The U.S. Ambassador on Dichotomous Perceptions.

The Ambassador of United Stated of America H.E. Richard Hecklinger visited our campus on the morning of July 21, 1999 and delivered a resounding address on Thai-U.S. relations which he said were based on a pillars and the text is as follows.

Security and Defence Pillar. Thailand is one of five treaty allies of U.S. in Asia. This Relationship began during World War II when U.S. Supported the Free Thai movement. After the war we worked very hard to preserve the independence of Thailand. Then we had a more formal military relationship and we fought side by side in two conflicts. Today this relationship continues but it has changed very much in nature and it is very active now. We train together, we have joint exercises and there are a lot of exchange programs now and over 20,000 Thai officers have received training in U.S. and many U.S. officers and soldiers have come to Thailand. We still are devoted to two objectives, 1. Maintaining peace and stability in the region and 2. Maintaining the independence and freedom of the Kingdom of Thailand. Now is this pillar going to diminish in importance as we move into the next century? I think not. Many people thought that after the cold war it was going to be a different type of world where there would not be so many conflicts but that is not proving to be the case. And in this region like many others there is potential for conflicts where we need to have good regional and bilateral security arrangements to try to ensure peace and security.

The Economic Pillar. We have a very healthy, strong mutually beneficial economic relationship United States now is the largest over seas market for Thai goods. Even while other markets are contracting and exports to many parts of the world were going down during this economic crisis exports in dollar terms from Thailand to U.S. Increased over 13% in 1997 and over 7% in 1998. For those of you whore economists you know this means that in dollar terms or in volume terms the increase in even greater. This was of great help to Thailand at this time of economic difficulties

Also we are the second largest investor in Thailand. American Companies are interested in increasing their role here in Thailand and have great confidence in the future of Thailand and with their investment comes technology transfer. Thai citizens are the managers of most of these firms and there are very few Americans. There is a lot of training involved and also a lot of work on community betterment. So our companies are good citizens and remains so as the second pillar.

The shared valued Pillar. We both have a commitment to a democratic form of government and freedom of basis human rights. This is very important, something the Secretary of State emphasized when she was here and something which H.M. the King emphasized when he came to the U.S. in the 1960s.

