Southeast Asia Among the World Powers

Amry Vandenbosch, Richard Butwell

• Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9780813155333
• Edition: 2
• eBook ISBN:
  9780813183558
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Vietnam War
• Index: Politics & International Relations

CHAPTER I

SOUTHEAST ASIA CONTEMPORARY POWER VACUUM

NOT SO LONG AGO the people of the Western world knew only vaguely of the existence of the countries of Southeast Asia. India, on the fringe of the region, had for several decades attracted a great deal of attention because of its heroic struggle for national independence under a very unusual leader. The Philippines were known to Americans, though in a superficial manner, because the United States had the responsibility for governing the islands. Their country’s respective Southeast Asian colonial holdings were likewise known in a general fashion to Englishmen, Frenchmen, and Dutchmen. As a whole, however, the people of the West knew little of the lands east of India and south of China.

Today the Western world is conscious of Southeast Asia and of its importance in world politics. The change in attitude began with the Japanese invasion of Southeast Asia during the Second World War, which dramatically emphasized the strategic importance of the region. Interest sharpened when the loss of China left to the free world only the fringes of the continent and the off-lying islands and insular countries. The fall of Dien Bien Phu, lending itself to colorful news coverage, caught virtually everyone’s attention; as a result of its successes in Vietnam, the Communist bloc now also had a foot squarely in a country known as the “gateway” to Southeast Asia.

If the Communists gain control of Southeast Asia, the West is now fully aware, India will be threatened and the strength of Australia will be partially neutralized. The free world cannot afford to lose any more territory or prestige in Asia.

A LITTLE-KNOWN REGION ENTERS WORLD POLITICS

Southeast Asia consists of Indonesia, Vietnam, the Philippines, Thailand, Burma, Cambodia, Laos, Malaya, and the British Borneo possessions. The total land area of the region exceeds 1,600,000 square miles, and because much of it is insular, it covers a large expanse of ocean. Southeast Asia’s significance in world politics is particularly due to its strategic location at the southeastern extremity of the great Asian land mass. A tropical extension of the continent, the region consists of a two-pronged peninsula on the mainland and a vast string of islands stretching along both sides of the equator for a greater distance than that between New York and San Francisco. The main sea route between the Pacific and Indian oceans passes through the area, which also serves as a link between Asia and Australia. With the important exception of northeastern Indochina, an extension of the south China littoral, Southeast Asia’s boundaries effectively separate it from the nearest land masses on all its sides. In the north, high mountains divide the region from China and India—except for the northeast coastal region of Vietnam in Indochina. Southeast Asia is bordered by water to the east, south, and west.

As a consequence of the events of the post-Second-World-War years—and the headlines which chronicled them—the term Southeast Asia is now common in discussions about international political, social, and economic developments. Before the war, however, these tropical-equatorial lands were thought of almost exclusively as overseas extensions of the Western metropolitan powers which controlled their destinies. They had little political identity or significance apart from their colonial connections. Nor was there any reason why this should have been otherwise. As late as the nineteen-twenties and early thirties Southeast Asia’s was not a role of vital importance on the stage of international politics, although the area produced most of the world’s rubber and tin and more than two-thirds of the rice entering world trade.

Today all the major foreign offices have, or seek to have, a “Southeast Asian policy.” The British and the Australians, as examples, have resident commissioners in Southeast Asia to coordinate policy in this area of more than 170,000,000 inhabitants. Political developments in individual countries—Vietnam or Malaya, for instance—are no longer important only locally or to an imperial ruler. Ho Chi Minh’s is a name known to at least some men in all lands; Philippine President Magsaysay and Indonesian President Sukarno also have international reputations.

All of this indicates a major change in the attitude of the world, the West in particular, towards this region, which, it should be noted, is itself as big as all Europe. The occasion for this change has been the emergence of a new and dynamic Southeast Asia—a politically independent Southeast Asia demanding a greater voice in the settlements of international politics. The change also relates to recent developments in other parts of Asia—the rise of Moscow-fathered communism in China and the achievement of independence by India, which have had tremendous consequences for Southeast Asia—and to events in the world at large, especially as these have been reflected in the “cold war” of the years since the Second World War.

