The Domino Logic of the darkest moment: The fall of Singapore, the Atlantic Echo Chamber, and 'Chinese Penetration' in US Cold War Policy toward Southeast Asia

Alternative Title

Domino Logic of the Darkest Moment

Author

Wen-Qing NGOEI, Singapore Management UniversityFollow

Publication Type

Journal Article

Version

publishedVersion

Publication Date

9-2014

Abstract

This essay argues that Anglo-American memories of Japan's victory in Singapore in 1942, which British Prime Minister Winston Churchill labeled Britain's "darkest moment" in World War II, soon would underpin the domino logic within US Cold War strategy. For both American and British policymakers, Japan's war machine had fused together in interconnected insecurity the bastions of Euro-American colonial power. In Southeast Asia, it had imposed the condition that one state's vulnerabilities impinged upon the stability of its neighbor. This vision of Southeast Asia's interconnected insecurity was central to the domino logic within US Cold War policy. US policymakers' preoccupation with containing communism in Vietnam arose significantly from how Japan had torn into Southeast Asia from Indochina. After World War II, US and British policymakers perceived Southeast Asian insecurity through both the prism of Japanese imperialism and their fears of an older "Yellow Peril" - China and Southeast Asia's Chinese diaspora. Indeed, US and British officials anticipated, as well as echoed and confirmed, each other's suspicions that China and its diaspora would collaborate to reprise Japan's campaign.

Keywords

Domino Theory, Chinese Diaspora, Japanese Imperialism, Anglo-American Cold War Policy, race and empire, colonial order, Chinese communism

Discipline

Asian Studies | Political Science

Research Areas

Humanities

Publication

Journal of American-East Asian Relations

Volume

21

Issue

3

First Page

215

Last Page

245

ISSN

1058-3947

Identifier

10.1163/18765610-02103001

Publisher

Brill Academic Publishers: 12 months

Citation

NGOEI, Wen-Qing.(2014). The Domino Logic of the darkest moment: The fall of Singapore, the Atlantic Echo Chamber, and 'Chinese Penetration' in US Cold War Policy toward Southeast Asia. Journal of American-East Asian Relations, 21(3), 215-245.

Available at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/3209

Copyright Owner and License

Brill and the author

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.

Comments

This essay won the 2014 Frank Gibney Prize for best article in the Journal of American-East Asian Relations.

Additional URL

https://doi.org/10.1163/18765610-02103001