Abstract:
The aim of this thesis is to study international security environment, Thai geopolitics, and Thai foreign policy instruments as well as Thai sea power from 1977 to 1988. The study is to analyze and find outcomes from the use of various foreign policy instruments compared to the use of sea power against external threat during that period which finally lead to reasons why Thailand gave more importance to the use of another foreign policy instruments rather than the use of sea power. The scope of the thesis starts from studying and analyzing root causes of the research problems and concentrates on the period when General Kriangsak Chamanant took power as Prime Minister of Thailand followed by General Prem Tinnasulanont then General Chatchai Choonhawan during his first year in power. During that period Thailand had directly encountered threat from communist countries in Indochina, particularly Vietnam when it occupied Cambodia in 1979 and deployed 160,000 troops there. Some of them were deployed along Thai Cambodian border and encroached Thai border several times to suppress Cambodian resistance fractions. Such action made Thai leaders concern about possibility of Vietnams invasion. The thesis found that the reasons why Thailand gave more importance to the use of another foreign policy instruments rather than the use of sea power to counter against Vietnamese threat are: the necessity to counter immediate threat from Vietnamese land forces which was appropriate to be done by land forces and air forces; the use of diplomatic instrument gave more effectiveness than any other instruments; the discontinuity in sea powers development due to intra-military services conflict; the dependence on the U.S. military assistance; and the obsolete of naval technology.