Prayut has role to play in North Korean crisis

Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha’s planned official visit to the White House appears to have been postponed to a later date due to a number of factors.
The premier had at the end of April spoken by phone with US President Donald Trump and received an invitation to visit the US, tentatively sometime in late July, but the trip was put off, with both leaders initially claiming to be too busy with domestic matters.
North Korea is at or close to the top of Trump’s agenda when it comes to Asia, especially in the face of Pyongyang’s continued defiance concerning its nuclear-capable intercontinental ballistic missile programme.
Beijing has come under pressure to rein in its neighbour, with Trump threatening to play the economic card against China unless it helps the US manage North Korea.
Regarding Southeast Asia, leaders of several countries, including Vietnam and Singapore, have already had meetings with Trump. The Vietnamese prime minister visited the White House in late May and Singapore’s premier held a bilateral meeting with Trump in Germany on July 8 on the sidelines of the G20 Summit.
Trump extended his invitation for the Thai leader to visit the White House in late April, at the same time the leaders of Singapore and the Philippines were invited.
In fact, Thailand and other Southeast Asian nations are also under increasing pressure to step up sanctions against North Korea, with US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson due to deliver the message personally while visiting Thailand, Malaysia and Philippines next week.
In this context, Thailand should be reluctant to embrace the US strategy in managing the North Korean issue, since the country currently has full diplomatic relations with both South and North Korea. Strong action against the North would also hurt Thailand’s relations with China.
This sensitive issue is probably one of the key factors contributing to the postponement of Prime Minister Prayut’s planned visit the US.
For Prayut, the White House invitation is a good opportunity to boost his non-elected government’s popularity while re-balancing Thailand’s relations with the major powers.
But he must be careful in handling the re-balancing act vis-a-vis Thailand’s relations with China, which improved significantly following the 2014 coup.
Aside from the North Korean issue, the US also aims to restore its previous pre-eminent role in Southeast Asia beyond the context of regional security, given that rival China has established a strong foothold in the economic front over the past few decades.
Ironically, the Barack Obama administration banked on the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) comprehensive trade and economic deal in a bid to restore US prominence in this part of the world, but Trump did an about-face and withdrew the US from the pact. The absence of a powerful vehicle like the TPP framework will likely make US efforts to rally Asian support against North Korea more challenging. As far as economic and trade deals are concerned, Thailand and other countries will have to start anew on the type of bilateral approach favoured by the wheeler-dealer Trump.
Thailand’s trade surplus with the US was an issue raised by the Trump administration, which singled out 16 countries said to have had unfair trade practices with the US.
What comes next remains to be seen, but Thailand could now be mixed into the US strategy of containing North Korea, which Washington regards as Asia’s “rogue state”.