Connecting Histories: Decolonization and the Cold War in Southeast Asia, 1945-1962 (review)

The fifteen essays in Connecting Histories provide an international history of the transformation of Southeast Asia during the early years of the Cold War. The scholars who participated in this study, which is part of the International Cold War History Project of the Woodrow Wilson Center, make use where feasible of documentary sources. Although a few of the essays deal with policies of external powers, most focus on the emerging Southeast Asian countries, all of which except Thailand experienced decolonization, and how they defined their interests within the context of the Cold War.

Ideology stands out as a fundamental determinant of Chinese and Vietnamese Communist strategy. Chen Jian challenges the conventional interpretation that China's commitment to "peaceful coexistence" represented a retreat from a revolutionary foreign policy, contending instead that its appeal to developing peoples enabled Beijing "to link—in its own ways—communist revolution and decolonization" (p. 166). Two studies of Vietnamese Communists, one by Tuong Vu and the other by Christopher Goscha, question the widely held view that the Vietnamese subordinated ideology to nationalism. An examination of the Vietnamese Communists' worldview during the 1940s finds a conventional Communist interpretation of the West and an assumption that Vietnam was destined to play an important role in the inevitable world revolution. Ho Chi Minh and other leaders thus welcomed Sino-Soviet recognition of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) in 1950. An important perspective on the Soviet side is provided by the late Ilya Gaiduk's analysis of Iosif Stalin's cautious response to Asian Communist movements—a reflection not of any questioning of Communist ideology but of practical matters: preoccupation with European problems, distrust of Asian leaders, skepticism of their strength, and apprehension that the Soviet Union would be drawn into supporting their insurgencies.

The major Communist powers' recognition of the DRV, followed by Western recognition of the French-created Bao Dai Solution as a non-Communist alternative, brought the Cold War squarely to Southeast Asia. Ang Cheng Guan's essay makes the important point that all non-Communist countries were wary of Communist activities and ambitions and thus embraced, to varying degrees, the plausibility of the "domino theory." Yet as Goscha points out, this posed a dilemma for Asian leaders— most notably in India, Indonesia, and Burma—whose overriding concern was being drawn into a Cold War confrontation. This led them to embrace nonalignment. Samuel Crowl adds that India's Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, by hosting the Asian Relations Conference of 1947 and by steadfastly supporting the Indonesian revolution, made the non-Western countries a force in international affairs. The fifteen-nation New Delhi Conference in January 1949 to protest Dutch repression "indicated that the new nations did not have to compromise their independence and succumb to pressures to join a Cold War bloc, that the international system was changing, and that other choices were developing, such as non-alignment" (p. 252). This new international force culminated in the 29-country Bandung Conference of 1955.

Thailand and Malaya rejected nonalignment in favor of association with the West. As Daniel Fineman underscores, Prime Minister Phibun Songkhram's decision to become a U.S. ally was a defining moment in Thailand's history, ending the tradition of maintaining proper relations with all external powers. Recognition of Bao Dai (for whom Phibun had little regard) and the dispatch of Thai troops to fight in the Korean War were a small price to pay for U.S. military assistance. According to Danny Wong Tze Ken, Malaya's campaign against Communist insurgents made anti-Communism its overriding foreign policy objective, which led to uncritical support of South Vietnam even as Ngo Dinh Diem's authority eroded.

Among the more imaginative essays are those by Michael Charney, Remy Madinier, and Edward Miller demonstrating how leaders used culture to influence short-term political development in Burma, Indonesia, and South Vietnam respectively. In Burma, U Nu, whose...