Draped over the curve of coastal hills as they give way to a sweltering plain that borders the Java Sea is the Indonesian city of Semarang. Now a moderately-sized provincial capital of 1.5 million people, Semarang was once a rival to its better-known neighbour, Batavia (now Jakarta), and for centuries boasted substantial wealth and political influence on par with some of Southeast Asia's most prominent port cities. Javanese, Chinese, Malay, South Asian and Arab communities first made their homes here, drawn to the vast network of lucrative trade routes that threaded through the city and its bustling harbour (Muhammad 2011). Then, from the late seventeenth to the mid twentieth century, waves of Dutch colonizers arrived on these shores, transforming Semarang into a foothold of their empire in the archipelago and a “gateway to modernity” for the whole of central Java (Coté 2006; Cobban 1988). In the decades leading up to World War II, Semarang gained further fame as a hotbed of radical politics and local resistance to foreign rule, earning it the moniker Kota Merah, or “The Red City”, in reference to its association with early leftist leaders in the anti-colonial struggle (Poeze 2014). Now, over seventy years since Indonesia declared its independence, this deep history of colonialism, cosmopolitanism and conflict is etched upon the contemporary cityscape, which still bears tangible traces of this tumultuous past in the form of mosques and temples, marketplaces and railways, dwellings and warehouses, barracks and offices, lighthouses and canals.

Semarangers today regard many of these crumbling structures as sites of memory and meaning, whether for themselves, their families or their own ethnic and religious communities. However, one site in particular has drawn significant attention from government authorities, civil society groups and community organizations in recent years: Kota Lama, or “The Old Town”. Strategically nestled between the city's historic port and the densely packed districts of Pecinan (Chinatown), Kauman (the Arab and Javanese quarter), Kampung Melayu (the Malay quarter) and Pekojan (the South Asian quarter), Kota Lama consists of a cluster of streets and buildings that once lay within the walls of a fortress built in the mid 1700s by the Dutch East India Company (VOC) as a base from which to extend control over the city.

It is typically said that heritage is always political. Such a statement might refer to the everyday politics of local stakeholder interests on one end of the spectrum or the volatile politics of destruction and erasure of heritage during conflict on the other. If heritage is always political, then one might expect that the workings of World Heritage might be especially fraught, given the international dimension. In particular, the intergovernmental system of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage programme must navigate the inherent tension between state sovereignty and nationalist interests and the wider concerns of a universal regime (Francioni 2008; Pavone 200 The 1972 Convention concerning the Protection of World Cultural and Natural Heritage and its list of over a thousand properties has many such contentious examples, including sites in Israel, Mali, Syria, Crimea, Congo and Cambodia. As an organization, UNESCO was born of war, with an explicit mission to end global conflict and help the world rebuild materially and morally (Guitton 2006), but it has found its own history increasingly entwined with that of international politics and violence.

If heritage is, and always has been, political, then I would argue that the scale and complexity of those politics is intensifying (Meskell 2013; Meskell et al. 2015). Globalization and world-making projects, like the UNESCO World Heritage programme, have changed the stakes for particular heritage sites through processes of greater interdependence and connectivity, transforming them into transactional commodities with exchange values that transcend their historical or material characteristics and that can be wrested from those contexts to serve other international interests. Of course, heritage is also always political, too, in domestic arrangements, particularly when governments intervene in the material lives of their citizens, local peoples and other connected communities. But how do archaeologists assess the political when so much remains largely anecdotal, imagined, protected and typically occluded from view in complex international circuits? How might we see realpolitik at work? In this article, I show how the diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks in 2010 allow us an unprecedented vantage on to one contested archaeological site, Preah Vihear Temple in Cambodia (Figure 2.1).

Although the Union of Burma once tried to resist the grand vision of modernization and development with its associated machinery of Western lending and universalist discourses of technology transfer and democracy, the post-1988 governments of Myanmar have gradually adopted international standards as prescribed by the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, ASEAN and others in order to catch up. They fear that if Myanmar does not become competitive in the regional economy, it will be swallowed up by China and India, and left behind by its ASEAN neighbours.

