Major studies of American foreign relations treat US failures in Vietnam as the end of both American imperialism and western empires in Southeast Asia. Ngoei's book argues that Vietnam was an exception to the region’s overall pro-US trajectory after 1945. It traces how British neo-colonialism and Southeast Asian anticommunism combined with widespread anti-Chinese prejudice in the region, transitioning Southeast Asia from formal colonialism to US hegemony. Between the 1950s and 1970s, Southeast Asia’s anticommunist nationalists established, with US support, a geo-strategic arc of states that effectively contained Vietnamese communism and isolated China.
Find out more about Arc of Containment and Dr. Ngoei's other works at his website.
Ngoei, Wen-Qing. (2019) Arc of Containment: Britain, the United States, and Anticommunism in Southeast Asia: Cornell University Press.