End of an era?

One-star US Marine Gen Russell Sanborn and Lt Gen Thongchai Sarasuk, director of Joint Operations, shake hands after the Initial Planning Conference last August for the Cobra Gold 2017 war games. (Photo courtesy US Marine Corps)

Planning for the third Cobra Gold war games since the 2014 coup d'etat is pretty much complete, and it is going to show better than any other public event the diminishing passion of the long US-Thailand affair.

As noted in this column recently, the year-long Trump-Clinton election campaign marked the first time since Truman beat Dewey in 1948 that the word "Thailand" passed neither candidate's lips. It's almost certain that if the Thai leader were to give a policy speech, he would mention "America" just as often.

Cobra Gold 2017 in February will shrink the number of US marines and the counterpart Thai force. The tiny platoons from other countries will be smaller, and the number of observers has been cut.

The death of King Bhumibol put the imprimatur on this end of an era. The diplo-military union is dissolving like a friendly divorce in which the participants still speak to each other, sort of.

It was not that the late king's reign spanned a dozen respectful US presidents, but rather that his life was a dynamic time that tested the cliche of "America's oldest Asian ally" and found it firm. In just a few years, however, it has gone squishy.

The coup has only hastened events. Well before even the Bangkok Shutdown violence, the female prime minister so often praised and even fawned upon by President Barack Obama told US authorities to take a hike on TPP and on a simple request to use U-Tapao airbase for a few Nasa low-space flights.

The United States badly misjudged post-coup Thailand. It misread the country, misinterpreted which way important people threw support and misjudged the spinal strength of the military to reinstall methods and means from the golden age of the dictators.

Among many missteps, the biggest was probably the Jan 26, 2015, talks by senior US State Department official Daniel Russel. First to the foreign minister, then to a Chulalongkorn University seminar, Mr Russel seemed the paternal counsellor, worried that his daughter had been caught twice smoking weed.

Behind closed doors, it didn't get better. US laws on military coups swung into effect on Thailand the day army commander Gen Prayut Chan-o-cha locked up the politicians and seized power with not a conciliatory word. Encountering Prime Minister Prayut at the United Nations five months after the coup, Mr Obama shook hands without looking Gen Prayut in the eye.

Although senior and respected ambassador Glyn T Davies arrived, the old proverb proved correct again: "Absence makes the heart wander." As Washington studiously ignored or treated Thailand curtly ("for legal reasons; we don't have a choice"), Thailand was seeing others. Gen Prayut successfully wooed Japan and busted its sanctions. And China was thrilled. So was Russia.

Washington asked Thailand to store US military relief supplies such as a full, portable army hospital. The junta told the Americans to take a powder. Then it really got weird. US diplomats toodled off to Hanoi and Phnom Penh, where they quickly and easily got approval to store the US military equipment. Bangkok, meanwhile, negotiated and approved munitions factories for Moscow and Beijing.

There's another indication of waning US influence and likeability going through the court system. In fact, the case of Dmitry Ukrainsky is one of the more subtle examples of near-dismissal of Washington.

Mr Ukrainsky, 44, is a Russian wanted in the US as an allegedly major wheel in computer hacking operations. By hacking, we mean bank robbing, ATM skimming and the like. He was arrested in July at Pattaya on a US request, which until very recently meant he would be handed over to US marshals in Bangkok for a flight to New York.

The Russian government and its ambassador to Bangkok, Kirill Barsky, stepped in immediately. They strongly protested about the arrest itself and served notice Moscow would oppose extradition to the US at every legal step. They openly warned Thai authorities to not even think of deporting Mr Ukrainsky into US hands.

In the past, this was a pro forma set of statements with a clear and rapid end-game victory for the Americans. Now, with Russian influence "at their strongest point ever" -- ambassador Barsky's phrase -- and US close to its lowest, there's going to be a long, hard trial and the US probably is not going to win the case as they did with the arms merchant Viktor Bout.

The US and Thailand will continue to do business, of course -- diplomatically, commercially and, in pro forma ways, militarily. Of the decades of special relationship, however, the "special" is unrelentingly disappearing.