From 1962 to about 1988, the military-led socialist government drove out foreign influence and endeavoured to develop Burma on its own terms, to make it self-sufficient through The Burmese Way to Socialism. Although economic reform from about 1990 onward incrementally improved the national economy, Myanmar was still ill-prepared for integration into the ASEAN Economic Community because it could not compete as an equal. National reform initiated in 2011 has dramatically altered the status of the country on the world stage and opened the floodgates for international aid, but the country's long-term prospects remain uncertain. During the initial honeymoon-like phase between 2011 and 2016, sweeping changes seemed to indicate thorough reform in all sectors. However, the current phase under the leadership of Aung San Suu Kyi seems marked by economic stasis and increasing ethno-religious violence. In November 2015, the National League for Democracy (NLD) won the first openly contested general election since 1990, and came to power in March 2016. While the NLD and its leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, are broadly seen as symbols of hope and democracy, their symbolic significance has been tested by the complex reality of a country where ethno-religious violence continues unabated and basic needs in housing, education and health have yet to be met. It is too early to draw any conclusions, but for this discussion the exponential increase in the number of international actors in Myanmar has certainly increased the complexity of heritage-making and urban development and has unearthed entrenched and often contradictory practices that defy the rationale of linear international development.

In spite of a growing academic interest in the politics of heritage in Asia, few studies have directly questioned the role of international and transnational cooperation in heritage conservation. First, even though the literature has widely addressed the role of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) as a powerful disseminator of international standards of conservation (e.g., Askew 2010; Daly and Winter 2012; Labadi 2010, 2013a; Logan 2001), it has not yet tackled the impact of UNESCO's normative discourse on other cultural policy agents. Secondly, the social sciences have largely neglected other international structures such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, the European Union, USAid, the Asian Development Bank and many others that have their own engagements in the conservation of heritage in Asia. These organizations often collaborate with UNESCO or participate in bilateral or multilateral initiatives by providing funding and “expertise” in the management of sites. The IMF, for instance, played an important role in the establishment of the International Coordinating Committee of the World Heritage Site (hereafter WHS) of Angkor under the aegis of UNESCO. Many of these initiatives are carried out by states’ cultural diplomacies in often well-thought-out strategies. Pioneer countries in cultural diplomacy include France, Italy and the Netherlands, but also India and Japan. Today, most Asian states are also engaging in cultural diplomacy. In the last two decades, China, South Korea, Thailand, Vietnam and Indonesia have considerably strengthened their investments in regional “heritage cooperation”. Some of them, like India or Japan, have a long history of cultural international intervention (Ray 2012). Thirdly, private “philanthropic” programmes like the Ford Foundation, the Agha Khan Foundation, the World Monuments Fund and the Getty Trust have long had a major impact on the management of heritage in Asia. They are now joined by newly established Asia-based foundations such as Korea's Samsung Foundation. Finally, new connections have recently been drawn between market-driven “development” schemes explicitly linking “culture” and “economic opportunities” as part of the global capitaldriven developmentalist discourse, as when WHS become mass tourism destinations incorporated in national economic development schemes (Labadi and Logan 2016).

For Indonesia, culture as a means of economic development has recently become an important policy issue in development discourse and practice. Given the country's richness and diversity of cultural heritage, the deputy to the Indonesian minister of education and culture, Wiendu Nuryanti, claimed that Indonesia is a “cultural superpower state” (negara adidaya secara budaya). In order to show its leadership in cultural diplomacy, the government of Indonesia took the initiative of organizing the World Cultural Forum in November 2013, in Bali, as the first multilateral conference to build global partnership around culture-based development. Following the forum, in December 2013 the United Nations adopted Resolution No. 68/233 on Culture and Sustainable Development, which embraces an instrumentalist notion of culture by emphasizing its contribution “to inclusive economic development, since cultural heritage, cultural and creative industries, sustainable cultural tourism and cultural infrastructure are sources of income generation and job creation”. In the previous year, the deputy minister also led the Indonesian delegation to the UNESCO World Heritage Committee meeting in St. Petersburg, Russia, where nomination of the Cultural Landscape of Bali Province was finally approved as a World Heritage Site.

