The United States and Southeast Asian Regionalism

The United States and Southeast Asian Regionalism
Author: Sue Thompson
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2018-11-08
Genre: History
ISBN: 1317312546

The Nixon or Guam Doctrine of 1969 stressed the importance of progress towards regional cooperation and Asian collective security, indicating that Asian countries themselves should take the initiative in creating programs in which the United States could participate. This book analyses the development of United States regional cooperation policy on Southeast Asia and its importance to long-term planning for the region that had been the general aim of successive American post-war administrations. The author demonstrates the link between economic regional cooperation and collective security in Southeast Asia, placing regionalism in an international context by examining the influence United States policy and various important events had on the development of Southeast Asian regionalism. Through the analysis of primary material, including previously classified material, in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia and engagement with historiography of war and peace in Southeast Asia, the book puts forward the argument that Southeast Asian regional cooperation was influenced by both American and Asian policy and its development reflected the economic and political transformation of the post-war Southeast Asian landscape. It also examines the developments in British and Australian policy and how developments in Southeast Asia influenced and, in turn, were affected by the policies of the Western powers. Adding to the current discourse concerning the origins of Southeast Asian regionalism, this book will be of interest to academics in the field of Southeast Asian studies, United States political history, international relations and regionalism.

U. S. War Crimes in Indochina

U. S. War Crimes in Indochina
Author: Mark Pavlick
Publisher:
Total Pages: 450
Release: 2019-04-25
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781608463237

Exposes the horrifying criminality of United States policy in Indochina during the Vietnam war.

China, The United States, and the Future of Southeast Asia

China, The United States, and the Future of Southeast Asia
Author: David B. H. Denoon
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 474
Release: 2017-05-16
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1479810320

Distinguished experts explain the economic trends and varied political goals at work in Southeast Asia. With China’s emergence as a powerful entity in Southeast Asia, the region has become an unlikely site of conflict between two of the world’s great powers. The United States, historically regarded as the protector of Pacific Southeast Asia—consisting of nations such as Vietnam, the Philippines, Myanmar, and Malaysia—is now called upon to respond to what many would consider bullying on the part of the Chinese. These and other countries have become the economic and political engine of China. While certainly inclined to help the country’s former allies, the United States has grown undeniably closer to China in the recent decades of global interconnected economic growth. China, the United States, and the Future of Southeast Asia uncovers and delves into the complicated dynamics of this situation. Covering topics such as the controversial response to human rights violations, the effects of global economic interconnectedness, and contested sovereignty over resource-rich islands, this volume provides a modern and nuanced perspective on the state of the region. For anyone interested in understanding the evolving global balance of power, China, the United States, and the Future of Southeast Asia illuminates how countries as different as Thailand and Indonesia see the growing competition between Beijing and Washington.

Elusive Balances

Elusive Balances
Author: Prashanth Parameswaran
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 223
Release: 2022-01-13
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9811666121

This book undertakes an in-depth examination of the dynamics of commitment in U.S.-Southeast Asia strategy. Drawing on cases including the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam and Washington’s pivot to Asia amid China’s growing regional role, it constructs an original balance of commitment model to explain continuity and change in U.S.-Southeast Asia policy. Balance of commitment goes beyond balance of power approaches to explains how translating Southeast Asia’s importance in U.S. thinking into actual commitments has proven challenging for policymakers as it requires simultaneously calibrating adjustments to power shifts, threat perceptions and resource extraction. The book applies the balance of commitment approach to several practical case studies, based on hundreds of conversations with policymakers and experts in the United States and Southeast Asia, personal experiences across nearly two decades and primary and secondary source material across a half-century. The findings suggest that the challenges of U.S. commitment to the region are rooted not simply in differences between administrations or divergences in outlook between Washington and regional capitals, but tough balancing acts for U.S. policymakers in domestic politics and wider foreign policy. As such, shaping U.S. strategy in Southeast Asia and calibrating and sustaining commitment requires not just appreciating Southeast Asia’s significance, but committing to the region in ways that manage structural aspects of U.S. thinking, capabilities and resourcing.

The United States in the New Asia

The United States in the New Asia
Author: Evan A. Feigenbaum
Publisher: Council on Foreign Relations
Total Pages: 53
Release: 2009
Genre: Asia
ISBN: 0876094698

At head of title: International Institutions and Global Governance Program.

