The modern romance between westerners and Southeast Asia is not a new one. The territory that stretches from the Himalayan slopes and Indian Ocean to the Pacific, overlooked by India and China, has long fascinated the West for its violent nature, abundance of natural resources, agricultural products, and diverse and harmonious cultural mix. Since the eighteenth century, European powers have slowly replaced China as wardens of this region and, realizing its strategic position as gateway to the East, fought to gain the control of its trading routes. They introduced institutions and infrastructure, while subordinating the local populations and extracting natural resources.

Southeast Asia—with eleven countries (including Brunei and East Timor), about 650 million people, and a combined GDP of US$7.6 trillion—has historically been an economic and geopolitical playground for superpowers. After more than a century of European colonial rule, the region briefly became the scene for the Japanese “Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere,” only to come back under European control before each country gradually, and often violently, obtained independence. In the postcolonial era, under close scrutiny by the United States, these eleven countries embarked on the tortuous path of state building and industrialization. Today, the shadow of an increasingly powerful China looms large, while, as Michael Vatikiotis is eager to suggest, a waning United States slowly and hesitantly withdraws from the region.

Blood and Silk is a timely attempt at surveying the results of a more-than-half-century process of political, cultural, and economic reform in Southeast Asia. The book concentrates on the period between 1979 and 2015, which the author spent in the region first as a journalist and then as a peace negotiator and diplomat. The volume is organized thematically in two parts, discussing power and conflict.

In the first part, comprising the introduction and seven chapters, Vatikiotis introduces us to the region's complex geography and traces a very accurate political history primarily of Malaysia, Indonesia, and Thailand, first illustrating the cultural context and political systems of these countries. He discusses at length the mechanisms that allowed systematic use of violence to constantly go unpunished and political privilege to become engrained. The analysis is carried forward by aptly using the concepts of harmonious multiculturalism and “complex plural societies” as lenses through which to make sense of these countries’ apparent paradox (p. 110). Despite few exceptions, Vatikiotis indeed laments that Southeast Asia is stuck with “semidemocracies,” even as their people continue to grow richer and better educated (p. 124).

What is the underlying point? Historically, Southeast Asian economies developed and thrived thanks to high inflow of foreign direct investments. Since colonial times, these countries have been recipients of Western capital, also channeling many Western institutions. This continued during the postcolonial era, but more recently, as Vatikiotis shows, new emerging powers, especially Saudi Arabia and China, have become major investors and donors. Saudi Arabia is especially active in Malaysia and Indonesia and its capital comes with political and cultural strings attached. The same goes for China and its investment projects across the region, primarily in Myanmar, Cambodia, and Laos. Vatikiotis hints at weak governance as the major culprit but does not dig deeper into institutional voids and how they keep most of these economies trapped in a middle-income status. In sum, while captivating the reader with its rich detail and its thorough political reconstruction, this part of the book would have benefited from a closer investigation of the regional macroeconomic issues and their connection with the local institutional setup.

By contrast, the second part of the book is more confident in defining arguments and drawing conclusions. It houses three superb chapters on conflict, surely the strongest and most insightful in the volume. Vatikiotis's unique expertise as a diplomat and regional observer emerges at its best when geopolitical analysis mingles with investigative journalism. First, the author navigates the topic of local irredentism with great confidence. The book offers a detailed and informed overview of the causes and crucial nodes of regional conflicts ongoing for decades in Thailand, Myanmar, Indonesia, and the Philippines. Then, Vatikiotis walks the reader into the thorny issue of changing beliefs toward conservative Islam. The chapter offers a sharp review of the radicalization of the Muslim majority in rural Malaysia and of the erosion of religious tolerance in Indonesia. It aptly connects Saudi Arabia's financial and ideological support with the rise of the region's Muslim parties. Before concluding, the author dedicates a whole chapter to the influence of China as a rising superpower and increasingly invasive force in the region. He skillfully shows how China is slowly reinstating its precolonial imperial approach to geopolitics and tailoring its strategy to the needs and specificities of each country. This uncanny analysis of the historical relationship between China and Southeast Asia is undoubtedly the most powerful chapter in the book. This makes me wonder whether a more marked focus on the geopolitical angle could have yielded a more cohesive structure and argument across the whole volume.

Although at times the book can read like a travel diary, Vatikiotis effectively colors his accurate political analysis with the scents, flavors, sounds, and tactile impressions that are quintessentially Southeast Asian. The choice of treating the same themes across countries is decisively winning, as it allows the reader to appreciate both the diversity in cultural nuances and the recurring threads across the region. The continuous interplay of different countries makes the narrative more dynamic and fluid, although at times it may spur repetition and impair the clarity of underlying arguments. Further, this approach yields a bias toward larger countries throughout. The analyses of Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia are very well bound together; the Philippines and Myanmar are often discussed through insightful and captivating vignettes, but the reader is left longing for more. Singapore, Vietnam, and Cambodia are simply mentioned too little, which is a pity, especially considering that Singapore, being the regional global city, is a small regional power with business and political ties across all its neighbors. As for Laos, while it is surely the smallest economy, perhaps it deserved a bit more attention.

Overall, the book is a journey into the political complexity of a region that lived through repeated chances to pair economic growth with democratic advancement. Vatikiotis shows us that the local political elites seem to have forgone the latter for short-term gains, trapping their people into a future very similar to their past. The most significant takeaway is that today Southeast Asian multiculturalism and tolerance of diversity are in danger. These are the features that have made the region unique and attractive to foreigners and that need to be cherished by local governments and people in the future.