For both the World Cultural Forum and the approval of Indonesia's first World Heritage cultural landscape, Bali was the centre of gravity. Not only because Bali's cultural heritage is regarded as a national asset (UNDP, USAID and the World Bank 2003) but also because the island is the international gateway for Indonesia. Since the Dutch colonial era, Balinese culture has been an object of preservation in the service of the development of tourism. More recently, cultural heritage conservation projects for Bali have been promoted and supported by international agencies, including the World Bank and UNESCO. In these projects, the old discourse and practices of the conservation of Bali's cultural heritage, a concept Schulte Nordholt (2008) asserts was “invented” by Dutch Colonial authorities and scholars, has been brought into new structural settings. Not only has the global economic system been restructured, the Indonesian state has been transformed substantially from a colonial state to a developmental state, and more recently to a neoliberal regulatory state where the relations between the state, market and civil society in the heritage conservation sphere are redefined.

In 2001 the Taliban destroyed the Buddhas of Bamiyan, two of the world's tallest Buddha statues, which had stood at the crossroads of Asia for more than 1,400 years. The event was a poignant example of the dynamic relationship between archaeological heritage and politics. In the aftermath, the international community largely attributed the event to a growing trend of heritage destruction (i.e., Bahadur 2002; Bryant 2002) perpetrated by religious fundamentalists across South Asia (i.e., Chakrabarti 2003; Coningham and Lewer 1999; Ratnagar 2004). Others placed the event within a continuance of Islamic iconoclasm, extending back to the medieval period, across the broader Muslim world. From 2014, the Bamiyan Buddhas’ destruction was reinterpreted as a harbinger for Da’esh's iconoclastic destruction of archaeological sites across the Middle East (Williams 2015).

While the destruction of the Buddha statues linked the threats posed by religious fundamentalism to eastern and western neighbours, within Afghanistan it also underscored the relationship between the country's archaeology, nationalism and politics. Since Afghanistan's “independence” in the early twentieth century, successive political leaders have attempted to build a nation from a deeply divided society, and one of the most valuable resources available has been the ancient archaeological heritage. While numerous studies have revealed the politicization of archaeological heritage in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries across the Middle East and South Asia (i.e., Goode 2007; Meskell 1997; Silberman 1989), none have fully delved into the twentieth-century historical backdrop that shaped the events of 2001 in Afghanistan. Moving beyond the typically generalized treatment of the Taliban and their destruction of the Buddhas (for a discussion, see Bernbeck 2010, p. 30), this paper aims to place the events of 2001 in the context of the formation and development of nationalism and the archaeological discipline in Afghanistan since the country's “independence” in 1919. Using the iconic case of Bamiyan, this paper will reveal how key actors, including foreign archaeologists, conservative religious groups and Afghan political administrations, shaped the politicization of archaeology in the modern Afghan nation-state.

Introduction: Expert Knowledge and Political Settings

As is well known, UNESCO is an international organization with an educational and cultural governance mandate to achieve a more equal and peaceful world through altering the minds of men (Nielsen 2011, p. 275). All UNESCO conventions dealing with “heritage” aim at contributing to these overarching idealistic goals. At the core of Operational Guidelines to the 1972 World Heritage Convention are the criteria that nominations must fulfil in order to reach approval by the Intergovernmental Committee (IGC). The first and foremost criterion a monument, a group of buildings or a site must fulfil is that of “Outstanding Universal Value” from the point of view of history, art or science. A number of circles of experts at both the national and international level are involved in the nomination and listing process. At the national level, such experts are charged with the task of describing and documenting the cultural property for the nomination file in such a way that the delegates of the member states constituting the Intergovernmental Committee to the Convention become ultimately convinced of its quality. UNESCO, on the other hand, cooperates with a number of international expert bodies such as the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), the International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property (ICCROM) and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Their experts, whose names are kept confidential, evaluate the nomination with regard to the fulfilment of the criteria and submit a recommendation to the IGC, where decisions are made. Though expert reports claim to focus exclusively on the quality of the cultural property (mostly monuments) and to stand above politics, the expertise expressed in them is often situated in a highly political context, which, as I am going to show, can lead to unforeseen consequences. These mostly implicit and invisible conditionings of expertise often divert UNESCO's noble goals and produce other socio-political results than those intended.

