Strategic Culture and Thailand’s Response to Vietnam’s Occupation of Cambodia, 1979–1989

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Thailand’s Cold War role is usually seen through the prism of its support for
the U.S. wars in Indochina. Serving as an unsinkable aircraft carrier, Thailand
hosted as many as 48,000 U.S. troops for operations in neighboring Laos and
Vietnam.
1 In exchange, Thailand received U.S. military assistance on a massive scale. From 1951 to 1971, this assistance totaled $935 million, equivalent
to 50 percent of the Thai military’s own budget for the same period.
2 U.S. military aid allowed construction of a deep-water port at Sattahip and an airbase
at nearby Utapao supporting B-52 missions from 1967.
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But after President Richard Nixon’s enunciation of the Guam Doctrine
in 1969 and the fall of Saigon in 1975, U.S. troops departed from Thailand
and Indochina. Most were gone by 1976.
4 This separation was more than
physical. A recently declassified intelligence assessment reveals that neighboring Australia saw the United States as increasingly detached from the arena:
“since the Vietnam War, the United States has not behaved as though it had
any important national interest at stake in Indochina.”
5 This suggests that, for the last decade and a half of the Cold War, Thailand’s security was, much more than previously, a matter predominantly for Thailand, not for others. 

More infomation: Gregory V. Raymond, Strategic Culture and Thailand’s Response to Vietnam’s Occupation of Cambodia, 1979–1989