Security Order during the Cold War

Southeast Asia and the Major Powers

All of Southeast Asia, except Thailand, was colonized by the major European powers or the United States, and their wars, rivalries, and deals largely delineated the present frontiers of Southeast Asian countries. Although decolonization took place after World War II, until ASEAN was established in 1967 a sense of regional identity was virtually non-existent.

During the Cold War the Southeast Asian security order was determined largely by the United States, the Soviet Union, and China, with Japan acting as a junior partner of the United States and helping in the fight against communism by contributing to economic development of the region. France and Britain had lesser roles, mostly up to the 1950s and 1960s, in Indochina and Malaysia/ Singapore respectively, though a small British role continues to the present day through the Five Power Defence Arrangement. In the 1970s and the 1980s Southeast Asia itself, through ASEAN, sought, but with limited success, to have its own stamp on the region's security order.

There were two Cold Wars in East and Southeast Asia: the East-West Cold War which lasted from the late 1940s to the late 1980s which, in Asia, pitted the West and Japan, led by the United States, against first both the Soviet Union and China and then against the Soviet Union alone; and the East-East Cold War which from the 1960s pitted the Soviet Union against China. These Cold Wars were fought over the broad East Asian/Western Pacific landscape of which Southeast Asia was but one part. They affected this broader regional order in a number of ways.

Firstly, they gave birth to Big Power initiated security structures, the most prominent of which has been America's alliance system. To be sure, America's security treaty with Japan had its origins as much in the need to ensure that Japan did not rearm and commit aggression again as in the desire to contain the communist powers. Likewise the treaties with Australia, New Zealand, and the Philippines were originally meant as much assurance against Japan as building blocks in any grand anti-communist containment strategy.