The politicization of the cultural property already begins when experts are called into action and they obediently seek to fulfil their task. This applies most strikingly to the ruins of the former Hindu Temple of Preah Vihear on the Thai-Cambodian border.

The Sino-Japanese relationship has experienced ups and downs since its diplomatic normalization in the 1970s. The increasing economic interdependence has broadened and deepened mutual understanding and interests among business sectors and the general public in both countries, while historical problems, security and territorial disputes, and economic competition remain the main obstacles for building trust and confidence between the two governments. The bilateral relationship since the changes in leadership in the two countries in 2012 has substantially deteriorated. Chinese President Xi Jinping and Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzō were finally able to schedule their first bilateral summit in 2014, at the Beijing APEC Leaders’ Summit, after they had both been in office for two years. It is expected that the Sino-Japanese relationship will continue to face many challenges, particularly in relation to security issues.

With such a pessimistic background to Sino-Japanese relations over the past few years, this chapter aims to examine how heritage conservation could operate as a tool of cultural diplomacy in the context of Sino-Japanese confrontation. Heritage not only contains cultural or historical value but also enhances and channels a national image to a country's people, and to the rest of the world. So, in order to realize the nationalist agenda, it is essential for both governments to “push” heritage conservation at the international institutional level—in this case, through the framework of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The core concern of this chapter is to explore how China and Japan interact with different stakeholders through the negotiation and lobbying processes to realize their cultural and diplomatic, or nationalistic objectives.

The chapter consists of five sections. After this introduction, the second section reviews the process of heritage conservation at the domestic and international levels. I apply a constructivist approach to conceptualize heritage as a tool of cultural diplomacy. The third and fourth sections delineate two case studies related to heritage conservation and the Sino- Japanese relationship: (1) the inclusion of sites of Japan's Meiji Industrial Revolution: Iron and Steel, Shipbuilding and Coal Mining in the World Heritage List (WHL); and (2) the inclusion of Documents of the Nanjing Massacre in the Memory of the World Register (MWR) in July and October 2015, respectively.

Goguryeo (Koguryo in old romanization) is the name of an ancient kingdom that existed from 37 BCE to 668 CE in present-day North Korea and Northeast China (also known as Manchuria), as well as small portions of South Korea and the Russian Far East. In succession, its capitals were in the present-day Chinese county of Huanren (34 BCE – 3 CE), the Chinese city of Ji’an (3–427 CE) and North Korea's capital city of Pyongyang (427–668 CE). Historical relics, particularly tombs and city walls, abound in these places and their environs. During the seventh century, Goguryeo resisted numerous invasions from successive dynasties in the Chinese hinterland, particularly the Sui Dynasty (581–618 CE) and the Tang Dynasty (618–907 CE), and experienced continuous warfare with other regimes on the Korean Peninsula, such as Silla (57 BCE – 935 CE) and Baekje (18 BCE – 660 CE). The period during which Goguryeo existed is termed the era of the Three Kingdoms of Korea (57 BCE – 668 CE) because Goguryeo, Silla and Baekje were the three major powers on the Korean Peninsula. Goguryeo was eventually destroyed by a joint force of Silla and the Tang in 668, which led to the Unified Silla Era (668–935 CE) and to the Tang's rule in northern Korea.

Surprisingly, Goguryeo became an issue of severe contention among Northeast Asian countries in the early twenty-first century, more than thirteen centuries after the kingdom's collapse. A controversy among China and the two Koreas involving governments and academia over whether Goguryeo was a Korean dynasty or a local minority regime of ancient China broke out when North Korea and China nominated their respective Goguryeo relics for UNESCO World Heritage status. While nominations from both countries were eventually successful, the controversy persisted and had a significant impact on international relations in Northeast Asia.

This chapter probes the historical origin of this early twenty-first century controversy by placing it within the modern history of the three countries involved.

