The two-day virtual summit kicks off on Thursday with over 100 countries, territories and regions – including Asean members the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia – on the invitation list.

The White House says the event will “set forth an affirmative agenda for democratic renewal and to tackle the greatest threats faced by democracies today through collective action”.

It is widely seen as a forum to encourage invitees to ally more closely with the US than with China.

The kingdom, Southeast Asia’s second-largest economy, did not make the list.

During a lower house session on Nov 25, Suthin Klangsaeng from the opposition Pheu Thai Party raised a concern regarding Thailand’s absence from the summit.

Don Pramudwinai, a deputy prime minister and foreign minister, dismissed Suthin. The summit, he said, “is nothing more than pure politics being played by some countries against one another.”

“Some other countries that have democratic elections were not invited either.”

Among other Asean not invited to the summit, Singapore has a decadeslong history of single-party domination. Vietnam and Laos support communism.

Myanmar has been ruled by its military since a takeover in February. Cambodia is a de facto totalitarian regime under Prime Minister Hun Sen, whose Cambodian People’s Party filled all of the seats in the lower house after a rival party was dissolved.

According to an analysis made by senior fellow Steven Feldstein from Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the invitees fall into certain groups: borderline democratic countries with reform-minded leadership; countries with the potential for big leadership changes in upcoming elections; and big democracies in jeopardy of backsliding.

Thailand supposedly returned to democracy under a constitutional monarchy after general elections in 2019. The next general elections must be held by March 2023.

The democracy summit is not the first tool Washington has used to belittle Thailand. When Vice-President Kamala Harris made a diplomatic tour of Southeast Asia in August, she chose to stop in Singapore and Vietnam.

In July, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin spent a week visiting Singapore, Vietnam and the Philippines, but not Thailand.

In September, the Bangkok Post English newspaper in an editorial blamed Harris’ and Austin’s snubs on the bitter legacy of Prayuth’s coup in 2014 and on Thailand’s dovish approach toward Myanmar’s new military regime.

The piece was immediately answered by a lengthy rebuttal from Tanee Sangrat, a spokesperson for the foreign affairs ministry, who said Thailand’s diplomatic ties with the US and other international partners remain intact.

But those ties are once again being questioned now that the kingdom has been left off the list of democracy summit attendees.

To be fair, Thailand is scheduled to welcome Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Wednesday and Thursday.

Though it will be the Biden administration’s first secretary-level visit to Thailand, it will not make up for the past slights as Blinken will stop in Indonesia and Malaysia before arriving in Thailand.

The US’s cold shoulder comes as it dawns on much of the international community that Thailand’s democracy is deteriorating.

Although Tanee insists Thailand remains committed to the same level of democracy and human rights as its freedom-minded peers, some international research agencies say otherwise.

The V-Dem Institute, which provides comprehensive and detailed democracy ratings, puts countries into four groups, from most democratic to least – liberal democracies, electoral democracies, electoral autocracies and closed autocracies.

Thailand found itself in the least democratic category in the institute’s 2021 report. A decade ago, the country was regarded as an electoral autocracy.

No “closed autocracy” was invited to Biden’s summit.

“Thais should take this matter as an opportunity to ask ourselves what level of democracy we are at,” said Panitan Wattanayagorn, a former political science lecturer at Chulalongkorn University.

Thailand’s insistence that it is democratic oftentimes refers to how the current constitution took effect.

The charter, written under the supervision of a military junta, in 2016 won the support of voters in a national referendum. But some of its clauses do not reflect democratic values.

The country’s 250 senators were hand-picked by a committee chaired by Prawit Wongsuwan, the junta’s deputy chief who currently serves as a deputy prime minister.

What’s more, the charter states that Thailand’s prime minister is to be elected by parliament, which also has a 500-seat House of Representatives.

The bare minimum of votes needed to win the job is 376, giving the unelected Senate nearly overwhelming power to dictate who the prime minister will be.

Severe clampdowns on anti-establishment protesters have not improved Thailand’s democracy score.

On Nov 10, the Constitutional Court ruled that three protest leaders attempted to overthrow the democratic institution with the king as head of state by making speeches regarding monarchy reforms.

The verdict sparked concerns that the government – already regarded around the world as infringing on free speech – will crack down harder on demonstrators who raise the same issue.

Those concerns quickly manifested themselves. Referring to the court’s ruling, the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (NBTC), is pressuring Thai media to refrain from detailing protesters’ monarchy reform demands, interviewing protest leaders, broadcasting live reports from protest sites and otherwise discussing the protests.

“Thailand’s efforts to block media coverage of the protests is out of line with the government’s international human rights commitments,” said Scott Griffen, deputy director of the International Press Institute as he condemned the NBTC’s demands.

As for its awkward relationship with Washington, the Thai government is displaying little if any irritation. “Maybe we should be glad that we were not invited,” Deputy Prime Minister Don said. “This could turn out to be a double-edged sword.”

Attending the summit could have forced Thailand to choose a side, instead of pursuing what the government describes as a “balanced approach”.

The kingdom, a master of avoidance when it comes to taking sides, prefers to strike a neutral pose toward the US and China.