rough mountain country of northern and eastern Burma, the Indian Ocean coastal approaches. India had a substantial fleet, by Indian Ocean standards-might they attempt to run the Strait of Malacca and strike at the heart of Thailand from the gulp. All possibilities had to be prepared for.
Some basic intelligence about the makeup of the Indian and Thai military was available on the nets. Thailand had a powerful air force-there was a chance of achieving air dominance, if they could protect their bases. Therefore it would be essential to have the capability of laying down emergency airstrips in a thousand different places, an engineering feat well within the reach of the Thai military-if they trained for it now and dispersed crews and fuel and spare parts throughout the country. That, along with mines, would be the best protection against a coastal landing.
The other Indian vulnerability would be supply lines and lanes of advance. Since India's military strategy would inevitably depend on throwing vast, irresistible armies against the enemy, the defense was to keep those vast amties hungry and harry them constantly from the air and from raiding parties. And if, as was likely, the Indian Army reached the fertile plain of the Chao Phraya or the Aoray Plateau, they had to find the land utterly stripped, the food supplies dispersed and hidden-those that weren't destroyed.
It was a brutal strategy, because the Thai people would suffer along with the Indian Army-indeed, they would suffer more. So the destruction had to be set up so it would only take place at the last minute And, as much as possible, they had to be able to evacuate women and children to remote areas or even to camps in Laos and Cambodia. Not that borders would stop the Indian army, but terrain might. Having many isolated targets for the Indians would force them to divide their forces. Thenand only then-would it make sense for the Thai military to take on smaller portions of the Indian army in hitand-run engagements or, where possible, in pitched battles where the Thai side would have temporary numerical parity and superior air support.
Of course, for all Bean knew this was already the longstanding Thai military doctrine and if he made these suggestions he would only annoy them-or make them feel that he had contempt for them.
So he worded his memo very carefully. Lots of phrases like, "No doubt you already have this in place," and "as I'm sure you have long expected." Of course, even those phrases could backfire, if they hadn't thought of these things-it would sound patronizing. But he had to do something to break this stalemate of silence.
He read the memo over and over, revising each time. He waited days to send it, so he could see it in new perspectives. Finally, certain that it was as rhetorically inoffensive as he could make it, he put it into an email and sent it to the Office of the Chakri-the supreme military commander. It was the most public and potentially embarrassing way he could deliver the memo, since mail to that address was inevitably sorted and read by aides. Even printing it out and carrying it by hand would have been more subtle. But the idea was to stir things up; if Naresuan wanted him to be subtle, he would have given him a private email address to write to.
Fifteen minutes after he sent the memo, his door unceremoniously opened and four military police came in. "Come with us, sir," said the sergeant in charge.
Bean knew better than to delay or to ask questions. These men knew nothing but the instructions they had been given, and Bean would find out what those were by waiting to see what they did.
They did not take him to the office of the Chakri. Instead he was taken to one of the temporary buildings that had been set up on the old parade grounds-the Thai military had only recently given up marching as part of the training of soldiers and the display of military might. Only three hundred years after the American Civil War had proven that the days of marching in formation into battle were over. For military organizations, that was about the normal time lag. Sometimes Bean halfexpected to find some army somewhere that was still training its soldiers to fight with sabers from horseback.
There was no label, not even a number, on the door they led him to. And when he came inside, none of the soldier-clerks even looked