ABSTRACT
The availability or lack of resources inevitably affected the extent to which the military's political role influenced the acquisition of weapons too. This was certainly the case in Burma where, despite the military's control of the levers of political power, dire economic circumstances heavily circumscribed the Tatmadaw's arms acquisitions. The Indonesian experience has been considered above. Moreover, in the case of ABRI, it is doubtful that even in the light of its integral role in the Indonesian government it was able to use this to much effect as far as arms purchases were concerned. All major arms procurement decisions ultimately had to be sanctioned by President Suharto, who was by no means always predisposed to give his former comrades everything they wanted as this would almost certainly be detrimental to national development which was his primary focus.4 There is also no readily available evidence that the Thai military's extensive political role during most of the Second Cold War period enabled it to acquire weapons in excess of those which could be justified in terms of the overall requirements of defence policy and strategy in the light of the threat from Vietnam, or which would result in an unacceptable burden being placed on the national budget. This is not to say, however, that elements of the Thai military were unable to influence the procurement of a certain make of weapon once an overall capability requirement had been determined and agreed upon.
