The origins of the Southeast Asian Cold War

Abstract

How and when did the Cold War manifest itself in Southeast Asia? More particularly, how are we to understand the connections between global great power rivalry and the specific regional problems and tensions which marked Southeast Asia in the five years after the end of the Second World War? What were the connections, if any, between the global powers and the nascent political forces of the region during this period? These are some of the issues which the five contributors to this collection address as they explore the origins of the Southeast Asian Cold War. These contributions challenge existing interpretations of the origins of the Southeast Asian Cold War. They employ new evidence gleaned from party archives and memoirs, and from Soviet, British, Australian, Dutch, Indonesian and Vietnamese state archives. They use this evidence to suggest that Southeast Asian communist parties, far from being totally autonomous on the one hand, or pliant tools of larger powers on the other, interacted with changing international communist lines as proactive agents. This interaction is the key to understanding why a regional pattern of increasing violence, and of decreasing cooperation with non-communist parties and democratic politics, emerged in 1948; while also allowing us to understand the uniqueness of the individual parties' paths to revolution. Discussion of the origins of the Southeast Asian Cold War inevitably involves examination of the policies pursued by the colonial powers returning to the region post-World War II, their relations with the great powers, as well as the agendas pursued by the local nationalist forces and communist parties of the region. One of the key issues which has exercised scholars minds in this area has been the switch to armed conflict by communist parties in 1948. The switch was rapid. In 1947 communist parties in this region were generally engaged in broad united fronts, and with the exceptions of China and Indochina, were mostly committed to participation in open political activity and trade union work. Then, in 1948 almost every regional communist party abandoned the broad united front policy and the emphasis on trade union work and legal political activity, and began pursuing a policy of armed revolt. Communist revolts occurred in India, Burma, Malaya, Indonesia and the Philippines in this year, and there were key changes to communist party policy in Indochina. Not surprisingly, people have long asked: Was this a calculated policy of extending the Cold War in Europe to a new front? It is suggested both here and in the papers comprising this collection that existing answers to this question, and explanations of this change, have failed to fully capture the complex interactions between international and local communisms, offering instead 'one hand clapping' explanations which emphasise either international directives, or very local and national factors. Orthodox Cold War historiography held that Moscow issued instructions, which were disseminated at two 1948 conferences held at Calcutta in India: the South East Asia Youth and Student Conference hosted by the World Federation of Democratic Youth, a Moscow-controlled movement (19-24 February 1948); and the Second Congress of the Indian Communist Party (28 February-6 March). According to the orthodox interpretations written in the late 1940s to 1950s, these instructions sparked revolts in the following few months of 1948. (1) Revisionist scholarship soon challenged the orthodox position. By the late 1950s, some academics were already arguing that there had been no clear instructions from Moscow, that the Calcutta Conferences were of debateable significance, and that the revolts were above all locally motivated and uncoordinated. The classic expression of this line was Ruth McVey's The Calcutta Conference and the South-East Asia uprisings. (2) This re-examined the impact of the 'two camp' line being promoted by Moscow and the newly formed Cominform in late 1947 to 1948. …