Between 1967 and 1972, Thailand sent 37,644 volunteer soldiers to serve in South Vietnam as members of the American-led Free World forces fighting there. This study traces the process by which these volunteers were recruited, trained, and sent overseas to fight communism. It examines their encounters with American consumer culture, South Vietnamese civilians, and the communist guerrillas they fought. The core of this dissertation is a set of first-hand interviews conducted with Thai veterans of the conflict. Using their recollections of the war, it argues that the self-interest of these volunteers, like that of their national leaders, was driven as much by patriotism and a desire for military experience as it was by the pursuit of material gain.
More broadly, this is a study of Thailand's involvement in the Vietnam War. It analyses Thailand's role in this regional war on two levels: the intuitional and the individual. It argues that Thailand's leadership opted to enter the war in South Vietnam because it served its own interests to do so. This self-interest transcended narrow considerations of military and economic aid related to Thailand's patron-client relationship with the United States, and was, instead, born out of several critical factors related to Thailand's domestic political agenda, specifically those related to anti-communism and state security.
Thailand's ruling institutions cooperated successfully to generate popular support for the country's entry into the war. The Thai leadership used the excitement it fostered for the all-volunteer army to win further support for its expanded military operations against internal insurgents, especially the Thai communist guerrillas in the south and northeast, and for its role as host to a growing American military presence.
This study challenges previous scholarship that has dismissed Thailand's forces in South Vietnam as "mercenaries." By tracing and critiquing the evolution of the term as it was applied to the Thais by unfriendly governments, anti-war activists, and American opposition politicians, and through an analysis of the motivations for serving offered by the Thai volunteers, it demonstrates that this enduring label is inaccurate in this historical context.
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