Personal Contacts and Connections. This is the most important pillar of all. This has nothing to do with the governments. It has to do with millions of personal connections, relationships built up between Thais and Americans over the course of last 50 years and even beyond. And these personal connections which I see every day, no matter what we are doing and these form the most important fundamental bond between our two countries. Now on these 4 pillars as a platform upon which we built different types of cooperation which in the past we called assistance but which we like to call now as partnership as our relationship has evolved. And the new elements of cooperation cover issues which are transnational, global and regional in character. We have had for over 3 decades of very close cooperation in fighting illegal drugs and that is probably a model for all countries in the world. Well, that is evolving further now. Last week the Deputy Foreign Minister and I presided over the dedication of something called the International Law Enforcement Academy. It is a Thai/U.S. cooperation joint institute which is now training law enforcement personal from all over the region, Asean countries as well as China primarily in various aspects of law enforcement including heavy emphasis on respect for the rule of law and human rights and covering white collar crime, organised crime, illegal narcotics-based problem, intellectual property, even trafficking in human being, including woman and children, a wide range of issues that all our countries face. Important things is Thailand in a leadership role and it is a regional approach to a regional problem. We have also supported Thailand's effort to take a regional approach to the issue of irregular migration, humanitarian demining. We have worked on international economics here very closely together and we do a number of other things-on finding cures and preventive measures for diseases which affect people here in the region and all over the world like Malaria, Dengue Fever and H. I. V. Aids. We are encouraging a strong Thai role in bodies like Asean and Apec and we see our relationship with Thailand progressing like our relationship with many of our allies-less emphasis on bilateral issues, more on cooperation for regional and global challenges. It is a good picture and something I am happy to see since I came here is the extent to which U.S. and Thailand work together literally everyday. I find new examples of this and so I was a bit disappointed when this one issue, as important as it may be-coloured and sometimes overshadowed the basic value of the cooperation and I think that it disturbed other people too here, certainly the Prime Minister who tried to put the WTO issue in the context by saying it must not hurt the important overall relationship we have. What went wrong. Well, I am not sure anything went wrong but like any issue it certainly could have been handle better. The U.S. had to decide which candidate to pick and in U.S. this issue is tied into trade policy and to the launching of a new trade round. As I have explained here in the U.S. when we have a trade policy issue it is looked upon wholly apart from any other foreign policy issue, diplomatic political, security, even other economic considerations don't come into play. There is reason for that and one of the reasons is that we probably felt in decades prior we subordinated trade interests too much to security interests during the cold war. We are not alone in this. Many of our partners treat trade issues in the same way. An example is that our most bitter and difficult trade disputes are usually with our best friends and allies. So the decision on whom to support was based strictly on trade policy objective and it does not even reflect negatively on the persons we didn't support. They could be every bit as capable and competent and respected and in the case of Dr. Supachai that is certainly the case as the one we supported-it is just that one was more compatible with U.S. trade objectives than the other, taking nothing away from the other. I explained this to my Thai colleagues and I also tell them that last time we had a WTO competition we did not support Mr. Ruggeiro who was the Italian Trade Minister and a representative of a close ally, some one we have worked with very closely over the years in preparation for the annual economic summit and other capacities and for whom we had a great deal of respect. We supported the Mexican candidate, a developing country candidate with whom we had worked to negotiate our North American Free Trade Agreement. He didn't get it. We joined the consensus for Mr. Ruggeiro and had worked closely with him ever since. When I say to my Thai colleagues that the decision was made on trade issues alone and this is how it is handled in the U.S. as well as many other countries they say that's fine but the Thais are never going to understand that and it is amazing that everybody said that to me and I say, well you know I can't say anything else but what is the truth. I can understand why they cannot understand that. They tell me friendship counts for much more and it is much more likely one will adjust the policies to take an account of friendship. I thought about that and I was wondering do we have a cultural divide here? Are we approaching this issue so much differently because we are Americans and Thais are Thais. I imagine there is a little bit of it but to tell you the truth my conclusion in the end is that we are approaching trade issues differently. So I went through a number of other aspects of our relationship, the security side of it, the broader economic relationship, again, counternarcotics and our mutual interest in promoting human rights and democracy and I realised that in many cases friendship does count. It is a combination in our policy of interest, national interest which both nations are trying to advance but there is certain other element there with respect to Thailand. And that element can be called friendship or building the strength of the overall relationship. So I find the problem a little more narrow than something that affects the overall relationship we have with Thailand. I think that is the lesson I draw from it, draw a number of lessons, one is that Thailand, particularly as you will see this week, has earned a great victory. Thai people often say we are just a small country. Well, you are the geographical size and population of France, and has more people than Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Uruguay and Paraguay put together. In GNP terms you may be smaller than France and many other countries but Thailand has really exerted itself and played a very strong role on the international scene even though it was up against very substantial odds and has come out victorious. I think that is the key lesson and that can be applied to many other areas where Thailand will try to advance its interests in the international forum. Secondly as Thailand becomes more active internationally and globally it is going to be on different sides occasionally on the U.S. as well as other allies. That's O.K. It happens with all allies. I think we just have to recognise that we have to disagree sometimes but that should not necessarily affect the valuable relationship. Third, trade may be different. I was talking to a couple of my colleagues-Western diplomats-and they didn't say anything about golf and sex and they said yes, fir all of us where jobs and money are involved we may be friends but friendship does not go too far, that is a trade issue. Finally I think countries like U.S. and Thailand have to communicate a little better, sometime we take it for granted, we should have been talking about this so we understood each other better, much earlier, certainly last summer or during the fall to prevent this becoming such a big problem so there is one issue we have had to deal with and I think it has been instructive and I would be interested n any of your views on that. Another issue or two that would take only a couple of minutes-because I would like to hear your questions is what has happened in Kosovo and what that means for attitudes towards U.S. I have read in an editorial this morning which refers to U.S. as a new warlord. References in other newspapers here in Thailand and even in other places in the world about U.S. trying to work its way by using force and imposing its will throughout the world acting independently without the strength of the international law or the U.N. Now this is a serious problem, this perception which was exacerbated by the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade. This bombing and actually the whole overall impression of the U.S. and its willingness to use force is another example of how peoples, cultures and countries just don't see things in the same way. For any one who has worked in the U.S. Government or worked in the U.S. we can understand how a terrible mistake can be made like bombing an embassy. It makes no sense and perfect sense. It makes no sense that we would ever want to do something like that but I think all of us know how if somebody down at the bottom at the beginning makes a fundamental error, how it is possible that wont be caught depending on the type of error. Now admittedly there are very few of such errors and the one that happened could not have been worse. The Americans say it was a mistake, a terrible mistake. No excuse, absolutely no excuse. Compensation should be paid but families obviously can never be compensated for loss of life. Many people in China cannot believe that. How can U.S. be so incompetent as to do that. To tell you the truth Hollywood comes into play here. In movies, it is a Tom Clancy plot-I don't mean to make light of it-you imagine rogue elements in the U.S. Government trying to undermine U.S.- China relationship-purposely trying to do something that would cause this crisis. Any body working in the U.S. Government would say this is preposterous but any one who watches Hollywood movies would say it is quite reasonable and where do people get their impression now of the U.S.? And thirdly we have the situation in China and to some degree in other parts where the emphasis throughout the conflict was not on the terrible atrocities being committed by the Serbs, the hundreds of thousands of people who were being uprooted from their homes and the people who were being killed and raped. But there are mistakes made by allied forced bombing and so in fact the other side of the story wasn't even available to many people in China so what are they expected to think when their embassy is bombed. This is a crisis which then leads to another thing, what is the U.S. doing. So people in other parts of the world think the U.S. wants to intervene forcibly whether it is in Kosovo, Bosnia or else-where. And some one like me who has been in foreign policy business for the last 30 years I must say the last thing the U.S. Government, the U.S. Congress and the U.S. people want is to have to use force beyond its borders. It is extremely difficult when you are in the U.S. Government you think that force has to be threatened or used for purposes of peace or for humanitarian reasons or for advancing of critical interests to get anybody to go along with it and the people who have resisted most are often the military. So many of us sat by while we were watching the massacres take place in Bosnia wondering when we are going to act, when are our allies going to join us. As we see it very much differently a very reluctant power that often is called in because there is no acceptable alternative, but not really going in willingly. That is a very different picture-that is the U.S. picture. So it is an interesting dichotomy but one that is very serious and I would like to have your views on it.

The Ambassador's talk was followed by a lively question and answer session at which very relevant and discerning points were raised both by faculty members and other participants concerning U.S. -Thai relations.

At the end of the meeting in the Hall of Fame, The Rector of the University, Dr. P. Martin Komolmas hosted a luncheon in honour of the U.S. Ambassador H.E. Richard Hecklingier which was attended by Vice Rectors and other officials. All in all it was a very successful and memorable event ant highly appreciated by all who witnessed and took part in the proceedings.