United States Response to the 1973 Democratic Uprising in Thailand *

The United States has long been the “arsenal for democracy”. Additionally, it is conventionally argued that the U. S. can explain inaction on two grounds: first, a fine line separates support for a democratic movement and interference in the internal affairs of another country; and the risk of a confrontation with the Soviet Union is too great. This article challenges the dominant paradigm in the study of the U. S. foreign policy. By taking the U. S. response to the 1973 democratic uprising in Thailand as a case study, this article argues that the U. S. foreign policy did not always match rhetoric in spite of non-existence of those two conditions, suggesting that U. S. foreign policy studies need to refresh and update their analytical paradigm.