The United States in the World; Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University. Ithaca; London: Cornell University Press, 2019. x, 254 pp. (Map, B&W photos.) US$45.00, cloth. ISBN 978-0-5017-1640-9.
Scholars of Southeast Asia are familiar with the “common-sense” stories that the United States and Britain tell about their own involvement in the region. Southeast Asia looms large in British history books as a site of colonial competition and conquest—a backdrop for their wartime struggles against Japanese imperialism and the post-war incubator for foundational models of anti-communist counterinsurgency. For Americans, Southeast Asia was the cornerstone of both their Pacific theatre strategy in World War II and their bloody and gruelling efforts against communist expansion during the Cold War.
It is this latter period of American strategic dominance in the region that interests author Wen-Qing Ngoei the most, and forms the basis for his engaging book, Arc of Containment. Through a retelling of key episodes in the region’s experience with the US and Britain, Ngoei invites readers to consider what actually explains American Empire in Southeast Asia from the end of World War II to the end of the Vietnam War. Notably, he does not dispute the more common versions of stories as they are often told, but instead argues that such stories are incomplete. By considering the influence of the racially-based historical anxieties of Anglo-American policy makers and by examining the key influences of Southeast Asian actors themselves, Ngoei paints a fuller, more nuanced picture of this formative period of regional history.
The book first takes us through a lengthier timeframe, tracing how the Japanese occupation of much of Southeast Asia was deeply influential in formulating Anglo-American perceptions of domino logic vis-à-vis the perceived threat of Asian aggression. Here, Ngoei introduces the idea that Anglo-American leaders and policymakers held deeply racist views about the significance of the fall of Singapore. The mere fact of the Japanese victory over the British was seen as a threat to the assumed superiority of Western military supremacy that could potentially fuel the revolutionary ideas of anti-colonial nationalists in the region. Ngoei argues that this helps to explain the subsequent Anglo-American handling of Chinese communist influence in Southeast Asia.
The middle three chapters of the book focus on periods of Malaysia’s history to illustrate how the more commonplace understanding of Anglo-American influence in Southeast Asia is missing key components: namely, the British handling of the Malayan Emergency was (mis)understood and subsequently utilized by the US to inform their counterinsurgency strategies in Vietnam; and the crucial role played by Malay nationalists and their allies in the suppression of the Malayan Communist Party (MCP) and creation of the Federation of Malaysia in 1963 as part of a Cold War “Arc of Containment.” The book ends with an explanation of how Southeast Asia’s passage into a largely American sphere of strategic influence—despite the American withdrawal from Vietnam—represented a continuation of the Anglo-American decolonization and counterinsurgency strategies that relied so heavily on the consolidation of the same anti-communist nationalist regimes that would go on to form ASEAN.
One of Ngoei’s central claims is that the (Anglo)-American Arc of Containment could never have materialized without the support and complicity of the ruling powers in five key anti-communist nations: Malaya, Singapore, the Philippines, Thailand, and Indonesia. While Ngoei acknowledges that this point has been made before, the biggest original contribution of this book resides in his compelling arguments for why this is the case. Here, he points out that much of the Anglo-American fear of, and disposition towards, communism in Southeast Asia can be attributed to a simplistic and unsophisticated understanding of “Asians” and their own intra-regional dynamics, with significant implications for how we can understand the continued role of American Empire into the present.
First, both the British and the Americans lacked a general appreciation for the myriad complexities, social hierarchies, political claims, and historical grievances of various groups in the region. In this case, it led to an inelegant conflation of Japanese Empire with Chinese communist expansion, causing American decision makers to transpose their assumptions about the Japanese onto the Chinese after World War II. It also led to the pervasive assumption that the Chinese diaspora— some of whom had been living in Southeast Asia for generations—were to be viewed as a threatening “fifth column” for the Communist Party of China.
Second, and related to the last point, Ngoei persuasively demonstrates how British efforts to respond to the threat of communism in Southeast Asia conveniently intersected with pre-existing antipathy towards the Chinese, which was common among local ruling elites. Ngoei uses the case of (then) Malaya to show how the ruling Malays were able to successfully mobilize anti-Chinese sentiment as part of the counterinsurgency towards the goal of consolidating their singular claim to state power as the bumiputera, or “sons of the soil.”
Importantly, the support of the Malay rulers and their coalition of multi-ethnic backers (including members of the Chinese community who were not MCP supporters) was crucial to the success of the British-led counterinsurgency. But, as mentioned, this is an aspect of the Malayan Emergency that is routinely underplayed in historical accounts. Ngoei explains that as a result of continually underestimating the key role played by the “friendly kings” of Southeast Asia, American strategists “cherry picked” British counterinsurgency tactics in ways that ultimately contributed to their losses in the Vietnam War. Further, the subsequent fixation on American failures in Vietnam has led to an underappreciation for how the Anglo-American construction of a Southeast Asian “Arc of Containment” was perhaps the true origin of the Cold War “Domino Theory.”
Ultimately, Ngoei successfully makes the case that most of Southeast Asian leadership continues to be unerringly pro-American, which represents a continuation of Anglo-American influence that continues to be relevant—and significant—into the present. By bringing the agency and influence of Southeast Asian actors into his analysis, Ngoei’s book offers more regional insight to interested readers seeking knowledge about American influence in Southeast Asia. The book itself represents a noteworthy intersection of historical, comparative, and security scholarship and would be of equal interest to historians, political scientists, and regional scholars alike.
Jennifer Mustapha
Huron University College at Western, London