“Invaluable, Rare, Traditional Aesthetics: A Restoration of the Ming Dynasty Mode of Performance.” This was the caption used to market a kunqu opera performance in Beijing's Imperial Granary production of Ming dynasty playwright Tang Xianzu's (1550–1616) play Peony Pavilion. Such words exude authenticity and seek to attract those curious to experience a rare performance of an antiquarian art form. The exoticism and novelty of experiencing an “ancient” and “authentic” performance appeals to the modern (Ivy 1995, pp. 241–42). It prompts the modern to consider that kunqu performances and aesthetics have been irrevocably lost, and thus this performance of Peony Pavilion at the Imperial Granary was to be a rare opportunity not to be missed. Captions like these resonate within the individual—that, because of the rapidly evolving sense of time and changes in political history, environmental context and contemporary culture, much has been lost, and this alarming sense of distance2 appeals to the identity and nostalgia of the Chinese modern, who begins to question their roots and traditions

Performances like these are also marketed towards the international visitor. Printed in English, the production advertises its performance as the “Ultimate Landscape of Chinese Culture: A Must-see for Tourists in Beijing”, with the accompanying words: “Kunqu Opera: A Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity of UNESCO”. The endorsement by UNESCO places kunqu on the world stage: a source of pride for the nation. The lead performers are young, good-looking and professionally trained from state-sponsored, government-endorsed kunqu opera troupes. The performance has an air of exclusivity. The theatre is small, with intimate seating for an audience of about forty. The setting gives the appearance and allure of the historical home of a member of the literati holding a performance by a private family troupe (jiaban). The performance, without microphones, compels audience members to lean in and be entranced. Ticket prices are hefty, ranging from 380 to 1,980 renminbi. The promises of an authentic, professional, spectacular and exclusive performance are all made.

I

There is little doubt that American philanthropy, including activities in developing countries, is experiencing fundamental shifts. Often defined as “using private wealth for public good”, philanthropy has been practised in the United States for more than a century within a particular framework shaped by American laws, which made it possible for philanthropists to minimize their tax burden by giving away wealth for what are defined as “charitable purposes”.

Primarily as a result of new technologies created by large and successful corporations, there is now a group of tremendously wealthy entrepreneurs and investors seeking to redefine the purposes and methods of philanthropic practice. Often called “philanthrocapitalists”, these entrepreneurs assert that being successful in business gives them the know-how to solve large-scale problems of poverty and deprivation. Their philanthropic organizations promote “business-like ways of working, business-like efficiency, and market-driven solutions to social problems” (Feinstein 2011). Instead of the “bottom line” of corporate profit, they promise a “bottom line” of social impact. Along with bottom-line thinking comes an emphasis on measuring outcomes and tangible results. The language of metrics, benchmarks, risk-reward ratios and scaling up now pervades the discourse of new philanthropies, making staff and their boards even more eager to see results quickly.

In a new book, David Callahan scrutinizes major living donors, who he argues are forming a “heterogeneous new power elite” (Callahan 2017). He describes activist megadonors who want to be celebrated for carrying out their philanthropic mission, and who maintain close personal control over their foundations, noting how in many cases donors are determined to give away all their wealth for specific purposes during their lifetimes, rather than leaving behind foundations that could evolve and chart new directions in perpetuity. The proponents of what is nowadays termed “venture philanthropy” do appear more activist than earlier generations of foundation executives. Venture philanthropists craft social media messages to explain their goals, and have created a celebrity culture of giving away wealth.

The year 2019 was potentially the most important one in Malaysia's political history since the creation of the Federation in 1963. While the historic change in government which ended the sixty-year reign of the Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition government the previous year was indeed momentous, the transition of power would have far less meaning if the promises of broader national transformation are not fulfilled by the new Pakatan Harapan (PH) government led by former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad. PH's 194-page Buku Harapan (“book of hope”) manifesto included sixty pledges, from reforming the Anti-Corruption Commission to ensuring “transparency and robustness of our election system”, along with promises to “abolish oppressive laws” and “enhance the transparency and integrity of the budget and budgeting process”. Other bold promises included the “decentralisation of power to Sabah and Sarawak”, “making government schools the best choice for its people” and for Malaysia to “lead efforts to resolve the Rohingya and Palestine crises.”

