Conventional texts characterized the Cold War as a confrontation between two post–World War II superpowers: the United States and the Soviet Union. East Asia's position in the Cold War was treated secondarily or peripherally at best because of cultural barriers and the lack of readily available sources for Western researchers. However, recent research and younger contemporary scholars diverge from the conventional Euro-American-centric approach. Instead, they place the Asia-Pacific region center stage in exploring a new postwar history as they recognize the importance of East Asia's role in the Cold War. As Cold War history in East and Southeast Asia, the four books reviewed here attend to the rise of non-Western postcolonialism, transnationalism, democratization, and multinational and multicultural movements after World War II. The authors explore non-English sources from Japan, Korea, China, Russia, Australia, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, and New Zealand and address issues such as militarism, interventionism, racism, and Americanism. Any Asia specialist, Cold War historian, or graduate student of diplomatic history will find these books’ use of previously unpublished sources of great interest, provocative, and attentive to questions ignored in earlier scholarship.

As an expert in Asian American and comparative ethnic studies, Christine Hong critically examines transpacific archives, war writings, and victim literature. She identifies rising US interventionism and militarism in East Asia, while the United States maintained racial discrimination and police control at home during the Cold War. A Violent Peace provides a crucial connection between US foreign wars in East Asia and harsh domestic suppression working in tandem to gain total control.

Chapter 1, “Democracy within the Teeth of Fascism,” discusses black prisoners of war and the home front in the war writings of Ralph Ellison and his contemporaries. Chapter 2, “Revolution from Above,” collects cultural archives from occupied Japan, black airmen, and the writings of W. E. B. Du Bois. Chapter 3, “A Blueprint for Occupied Japan,” draws on personal stories of Japanese immigrants in “concentration camps” (p. 79). Chapter 4, “Possessive Investment in Ruin,” focuses on the victims of atomic bombs and nuclear weapons testing in the Pacific. Chapter 5, “People's War, People's Democracy, People's Epic,” examines how US counterintelligence agents worked in East Asia and the application and impact on American society. Chapter 6, “The Enemy at Home,” examines protesting culture in US cities from James Baldwin's writing. Chapter 7, “Militarized Queerness,” explains gay and lesbian discrimination and criminalization within the US armed forces. Using multilingual primary sources, Hong critiques the United States’ transformation into a total-war state in the late 1940s and 1950s.

A Violent Peace shows the postwar Pax Americana, or the American military occupation of Japan, which “introduced an anticommunist necropolitical order in which unfreedom would be presented as freedom, democratization as democracy, and militarism as the basis for life itself” (p. 3). Thereafter, when the Cold War turned “hot” in Korea and Vietnam, the United States exerted more “police power” and police actions against communist expansions in East and Southeast Asia; a similar domino theory and violent approach worked against racial protests in US cities and turned America into a police state (pp. 18–19). According to Hong, the government and war machine considered both communist aggression and domestic instability to be threats to the American-centric world order as well as their social and economic institutions at home. Counterintelligence and the military targeted attempts at radical change to protect American empire. The US war machine worked against the Soviet Union, China, North Korea, and North Vietnam in Asia, while it also should have worked at home when the government launched both the “war on drugs” (p. 7) and the “war on terror” (pp. 225–26). US interventionism in the Cold War internationalized domestic issues such as homeland security, racial tension, economic recessions, and unemployment. Moreover, US militarism in East Asia brought violent means to American society and created a police state at home.

Hong's critical account of race in the postwar United States challenges conventional interpretations that World War II marked a global racial break and shattered white supremacy worldwide, by arguing that it became militarized (p. 4). Through her complex, historically layered, and geographically far-reaching analysis in A Violent Peace, Hong questions the US Cold War legacy as political and economic “democracy” since it depended on “superior force to achieve political ends in foreign and domestic arenas . . . total-war state, permanently mobilized not only for war abroad but also for war at its very core” (p. 1). Nevertheless, she recognizes the transformation of the US armed forces from a predominantly white military in the 1950s and 1960s, to a multiracial military in the 1970s and 1980s, and to a multicultural military in the 1990s and 2000s. Indeed, according to Hong, these changes were the result of significant domestic transformation of American society from a white democracy, to a multiracial democracy, and to a multicultural democracy (pp. 219–23). A Violent Peace provides a timely opportunity for American government officials and the public to have a better understanding of the impact of our current foreign wars on our military and society.

In Cold War histories of Southeast Asia, Malaysia and Singapore generally were ignored or treated briefly by historians and all too commonly dismissed as a sideshow or background to the Vietnam War, which garnered the most attention. Wen-Qing Ngoei focuses his multi-archival research on Malaya and Singapore and reconstructing the postwar US-British cooperation in Southeast Asia. Besides American and British archives in Arc of Containment, Ngoei's primary sources include official documents from the Malaysian National Archives, National Archives of Singapore, Singapore-Malaysia Collections, and private paper collections from important leaders such as Alex A. Josey, Sinnathamby Rajaratnam, and Tan Cheng Lock. As a regional history of Cold War Southeast Asia, Ngoei's discussion also includes Vietnam, Thailand, Burma (Myanmar), Indonesia, and the Philippines and details an international transition “from the colonial order through Anglo-American predominance into U.S. hegemony” (p. 176) in Southeast Asia from the 1940s to the mid-1970s.

Arc of Containment traces the complex origins of the British “nation-building colonialism” (p. 46) and provides fresh insights into the often neglected but vital question of regional nationalism and decolonization in Southeast Asia, which played an important role in the US anticommunist movement. Among his major arguments, Ngoei states, there were no “falling dominoes” in five key anticommunist nations—Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines, Thailand, and Indonesia—after Vietnam fell in 1975 because of a strong local security and a regional “arc of containment” established by Anglo-American cooperation in the 1950s and 1960s (p. 14).

Arc of Containment begins with Japan's conquest of Malaya and Singapore in the Pacific War while local resistance movements reestablished long-standing Chinese diasporic links to the mainland through the Malayan Communist Party (MCP). Then, Ngoei explains in the second chapter how US policy makers carried on British nation-building colonialism and employed anticommunist nationalists in Malaya through its independence and decolonization in the 1950s. His analysis shows how the Cold War internationalized regional concerns such as European influence or the Chinese diaspora. The third chapter discusses continuing Anglo-American cooperation in the counterinsurgency against the MCP guerrillas to shape US regional strategies through the 1960s. Ngoei details the founding of Malaysia in 1963 to establish an anticommunist coalition with Thailand and the Philippines in the fourth chapter. Ngoei explains the completion of US hegemony, through the arc of containment, in the late 1960s by describing the Association of Southeast Asia Nations (1967) and the Five Power Defense Arrangements (1971) as the foundations of US domination (p. 13) in his last chapter. He concludes that the arc of containment deterred “Soviet and Chinese influence” in Southeast Asia in the 1970s even after the United States withdrew from Vietnam in 1973 (p. 182).

Well balanced in its presentation, Arc of Containment integrates the various subfields of Cold War Southeast Asian countries through a synthesized treatment of their interactions and conflicts. Ngoei makes four important points. First, he goes beyond the existing scholarship on this period, which has proved to be US-centered with the domino theory on the Vietnam War, in a methodological sense, viewing American Cold War policy as the source of all virtue as well as all evil in Southeast Asia. Ngoei carefully examines British perceptions and positions during the Cold War and discusses the nature and goals of British policy and its impact on Anglo-American cooperation, stating that the “British solution . . . shaped the contours of U.S. Cold War strategy and empire in Southeast Asia and beyond” (p. 82). In other words, the domino theory failed in this region.

Second, the arc of containment, or the anticommunist movement, was based upon preexisting local anti-Chinese nationalisms, such as “ethnic Malay nationalism” (p. 32). Thereby, the US successfully established a geostrategic arc of states that contained the Vietnamese revolution and encircled China because their pro-Western nationalist governments, established by the British before World War II, were willing and able to diminish Chinese-influenced communist movements and guerrilla wars at home.

Third, Anglo-American collaborators transformed British colonialization into US hegemony in Southeast Asia (p. 50). The Cold War provided opportunities for the United States in Southeast Asia. Ngoei argues that “U.S. containment policy had all along approached Southeast Asia with this broad, regional focus; the policy had never been Vietnam-centric” (p. 159). Intending to maintain its leadership in Southeast Asian affairs, the United States considered postwar Malaya and Singapore as international issues and practiced its Cold War politics.

Fourth, compared with US global foreign policy planning, the nationalist leadership in Malaya and Singapore had a much narrower agenda, such as “demands for restrictions against Chinese immigrants” (p. 51). They “readily solicited U.S. support for their resistance to China” (p. 180). Nevertheless, when the nationalist governments formed an alliance with the United States, they internationalized their status and became pro-American anticommunist countries. Arc of Containment is a significant contribution to transnational and regional history of Cold War Southeast Asia.

Few Cold War histories paid full attention to Australia and New Zealand because of their geostrategic positions and distance from major Cold War events in the Pacific region. Cold War historians usually focus their research on Australia's participation in the Korean and Vietnam Wars or New Zealand's proposals in the United Nations during this period. In Divided Allies, Thomas K. Robb and David James Gill offer an analysis of “quadrilateral cooperation” among the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand against communist threats from 1946 to 1955 in the Asia-Pacific region. Based on extensive quadrilateral archival research utilizing Australian, British, US, and New Zealand documents, private papers, records, diaries, and memoirs, Robb and Gill focus on Australia and New Zealand and their roles in two international strategic agreements, the ANZUS (Australia, New Zealand, and United States Security) Treaty and the Southeast Asia Collective Defense Treaty (SEACDT, also known as the Manila Treaty). SEACDT was the precursor to the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), “the most important examples of formalized cooperation among Western powers in the region” (p. 2). While reconstructing the difficulties of international cooperation among these nations, which had to balance their own security concerns, economic interests, trade competition, the book also shows the limits and problems of anticommunist allies in the region.

Divided Allies explains the challenges for Western wartime allies in 1941–45 to form a new strategic cooperation against the Soviet Union and China in 1946–53. Chapter 1, “National Interests,” provides historical background on these closely allied Western powers against Japan in the Pacific in 1941–45 and traces common postwar fears of the Soviet Union and communist influence among the four nations in 1945–47. Chapter 2, “Crisis and Cooperation,” examines how communist aggressions and victories in Malaya, China, and Korea pushed the four countries toward strategic cooperation in the Asia-Pacific region in 1948–51. Chapter 3, “A Negotiated Alliance,” shows that it was not the United States but Australia and New Zealand that “push[ed] for their longtime goal of a security treaty” with the United States and created ANZUS in 1951 (p. 66).

Chapter 4, “Selective Membership,” explains why the United States excluded the United Kingdom from ANZUS and how British policymakers opposed the Harry S. Truman administration's concerns about racism and imperialism. Chapter 5, “An Unwelcome Ally,” indicates that although there were some policy changes under President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles in 1953, ANZUS remained exclusively against the United Kingdom. Chapter 6, “Divided Action,” details the United States’ reversal of its exclusion in 1954 because of “growing concerns about Communist expansion in Southeast Asia” (p. 134) and its diplomatic failure in Geneva. Chapter 7, “The Costs of Compromise,” states that the United States agreed to include the United Kingdom in a new collective security pact, SEACDT, in September 1954 and later SEATO in 1955. Robb and Gill's conclusion emphasizes the “shared” security concerns among the four countries while they maintained “their own interests” and competitions in the region during this crucial period (p. 180).

Divided Allies offers a comprehensive analysis of the Cold War strategies of Australia and New Zealand. The monograph carefully examines their perceptions and positions during the period between 1945 and 1955 and discusses the nature and goals of their policies and the impacts on their relations with the United States and Britain. Australia and New Zealand acted on their own consistent logic and dynamics in the conduct of their foreign affairs; they were not just followers or observers of the events of the Cold War in the Asia-Pacific. They played an important role in the region and successfully utilized diplomacy to advance their own interests.

Moreover, among several previously overlooked issues that Robb and Gill address in their book, the first is the “Japan question.” When discussing Asia-Pacific politics, they view the US policy of “the recovery of Japan” as “strategically and economically essential for the security of the region” (p. 65). Compared with the “German question,” which had occupied a central position in defining the agenda of big power politics in Europe throughout most of the twentieth century, including a large part of the Cold War period, the “Japan question” did not have such an overwhelming influence in Cold War historiography. Robb and Gill adequately attend to and interpret the complex “Japan question.” Indeed, even the “Japan question” itself has not been clearly defined. Improved relations with Japan further pushed the “Japan question” to the periphery of the power politics agenda in the Asia-Pacific region.

Second, the analysis of the creation of ANZUS also explains its economic impact, military implication, and racial preferences, as it was called the “white man's club” (p. 90). Robb and Gill emphasize the importance of racial and cultural elements in crafting the 1951 treaty, not just for regional security but also for domestic stability resulting from international cooperation. Third, although the four countries shared common interests in regional stability, trade, economy, and technology for cooperation against the rising communist threat and Japanese competition, they had competing national interests and uneven developments. These treaties tested the limits of the alliance. Disagreements reflected competing ideas about economic development and international trade. Eventually, growing Soviet and Chinese threats coupled with alliances and partnerships, forced military commitment, alliance diplomacy, and economic investment.

