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After the mess it made in power, the army is much happier pulling the strings, says Paul Chambers of pearl jewelry wholesale Heidelberg University in Germany. It has all the legal tools it needs to keep civilians like Mr Abhisit in line, without the bother of having actually to run the country.

Of course, General Anupong’s reluctance to seize power need not preclude others from trying. Many of the 18 coups since 1932 have turned on factional rivalry within the top military ranks during the autumn shuffle of commands. But General Anupong has promoted his followers and penalised officers suspected of Thaksinite loyalties. He is due to pearl jewelry retire next year as head of the army, the most important branch of the armed forces. His anointed successor is his deputy, General Prayuth Chan-ocha, who is young enough to serve until 2014. He is reckoned to be even more conservative than his mentor, and even readier to crack heads to defend national security and the revered monarchy. General Prayuth is likely to play a crucial role during the much-feared succession to the king, Bhumibol Adulyadej, who is 81.

Among Thais, the army commands both respect and suspicion. A recent survey by the Asia Foundation ranked it second behind the judiciary as institutions with integrity (the monarchy was not an option). But only 37% of respondents said it was neutral. Its reputation has improved since May 1992, when troops massacred scores of demonstrators in Bangkok. Never again, came the refrain. Soldiers were spat on in public. But successive civilian governments failed to overhaul the 300,000-strong armed forces. They still have several hundred active generals, many without even a desk. The tally of 36 four-star officers is just behind America’s 41. But America’s army is four times larger—and at war.

Mr Thaksin, who came to power in 2001, crossed the army in two ways. Firstly, he kept a lid on spending, meaning fewer fat commissions on the procurement of expensive weapons. Second, he interfered in annual promotions. Within two years he had installed his cousin as army chief. That put him at loggerheads with Prem Tinsulanonda, a retired general and former prime minister, who is the chief adviser to King Bhumibol. Assigning the freshwater pearl jewelry most senior ranks had been the purview of Mr Prem, who chairs the Privy Council. Upstart politicians were not supposed to meddle. The resulting Prem-Thaksin feud and the 2006 coup pulled the army firmly back into politics, if indeed it had ever really left.

Asian democracies like Indonesia and South Korea have put military rule behind them, yet Thailand is swimming the other way. A civilian government with an electoral mandate might start to turn it around. But the elite in Bangkok would not tolerate another pro-Thaksin government. On September 19th the red-shirts are determined to march on the house of General Prem, the alleged mastermind of the 2006 coup. Thailand’s army sees itself as the defender of the crown and suspects a republican agenda among reds. For that reason, the generals will be loth to let go until the succession is over. But repressing a mass movement in the name of freshwater pearl a charismatic king is one thing. As Nepal’s army found in 2006, doing the same for an unpopular monarch, as Thailand’s crown prince would be, is a recipe for defeat.

AUTUMN in Thailand is coup season. Three years ago the prime minister at the time, Thaksin Shinawatra, flew to pearl jewelry New York for the United Nations General Assembly as rumours circulated in Bangkok of a plot against him. His army chief denied them. On September 19th 2006 he seized power. As he sets off for this year’s UN meetings, the pearl pendant current prime minister, Abhisit Vejjajiva, will be hoping that history does not repeat itself. Since Mr Thaksin’s ousting, Thailand has been convulsed by political fighting. The army has played a decisive role, even after it donned a figleaf of civilian rule. Few expect the generals to go back to their barracks soon.

To mark the third anniversary of the coup, Mr Thaksin’s red-shirted supporters plan to rally in Bangkok. A big show of force is likely. A controversial security law allows troops to pearl necklace restore order if the police cannot manage—and a political row over the appointment of a new police chief has already rattled the force.

Mr Abhisit has tried to reassure nervous Thais that his squabbling, nine-month-old coalition government is on good terms with the army. The top brass have given their usual no-coup pledges. This time, they are probably sincere. It would seem rash to unseat Mr Abhisit, whom they helped to install after the courts dissolved a pro-Thaksin government, and who remains beholden to them.

Army officers like to grumble that politics in Thailand, unlike soldiering, is a dirty game. But it is a game that they have rigged to pearl earrings their advantage. After the coup, the liberal 1997 constitution was replaced by a less democratic one. They have secured a bigger budget allocation (see chart), allowing them to give friendly politicians a hand. And a tough new internal-security act was passed with minimal oversight.

This proved handy after Mr Thaksin’s allies won an election in December 2007 and an inept military government was disbanded. Within months, yellow-shirted royalist protesters were back on the streets in Bangkok, refusing to leave until the government did. In the ensuing chaos, it was the army that arguably emerged on top. Urged by yellow-shirts to wholesale pearl jewelry stage another coup, General Anupong Paochinda, the army chief, demurred. But when he refused to disperse the crowds at Bangkok’s two airports last November, and instead urged the prime minister, Somchai Wongsawat, to resign, the effect was the same.

