the next.

Ed 2 00:52:22 I mean, since I don't really drink sugared stuff anymore, I can't say I'm a hater. So I don't know, maybe I'm gonna live with, but I'm not not a fan.

Greg 00:52:30 I begrudgingly live with. Yeah.

Ed 00:52:31 Me too. Right.

Ed 2 00:52:33 Alrighty. A final thanks to our patrons who support the show. Patrons get a ton of cool perks and the warm, fuzzy feeling knowing that they're helping and are never ending. Quest for cool content. Find out more by clicking support on our website and connect with us online. Where Bangkok podcast on social media Bangkok podcast. Com on the web or simply Bangkok Podcast at gmail.com. We love hearing from our listeners and always reply to our messages.

Greg 00:53:02 That's right You can also listen to each episode on YouTube. Send us a voicemail through our website that will feature on the show. Hit me up on threads at BCC. Greg, thank you for listening. Everyone. Take it easy out there and we will see you back here next week.

Ed UU 00:53:14 No doubt.