From the point of view of the United States, one of the most important characteristics of contemporary Southeast Asia is the fact that it constitutes a power vacuum of rather sizable proportions and with significant consequences. For more than forty years preceding the outbreak of the Second World War, Southeast Asia had comprised a series of mutually accepted Western colonial regimes. During these years Southeast Asia, together with British India and Ceylon, formed a single defense unit, based on the naval power of the British and part of a larger defense arc which reached westward as far as Suez. Stability at the price of national freedom was a keynote of the area. The postwar years, however, witnessed an eclipse of this stability with the attainment of independence, if not always complete, by all the lands of the area except Malaya and northern Borneo. The old chain of defense which once extended from Suez to the eastern reaches of Southeast Asia was broken, as India, Pakistan, and Ceylon also achieved national independence, although within the British Commonwealth. Stability was replaced by turmoil. A power vacuum followed the demise of Western colonialism.

This vacuum derives importance from the existence, to the north of Southeast Asia, of the huge Chinese state, which has traditionally regarded the lands to its south as a proper outlet for its expansive tendencies. Its present membership in the international Communist coalition makes Peiping’s dominating geographical and political position more ominous for its southern neighbors today than ever before. China is not the only power, however, which might seek to fill this important vacuum. To the west of Southeast Asia lies India, which has contributed several million immigrants to the countries of South Asia and East Africa in the present century and which also is enjoying a period of resurgence, regarding itself as the key power in the Indian Ocean area. And to the northeast a crowded and once-covetous Japan watches Southeast Asia with an obviously interested eye, the same Japan which in 1941-1942 succeeded in bringing all of the region under a single ruler for the first time in history.

Like other of history’s power vacuums, Southeast Asia may not remain a vacuum long, particularly in light of the fact that geographically it is composed principally of islands and peninsulas with a high ratio of coastal area to total land surface, a physical condition highly favorable to external penetration.

TRADITIONAL “LOW-PRESSURE AREA”

It is no new thing for Southeast Asia to be subjected to pressures from all sides. This, indeed, has been its historical lot, causing one prominent observer of the region to term it a “low-pressure area.”¹ The description is apt.

One of the most important of these pressures has been population. Southeast Asia has been peopled for the most part by successive migratory waves forced to move south by ever-increasing pressure upon them, stemming in the last analysis from the Chinese, who pushed down from their early home in north China.

The first of the migrations of importance to contemporary Southeast Asia was that of the Indonesians or Malays, who, beginning about 2500 B.C., pressed south into the mainland portion of Southeast Asia and moved on to the archipelago beyond. The direct impetus to their migration was not the Chinese themselves, but other Mongoloid peoples who had in turn been pushed south by the Chinese. These were later to be pushed out of south and west China by Chinese population pressure, various groups of them becoming the Vietnamese, Thai, Burmese, and Cambodian peoples of modern Southeast Asia.

Traditionally, in comparison with China to the north, Southeast Asia has been a region of low population density. It was this comparatively sparse settlement of the area that permitted the peoples now inhabiting the region to move into it. This situation has not basically changed. The gap, in fact, has greatly widened in modern times. China, with its population of approximately 600,000,000, continues to exert pressure upon the lands to its south, which have less than one-third its inhabitants. Southeast Asia, though possessing patches of overpopulation, has vast areas of sparsely settled land. If anything, an increase rather than a lessening of Chinese population pressure is to be expected. It is highly significant that large numbers of Chinese have migrated to Southeast Asia during the past one hundred years, almost all of them coming by sea. There are today more than ten million of them in the area.

Southeast Asia is faced with population pressure from another direction. Indeed, it is situated between two of the heaviest concentrations of population to be found in the world—the Indian and the Chinese. The pressure of population upon available resources caused large numbers of Indians to seek their fortunes in British-held Burma and Malaya. That they did not do so in greater numbers elsewhere in the area is probably due to policies designed by the colonial rulers of these territories to exclude them. It certainly is not due to the absence of a desire to move into Southeast Asia.

Expansion of adjacent populations has been only one of several pressures converging upon the region. Culturally, Southeast Asia also has always been a low-pressure area. The advanced level of civilization achieved by the Indonesian kingdoms of Java and Sumatra in the eighth and fifteenth centuries largely resulted from the penetration of the area by Hinduism and associated social elements. Much that owes its origin to Indian cultural influence is evident today in most of Southeast Asia. The same might be said of Chinese-derived cultural factors, although to a lesser degree. The Arabs also have made a substantial cultural contribution to Southeast Asia, although Indians were the direct bearers of Islam. And though they gave little of substance to Southeast Asian life in the early years of contact, the Europeans have to an ever-increasing extent left a pronounced imprint on virtually all aspects of life in this part of the world. Although much is made of the truth that Southeast Asians adapted many of these borrowings to their own particular needs and environment, the fact remains that they did borrow them. Cultural influences converged upon the area from India, Europe, China, the Middle East, and America, and they were accepted. Traffic, however, was one way. No such influences made their way out from the area to these or other parts of the world.

This was also true in the realm of economics. It cannot be shown that the Indian or Chinese or European economic structures were modified in any way as a result of any efforts by native Southeast Asians. The markets of this region were opened by traders from other countries; they were not the development of indigenous commercial enterprise. Before the advent of European traders, Indians, Chinese, and Arabs had been prominent in fostering the commerce of Southeast Asia. With the establishment of European power, the economic structure of the area underwent a revolutionary transformation. What had previously been a self-sufficient food-producing economy became a raw-material supplier to the industrialized countries of the West and a leader in world trade in rice. Few events in economic history have been comparable to the impact of the Western commercial invasion upon Southeast Asia and similar underdeveloped regions. Historically, Southeast Asia has certainly been an economic low-pressure area.

It has been an area of convergent political interests, too. China on several occasions has moved south to increase its power and territory. Vietnam was long under the Chinese yoke, and Khubilai Khan attacked Burma, Cambodia, and Champa (part of present-day Vietnam) and sent a punitive expedition to Java, which had given Champa some assistance in its war with China. An aggressive Chinese foreign policy was most evident, however, under the Ming emperor Yung Lo (1403-1424), who occupied much of Vietnam, acquired control over Upper Burma, and sent several tribute-seeking naval expeditions to the lands of the south to induce local rulers to acquiesce, either peaceably or under duress, in Chinese overlordship. In contrast with China, the relations of India with the area on the whole have been most peaceful. The expansionist policy of the Chola emperors of Tanjore in the eleventh century, however, is an example of what India could do, although in fact it has made the attempt only once. Japan, though it also struck at the region but once, would have been successful in that effort, had it encountered only Southeast Asia’s resistance and not that of the allied West. The West in its own penetration of the area successfully and for a limited time took over full political control of the region. And today the forces of the powerful contestants in the worldwide cold war converge on this politically, economically, and militarily weak area. Simultaneous with this convergence is the impact of China, India, Japan, Australia, the United States, the Soviet Union, and the United Kingdom functioning as traditional influence-seeking national states, possessing objectives which exist apart from the present encounter between democracy and communism—objectives, however, frequently not perceived due to the shadows cast by the bigger and more novel cold-war interests. As much in terms of international relations as of population, culture, and economics, Southeast Asia can best be understood in terms of a low-pressure area.

