Better reasons needed not to proceed with canal
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Ref: "Canal an option if geopolitical factors change", Analysis, June 13.
I have been mesmerised by your series on the Kra Canal. To link the Indian and Pacific oceans on Thailand’s soil has been an on-and-off subject of contention for more than five decades.
No decision either way has ever been shown as likely. Same old reasons for procrastination were used and are now reused again by Panitan Wattanayagorn and Sumet Jumsai – uncertain economic benefits and unwelcome security effects on our nation.
I beg to differ. The scenarios assumed by these two imminent Thais are no longer valid. Though I don’t have the benefit of a close evaluation of the costs and benefits, I venture to conclude that the benefits to Thailand, China and others would be so immense under modern technology that one day we would have forgotten the cost and congratulated ourselves for the link.
The concern of having two giants like Britain and France fighting for their prey – Siam’s Kra Canal – in the nineteenth century is unlikely to be repeated by the US and China today. The world is now different from those days of colonialism, otherwise all those disputed islands in the South China Sea would have been owned by China by now without any whimper.
We are now in a push-and-pull world where opportunities and fairness are offered to weaker nations if human decency in each nation is maintained.
I do not ask for a positive move on the canal but ask for better reasons for deciding not to proceed.
Songdej Praditsmanont
Bangkok
