When Obama looks around the gala dinner table in Vientiane, he will find a bevy of new partners. More striking still will be the presence of Myanmar’s de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who spent much of the last three decades held prisoner by a brutal military junta. Yet experts ay it is Thailand that represents the starkest failure to leverage US diplomatic power in the region. Notoriously prickly junta leader, Prayut Chan-O-Cha, has also frequently bristled at US criticism of the darkening human rights environment in his country. The Thai military used to be “partnered almost exclusively with the United States and that is changing,” said Des Walton, a former defense attache in Bangkok.

Source: Manila Times September 07, 2016 12:45 UTC