It would be easy, then, to highlight the various unfulfilled promises of the manifesto in order to determine 2019 as an abject disappointment for the fledgling PH government. Indeed, it has become a well-worn path for many analysts to measure the new government against its manifesto pledges, especially after the first hundred days of the PH administration and the one-year anniversary of its electoral victory. The slow pace of reform is not only limited to the political sector. The economy remains buffeted by stock outflows and a weak ringgit as global funds signalled their concerns about the lack of reforms. Elina Noor has written that while Malaysia “faced myriad challenges” in terms of foreign and security policies, “not much is likely to change” under Mahathir's “new Malaysia”. There has also been no major reform of education at any level, no progress on promises of decentralization, and only limited attempts to address the issues relating to the Orang Asli (indigenous peoples). Many Malaysians have thus become despondent when discussing national politics in 2019, including those who were initially part of the reform process themselves. Opinion polls throughout the year from the Merdeka Centre (Figure 1) reflect the growing public disappointment with the PH government. In the face of these criticisms, senior PH politicians have spent much of the year defending their track record.

According to the Constitution of Myanmar, a general election is to be held every five years in order to elect parliamentarians to the two legislative chambers, the lower house (Pyithu Hluttaw, or house of representative) and the upper house (Amyotha Hluttaw, or house of nationalities). Twenty-five per cent of the seats in both houses are reserved for military-appointed representatives. After parliamentary elections, the lower and upper houses will sit together in the Pyidaungsu Hluttaw (Assembly of the Union) to serve as an electoral college for the presidential election.

The coming general election in 2020 will be an important milestone for Myanmar. The elections in 2010 brought about the “Myanmar Spring” under President Thein Sein, while the 2015 elections witnessed Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy (NLD) coming to power. The 2015 general election marked the very first peaceful transfer of power from one elected government to another since the country gained independence from the British in 1948. The year 2015 was also the first time Aung San Suu Kyi and her party were able to form the government since winning the election in 1990.

In the three years since assuming power, the NLD government has introduced reforms of the economy, banking and finance; implemented a crackdown on corruption; and initiated the 21st Century Panglong Conference, a new peace process aimed at settling the country's various ethnic insurgencies. However, these efforts have been overshadowed by an economic slowdown, the Rohingya crisis and a lack of progress in the peace process. In particular, the failure of the reforms to translate into tangible benefits at the grass-roots level has led many people to feel that the NLD government has under-delivered on expectations.

The upcoming general election in 2020 will be the first electoral test for the NLD government. It will also be a judgement of Aung San Suu Kyi's leadership and legacy. Meanwhile, the opposition parties in Myanmar have sought to capitalize on voter dissatisfaction with the NLD's performance in government. The Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), which lost power in the 2015 elections, has been reorganizing itself and replacing its old generation of party leaders, including former President Thein Sein.

On 29 December 2018, Prime Minister Hun Sen presided over the inauguration of the Win-Win Monument, constructed on the outskirts of Phnom Penh to commemorate the end of civil war in Cambodia some twenty years ago when the Khmer Rouge was finally defeated in 1998. Achieving total peace is a source of pride for Prime Minister Hun Sen, signalling his triumph over the neoliberal global order, especially since even the United Nations (UN) failed in this task, despite the mission's expensive price tag. The ceremony was also a testimony to the pre-eminence of the ruling Cambodian People's Party (CPP) following the dissolution of the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) and the party's comprehensive victory in the 2018 general elections that transformed Cambodia into a de facto one-party state. In many ways, Prime Minister Hun Sen and the CPP have reasons to be proud of Cambodia's achievements. The economy continued to expand sustainably at a rate of around seven per cent, elevating Cambodia to one of the fastest-growing economies in the world. Its international geopolitical position has also been strengthened with the political and economic support of China. However, despite these successes, the CPP faces challenges to its legitimacy, both on the international and domestic fronts, as it embarks on further power consolidation. This chapter analyses the CPP's successes and challenges in 2019 in the domains of politics, economics and foreign affairs. The first section will discuss the domestic political developments surrounding Sam Rainsy's attempt to return from self-imposed exile and the reactions of the Cambodian government. The second section will address economic developments in 2019 as well as possible future trends. The third section will discuss Cambodia's external relations, particularly Western concerns over its recent democratic regression and its bilateral relations with China and Vietnam.

