ABSTRACT

Since the end of the colonial era, the evolution of Southeast Asia’s place in the global system has been defined in two main phases. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, and until the final retreat from Vietnam, it was the Cold War that dictated an engagement that was almost entirely geopolitical in nature and focused upon the consolidation of powerful anti-communist governments within a broad US-led alliance aimed at defeating various revolutionary political movements. As the Cold War waned, the logic of engagement shifted into the sphere of economics as the major Western economies, notably the USA, liquidated their decaying manufacturing bases to reorganize their ascendancy within in a system of global (especially financial) markets. Thus, Southeast Asia was drawn into a larger global project that was aimed at dismantling protected state-led capitalist systems by forcing open markets and deregulating financial regimes. This was a period in which neoliberal ideas took centre stage.1 The IMF, the World Bank as well as economic technocrats within economic ministries across the region became key players as they attempted to force market-oriented programmes of structural adjustment on interventionist states. This was also an era defined by the ascendance of institutions of global governance such as the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC).