The USS Lincoln’s ‘Leisure Trip’ to Thailand: A Port Call of US Neocolonialism and Femicide

USS Abraham Lincoln, May 29, 2026 -- public domain image

By Benyasiri Eimviriyapong

The arrival of the USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72) for a ‘leisure trip’ in Thailand before returning to its campaign of destruction against the people of West Asia demands immediate interrogation and opposition. For us Thai people, and those in sites of American plunder across the globe, this a rattling of the US’ cold war colonial chains on its most loyal lap dog, while conducting a war of aggression in Iran and the ongoing genocide in Palestine. In allowing the USS Lincoln to dock, the Thai ruling elites are once again facilitating a system of imperial violence that extends far beyond Southeast Asian borders, a system which in our case, is predicated on sexual violence and femicide.

Thailand has a long history of being a colonial vassal of the US today a ‘major non-NATO ally’ since 2003. While Thailand has sought to balance its relationships by pivoting toward China in recent years, the US continues to invest heavily in maintaining influence over Thai politics and military institutions, viewing the kingdom as strategically vital. The visit from the USS Lincoln is thus a confirmation of the ongoing alliance maintenance: an embarrassing reminder of the rulers of the Kingdom of Thailand’s bootlicking tendency to American military ambitions. This is a tendency not shared by the people of Thailand, in particular the country’s women, who have most suffered from US violence in the course of this relationship.

It is the continuation of a long history of imperial violence, where women’s bodies have served as currency for Thailand’s relations with the west. The USS Lincoln will arrive in the port in the eastern seaboard of Thailand which was established as the primary American staging post and Rest & Relaxation site of its assault on Vietnam from the 60s to 70s. Today, the city of Pattaya is perhaps the largest site of sex tourism, of imperial rape, in the world, thanks entirely to its history of accommodating the American GI. The war machine docks itself to the structural legacy of American neocolonialism, a legacy of plundering Thailand into a site of sexual exploitation, and a legacy of femicide, where the state and capital work hand in hand to systematically render women’s lives as expendable in the name of profit and US geopolitical hegemony.

The Myth of Thailand’s Sovereignty

Official Thai histories celebrate the kingdom as a rare Southeast Asian nation that has managed to escape the claws of European colonisation through the diplomatic acumen of our brilliant monarchs. However, this narrative obscures the people’s reality. As early Marxist Thai historians recognised, Thailand was a ‘semi-colonial’ state, beginning with the Bowring Treaty of 1855, which granted extraterritoriality to British subjects and monopolised trade into colonial hands. The treaty, signed under gunboat diplomacy – akin the the Unequal Treaties with China, rendered Siam a de-facto buffer state between British and French colonial interests, making it sovereign only in name.

‘Thailand is the US’ 51st State’

The departure of European powers did not bring genuine independence but replaced one master with another. Following World War II, the United States assumed the role of an imperial patron, viewing Thailand as an essential bulwark against ‘communist aggression’ in Southeast Asia. From 1950 onwards, successive Thai military fascist dictatorships, beginning with Sarit Thanarat’s 1957 coup, orchestrated with the US support, came to heel at the governing call of Washington. The US poured over $1.5 billion in military and economic aid into the country, embedding a system of dependency to American interests within the Thai military, while Thailand hosted seven US air force bases and hundreds of thousands of troops- primarily for Rest & Relaxation- during the American war of aggression in Vietnam.

In reality, Thailand was colonised not through direct territorial seizure but through economic domination, military presence, and political subservience – through a complex network of financial geopolitical mechanisms. As the Tricontinental put it back in 1969: ‘Without a doubt, Thailand is one of the most faithful in carrying out orders from Washington. Therefore there is no doubt that Marshal Kittikachorn (Thanon) was completely sincere when he stated that the United States could consider Thailand the 51st state.’

The US Military’s Prostitution Industrial Complex 

The war of aggression in Vietnam has transformed Thailand into the US military’s primary Rest and Recreation R&R hub. Soldiers on leave after murdering Vietnamese people and drowning the country in Agent Orange would be flown to Thai bases where the patriarchal violence and femicide were institutionalised as both reward and necessity. Sarit’s military state, for example, actively engineered this as a matter of national policy. In 1959, even before the major troop buildups, a group of 500 American soldiers were transported from their base in Nakhon Ratchasima, to – what was then – the small fishing village of Pattaya, Chonburi, a trip facilitated by local authorities and effectively marking the village as a designated site for their R&R. This was formalised in 1964 when the Thai and US governments signed an official agreement to provide R&R facilities for GIs, a pact that transformed Pattaya and other areas into sprawling ‘entertainment’ complexes. Between 1964 and 1976, approximately 700,000 international soldiers arrived annually for week-long stays during the American assault on Indochina.

