Arc of Containment: Britain, the United States, and Anticommunism in Southeast Asia

Arc of Containment recasts the history of American empire in Southeast and East Asia from WWII through the end of U.S. intervention in Vietnam. Setting aside the classic story of anxiety about falling dominoes, Wen-Qing Ngoei articulates a new history premised on sure containment guaranteed by Anglo-American cooperation. He argues that anticommunist nationalism in Southeast Asia intersected with local antipathy toward China to usher the region from European colonialism to U.S. hegemony. Central to this assessment is the place of British power and the effects of direct neocolonial military might, as well as less overt cultural influences based in decades of colonial rule. Also essential to the analysis is the considerable influence of Southeast Asian actors.