THE INFLUENCE OF THE ASEAN POLITICAL SECURITY COMMUNITY (APSC) ON THE POLITICAL AND SECURITY STRATEGY OF THAILAND

Abstract

The objectives of this research aimed to examine the influence of the ASEAN community on the political and security strategy to effectively design and implement Thailand’s political and security strategies. It was a qualitative research, focusing on documentary study and in-depth interview with fifteen professionals. The results showed that one of the major strengths of Thailand was its location, where suited for being the center of the region. It could support the expansion of the economy, politics and securities, and society and culture of ASEAN. However, the major weaknesses of Thailand were the inadequacies in terms of budgets, human resources, and knowledge, that had the impact to regional solutions. In addition, the analysis of the external environment in Thailand found that the important opportunities were the regional integration as the ASEAN community, which resulted in the integration of politics and security together with economy, society, and culture. The threats of Thailand included the new form of threats that affected directly on non-traditional security. Based on the analysis of environmental factors, three main strategies could be identified as follows: (1) strategic political development consisted of two main strategies, which were strategy to strengthen democratic political culture and strategy to raise moral standards and the ethics for political institutions; (2) a new cross-national threat management strategy, which included important strategies such as the strategic management of transnational crime, and information technology and cyber; and (3) strategy to strengthen cooperation in international political and security. This research study only examined the influence of the ASEAN community on Thailand’s political and security strategy. The following research might further study on various aspects as follows: (1) study on the influence of the ASEAN Economic Community on the economic strategy of Thailand because ASEAN had a great influence on the economic strategy of Thailand; (2)  study on the influence of the ASEAN community on social and cultural aspects to the social and cultural strategies of Thailand because the society and culture had a great influence on the strategic design of the social and cultural aspects of Thailand; and  (3) the monitoring and assessing the internal environment of Thailand continuously to analyze the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of Thailand under the influence of entering the ASEAN community, so as to determine the consistent and appropriate strategies for Thailand in the present and the future time.