Role Redefinition: The US and Southeast Asia 1954–1975

Abstract

This chapter analyses order and role negotiation between the US and Southeast Asian states from the early Cold War period up to the full US withdrawal from Vietnam in 1975. It looks at how US post-war designs for organising regional order in Asia were subsumed under its Cold War imperatives, which directly confronted the anti-colonial and independence agendas of decolonising states. It focuses on how the US and Indonesia engaged in a contest over what order and the great power role should look like in Southeast Asia. The US pushed for a containment order with itself performing a great power guardian role, which it claimed through creating SEATO and intervening in Indonesia and Vietnam. Indonesia pushed for an autonomy order with itself performing a liberator role, claimed first through organising the Bandung Conference, and then through confrontation against external powers. Only when anti-communists had violently come to power in Indonesia was a role bargain possible between the US and the non-communist Southeast Asian states. This took the form of the US providing security club goods as the ‘offshore great power guarantor’ and ASEAN performing diplomatic leadership in managing its internal relations and providing legitimising initiatives for US aims in Indochina. This role bargain redefined the great power role in Southeast Asia.