Two factors especially explain why alien powers have been so successful in their numerous attempts at penetration of various parts of the region. The first is the continuing division of the area into a multiplicity of small political units, partially a consequence of its marked geographical fragmentation. When the West began its penetration of Southeast Asia in the sixteenth century, it found a “patchwork quilt of kingdoms, principalities and tribal chieftainships, independent cities, and local or regional confederations.”² This division is an outstanding factor in explaining the ease of European conquest of the area. Divided, it could be, and was, taken over territory by territory. After a series of squabbles in which the contestants varied, the area was finally stabilized into several mutually accepted Western colonial holdings. But if it had become stabilized, it was still divided. There was British Malaya, the Dutch East Indies, French Indochina, British Burma, and the American-held Philippines, as well as nominally sovereign Thailand.

The existing divisions, in the sense of there being a multiplicity of ultimately responsible rulers, and the metropolitan power-imposed stability were wiped out by the Japanese invasion which struck at the region in late 1941 and early 1942. For the first time in all its history Southeast Asia knew a common ruler, although in fact, for all practical purposes, divisions continued much as before under Japan’s temporary overlordship. But there can be no doubt that the old stability disappeared. The very change of rulers, whatever their respective merits, encouraged this. The use of local puppets by the Japanese was fuel to the flame of incipient nationalism. And as the Japanese began to be forced out of the region, it became their deliberate policy to give active encouragement to this rapidly growing nationalism. Although this may have arisen from a reckless determination to create turmoil and confusion for their own sake, there can be no question that it gave considerable impetus to the nationalist movements in Southeast Asia. It also created conditions favorable to the spread of communism, which has benefited from the region’s widespread poverty as well as its postwar political instability.

RISE OF NATIONALISM

Nationalism, as contrasted with more primitive hostility to the foreigner, dates its active existence in the region from the period following the First World War. An importation from the West, it existed in embryonic form before then, but only in the Philippines had it assumed substantial strength before the 1914-1918 war. In the nineteen-twenties and thirties, although granted a few concessions, it continued to feed on the ever-increasing frustrations of an ever-expanding body of sympathizers, modeling itself in many respects after Indian Congress and Chinese Kuomintang nationalism. On the eve of the Japanese invasion it was still a force of limited strength, but it emerged from the devastations of the Second World War a militant movement. Taking advantage of the almost complete destruction of existing and accepted institutions and values by the Japanese occupation, the nationalists raised the standard of revolt. Although they met with armed resistance from the French and the Dutch, national independence was for the most part obtained. The Philippines, Indonesia, and Burma have joined the family of nations, and French colonialism is dead in Indochina, although it is not yet clear what will take its place. It may very well be succeeded by Communist Chinese colonialism. Malaya, which until the Second World War seemed utterly without political consciousness, is about to take its place as a self-governing dominion in the British Commonwealth.

But although the colonial powers have departed, the divisions solidified by their arbitrary partition of the region remain. The new national states for the most part follow the boundaries of the old colonial domains. Division continues, but the old stability is gone. The door perhaps is again open to external penetration. The situation bears a close analogy to the condition of Southeast Asia at the time of the coming of the West. Forces exist today ready once more to converge upon the area. The old pattern of division may facilitate the progress of these forces.

In addition to political divisions, however, there was another conspicuous characteristic about Southeast Asia that facilitated Western penetration of the region. This was its backwardness in economic development. It was in part because of this material weakness that the several lands of the area fell under the sway of the powerful European imperial powers seeking to expand their trade. This is most important in understanding the region’s present character and its possible future development, for predominantly agricultural Southeast Asia today is still backward in economic achievement. In terms of industrialization, the main criterion in ascertaining economic might in the modern world, it is exceptionally weak. And it is very likely that this lack of indus...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Preface
• Contents
• 1. Southeast Asia: Contemporary Power Vacuum
• 2. Indonesia: Restless Insular Empire
• 3. The Philippines: Showcase of Western Democracy
• 4. Indochina: Gateway to Southeast Asia
• 5. Thailand: Diplomatic and Political Phenomenon
• 6. Malaya: A Problem in Nation Building
• 7. Burma: Land of Contradictions
• 8. The International Relations of Southeast Asia
• 9. American Policy in Southeast Asia
• Recent Developments
• Bibliographical Note
• Index