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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Silver Screen Reversals Of The Domino Theory: American Cold War Movies And The Re-Imagination Of British Experiences In Southeast Asia, Wen-Qing (Wei Wenqing) Ngoei Jun 2024

Silver Screen Reversals Of The Domino Theory: American Cold War Movies And The Re-Imagination Of British Experiences In Southeast Asia, Wen-Qing (Wei Wenqing) Ngoei

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This essay examines how Hollywood was affected by the successful anticommunism of Britain and its local allies in Malaya and Singapore, victories that unfolded alongside Vietnam’s mounting crisis in the early 1960s. It shows that American movies of this era which portrayed the intertwining of US and British experiences in 1950s Malaya and 1940s Singapore conveyed an uneasy yet clear optimism about U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia.


America's 'Chinese Problem' In Southeast Asia And The Emergence Of The Domino Theory [Come Tessere Del Domino: Il Pericolo Comunista E La “Questione Cinese” Nel Sud-Est Asiatico Negli Anni Cinquanta], Wen-Qing (Wei Wenqing) Ngoei, Raimondo (Translator) Neironi Dec 2022

America's 'Chinese Problem' In Southeast Asia And The Emergence Of The Domino Theory [Come Tessere Del Domino: Il Pericolo Comunista E La “Questione Cinese” Nel Sud-Est Asiatico Negli Anni Cinquanta], Wen-Qing (Wei Wenqing) Ngoei, Raimondo (Translator) Neironi

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

This essay traces how race thinking in US foreign policy, combined with war memories of Japanese imperialism in Southeast Asia, shaped American strategy toward the region and the rise of the domino theory in US Cold War ideas.


British Neo-Colonialism In Malaya And Singapore, And U.S. Empire In The Pacific, Wen-Qing Ngoei Dec 2022

British Neo-Colonialism In Malaya And Singapore, And U.S. Empire In The Pacific, Wen-Qing Ngoei

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This essay places the Vietnam War upon the larger canvas of Southeast and East Asian history by studying the long shadow that Britain’s Empire cast over U.S. entanglements across the region. It shows how British officials in Malaya and Singapore directly contributed to the expansion of US involvement in post-1945 Southeast Asia, as well as the overall pro-US trajectory of the region well before the Americanization of the Vietnam conflict.


Choreographing Neutrality: Dance In Cambodia’S Cold War Diplomacy In Asia, 1953-1970, Espena Darlene Machell Dec 2022

Choreographing Neutrality: Dance In Cambodia’S Cold War Diplomacy In Asia, 1953-1970, Espena Darlene Machell

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This article examines the role of dance in Cambodia’s Cold War diplomacy in Asia from 1953 up until the establishment of the Khmer Republic in 1970. It explores how Sihanouk leveraged Cambodian dances to enact Cambodia’s neutral stance during the Cold War and forge cordial relations with other Asian states. Through an examination of the myriad of dance performances of the Royal Ballet and other Khmer dance troupes within the context of Cambodia’s diplomatic relations in Asia, this paper demonstrates how dance afforded a space for Inter-Asia referencing amidst the Cold War tension in the region. Premised on an interdisciplinary …


The United States And The "Chinese Problem" Of Southeast Asia, Wen-Qing Ngoei Apr 2021

The United States And The "Chinese Problem" Of Southeast Asia, Wen-Qing Ngoei

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This essay examines how US Cold War policy toward all of Southeast Asia arose from American suspicions that the region's Chinese diaspora would align itself with the Chinese communists against the west. In so doing, it explores how US distrust of the Chinese diaspora fell in step with a longer imperialist tradition practised not only by the European powers for centuries, but also the Japanese Empire during its brief ascendancy during World War Two. Additionally, the essay proposes that to move beyond the bilateral studies that dominate the histories of US-Southeast Asian relations to view the region as whole, it …


The “Lessons” Of Britain’S Counterinsurgency In Malaya: An American Obsession, Wen-Qing (Wei Wenqing) Ngoei Jul 2019

The “Lessons” Of Britain’S Counterinsurgency In Malaya: An American Obsession, Wen-Qing (Wei Wenqing) Ngoei

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This essay examines how US preoccupation with British counterinsurgency in Malaya exerted a profound impact on US Cold War policy in Vietnam and the Global South, and continues to have consequences for American interventions in the present.


There And Back Again: What The Cold War For Southeast Asia Can Teach Us About Sino-Us Competition In The Region Today, Wen-Qing Ngoei Jun 2019

There And Back Again: What The Cold War For Southeast Asia Can Teach Us About Sino-Us Competition In The Region Today, Wen-Qing Ngoei

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Expert commentary today typically focuses on the agendas and actions of the two big powers, the United States and China, which misses the bigger picture. During the Cold War, leaders of ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) played a critical role in containing Chinese influence, shaping the terms of Sino-U.S. competition and rapprochement, and deepening the U.S. presence in Southeast Asia. The legacy of ASEAN’s foreign relations during and since the Cold War militates against the popular notion that Chinese hegemony in Asia is inevitable.


