U.S. Policy and the Two Southeast Asias

Abstract

THE TERMINATION OF the Indochinese wars ushered in a new, more complex pattern of regional international relations in Southeast Asia. Although the general framework of the eventual political outcome had been anticipated by the non-Communist states (Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand, Singapore) grouped together in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the abrupt violence and totality of the transfers of power in South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia were not expected.' The Nixon doctrine and the Paris Accords had already impelled the ASEAN elites to reappraise their own positions within the changing regional distribution of power. The notion of the domino theory, conceived by some to mean the automatic and sequential collapse of the non-Communist states in the wake of a Communist victory in Vietnam, was explicitly rejected. Global, regional, and domestic interactions and events, however, have created a new international reality in Southeast Asia which cannot be ignored. In response to a new sense of urgency and potential danger, inherent in that reality, ASEAN nations are attempting to vitalize a coherent economic, political, and military strategy. The general outline of the new international reality is fixed by objective changes in the quality of great-power links to the region. These changes are reinforced by differing indigenous judgements about their significance. Mrost acutely, the outcome of the war in Vietnam, a