Recently, for reasons unknown to this writer, and probably well above my paygrade, there have been military scandals in both Thailand and Malaysia over the issue of submarine purchases from abroad. I have been paying attention to this issue for a few months, and thought it might be worthwhile to shine a light on the matter, even if the reasons why both Thailand and Malaysia have thought it so important that they need submarines all of the sudden are obscure to me. Perhaps someone else reading this may be able to fill in the blanks.
Currently Malaysia has two Scorpene submarines in active duty, purchased for about 600 million dollars apiece. There is a complicated story about how the money to purchase those submarines was distributed, as the money came from Malysian taxpayers but some of it seems to have ended up as kickbacks to Malaysian politicians and their businesses, and other money appears to have gone to a Hong Kong company that was a front for Malaysian politicians and that used to be a Malaysian company [1]. It’s complicated.
Corruption generally is complicated. It’s a sad fact of life that military equipment seems to be rife with corruption. Lest we laugh at this too much, it has been a longstanding problem with America’s military. To give but one of many examples, in the American Civil War government contracts to build military clothing often ended up purchasing shoddy and substandard clothing. Government logistics contracts of any kind have generally attracted a fair amount of ridicule and skepticism because of the high cost per unit volume of a given product, as well as the easy opportunity that military or scientific applications have to encourage official corruption by businesses or political elites.
Interestingly enough, one of the blogs I am subscribed to (it’s blocked in Thailand, but somehow I managed to get to the blog before it was blocked for me) recently commented on an abortive attempt by some in the Thai military to get their hands on some German submarines as well [2]. Now I don’t claim to know a lot about how the Thai military operates when it comes to arms trading and procurement, and I’m generally of the philosophy that the less I know about such matters the better, but the story is an odd one. Apparently there was some concern by the King that submarines would get stuck in the mud at the bottom of the Gulf of Thailand, but that some military figures were interested in procuring submarines anyway, but that the project itself was canceled before any subs were purchased.
I have several questions concerning these seemingly related submarine scandals. The most obvious one is why would Malaysia and Thailand feel the need to have state of the art submarines in the first place. The last time I checked neither the Thais nor the Malaysians were in the business of engaging in U-boat style commerce raiding. So, why would they even need submarines in the first place? What enemy is Malaysia and Thailand preparing to fight that would require submarines?
Now, I have read that Germany (with the permission of the EU) is using submarines to fight pirates in the Horn of Africa [3], and so it is possible that Malaysia would consider it important to have some submarines to destroy pirates if they were threatening the Strait of Malacca. It is possible, in other words, that Malaysia has a legitimate reason to seek a submarine, if not necessarily likely. Thailand, though, would appear to be better served in having submarines on the Indian Ocean side if piracy were a major issue, since there ought to be no closer pirates (I am not aware of Cambodia being a pirate haven after all) than Indonesia. There are no blue water navies that are particularly dominant in the Gulf of Thailand that would require Thai submarines to counteract, nor the Malaysians either, so the whole issue appears rather vexing. What need is there for Southeast Asian nations to build and purchase submarines? Who knows? Certainly not I. It is an issue that has led to political controversy in more than Southeast Asian nation, though.
[1] http://asiancorrespondent.com/80056/gun-begins-to-smoke-in-malaysian-sub-scandal/
[2] http://thaipoliticalprisoners.wordpress.com/2012/04/06/subs-torpedoed/
Edge Induced Cohesion 