By Prashanth Parameswaran
The U.S. military will scale down the annual exercise over human rights concerns, but won’t cancel it.
On June 12, media outlets reported that the United States had decided this week to go ahead with preparations for Cobra Gold 2016 — the Asia-Pacific’s largest annual multinational military exercise — despite lingering rights concerns.
According to the Associated Press, senior State Department official Scot Marciel told a congressional hearing on June 11 that the Obama administration would move forward with Cobra Gold 2016 but that the exercise would be scaled down again because of the political situation in Thailand, where a military junta continues to rule after seizing power in a coup last May.
The report publicly confirms what many had already expected. The decision is essentially the same as the one Washington made last October when it chose to go ahead with a scaled down version of Cobra Gold 2015. As I have written previously, this course allows the administration to signal its disapproval with the rights situation in post-coup Thailand while preserving an engagement that is a crucial part of not only the U.S.-Thai relationship, but U.S.-Asia policy as well (See: “US-Thailand Relations and Cobra Gold 2015”). Though Cobra Gold began as a bilateral drill between the United States and Thailand, it has grown to involve some 30 countries including Japan and China.
Read the full story at The Diplomat