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The Domino Logic Of The Darkest Moment: The Fall Of Singapore, The Atlantic Echo Chamber, And 'Chinese Penetration' In Us Cold War Policy Toward Southeast Asia, Wen-Qing Ngoei

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This essay argues that Anglo-American memories of Japan's victory in Singapore in 1942, which British Prime Minister Winston Churchill labeled Britain's "darkest moment" in World War II, soon would underpin the domino logic within US Cold War strategy. For both American and British policymakers, Japan's war machine had fused together in interconnected insecurity the bastions of Euro-American colonial power. In Southeast Asia, it had imposed the condition that one state's vulnerabilities impinged upon the stability of its neighbor. This vision of Southeast Asia's interconnected insecurity was central to the domino logic within US Cold War policy. US policymakers' preoccupation with …