Today, whether China and the United States will ever go to war is a perennial question in foreign policy circles in Washington. But many pundits forget that the two already did seventy years ago in Korea. From 1950 to 1953, more than three million Chinese troops fought the US-led United Nations Command. In reality, the Korean War was a conflict between China and the United States, which provided 90 percent of the UN troops. What is new about the war at its seventieth anniversary? Samuel F. Wells Jr. revisits the Korean War in Fearing the Worst and reinterprets it as a turning point of the Cold War. Wells states the war convinced the two superpowers that there would be no winner in a military showdown and to keep their confrontation “cold” for forty years. Exploring archival materials and previously restricted published works in Russia, China, and North Korea, Wells confirms that “it was the Korean War and not World War II that made us a world military-political power” (p. 488).

Part one of Fearing the Worst, “The War,” includes ten chapters covering background, Cold War politics, and war strategy and experience from June 1950 to July 1951. The first two chapters document the close working relations, extensive cooperation, and military buildup by the Soviet Union, China, and North Korea. The next three chapters explain the Truman administration's strategic focus on Europe during the early Cold War years to contain Soviet expansion and prevent a possible attack on the West while withdrawing militarily from East Asia. Chapter 6 examines Kim Il-sung's attack on South Korea with “a compelling vision of a unified Korea” (p. 108). Chapters 7 and 8 interpret why Truman reversed his policy toward East Asia, decided to stop communist aggression, and sent US troops to save South Korea and how General Douglas MacArthur's early success led to him crossing the 38th Parallel to liberate North Korea. The last two chapters interpret Chinese intention, strategy, and offensive campaigns until the stalemate in June 1951.

The second part of the book, “The Transformation,” is composed of seven chapters emphasizing the US strategic shift to Cold War militarization after the Korean War. Chapters 11–12 look into how George Marshall and Robert Lovett built up the US military and Dean Acheson led the defense of Europe. Chapters 13, 14, and 16 examine the establishment of America's strategic bomber forces and strategic air command and expansion of the Central Intelligence Agency. Chapters 15 and 17 details the Soviet nuclear weapons development and concludes the transformation of the Cold War.

Fearing the Worst clearly indicates that the Chinese intervention in Korea “forced Washington officials to launch an urgent strategic” reevaluation of the war policy (p. 246) and begin to “militarize and escalate the Cold war” (p. 1). Wells was able to follow congressional funding thereafter for a “massive increase” in nuclear weapons, strategic bombers, and nuclear submarines because Truman administration “officials believed they faced World War III” (p. 488). Conventional and revisionist historians have long criticized MacArthur's miscalculation when UN forces crossed the 38th Parallel and Chinese intervention as misunderstanding of the UN Command's intention as the prelude to an invasion of China. The Korean War seemed like a series of miscommunications, misperceptions, and overreactions. It even became a “forgotten” war in America, since there was no “winner” except the Soviet Union.

Now seventy years since the Korean War began, Wells reexamines the impact of the war and concludes that the “the Korean War and the manner in which American leaders interpreted Soviet and Chinese motives were the main catalysts for the transformation of US policy” (p. 1). Indeed, the Korean War made East Asia a focal point of the global Cold War. Thus, a central condition of the Cold War was to remain “cold” from the 1950s to the 1980s. Meanwhile, North Korea survived the war and soon became a military power with strategic forces. The Korean War also reestablished China's central power status in East Asia, which it had lost in the late nineteenth century, and transformed the Chinese military into a modern armed force. Then, the Vietnam War turned this main battlefield into a strange “buffer” between the United States and the Soviet Union. With East and Southeast Asia standing in the middle, it was less likely that Washington and Moscow would become involved in a direct military confrontation. East and Southeast Asia's important role in the Cold War was clearly indicated in the historical process leading to the end of the Cold War, from the Sino-Soviet split in 1960 to the Sino-Soviet border war in 1969, and from Chinese-American rapprochement in 1972 to US withdrawal from Vietnam in 1973. While policymakers in Washington found it possible to concentrate more of America's resources and strategic attention on dealing with the Soviet Union, Moscow's leaders, having to confront the West and East simultaneously, caused the Soviet Union's overextension of strength and power.