Review Of Daniel Chua, Us-Singapore Relations, 1965-1975: Strategic Non-Alignment In The Cold War, Wen-Qing (Wei Wenqing) Ngoei Oct 2018

Review Of Daniel Chua, Us-Singapore Relations, 1965-1975: Strategic Non-Alignment In The Cold War, Wen-Qing (Wei Wenqing) Ngoei

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The history of U.S.-Southeast Asian relations during the Cold War is dominated by studies of American involvement in Vietnam. If understandable, this state of affairs is nevertheless regrettable. For, even though U.S. cold warriors viewed the fates of Southeast Asia’s states as interconnected and pursued a containment strategy focused on the entire region, scholars of U.S. foreign relations with Southeast Asia pay outsized attention to Vietnam. There remain disappointingly few major works on U.S.-Indonesian relations despite years of American interference in Indonesia due to its huge population, the one-time prominence of its Beijing-oriented communist party, and firm American support for …


Review Of Ang Cheng Guan, Southeast Asia’S Cold War: An Interpretative History, Wen-Qing (Wei Wenqing) Ngoei Sep 2018

Review Of Ang Cheng Guan, Southeast Asia’S Cold War: An Interpretative History, Wen-Qing (Wei Wenqing) Ngoei

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Ang Cheng Guan’s Southeast Asia’s Cold War: An Interpretive History makes a welcome scholarly contribution to the field. As he rightly points out in the introduction to his book, the “voluminous” literature concerned with the Cold War in Southeast Asia has too long centered on the United States, European decolonisation, and/or the Sino-Soviet competition for Hanoi’s loyalty.


Doubling Down On Asia Victor D. Cha, Power Play: The Origins Of The American Alliance System In Asia (Princeton University Press, 2016). Michael R. Auslin, The End Of The Asian Century: War, Stagnation And Risks To The World's Most Dynamic Region (Yale University Press, 2017)., Wen-Qing (Wei Wenqing) Ngoei Jan 2018

Doubling Down On Asia Victor D. Cha, Power Play: The Origins Of The American Alliance System In Asia (Princeton University Press, 2016). Michael R. Auslin, The End Of The Asian Century: War, Stagnation And Risks To The World's Most Dynamic Region (Yale University Press, 2017)., Wen-Qing (Wei Wenqing) Ngoei

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

With the Chinese government aggressively militarizing the South China Sea and U.S. President Donald Trump scuttling the Trans-Pacific Partnership, there appears no clear answer to Beijing’s “One Belt, One Road” initiative. In fact, U.S. foreign policy thinkers are casting about for a strategy in Asia. What is to be done? Victor Cha’s Power Play and Michael Auslin’s End of the Asian Century recommends that the United States “double-down,” an expression Cha uses repeatedly, on its time-tested strategy of containing Chinese power in Asia.


A Wide Anticommunist Arc: Britain, Asean, And Nixon's Triangular Diplomacy, Wen-Qing Ngoei Nov 2017

A Wide Anticommunist Arc: Britain, Asean, And Nixon's Triangular Diplomacy, Wen-Qing Ngoei

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

President Richard Nixon’s triangular diplomacy succeeded because a “wide anticommunist arc” of U.S. allies in Southeast Asia had confined the influence of both China and the USSR to the Indochinese states. Beijing and Moscow welcomed détente with Washington in order to accommodate to de facto U.S. hegemony in the region.


Remembering 1965: Indonesian Cinema And The 'Battle For History', Espena Darlene Machell Jan 2017

Remembering 1965: Indonesian Cinema And The 'Battle For History', Espena Darlene Machell

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Using four films to probe the transformations in Indonesia’s historical memory, this paper examines how the Indonesian society remembers, interrogates, and comes to terms with one of their nation’s most traumatic episodes: the widespread communist purge that followed the failed coup on 30 September 1965. It also demonstrates how they reflect various perspectives on the 1965 killings that are—to an extent—part of the “Battle of History” (van Klinken 2001) in postSuharto Indonesia, wherein different historiographic traditions introduce new actors, reveal the nuances, and challenge longstanding dominant understandings of 1965.


Review Of Beyond And Between The Cold War Blocs, Wen-Qing (Wei Wenqing) Ngoei May 2016

Review Of Beyond And Between The Cold War Blocs, Wen-Qing (Wei Wenqing) Ngoei

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

In their introduction to this special issue of The International History Review, Janick Marina Schaufelbuehl, Sandra Bott, Jussi Hanhimaki and Marco Wyss state that this collection of papers examines “what independent pathways” existed for peripheral states, independence movements, or regional alliances “within the Cold War system that were not directly subjected to the East-West confrontation” (902).And there is, in principle, much to recommend this endeavor. As the introduction rightly points out, there is abundant evidence of middle and smaller powers as well as non-state actors who pursued their objectives through “an extensive array of strategies” that “did not easily fit …