Outposts of Empire: Korea, Vietnam, and the Origins of the Cold War in Asia, 1949–1954 by Steven Hugh Lee (review)

BookReviews 191 John focuses his study on the communication revolution of the past, yet his meticulous analysis of the complex motives forming the postal institution and its policies relate to such current controversies as those that surround the transmission of information in cyberspace. These contemporary disputes highlight the power of the government in shaping the communication of the people. John privileges the postal institution as the reigning communication system, yet he links it with the developing ideology of the nation, and the scope of his study ensures its value-in the disciplines of communication studies, literature, history, and political science, among others-as a history of the past and present. S,m1hR Marino Ohio Northem University Steven Hugh Lee. Outposts o( Empire: Korea, Vietnmn, and the Origins of" the Cold War in Asia, 1949-1954. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1995. Pp. xiv + 276 and bibliography. In this thoroughly researched study, Steven Hugh Lee analyzes the American 11 informal empire" in Korea and Vietnam within the framework of the U. S. relationship with its North Atlantic partners: the United Kingdom and Canada. The early Cold War was a time of fundamental change: Britain's decline limited its influence in Asia and on American policy, while the growth of U. S. power inevitably pulled Canada toward greater involvement in Asia. Firmly based in American, British, and Canadian documents, Outposts o( Empire offers insight into a critical period when the United States fought one war and took steps that helped lead it into another one. A principal theme of this study is that British and Canadian officials, despite their frequent doubts about American priorities and tactics, consistently deferred to Washington's leadership. Lee thus questions some earlier scholarship which stresses British restraint on U.S. policy. In exploring the British role, Lee illustrates the influence of other Commonwealth membersAustralia and India-with the farmer's identification with U. S. policy in Asia invariably prevailing over the latter's call for moderation. In the Korean crisis, Britain and Canada supported American initiatives in the United Nations and the ensuing military action largely because of the imperative of 192 Canadian Review o/American Stu.dies upholding the North Atlantic alliance. The British risked peaceful coexistence with the People's Republic of China, which was seen as necessary to preserve their precarious imperial position in Hong Kong and Malaya; and Canada accepted involvement in a region of negligible economic or political importance . Despite misgivings over what they saw as the American conversion of a defensive war into a moralistic crusade, Britain and Canada accepted the United States-South Korean drive for unification, effectively repudiated India's efforts to restrain the Americans, and endorsed the American-inspired General Assembly resolution condemning China as an "aggressor." While war was being waged in Korea, the United States was becoming more deeply involved in Vietnam. Unlike Korea, the American effort to build a Western-oriented state necessitated working indirectly (through the French who were fighting the communist-led Viet Minh), and without a viable indigenous leadership (the government of the French puppet Bao Dai having no substantial backing). So the United States pursued the contradictory policy of financially underwriting the French war effort while trying to push the French to adopt a more 1 'enlightened" approach toward noncommunist Vietnamese , which would lead to the end of the French empire. The American assumption-that Vietnam stood as the first 11 domino" whose ufall" would lead to the toppling of Western influence in Southern Asia-was shared by the British who especially wanted to assure continuation of Thailand's status as the major rice exporter to Malaya and Hong Kong. Skeptical of what they considered American 11 wishful thinking 11 in Vietnam, the British tried to draw the United States into Southeast Asia through other means, such as the Colombo Plan. The most engaging aspect of Lee's book is his detailed treatment of the negotiations ending the wars in Korea and Vietnam. When it came to disengaging the United Nations from Korea and the French from Indochina, its allies exerted some restraint on American policy. In Korea, Britain and Canada were alarmed by American simultaneous pursuit of a hard...