Introduction
When the Second World War reached its conclusion in 1945, the devastation was by no means limited to the European continent, for in Asia too destruction stretched far and wide. Moreover, just as the defeat of Germany led to a power vacuum in Europe and the start of Cold War tensions, so the capitulation of Japan on 15 August 1945 led to chaos and revolution in Asia.
Over the next decade a new international order very different to that which had existed before the Pacific War slowly emerged from the wreckage. In South and South-East Asia indigenous nationalist movements freed themselves from the European colonial presence and a number of new independent states emerged. Meanwhile China, following the victory of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) over the Guomindang (GMD), emerged once again as a regional Great Power, while Japan eschewed imperialist expansionism to concentrate on economic growth.However, this tendency for Asian peoples to gain greater control over their own destiny was to be compromised by another development, namely the arrival of the Cold War in the region. The establishment of the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1949 meant not only that China was now united under a strong centralized state, but that it was ruled by a communist government with close political and military ties to the Soviet Union. Fearing that such a regime posed
Pacific War
The phrase usually used to refer to the Allied war against Japan from 1941 to 1945.
Guomindang (GMD)
The Chinese Nationalist party founded in 1913 by Sun Yatsen. Under the control of Jiang Jieshi, it came to power in China in 1928 and initiated a modernization programme before leading the country into war against Japan in 1937. It lost control over mainland China in 1949 as a result of the communist victory in the civil war. From 1949 it controlled Taiwan, overseeing the island's ‘economic miracle', until its electoral defeat in 2000.
Great Powers
Traditionally those states that were held capable of shared responsibility for the management of the international order by virtue of their military and economic influence.
People's Republic of China (PRC)
The official name of communist or mainland China. The PRC came into existence in 1949 under the leadership of Mao Zedong.
containment
The term coined by George Kennan for the American, and broadly Western, policy towards the Soviet Union (and communism in general). The overall idea was to contain the USSR (that is, keep it within its current borders) with the hope that internal division, failure or political evolution might end the perceived threat from what was considered a chronically expansionist force.
decolonization
The process whereby an imperial power gives up its formal authority over its colonies.
Congress
Shorthand for the Indian National Congress, a nationalist party first formed in India in 1885. Congress played the most important role in bringing about Indian independence in 1947 and since then has been one of the major political parties in Indian politics.
a danger to its economic and strategic interests in the region, the United States reacted to this apparent threat by introducing a policy of containment similar to that which already existed in Europe. Thus, from 1949, East and South-East Asia became the second most important battleground in the global Cold War.
The encroachment of the Cold War and its attendant reductionist logic was to have a profound effect on Asia. Indeed, in some ways the ideological conflict for control of the continent was to become even more dangerous than the parallel events in Europe. After all, Asia, unlike Europe, witnessed two ‘hot wars', in Korea and Vietnam, which had the potential to develop into global conflagrations. The volatility of the Cold War in Asia came about precisely because it was an area where nationalism was on the march and where new unstable states were coming into existence.
As a result, the United States and the communist bloc entered into a deadly competition for clients, established either bilateral or multilateral alliance systems, and, in order to win or guarantee loyalty, distributed large amounts of military and economic aid. Uncommitted states were pressed to align themselves, with both the East and West declaring that there could be no neutrality in the conflict between communism and democracy. So rigid was this belief that Washington even felt it necessary to support colonial Powers against the challenges posed by left-wing national liberation movements. The result, not surprisingly, was a largely polarized Asia and the development of two armed camps. However, some states refused to be coerced into line and instead sought to free themselves from the shackles of bipolarity. Rejecting the Cold War paradigm, they asserted that the priority in Asia was the final removal of colonialism, and that America's insistence on the importance of containing communism was leading it to protect European imperialism and to act as an imperialist itself.
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