With the ruling Thai Rak Thai party expecting a clean triumph at the polls on Sunday, Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra has little to worry about on the home front.
His main challenges over the next four years are more likely to come from abroad, analysts say.
"I think Thaksin's got the domestic situation all wrapped up, so he'll have to look to the international arena if he wants to make a mark in his second term," said Kobsak Chutikul, a former Foreign Ministry spokesman-turned-politician.
It is widely expected that the Thai Rak Thai will win more than 300 of the 500 contested seats in Sunday's general election, giving Thaksin and his party a clear mandate to pursue their own domestic policies.
Pursuing Thaksin's often ambitious goals abroad may prove more problematic. There are signs that his autocratic, authoritarian style has already irked some of Thailand's neighbors.
For instance, Thaksin's push to turn Thailand into a regional center for a regional tsunami early warning system in the aftermath of the Dec. 26 disaster was shot down at an international conference last weekend.
Among the chief objectors to Thailand's bid to take center stage was Indonesia.
A peeved Thaksin announced on Monday that Thailand would go ahead with setting up its own early warning system with or without regional cooperation.
"Some countries are concerned too much about themselves and are less concerned about the region," he said.
Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, has made clear its foreign policy goal of regaining more of a leadership role in the ASEAN, which it has lost since the fall of Suharto, another autocratic Asian leader.
ASEAN has a long history of autocratic leaders who transformed their countries from chaotic backwaters into successful modern economies, as Lee Kuan-yew (李光耀) did for Singapore and Mahathir Mohamad did for Malaysia.
Suharto, Lee and Mahathir, all powerful personalities, also emerged as leaders within ASEAN, a role Thaksin clearly aspires to as well.
"He doesn't want to be a leader of a developing country," said one Western diplomat. "He considers himself leading an up-and-coming industrialized country, and considers Thailand to be a leader in the region."
Thailand may be a leader economically -- certainly it has recovered quicker from the 1997 Asian financial crisis than Indonesia -- but it will take more than economic and business clout to lead ASEAN politically, observers note.
Thaksin annoyed neighboring Malaysia with his accusations last year that it was sheltering Muslim separatists responsible for the rising tensions in Thailand's three southernmost, predominantly Muslim, provinces where more than 600 people died in violent clashes last year.
With the southern problem far from settled, Thaksin can look forward to tense relations with predominantly Muslim Malaysia and Indonesia in the near future.
And Thailand's fairly close relationship with Myanmar, cultivated by Thaksin, could turn into a major ASEAN embarrassment if the country's military leadership does not free opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi from house arrest by next year, when Myanmar will chair the regional grouping.
Another tough challenge for Thaksin will be his campaign to make Foreign Minister Surakiart Sathirathai a candidate to replace UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, who is scheduled to retire in 2007. Surakiart's chances to be named UN chief are deemed slim.
"The UN secretary general has to have an image of being his own man, because his first loyalty has to be to the United Nations," said one Asian diplomat.
Surakiart's first loyalty has always been to Thaksin.
The conflict in the Middle East has been disrupting financial markets, raising concerns about rising inflationary pressures and global economic growth. One market that some investors are particularly worried about has not been heavily covered in the news: the private credit market. Even before the joint US-Israeli attacks on Iran on Feb. 28, global capital markets had faced growing structural pressure — the deteriorating funding conditions in the private credit market. The private credit market is where companies borrow funds directly from nonbank financial institutions such as asset management companies, insurance companies and private lending platforms. Its popularity has risen since
The Donald Trump administration’s approach to China broadly, and to cross-Strait relations in particular, remains a conundrum. The 2025 US National Security Strategy prioritized the defense of Taiwan in a way that surprised some observers of the Trump administration: “Deterring a conflict over Taiwan, ideally by preserving military overmatch, is a priority.” Two months later, Taiwan went entirely unmentioned in the US National Defense Strategy, as did military overmatch vis-a-vis China, giving renewed cause for concern. How to interpret these varying statements remains an open question. In both documents, the Indo-Pacific is listed as a second priority behind homeland defense and
Every analyst watching Iran’s succession crisis is asking who would replace supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Yet, the real question is whether China has learned enough from the Persian Gulf to survive a war over Taiwan. Beijing purchases roughly 90 percent of Iran’s exported crude — some 1.61 million barrels per day last year — and holds a US$400 billion, 25-year cooperation agreement binding it to Tehran’s stability. However, this is not simply the story of a patron protecting an investment. China has spent years engineering a sanctions-evasion architecture that was never really about Iran — it was about Taiwan. The
In an op-ed published in Foreign Affairs on Tuesday, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) said that Taiwan should not have to choose between aligning with Beijing or Washington, and advocated for cooperation with Beijing under the so-called “1992 consensus” as a form of “strategic ambiguity.” However, Cheng has either misunderstood the geopolitical reality and chosen appeasement, or is trying to fool an international audience with her doublespeak; nonetheless, it risks sending the wrong message to Taiwan’s democratic allies and partners. Cheng stressed that “Taiwan does not have to choose,” as while Beijing and Washington compete, Taiwan is strongest when
RSS