Book Number: 21 793

Marks, Tom

MAKING REVOLUTION, INSURGENCY OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF THAILAND IN STRUCTURAL PERSPECTIVE
Studies in Contemporary Thailand No. 3

This book is the first comprehensive treatment of the stunning campaign which saw Thailand win its battle against Maoist insurgency. The reasons for victory have been hitherto all but ignored. This is a mistake, because the Thai conflict provides an exceptionally useful opportunity for examining one of the more recent episodes of “political war” to play itself out. Furthermore, since the insurgents' efforts to “make a revolution” were ultimately unsuccessful, there are practical as well as theoretical lessons to be learned. Ironically, in the end, it was the government “people's war” that ended the Maoist-inspired effort by the Thai communists to seize power.

What emerged was not a model of a particular combination of tactical or operational techniques. To the contrary, it was a victory for a strategic approach which sought ultimately to respond to Thai circumstances, particularly political realities. Only the change in those realities made effective the techniques chosen. Just as certainly, though, had the technique not been carried out, the results of the struggle could have been very different. In this sense, the counterinsurgency campaign existed in a symbiotic relationship with its society, while that of the would-be revolutionaries did not.

(Bangkok 1995) ISBN 974-8496-30-9

300 pp., 150 x 210 mm, pbk.

25.- US-Dollar

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