It would be odd, even disappointing, if decades of one-party rule ended without shaking up Japan’s foreign policy. Its bedrock has been Japan’s close alliance with America. As conqueror, the United States first demilitarised Japan, then turned it into its main Asian ally in the cold war, and then, under President Bush, encouraged it to freshwater pearl jewelry join the “war on terror”.

Throughout, American troops have been stationed in Japan, occupying 134 bases on land that is, in total, more than one-and-a-half times the size of Tokyo. For some Japanese this “footprint” is grimly reminiscent of occupation. Yet, in a region facing a growing nuclear threat from North Korea and China’s inchoate deepwater fleet, American security has allowed Japan to pearl jewelry wholesale keep defence spending around a modest 1% of GDP (it has shrunk recently). America’s is four times that, and China’s has soared in the past decade.

The importance of the relationship with America has spawned puzzlement and even suspicion about how Mr Hatoyama’s Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) will conduct foreign policy. In opposition, it voted against many of the security agreements with the Bush administration. It bitterly contested the Iraq war. And it has opposed the decision to spend $6 billion on relocating 8,000 marines from a base on the Japanese island of Okinawa to Guam.

Since the election, its coalition with two small parties to give it a big parliamentary majority has threatened further to pearl jewelry strain the alliance. One of those parties consists of former socialists who have staunchly opposed keeping American troops on Japanese soil. Only after lengthy bargaining did it agree to water down its anti-American stance. For America, already frustrated with an ally whose soldiers are not allowed to shoot, all this seems alarming.

Mr Hatoyama’s own muddled messages have added to the concerns. He has berated American-led “market fundamentalism”, yet then called security arrangements with America the “cornerstone” of cultured pearl Japanese diplomatic policy. Like many Japanese, he supports global nuclear disarmament. He has pledged to investigate a supposedly secret deal allowing American nuclear-armed vessels to use Japanese ports. Yet he also wants a firm line taken against rogue North Korea.

His main foreign-policy goal is to establish a more “equal” partnership with America. This, however, puts him in the predicament of a rebellious youth desperate to break out of its parents’ clutches—but unable to afford it. He has expensive campaign promises to meet, such as expanding social welfare and child support, and little scope to spend more on rearming.

The man appointed this week as foreign minister to make diplomatic harmony out of this cacophony is Katsuya Okada. He is a forward-thinking pragmatist but has little experience in government. He has expressed no desire to pearl necklace rock the boat with the Obama administration, which the DPJ greatly prefers to the Bush one. But he believes Japan should not automatically extend its refuelling mission in the Indian Ocean for forces fighting in Afghanistan when the agreement expires in January.

For the time being Mr Hatoyama is unlikely to pearl jewelry wholesale provide much clarity on how he feels about the American relationship, even when he meets informally with Barack Obama at the United Nations in New York. He would far prefer to wholesale pearl jewlery dwell on issues such as climate change, where he has already delighted environmentalists with a promise—albeit with strings attached—to cut greenhouse-gas emissions by 25% from 1990 levels by 2020.

Any changes may be more symbolic than structural. “Under the cover that Obama is not Bush, the DPJ could express a greater desire to work with the Obama administration and essentially declare a ‘more equal partnership’ with little substantial adjustment or cost,” argue three scholars in a forthcoming article* in Asia Policy, an American journal.

It would be a missed opportunity, however, if Mr Hatoyama did not start to cultivate some sense that a change in ruling party means something to people outside Japan. He has appointed as finance minister a veteran fiscal hawk, 77-year-old Hirohisa Fujii, whose comments on the yen caused it to soar on September 17th. Japan’s partners at the G20 summit in Pittsburgh will want to know how he plans to steer Japan’s economy back to growth.

Mr Hatoyama has made a strong commitment to improve relations with other Asian countries, and has a chance of easing decades-old tensions because of his party’s history of gemstone jewelry sincere apology for Japan’s wartime atrocities.

Rapprochement with the neighbours, however, need not come at the cost of worsening ties with America. Throughout its history Japan, when it has not closed its doors to foreigners altogether, has tended to seek out and support the dominant or rising powers of the day, be that middle-kingdom China, Nazi Germany or post-war America. China’s emergence thus presents its diplomats with something of a novelty: the task of balancing relations between two powers at once. Previous Japanese governments have struggled to pearl jewelry define a post-cold-war foreign policy. For all the anxieties change brings, Mr Hatoyama’s may be better-placed to try.

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