THE POLITICS OF Southeast Asia

LUCIAN W. PYE

I. BACKGROUND

There is a quality of newness about Southeast Asia. The very term "Southeast Asia" came into common usage only with World War II and the creation of the South-East Asia Command. The end of colonialism and the rise of Communist China has caused the world to take a new interest in tropical Asia. The sense of the new and the contemporary stems also from the region being composed of newly emergent countries with youthful leaders who are striving to bring their peoples out of the old world of traditionalism and colonialism and into the modern world. The quality of newness in Southeast Asia comes also from a generation of peoples seeking to live without a history and with only hopes. Lacking a common store of memories, the people cannot look to the past for strength and guidance. They must look the other way, and in doing so they can see only a tentative present and an unsure future. The region is in such a state of flux that both outsiders and Southeast Asians find it difficult to gain perspective and hence the temptation to seek reality in immediate problems.

This emphasis upon the new and the contemporary is not entirely misplaced, for a fundamental characteristic of Southeast Asian societies is their involvement in a process of social change as a result of their exposure to the West. For all of the countries in the region, except Thailand, the Western impact included a period of colonial rule. Indeed, the modern history of Southeast Asia is largely a matter of various forms of colonial practices stimulating changes in all aspects of traditional societies which in time led to the development of nationalistic movements. With the emergence of seven new states in the postwar period, the dominant theme of Southeast Asia is the effort of the leaders of these new countries to create modern nation-states out of their transitional societies. These leaders have committed their peoples to the task of establishing representative institutions of government and developing more productive modes of economic life. Although enthusiasm for these goals has not been lacking, it is difficult to estimate their chances of being realized, for it is still hard to discern even the outlines of the political and social systems that are evolving in Southeast Asia. The possibility of failure is great, and leaders and citizens can be troubled with self-doubts. Already the tendency toward more authoritarian practices is widespread: for example, armies are coming to play roles that were originally reserved for democratic politicians.

The challenging task for the student of Southeast Asia is that of trying to determine the forces which will shape the future of the region.

The Physical and Human Setting

Southeast Asia consists, first, of a band of loosely organized and relatively underpopulated societies along the southern fringe of the massive and overpopulated East Asian continent, and, second, of the two island countries of Indonesia and the Philippines. The region is about as large as all of Europe and its adjacent seas. There are few regions as large as this with so uniform a climate, not only over the entire area but throughout the year. Except for parts of upper Burma and northern Thailand, and a few variations due to altitude, the average monthly temperatures for the entire region are within ten degrees of 80° at all seasons. In over ninety years Java has never had a temperature recorded above 96° or below 66°.

The population of Southeast Asia is rapidly approaching 180,000,000 (see Table I). Only a century and a half ago there were barely 10 million people in the region, and since the First World War the population has grown by nearly 100 million. The population of the region is distributed extremely unevenly, so that congestion and empty spaces are found side by side. Java, one of the most densely populated areas of the world, has a total of over 800 people to the square mile and in some areas there are over 3,000 people living on each square mile. The other crowded areas are Lower Thailand and the Red River Delta with densities of over 1,500 people per square mile, and Lower Burma, Central Luzon, and the Lower Mekong with over 750 persons to the square mile. The rest of Southeast Asia is relatively underpopulated: only 8 per cent of Vietnam and Cambodia is cultivated and settled; Sumatra has less than 50 people to the square mile; and the general average of Burma, Malaya, and Thailand is less than 100 persons per square mile.

Indonesia, with over 82 million people, is the largest country of Southeast Asia, and its 3,000 islands stretching for over 3,000 miles along the Equator cover a territory somewhat larger than that of the United States, while the total land area of the islands is equal to about one-fourth the area of the United States. The Philippines consist of over 7,000 islands, of which eleven make up over 95 per cent of the total land area. The Philippines, Burma and Thailand each have populations approaching 20 millions; Vietnam has about 28 millions, Cambodia 4.3 millions, and Laos has anywhere from 1 to 2½ millions.

Southeast Asia is relatively rich in natural resources. Europeans were first attracted to the region by the spice trade, and later the West introduced such commercial crops as rubber, copra, sugar, and coffee. Now the region produces nearly 90 per cent of the world's rubber, 53 per cent of its tin, 75 per cent of its...