Prem death premature for Thailand and UK stability?

General Prem has had a good innings dying today age 98.

The former PM and Privy Council chief dies at a crucial time for Thailand. As with King Bhumibol dying last year, Prem marks the end of an era. And a changing of the guard in Thailand with the new democracy election.

Prem's involvement in public and military life stretches back to WW2.

And apt with the refurbishment of the Thai Army Museum is a reconsideration of that thinly-documented era.

The French-Thailand War of 1940-41 not just the Thai Navy's finest hour but the first loosening of the Western Empires in Asia after the fall of Dunkirk an Ramsgate Little Ships.

And the famous landmark in Bangkok of the Victory Monument, Thailand's Nelson's Column.

That era ending to all practical purposes only with the Prem armistice of the Thai Communist Party in Northern Isaan in the early 1980's and withdrawal of the Vietnam army from Cambodia by 1990. And more symbolically with the return of Hong Kong in 1997 and Macau in 1999 to China.

As an aside, perhaps the Portuguese Catholic Church in Bangkok overdue UNESCO status as one of the first European outposts in Asia.

And surely an old soldier like PM Tu would consider a more detailed study of Japan in Vietnam and Cambodia and Thailand in WW2 beyond the familiar points of the Kwai railway and March 1945 Japanese coup. Even the UK occupation of September 1945 through to 1946 that sowed the seeds of the Vietnam conflict - few if any CWG war graves.

The first Allied victories in Burma in early 1944 after the near defeats at Kohima and Imphal - the Kwai railway put in place to resupply the Japanese army for the invasion of India - showing how near the Allies came to defeat.

One of the strange quirks of the Kwai campaign is a memorial tucked away in a side street raised by the Japanese military in March 1943 to celebrate the completion of the Kwai railway - and to commemorate the deaths of the Allied POW's, Asian conscript labourers and Japanese soldiers. A strange revisionism to Western eyes that the Allied 15k and Asian 100k deaths would have been a mere footnote in a successful Japanese Empire.

Western memorials at the Kwai bridge rather peculiar with a small plaque to American soldiers who died there and a plaque from the Welsh Male Voice Choir of Hong Kong plaque to all the prisoners amidst the souvenir stalls and still working trains.

Perhaps a Prem Studies course in a Thai or UK university could also highlight the Thai contribution to the Korean and Laos/Vietnam Wars largely unknown in the West, whether Thai volunteers or Thai soldiers redrafted in civilian clothes.

The Max Hastings Vietnam book even detailing the American OSS role at the end of WW2 with the rather splendidly named Major Archimedes Patti trying to organise resistance to the Japanese military. FDR promises of an early end of European Empires disappearing amidst 93k French troop deaths before the end of the French War in Vietnam - over double the eventual USA deaths.

And if the role of the Thai military in government has exploded into life with the new constitution and 250 appointed senators and anti-conscription policies of Future Forward Party then the older embers still spark into life beyond ASEAN. Whether North Korean nuclear missiles, naval exercises off Taiwan or the Chinese Spratly islands and seizure of the Paracels in 1974 from Vietnam.

Even the fragments of the KMT nationalist armies in the border regions of China and Myanmar repurposed as drugs gangs.

With Thailand and Cambodia and UK active in the UN Peacekeeping Mission of South Sudan perhaps similar is required with ASEAN auspices and Myanmar. In my MP campaign I wonder what use the last 3k UK troops in Germany from WW2 bases and the vast stockpiles of rusty lorries etc that could also be deployed from Bielefeld etc to better use in South Sudan before being scrapped.

Frau Merkel and Herr Weber in the running for EU roles must also surely be considering a shift westwards to former East Germany for US Army Europe bases as well as how long Germany can hope to ride on the redcoat tails of UK and USA military taxes for NATO and concomitant reductions in trade investment. BMW cars proving of more value than Ajax armoured cars.

Perhaps USA should talk up the Iran War and the supposed inevitability of a China War a little more for a lot more defence tax. the Trump Japan visit surely beginning a retrenchment from Korea and Okinawa and increased Japanese defence funding. Perhaps greater investment in the East Asian equivalent of ASEAN or EU for Japan, China, Koreas United, Taiwan, Russia and Mongolia.

The resolution of petty islands disputes or oceans cleanup and exploration perhaps the easiest Trump takeaway since a McDonalds Happy Meal.

As is the colonial disengagement of the last fragments of the European empires - the Caribbean surely ripe not just of the Caroline Munro Doctrine but greater Commonwealth investment in transferring the bananas republics of cocaine and tax haven economies to a surer grounding whether solar panels or vaccines.

Thailand's massive success to date in reducing drugs in The Golden Triangle surely a wider lesson for other nations: the first deployment of EU Border Guards to Albania a measure of EU effort needed along with Southern Italy, and UK efforts on SOCA crime gangs by Lincs Crime Commissioner.

And surely UK efforts in the Northern Ireland Troubles and strong relations with Malaysia and wider Commonwealth provide support for peace and prosperity in the Deep South.

Although at present, with the Brexit mess creating a disUnited Kingdom and no political government in Northern Ireland for years now - whether jerrymandered from Ulster or not. Perhaps the only factor now preventing a reunited Ireland by 2022 would be Eire not wanting to take on the bankrupt province nor UK wanting to invest funds to see it fall under the sway of Dublin, albeit with civil rights guarantees for Protestants of Londonderry and Belfast.

While the DUP emerging form the shadows of UK politics proving unpalatable to UK citizens on abortion etc and out of step with a more liberal and sectarian Eire now loosening divorce laws from the Catholic Church.

Brexit revealing not just the minefield of Europe for a Tory government again but also digging up the ticking timebomb of the Irish Question that defeated the Prem of that era, Disraeli and Gladstone.

And perhaps one of the key takeaways from Prem's life is - as with the EU for UK - the rise of ASEAN as a stabilising force for peace and prosperity after WW2 and the Cold War.

@timg33