The ANU Southeast Asia Institute Research Seminar Series is a recurring seminar series that showcases the work of scholars working on political, social, and cultural issues in Southeast Asia.
Contact the ANU Southeast Asia Institute Research Seminar Series Conveners:
- Deepak Nair at deepak.nair@anu.edu.au
- Nicholas Chan at waiyeap.chan@anu.edu.au
Singapore’s neutral Pax Americana and the Southeast Asian regional order
This talk examines how, from Singapore’s independence in 1965 through the late Cold War, the city-state’s leaders and diplomats strove to install their vision of Pax Americana in Southeast Asia while insisting that Singapore was neutral, aloof of the superpowers’ Cold War conflict. Though Singapore’s friendliness to America during the Cold War is well-known, there remain popular and scholarly perceptions that the city-state has always pursued a neutral foreign policy. This talk considers how Singapore discursively constructed and concealed this dissonant foreign policy in plain sight, and how this influenced the alignment of Southeast Asia as a region into the late Cold War.
About the speaker
Wen-Qing Ngoei is Associate Professor of History at the College of Integrative Studies in Singapore Management University. He completed his PhD in the history of US foreign relations with Southeast Asia at Northwestern University. His first book, Arc of Containment: Britain, the United States, and Anticommunism in Southeast Asia (Cornell University Press) traces how British decolonization intertwined with Southeast Asian anticommunist nationalism to usher the subregion from European-dominated colonialism to informal US empire after 1945. His articles have appeared in journals such as Diplomatic History and International Journal. He is currently preparing a manuscript on Singapore-US relations from the late Cold War through the War on Terror into the Sino-US. competition of the present.