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BECOMING ASIA

STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Contents

List of Illustrations.....................................................xiPreface...................................................................xiiiChapter 1 Introduction....................................................1Chapter 2 Planning the Postwar World......................................20Chapter 3 The Chinese Civil War...........................................30Chapter 4 Japan: Occupation and Recovery..................................51Chapter 5 The Korean War..................................................65Chapter 6 Decolonization, Nationalism, and Revolution.....................82Chapter 7 The U.S. Alliance System........................................103Chapter 8 The Sino-Soviet Alliance........................................116Chapter 9 The Vietnam War.................................................137Chapter 10 Strategic Realignment..........................................161Chapter 11 The End of the Cold War........................................194Chapter 12 The Rise of China..............................................209Chapter 13 Entering the New Century.......................................233Chapter 14 Change and Continuity..........................................251Notes.....................................................................279Selected Bibliography for Further Reading.................................303Index.....................................................................305

Chapter One

To borrow Prince Metternich's characterization of Italy before its unification, Asia was not much more than a Western geo graphical expression at the end of World War II. Before the war, most of the region had been colonized or, in the case of China, dominated by foreign powers, and then during the war much of East Asia was forcibly embraced by the Japanese Empire. In the wake of the war, an upsurge of nationalist movements dispossessed the colonial powers. The postwar emergence of nation-states in most of the region for the first time had a transformative effect, with the new states ardently committed to the Westphalian concept of sovereignty. However, the evolution of nation-states in Asia was complicated by the importation of the U.S.-Soviet Cold War from its Europe an cockpit. Even after the end of the Cold War, the effects of broader influences continued to shape the geopolitical landscape of Asia as a new century unfolded.

This history is an effort to provide a systemic perspective on these complex developments, focusing not on the outlook and actions of any single state but on the interactions of states and other forces within both a regional and a global context. The goal is to provide an interpretive account of how Asia became a region of increasingly consequential nation-states, leading to a shift in the global center of gravity toward the region—and prompting some observers to descry the advent of "the Asian century." Another aspect of this effort is to identify deep-seated continuities, in particular to track the origin and evolution of key issues still at the top of the international agenda, such as the division of Korea and nuclear proliferation, the Taiwan issue, the rise of China, Japan's role, the Kashmir issue and the now nuclearized Indian-Pakistani conflict, and the increasing salience of transnational issues such as terrorism.

Key documents, some public at the time and others later declassified, are used to examine the mind-sets and policy choices of the various protagonists in order to assess their goals and evaluate the effects of their decisions, anticipated and not. Excerpts from some of these documents appear throughout the text.

TWO MAJOR NARRATIVE THEMES

The narrative of this history interweaves the two threads that have dominated Asia's international relations since World War II. One is the competition between the great powers of the postwar era—the United States and the Soviet Union—to enlist the region's states as assets in their global competition, the Cold War. The other is the struggle of Asian nationalistic leaders to establish in de pen dent nation-states and to develop the domestic support and the elements of national power to sustain sovereignty in a dangerous international context.

The interplay between these two trends was a direct consequence of World War II, which, from a global perspective, was a genuine watershed. The structure of international relations after the war was fundamentally different from that preceding it, the war having decisively altered the cast of great powers that had played major roles both globally and in Asia. Also, in the aftermath of the war, statesmen's ideas and approaches regarding international affairs, though they were based in part on lessons they drew from the war and its origins, were different from those that led them into it. Finally, the war set in motion trends that continued to define the features of the international landscape into the next century. For these reasons, the war makes a natural starting point.

The Cold War emerged almost immediately from the geopolitical environment created by World War II. During this period, the United States and the Soviet Union—the first superpowers in world history—built powerful alliance systems and contended in an ideological, political, military, and economic struggle for global power and predominance in every part of the globe. Asia was one of the principal arenas of this struggle, and the Cold War had a powerful impact on the region, shaping relations among the Asian states and their interactions with the rest of the world.

From a regional perspective, World War II reshaped the place of every Asian society in the international order. At the beginning of this period, the imperial powers that had colonized nearly every part of Asia over the course of the preceding four centuries—Britain, France, the Netherlands, Japan, and the United States—lost those colonial empires. Japan lost its East Asian empire, acquired over the preceding fifty years, as a direct consequence of its defeat in the war. The end of Britain's and America's colonial control in the early postwar years came about largely through political means. In contrast, the French and the Dutch were forced to quit their colonies after failing to reimpose colonial administrations through military means in the early postwar years.

World War II itself played no small part in this outcome. On the one hand, the war weakened the Europe an colonial powers and their capacity to maintain their prewar empires in Asia and elsewhere; on the other, it helped enflame and mobilize simmering nationalistic sentiments within the colonies and created opportunities for indigenous elites to build in dependence movements immediately after the war was over. Although the British, French, and Dutch sought in different mea sure to restore colonial holdings, each abandoned or was forced to give up these ambitions in Asia in the early postwar years. Having accepted by the end of the war that recouping its position in India, the "jewel in the crown" of the British Empire, was no longer possible, London sought through negotiations in the early postwar years to preserve as strong as possible an association with an in de pen dent and sovereign...