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Route to the Interior. The airfield itself will be ready this summer, large enough to hold at one time three squadrons of fighter-bombers, 20 KC-135 jet transports, one squadron of air-defense fighters and 120 C-123 transport planes, not to mention the B-52s which could fly from its extra-thick runways. Sattahip's fuel pipeline system will eventually extend to Korat, where the U.S. Army's 9th Logistical Command has already stockpiled enough guns, tanks, trucks and ammunition for a full division. U.S. and Thai engineers are constructing the Bangkok Bypass, a strategic highway to carry vital traffic northward past the capital. It will have the side effect, as did the $20 million Friendship Highway completed two years ago, of opening up vast interior regions of the nation to the capital's culture and economy.
Everywhere the Americans settle in provincial Thailand, a miniature boom inevitably ensues. Bars, nightclubs, tailor shops and bowling alleys sprout. Udorn boasts the slick new Udorn Hotel; across the street G.l.s munch cheese burgers and chicken-in-the-basket in the Silhouette Restaurant before pushing off for the Playboy and Mona Lisa bars. Korat offers pleasures ranging from a town square filled with fortunetellers to miniature golf.
The Vital Core. For the Thais, proud and sensitive to any hint of interference by farangs or foreigners in their national life, the enormous U.S. buildup is a painful concession to the grim facts of Southeast Asian life. They talk about it as little as they can, admit virtually nothing officially, and have carefully made only gentleman's agreements, one at a time, for U.S. use of their bases. The U.S. in turn respects Thai feelings by trying, as one official puts it, to present a "low silhouette" on the Thai landscape. But inevitably, with the growing accumulation of American manpower and hardware, there are abrasions and mistakes. Early this month, an F-4C from Ubon lost one of its rockets flying over a Thai village. Before search squads could reach the site, village boys began playing with it. It went off, killing four and wounding four more.
The reason for Thai-American cooperation was explained to his subjects by King Bhumibol himself in his New Year's message. "The opposite side has revealed its intention that Thailand is to be the next target of aggression. A very great danger might reach us any day. None of you must be put off your guard."
For the U.S., as for Peking, Thailand is not just a convenient piece of real estate handy to the Viet Nam theater of battle. And it is not being built up by the U.S. as a strategic site for withdrawal of all the 255,000 U.S. troops now in South Viet Nam, should such a thing be demanded by some future Saigon government. For one thing, the Thais would not allow that many farangs roaming about for any reason. More important, throughout their history, the Thais have survived by shrewdly