ABSTRACT
The decolonization of a growing number of former colonies in Asia and their emergence as sovereign independent nation-states was increasingly shaped by the interaction of the United States, Japan (which was Washington’s key post-1945 client-ally in Asia), the Peoples Republic of China (Washington’s main concern in the region after 1949) and Beijing’s erstwhile patron-ally, the Soviet Union. The Cold War and the way it interacted with specific political and social struggles and wider capitalist dynamics are central to any understanding of the transformation of Asia after the Second World War. In the years immediately after 1945 the US emerged as the dominant global power, accounting for almost 50 percent of world economic output.1 The only power anywhere that even began to rival the US in military, although not economic, terms was the Soviet Union. Furthermore, as already emphasized, while there was often an important connection between earlier imperial ideas and practices and the elaboration of new hegemonic strategies and tactics, both the US and the Soviet Union wielded power in a world increasingly made up of formally sovereign nation-states. Washington’s grand strategy in the Cold War provided a crucial foundation for the emergence of various, usually authoritarian, but often developmental states in Asia at the same time as it imposed a range of constraints on the autonomy and sovereignty of virtually all nation-states in the region. Capitalist nation-states in Asia were increasingly incorporated into the post-1945 world order on terms that allowed for considerable autonomy over many issues within their territorial borders, at the same time as their sovereignty was limited with regard to issues that related to the Cold War and international affairs. Furthermore, in contrast to Europe the US was unwilling and unable to establish a significant multilateral political and military framework in Asia, relying on a growing range of bilateral defense treaties and arrangements. This chapter provides a historical interpretation of the transformation of Asia with a focus on the period from 19471975, but in some cases, such as the detailed examinations of the South Korean and Indonesian trajectories, it covers the period up to the late 1990s.