Thai women’s bodies were transformed into national resources, exploited to attract foreign currency and fuel economic development. Cynthia Enloe writes in Bananas, Beaches and Bases (1990) this is the logic of imperialism, capitalism, and patriarchy: the female body becomes an instrument for capital accumulation, and the state facilitates this extraction. Thailand’s sex industry constitutes a public, institutionalised system of exploitation legitimised by the state and fueled by international, particularly US, demand for a constant supply of women’s labour. Both unpaid (reproductive) labour like cleaners, cooks, maids, etc. as well as hyper-exploitative sexual labour.

Today, the city of Pattaya has been transformed into permanent zones of sexual commerce, serving international sex tourism for men beyond military personnel. Through an economic lens: American GIs created a demand that incentivised sex ‘entrepreneurs’ (pimps and traffickers) to ‘professionalise’ their activities. After the U.S military base in Chonburi was evicted in 1975 thanks to the brave work of Leftist militant organisers – students, farmers, and the working class of Thailand- these districts retained the infrastructure and reputation that attracted sex tourists, perpetuating a vicious cycle. The entire area surrounding the former bases now feature luxury beach front hotels, all marketed to foreigners, and as we see in the case of the USS Lincoln, still host western imperialist military, as a site to pimp out our women.

Class collaborators like Pattaya Mayor Poramet Ngampichet said the city is ready to welcome US military personnel seeking to rest and spend time in the resort city after their lengthy deployment of aggression.

Across Southeast Asia, fluctuation in sexual violence went hand in hand with American military presence. It was always an orchestrated industry of sexual supply chains meeting military demand. In the end, it is the women who bear the rawest brunt of this imperial patriarchal violence. The same conditions that allowed networks like Epsteins to operate: the vulnerability of victims, the complicity of power structures, and the commodification of women’s bodies, are mirrored in the structural conditions that have made Thailand a global destination for sexual exploitation.

Femicide: The Ultimate Outcome of Structural Gender Violence

Femicide extends beyond individual acts of murder to encompass all structural conditions that render women’s lives disposable, diminish their life opportunities, and subject them to systemic violence. The system where women are systematically wrapped into sex work due to existing infastructure and poverty, where the State facilitates and profits from our exploitation, where US military presence created the demand, and where Western tourism perpetuates supply – this is femicide. It is the systematic sacrifice of women’s physical and psychological integrity, autonomy, and our very lives, for imperialist ends.

Thailand’s women are being exploited, not only for the profit of sex tourism, but also to sustain the geopolitical alliance that makes Thailand a staging ground for imperial wars. The political stability that the US seeks to maintain in Thailand depends in part on the economic conditions that continue to entrench women in sexual exploitation. These systems of political maintenance include anti-communist deathsquads, maintaining dependent military ties, prohibiting economic sovereignty and ensuring a staunchly anti communist leadership. As long as tourism-dependent economies require the continued flow of foreign patriarchal consumers, and as long as the state prioritises capital accumulation over women’s right to life, Thailand’s women will bear the human cost of the US-Thailand alliance.

The Lasting Culture of Hypersexualisation 

On social media, the arrival of 5,000 US soldiers in Thailand is being treated as a comical punchline for Americans.This reveals how deeply the hypersexualisation of Thailand’s women and the systemic exploitation of our bodies have been normalised in the male consciousness. Some comments include ‘Big pay day for those girl[s], might find their husband’, ‘Tons of Gallons of Semen incoming’, and ‘Straight to Bangcock; all soldiers are sexcited about sexercises’. These statements are the amalgamation of attitudes left behind by American GIs. These sentiments are a direct descendant of the American culture that has portrayed Asian women as hypersexual and submissive since the era of US military aggression in the region.

The exploitation of Thailand’s women is considered entertaining an outcome of a military port call. The existence and perpetuation of this culture reveals the neo-colonial system that has systematically commodified women for the pleasure and profit of the empire.

The USS Lincoln is a Continuation

The USS Lincoln’s arrival in Thailand is just the latest iteration of a relationship forged through imperial domination and sustained by the systematic exploitation of Thailand’s women. The US actively and consciously created and shaped the sexual violence economy that now persists as a permanent feature of the Thai socio-economic system. When the ship docks, it is enjoying the fruits of its Cold War victory, marking the continuity of the ongoing structural femicide enabled by Thai-American relations.

We must see the women in Pattaya, in Nakhon Ratchasima, in Nakhon Phanom, in Takhli, in Ubon Ratchathani, in Udon Thani, and across Thailand as individuals caught in an oppressive web  of global capitalism, imperial legacy, and the crudest form of patriarchal violence. The solution is not Western-led anti-trafficking interventions that further disempower Thai women, but a revolutionary overhaul of the economic and political arrangements that made our exploitation profitable in the first place.

The USS Lincoln’s visit ought to be met with the most extreme opposition, from the history it represents to the future it portends. Until the structural conditions that produce sexual exploitation are dismantled, every port call is an act of violence on our lands and bodies.

Benyasiri Eimviriyapong is an editor, translator, and propagandist at Dindeng, a journal and publishing collective which seeks to decode the semi-feudal, the semi-capitalist, and the semi-colonial of Thailand. Her professional focus is on ecology, state power, and the application of revolutionary feminist politics in daily life.

This article was produced by Globetrotter.