Politics

The CPP's electoral victories since the UN-organized elections in 1993 have occurred largely because of the divisions within the opposition camp. The merger between the Sam Rainsy Party and the Human Rights Party into the CNRP had initially posed an electoral challenge to the CPP, as evidenced by the former's strong performance in both rural and urban areas in the 2013 general election and the 2017 local elections.

What happened in Thailand throughout 2019 was different from anything that had gone before in contemporary Thai politics. Prior to the March general election there were many questions. Was the election going to happen, and, if it was, what were the results going to be? The process leading up to the election was also intriguing. On the one hand, there were many new political parties. On the other hand, politicians faced many challenges and constraints caused by the promilitary constitution introduced in 2017.

The result of the election was even more startling. It saw the decline of the urban middle-class Democrats, the oldest party in Thailand, as well as the rural mass-based Pheu Thai, the latest incarnation of Thaksin-inspired parties, which had won every election this century. The election also witnessed the emergence of the “new kids in town”: Future Forward and Palang Pracharat. The latter was a pro-military party that recruited from the ranks of existing politicians with existing patronage networks. Palang Pracharat nominated General Prayut Chan-o-cha, the leader of the 2014 coup and head of the junta, as its choice of prime minister. Even though Palang Pracharat was only the second-largest party in parliament, Prayut was still voted by a joint sitting of the House of Representatives and the military-appointed Senate to be the prime minister. Palang Pracharat also managed to form a coalition government of nineteen political parties to hold a slim parliamentary majority of 254 out of 500 seats, confronting an opposition bloc of seven political parties with 246 parliamentary seats. Given the economic downturn, strained relations with Western democracies, and the rise of a popular opposition in the form of Future Forward, the government was expected to be vulnerable and short-lived. But, after more than half a year, the pro-junta government has successfully maintained its upper hand, taming its medium- and small-sized coalition partners and suppressing the opposition. There have so far been no robust challenges to the pro-military government.

Peculiar Pre-election Conditions

In the decade following the 1992 democratic transition, Thailand was considered one of the most democratic countries in Southeast Asia. The subsequent campaign for reform led to the 1997 constitution, one of the most democratic in Thai political history. After this came two overwhelming electoral victories of Thai Rak Thai (“Thai Love Thai”), a new party led by Thaksin Shinawatra that was popular among the rural poor.

The decline of America's relative strategic and economic power is reflected in adjustments to its global policy and strategy. This has in fact been apparent since the Obama administration's unwillingness to become involved in the Syrian conflict, and its calls for “burden sharing” and more partnerships. The tendency towards retrenchment has continued under the Trump administration, with officials seeking to review foreign involvement with the question “What is in it for us?” and seeking ways out of the conflicts in the Middle East and Afghanistan as the country tries to focus on the Indo-Pacific region.

American primacy after World War II was a historical anomaly brought about by very special circumstances of the post-war world. For many years before World War II the United States relied on a balance-of-power strategy to secure its interests in Asia, often in a multipolar geopolitical setting. This is the likely direction for the future. It is not clear yet what form a balance-of-power strategy will take in the Indo-Pacific. Alliances, partnerships and “burden sharing” will be important elements.

This chapter first addresses the big change in US foreign policy—in particular, policy towards China—during the Trump administration. It describes the mood in US policy circles as well as in the wider foreign policy community towards China and President Trump's role, which is not always in tandem with that of the relevant bureaucracies and Congress. It then goes on to examine the policy towards Southeast Asia, the region's importance to US interests, the current US “influence deficiency” in Southeast Asia and the prospects of the United States augmenting its influence and standing. Finally, there is a section making some concluding observations.

The New Turn in US Foreign Policy

A new phase in US foreign policy has begun, propelled mainly by three factors. First, the hubris and overreach during the immediate post–Cold War period, correctly seen in hindsight as a “unipolar moment”, led to wasteful and costly wars in the Middle East. Second, domestic policy failures to cope with the negative effects of globalization resulted in significant damage to US manufacturing industries and sections of the white working class. The global financial crisis of 2008–9 only accentuated the economic distress.