Publication Type

Book Chapter

Version

acceptedVersion

Publication Date

11-2025

Abstract

It is tempting to treat the United States’ ill-fated military intervention in Vietnam in the 1960s as the desperate final gasp of a moribund Western imperial system. Certainly, scholars have described Washington’s military debacle in Vietnam as the end of America’s “short-lived empire” in Southeast Asia, emblematic of the broader, decisive triumph of Southeast Asian nationalism over western colonialism. This reading of Southeast Asian countries attaining formal independence after 1945, with tacit assumptions that colonialism and nationalism exist in binary opposition, tends to ossify when the region’s history is viewed through the lens of U.S. defeat in Vietnam.

In contrast, this essay contends that the persistence of Western imperialism in Southeast Asia is more characteristic of the region’s history when the Cold War intersected with decolonization. For, Anglo-American neo-colonial designs for preserving their influence largely dovetailed with the goals of conservative, Southeast Asian nationalists seeking either U.S. or British help to suppress homegrown left-wing movements inspired and/or sponsored by Moscow and, above all, Beijing. Indeed, Britain, the United States, and their Southeast Asian partners shared an anticommunist world view undergirded by nearly identical fears that that the millions-strong Chinese diaspora in the region would serve the expansionist agenda of the Chinese Communist Party. These fears burned bright thanks to China’s overt expansionism, its wooing of Chinese diasporic communities, as well as infiltration of Chinese-language middle schools and cultural organizations throughout Southeast Asia. These fears also grew easily from pre-existing indigenous antipathy toward Chinese and China, from lasting resentment that Chinese merchants (itinerant or based in Southeast Asia) had apparently prospered at the expense of local populations; from exaggerated suspicions that Chinese communities in the region might be agents of the Qing Dynasty; and from xenophobia that framed Southeast Asian Chinese as hateful interlopers. As the Cold War unfolded, this racial thinking—rejuvenated and updated in Southeast Asian anticommunism—became the connective tissue for Anglo-American neo-colonialism and nationalism.

The melding of British and U.S. neo-colonialism with Southeast Asian nationalism ushered the region from European-dominated formal colonialism through a period of informal Anglo-American empire from the 1950s to late 1960s. By the end of 1965, when nearly two hundred thousand U.S. forces had deployed to Vietnam, Thailand and the Philippines had already been treaty allies of the United States for years; Malaysia and Singapore were pro-British but leaned increasingly toward Washington; and Indonesia’s new anticommunist leaders had begun to ensconce the republic within the U.S. orbit. From this broad, regional view, anticommunist regimes in Southeast Asia connected to, and augmented by, Anglo-American military and economic networks presided over the most resource-rich, prosperous, and populous former colonies of the region. The U.S. fiasco in Vietnam represents instead an anomaly, proving the rule. And, when Britain finally retreated from the region in the late 1960s, Malaysia and Singapore would cast their lot with the United States, making the region’s overall pro-U.S. trajectory more pronounced.

Keywords

Cold War, Southeast Asia, Imperialism, Neocolonialism, Nationalism, Singapore, Malaya, United States, Britain, China

Discipline

Asian Studies | Race, Ethnicity and Post-Colonial Studies

Research Areas

Integrative Research Areas

Publication

East Asia and the modern international order: From Imperialism to the Cold War

Editor

Stephan Haggard & David C. Kang

First Page

260

Last Page

277

ISBN

9781009545174

Publisher

Cambridge University University

City or Country

Cambridge

Embargo Period

12-10-2025

Copyright Owner and License

Authors

Download

Share

COinS