Preventing Bad Order at Sea Redux: Evolution of Thailand's Maritime Security Practice

The article traces five centuries of Thai maritime security practice to argue that recent reforms mark a partial return to preventing bad order at sea. It shows how Siamese polities initially conceived maritime security in negative terms, prioritising stability in riverine and coastal systems by merely managing or outright initiating rather than eliminating non-polity maritime violence. Only with the rise of a fiscal-state navy in the Interwar years did a positive good order at sea agenda begin to emerge in Thailand, later deepening through environmental stewardship and regionalisation efforts during the Cold War and the post-Cold War eras. Drawing on primary sources, the article argues that Thailand has renewed its preventive orientation in response to climate-related risks, a striated maritime domain, and proliferating transnational threats. It advances the concept of deep pluralist maritime security as a more appropriate framework than multipolarity for understanding the choices facing small navies in the contemporary strategic environment.