Given the recent examples of United States' involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq, this is a timely look at the effect of external influence on state-building in non-Western societies. Chong's analysis begins with the question of how polities outside the modern European state came to organise themselves as sovereign states by the mid-twentieth century. While acknowledging the merits of explanations involving nationalism, institutional commitment, and capital accumulation, the book argues that scholars have overlooked the relationship between external intervention and sovereign statehood. Contrary to accepted notions that foreign involvement in the affairs of weak governments will lead to either subjugation or political fragmentation, Chong asserts that such outside interference can also lead to the creation of a modern independent state.
According to Chong, foreign powers intervene in the affairs of peripheral countries to increase their own access to local resources and/or deny similar access to rivals. The book contains tables that present foreign policy as the product of net cost analysis, but the emphasis lies on the effect of collective outside meddling on the development of the state. If imperialist governments mutually anticipate that the costs of intervention will be low, the polity in question will likely disintegrate under combined pressure; if the perceived cost is high, external actors pursue the development of a cooperative local interest that can ensure access to all parties. If there is no consensus on opportunity costs, the divergent approaches to intervention can generate ‘cross-cutting forces’ that lead to feudalisation.
External intervention purports to study state formation in China, Indonesia, and Thailand — three case studies he describes as ‘least likely’ to support his argument (although precisely why they are ‘least likely’ is unclear). Although the title refers to three case scenarios, this book is a study of state formation in China. Paradoxically, Chong credits external intervention for both China's period of feudalisation (1893–1922) and its later period of slow but steady centralisation (1922–52). During the first period, the high reward/low cost dynamic enticed many imperialist powers to interfere in China's affairs. The result was intense competition over access to Chinese resources that weakened the Qing state, but also prevented China from suffering complete collapse and becoming the colonial dominion of any one interest. In the latter period, the rising cost of intervention led external actors (with the exception of Japan) to accommodate the development of a growing central government (p. 112).
Chong's argument that external intervention plays a critical role in state formation is an important one; but he's less persuasive when insisting that foreign actors are the primary agents in that process. He dismisses local actors as comparatively inconsequential since oftentimes weak polities contain many evenly matched rivals whose success depends on their ability to win financial assistance from powerful outside patrons (p. 3). This approach causes him to downplay the role of nationalist leaders in the formation of the Indonesian state, since both the Dutch and the Japanese managed and suppressed nationalist movements. While this is true, Chong fails to acknowledge that domestic actors (in this case, Sukarno) successfully manipulated both countries in turn. Indonesian independence is presented as an example of his point that sovereign governments emerge only when external forces decide their access to resources is best served by sponsoring, rather than suppressing, local interests. The book credits the United States for Indonesia's independence since the Americans pressured the Dutch with the promise of Marshall Plan aid (p. 184). But if, as Chong asserts, foreign powers stand back when the cost of intervention becomes too high, do nationalist groups not deserve some recognition for raising the price?
In his penultimate chapter on Siam/Thailand, Chong effectively dismantles the royal–nationalist narrative that Thai independence was the product of diplomatic efforts to play British and French interests against each other. The evolution of the Thai state confirms that foreign intervention served to shore up central authority in Siam rather than cause its disintegration (p. 225). For the Chakri monarchy, nationalism and modernisation did not create statehood; rather, the achievement of statehood allowed those two processes to eventually reach maturation. While Chong is not the first to make this argument, his analysis of Siam's foreign relations provide convincing evidence of its viability.
