hotsoup

Any 'Reasonable Chance' of knowing what's in the MH17 Black Boxes?

In assessing the decisions made by Thailand before and during WW2 3 things should not be ignored. The extremely important issue of territory has been raised above by Thailiketoo.

In 1939 Thailand was still a somewhat nebulous concept; the borders of 'Thailand' had been changing for hundreds of years. Thailand. During the 18th and 19th centuries many parts of what might have been considered as Siam were 'lost' to Britain France and even Burma. Many parts of what are now Thailand had been hardly within the writ of the king.

Thailand was shell shocked by the French incursion in 1893 and though they had made a treaty in the previous year with Britain, the whole issue had highlighted no reason to trust the west. That together with the bombing of BKK by Britain hardly inspired confidence in the west.

They were thus rightly concerned that any alliance with the west might result in even further loss of territory, in spite of some of the earlier French reparations.

An alliance with Japan thus provide the best of some unattractive options

Thailand was extremely fortunate that, much in the way Britain had used Siam as buffer between Burma and France, the USA decided, on I agree somewhat paranoid grounds, to use Thailand as a counter to communism in East Asia.