The Democrats just endorsed a military junta in their party platform

The Democratic platform fights between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders backers covered a wide range of topics: the minimum wage, universal healthcare, college tuition and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). The resulting document has been hailed as the most progressive in the party’s history. Sadly, much of the rest of the platform was simply copied and pasted from previous years.

“From the Asia Pacific to the Indian Ocean, we will deepen our relationships in the region with Australia, Japan, New Zealand, the Philippines, South Korea, and Thailand.” This statement, from the anodyne foreign affairs section, recycles the laundry list of countries featured in the 2008 and 2012 Democratic platforms. The problem is that, since a coup against the democratically elected government in 2014, Thailand has been ruled by a military junta.

{mosads}The new regime squelched all opposition, placing dissidents under house arrest and forbidding demonstrations. The strongly royalist military has zealously enforced Thailand’s abhorrent lèse-majesté law, going so far as to jail citizens for liking Facebook posts critical of the king, or even not sufficiently condemning such online comments. The junta has also set up Orwellian-sounding “attitude adjustment” centers at military bases where troublesome opposition figures and journalists are detained for up to a week at a time.

Coups in Thailand are nothing new. There have been 12 successful ones since the absolute monarchy was abolished in 1932. The pattern is fairly consistent: the military declares martial law and, after “calming” whatever situation deemed to be out of control, schedules new elections to return the country to civilian control. The difficulty for the military right now is that the people they find so objectionable have won every election since 2001. Under various amalgamations and names (after being repeatedly banned by the military or the conservative judiciary), the mildly left-wing party centered around the Shinawatra family has clearly shown itself to be the choice of the Thai people, with its strongest backing in the impoverished north of the country. The current junta, led by General Prayuth Chan-ocha, keeps postponing elections in the hopes of rigging the constitution to prevent the so-called Red Shirts from taking power again. Even as Prayuth promises a constitutional referendum in August and a general election in 2017, authoritarian rule continues unabated.

The Obama Administration’s reaction to the coup has been mixed. While initially condemning the armed forces’ takeover and suspending some aid, Washington has largely preserved military-to-military cooperation. The U.S. and Thailand engaged in joint exercises in February; at the same time, General Prayuth attended an ASEAN summit with President Obama in California, in a move criticized by human rights groups. Last month, the State Department upgraded Thailand’s ranking in its annual Trafficking in Persons report, potentially easing Bangkok’s eventual inclusion in the TPP. Obama presumably wants to prevent China from making inroads to its south by maintaining links with the Thai government, representing another misguided furtherance of the Cold War tactic of competing for the loyalties of autocratic regimes.

So was Thailand’s positive mention in the Democratic platform a careless mistake or actual intention? It’s unclear, but the convention delegates should reconsider in either case. The Clinton campaign has been right to shine a spotlight on Donald Trump’s support for dictators, especially Russian president Vladimir Putin. Democrats should take the opportunity to make a clean break and prosecute the case against Trump without being saddled by their bizarre backing for a desperate junta.

Andy Gottlieb is a recent graduate of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, where he concentrated in American foreign policy.