Arc of Containment

Arc of Containment recasts the history of American empire in Southeast and East Asia from World War II through the end of American intervention in Vietnam. Setting aside the classic story of anxiety about falling dominoes, Wen-Qing Ngoei articulates a new regional history premised on strong security and sure containment guaranteed by Anglo-American cooperation.

Ngoei argues that anticommunist nationalism in Southeast Asia intersected with preexisting local antipathy toward China and the Chinese diaspora to usher the region from European-dominated colonialism to US hegemony. Central to this revisionary strategic assessment is the place of British power and the effects of direct neocolonial military might and less overt cultural influences based on decades of colonial rule, as well as the considerable influence of Southeast Asian actors upon Anglo-American imperial strategy throughout the post-war period.

Arc of Containment demonstrates that American failure in Vietnam had less long-term consequences than widely believed because British pro-West nationalism had been firmly entrenched twenty-plus years earlier. In effect, Ngoei argues, the Cold War in Southeast Asia was but one violent chapter in the continuous history of western imperialism in the region in the twentieth century.

Wen-Qing Ngoei is Associate Professor of History at the Singapore Management University. His work has been published in Diplomatic History and the Journal of American-East Asian Relations.

This relatively slim volume illuminates as it enlightens [a] vivid testament to its immense value.

By bringing the agency and influence of Southeast Asian actors into his analysis, Ngoei's book offers more regional insight to interested readers seeking knowledge about American influence in Southeast Asia. The book itself represents a noteworthy intersection of historical, comparative, and security scholarship and would be of equal interest to historians, political scientists, and regional scholars alike.

Arc of Containment, which is based upon adroit trawling in the archives of the principal nations at issue—Great Britain, the United States, Singapore, and Malaysia—is certainly one of the more intriguing explorations of Washington's excruciating encounter in Southeast Asia; and, like many good books, it sheds light relentlessly on matters not necessarily addressed frontally: most pointedly, Washington's conflict then entente with China.

In this well-argued and convincing book, Wen-Qing Ngoei... delivers a perceptive and comprehensive... overview of the diplomatic and strategic evolution of Southeast Asia in the 1950s and 1960s. Arc of Containment situates the Vietnam War in a regional context, and students of history, diplomacy, politics, and security should find it interesting and illuminating.

Wen-Qing Ngoei's Arc of Containment: Britain, the United States, and Anticommunism in Southeast Asia is a thought-provoking, compelling, and significant contribution to the study of American hegemony and intervention in postwar Southeast Asia.

Ngoei issues a sad warning about the costs for the peoples of the area subjected to the new and re-emergent Asian cold war challenges. This is an important scholarly contribution.

Robert J. McMahon, Ralph D. Mershon Professor Emeritus, Ohio State University:

In this important book, Wen-Qing Ngoei applies a fresh, wide-angle lens to Southeast Asian regional dynamics from the 1940s to the 1970s. He offers a challenging new interpretation of US and British policies toward the region while tracing Southeast Asia's uneasy transition from a European-dominated colonial order to an era of American hegemony. Deeply researched in the archives of several nations and engagingly written, Arc of Containment illuminates critical elements of the international history of modern Southeast Asia long obscured by our fixation on the Vietnam War.

Bradley Simpson, University of Connecticut, and author of Economists with Guns:

Wen-Qing Ngoei makes a persuasive case for the deeply connected colonial and post-colonial trajectories of Malaysia and Singapore’s neighbors. Ngoei’s book belongs in classes on US and British foreign relations, Southeast Asian politics and history, and should be read by every scholar in these fields.

Mark Atwood Lawrence, University of Texas, Austin, and author of Assuming the Burden:

Arc of Containment is a genuine pleasure to read. Wen-Qing Ngoei deftly places the history of the Vietnam war in a larger regional perspective. He is able to show—very convincingly—that Vietnam was something of an anomaly.