The Soviet Union's role in Southeast Asia has gone through a metamorphosis. For most of the postwar period, it had only peripheral interests in the region. Indeed, the Southeast Asian countries viewed the Soviet Union largely as an outsider, a “white power” with no concerns or legitimate interests in Southeast Asia. But by the 1980s, after a shift in its policies, the Soviet Union had emerged as an important actor in Southeast Asia. This chapter traces the growth of the Soviet Union as a Southeast Asian power and compares Moscow's old and new thinking toward the region. The object is to show how the Soviet Union has become a major power in the region and to delineate the changing focus and policies of the Soviet Union, especially under Mikhail Gorbachev, toward Southeast Asia.

Soviet postwar policy toward Southeast Asia

For years the Soviet Union had no direct interests in Southeast Asia. Even after World War II, when tremendous political and social changes were taking place in Southeast Asia, Stalin continued to neglect the region. Moscow exhibited this neglectful, even hostile, posture toward the Southeast Asian countries in many ways: by its refusal to recognize states like Burma, Thailand, and Indonesia; by its failure to recognize the government of Ho Chi Minh until 1950; and by its continued call for revolutionary struggle in Southeast Asia, such as the endorsement of the communist uprisings in the region that broke out in 1948 in Malaya, Indonesia, Burma, the Philippines, and Thailand.