Arc of Containment

Arc of Containment
Author: Wen-Qing Ngoei
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 178
Release: 2019-05-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 1501716417

Arc of Containment recasts the history of American empire in Southeast and East Asia from World War II through the end of American intervention in Vietnam. Setting aside the classic story of anxiety about falling dominoes, Wen-Qing Ngoei articulates a new regional history premised on strong security and sure containment guaranteed by Anglo-American cooperation. Ngoei argues that anticommunist nationalism in Southeast Asia intersected with preexisting local antipathy toward China and the Chinese diaspora to usher the region from European-dominated colonialism to US hegemony. Central to this revisionary strategic assessment is the place of British power and the effects of direct neocolonial military might and less overt cultural influences based on decades of colonial rule, as well as the considerable influence of Southeast Asian actors upon Anglo-American imperial strategy throughout the post-war period. Arc of Containment demonstrates that American failure in Vietnam had less long-term consequences than widely believed because British pro-West nationalism had been firmly entrenched twenty-plus years earlier. In effect, Ngoei argues, the Cold War in Southeast Asia was but one violent chapter in the continuous history of western imperialism in the region in the twentieth century.

The Emergence Of Modern Southeast Asia

The Emergence Of Modern Southeast Asia
Author: Norman G. Owen
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
Total Pages: 584
Release: 2005-01-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780824828417

The modern states of Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines, Myanmar, Malaysia, Singapore, Cambodia, Laos, Brunei, and East Timor were once a tapestry of kingdoms, colonies, and smaller polities linked by sporadic trade and occasional war. By the end of the nineteenth century, however, the United States and several European powers had come to control almost the entire region - only to depart dramatically in the decades following World War II. perspective on this complex region. Although it does not neglect nation-building (the central theme of its popular and long-lived predecessor, In Search of Southeast Asia), the present work focuses on economic and social history, gender, and ecology. It describes the long-term impact of global forces on the region and traces the spread and interplay of capitalism, nationalism, and socialism. It acknowledges that modernization has produced substantial gains in such areas as life expectancy and education but has also spread dislocation and misery. Organizationally, the book shifts between thematic chapters that describe social, economic, and cultural change, and country chapters emphasizing developments within specific areas. will establish a new standard for the history of this dynamic and radically transformed region of the world.

(Re)Negotiating East and Southeast Asia

(Re)Negotiating East and Southeast Asia
Author: Alice D. Ba
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 344
Release: 2009-03-26
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 080477630X

This book seeks to explain two core paradoxes associated with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN): How have diverse states hung together and stabilized relations in the face of competing interests, divergent preferences, and arguably weak cooperation? How has a group of lesser, self-identified Southeast Asian powers gone beyond its original regional purview to shape the form and content of Asian Pacific and East Asian regionalisms? According to Alice Ba, the answers lie in ASEAN's founding arguments: arguments that were premised on an assumed regional disunity. She demonstrates how these arguments draw critical causal connections that make Southeast Asian regionalism a necessary response to problems, give rise to its defining informality and consensus-seeking process, and also constrain ASEAN's regionalism. Tracing debates about ASEAN's intra- and extra-regional relations over four decades, she argues for a process-driven view of cooperation, sheds light on intervening processes of argument and debate, and highlights interacting material, ideational, and social forces in the construction of regions and regionalisms.

Rivalry and Response

Rivalry and Response
Author: Jonathan R. Stromseth
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
Total Pages: 130
Release: 2021-02-16
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 081573915X

" Southeast Asia has become a hotbed of strategic rivalry between China and theUnited States. China is asserting its influence in the region through economic statecraft and far-reaching efforts to secure its sovereignty claims in the South China Sea, while the United States has promoted a Free and Open Indo-Pacific strategy that explicitly challenges China's expanding influence—warning other countries that Beijing is practicing predatory economics and advancing governance concepts associated with rising authoritarianism in the region. In this timely volume, leading experts from Southeast Asia, Australia, and the United States assess these great power dynamics by examining the strategic landscape, domestic governance trends, and economic challenges in Southeast Asia, with the latter focusing especially on infrastructure. Among other findings, the authors express concern that U.S. policy has become too concentrated on defense and security, to the detriment of diplomacy and development, allowing China to fill the soft power vacuum and capture the narrative through its signature Belt and Road Initiative. The COVID-19 pandemic has only increased the policy challenges for Washington as China recovers faster from the outbreak, reinforcing its already advantaged economic position and advancing its strategicgoals as a result. As the Biden administration begins to formulate its strategy for the region, it would do well to consider these findings and the related policy recommendations that appear in this volume. Much is at stake for U.S. foreign policy and American interests. Southeast Asia includes two U.S. allies—Thailand and the Philippines—important security partners like Singapore, and key emerging partners such as Vietnam and Indonesia. Almost 42,000 U.S. companies export to the 10 countries that comprise the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), supporting about 600,000 jobs in the United States, but America's economic standing is increasingly at risk. "