LAUSR

to the relationships between the PRC and the Communist movements in the region and suggests that these relationships, although seemingly superseded by the end of the Cold War, remain as plausible elements of a future narrative of Chinese policy in the region. The book appears to position the ASEAN countries as dominoes that did not fall because of U.S. intervention in the region. Despite each ASEAN country having its own reasons for participating in the formation of the organization, the author quotes the Singaporean foreign minister’s statement that the “principal object” they all shared was “reversing the domino theory” (p. 140). Then, later in the book, without comment, Ang Cheng Guan appears to dismiss the domino theory by citing statements the Malaysian foreign minister made in 1975 (p. 159) when, after the U.S. withdrawal from the region, the war in Indochina ended with no further threat to the rest of the region. This use of contradictory quotations without sufficient contextualization is an example of the weak level of analysis sometimes displayed in the book. In another example of possibly excessive dependence on the statements of prominent figures, the author uncritically uses a 1950 interview of Ho Chi Minh by two U.S. journalists to affirm Ho Chi Minh’s motivations in his relations with the PRC (p. 57), surely not an unproblematic source considering Ho Chi Minh’s famous skill in propaganda. The title of the book is most apt, for the Cold War, as the author demonstrates, did not come to Southeast Asia as the intrusion of some external problem into the region. Well before the emergence of the global Cold War, Southeast Asia had its own Cold War, with antecedents in colonial times. What is remarkable about the story presented in Southeast Asia’s Cold War is that with ASEAN there was a regional response to the Cold War that has outlived the conflict to become a structure of regional security that continues to redefine itself in response to changing conditions. This is perhaps the most telling evidence that Southeast Asia is a region with a certain coherence. As a model of regional cooperation, ASEAN is an experiment incomparable with any other apart from the European Union. Thanks to its proven capacity to change and adapt, ASEAN, which arose from and then survived the Cold War, is now generally accepted as an important part of international security in Asia.