"At the height of the Cold War in Southeast Asia, the foreign relations between the United States and Singapore demonstrated the interplay between America's strategy of containment and Singapore's efforts at a non-aligned foreign policy. But there is a deeper story. American involvement in the Vietnam War not only held back the spread of communism in Southeast Asia, but also catalysed economic and strategic cooperation between the United States and Singapore. The author argues that Singapore might not have achieved its success so rapidly without the support of the US.As the war in Vietnam raged on, Singapore became a critical refueling point, also providing ship and aircraft repair for the US military. Commercial and strategic support from the United States lifted Singapore out of the economic doom predicted for the city-state after secession from Malaysia, cessation of Indonesian trade during Konfrontasi and Britain's military withdrawal. By considering the importance of the US's role in Singapore's nation-building, this book provides an important supplement to the well-trodden narrative that attributes Singapore's success to good governance."--Back cover.

At the height of the Cold War in Southeast Asia, the foreign relations between the United States and Singapore demonstrated the interplay between America’s strategy of containment and Singapore’s efforts at a non-aligned foreign policy. But there is a deeper story. American involvement in the Vietnam War not only held back the spread of communism in Southeast Asia, but also catalysed economic and strategic cooperation between the United States and Singapore. The author argues that Singapore might not have achieved its success so rapidly without the support of the US. As the war in Vietnam raged on, Singapore became a critical refueling point, also providing ship and aircraft repair for the US military. Commercial and strategic support from the United States lifted Singapore out of the economic doom predicted for the city-state after secession from Malaysia, cessation of Indonesian trade during Konfrontasi and Britain’s military withdrawal. By considering the importance of the US’s role in Singapore’s nation-building, this book provides an important supplement to the well-trodden narrative that attributes Singapore’s success to good governance.

"At the height of the Cold War in Southeast Asia, the foreign relations between the United States and Singapore demonstrated the interplay between America's strategy of containment and Singapore's efforts at a non-aligned foreign policy. But there is a deeper story. American involvement in the Vietnam War not only held back the spread of communism in Southeast Asia, but also catalysed economic and strategic cooperation between the United States and Singapore. The author argues that Singapore might not have achieved its success so rapidly without the support of the US. As the war in Vietnam raged on, Singapore became a critical refueling point, also providing ship and aircraft repair for the US military. Commercial and strategic support from the United States lifted Singapore out of the economic doom predicted for the city-state after secession from Malaysia, cessation of Indonesian trade during Konfrontasi and Britain's military withdrawal. By considering the importance of the US's role in Singapore's nation-building, this book provides an important supplement to the well-trodden narrative that attributes Singapore's success to good governance."--Back cover.

Singapore became an independent state on 9 August 1965, six months after United States forces landed in Vietnam in March 1965. As part of an effort to contain the influence of the Soviet Union and People's Republic of China in Southeast Asia, Washington deployed a strategy that encompassed political, economic and defence engagements with non-communist countries in the region. Because of its strategic location and significant population of overseas Chinese, Singapore became a key country in Washington's policy towards Southeast Asia. Between 1965 and 1975, Washington aimed to maintain its access to Singapore's naval dockyards and to keep the island state's economy viable, so as to limit the risk of communist subversion in Singapore. The Singapore government's objectives were to preserve its legitimacy to govern by developing Singapore's economy and boosting its security during the Cold War. In order to gain international recognition of its independence after separation from Malaysia, the Singapore government decided to join the Non-aligned Movement and maintained an image of neutralism in the bipolar conflict between the US and the USSR. After a rocky start in the US-Singapore relationship in late 1965, America's relations with Singapore improved in 1966. Nevertheless, the Singapore government seemed to distance itself from the US while drawing nearer to the Soviet Union between the late 1960s and the early 1970s. Drawing from archival documents from the United States, Britain and Australia, this dissertation presents a history of US-Singapore foreign relations during the period of the Vietnam War, and argues that relations between the two countries were determined by the interplay of America's policy of containment and Singapore's attempt at projecting a non-aligned foreign policy stance. Although the first decade of Singapore's independence established the United States as an indispensable contributor to Singapore's economic growth and security during the Cold War, the process was not always smooth because the leaders in both countries recognised that their interests were best met when Singapore and the US maintained political distance from each other. This study adds to a current trend in Cold War historiography in Southeast Asia by demonstrating how American strategy was influenced by smaller states such as Singapore. The Singapore government attempted to sway US strategy in the region and was able to achieve its goals when it played the Soviet card. Non-communist Southeast Asian leaders, including Lee Kuan Yew, exerted pressure on the US government to maintain troops in Vietnam and prolonged the Vietnam war. This study establishes a link between a prosperous Southeast Asia and a Vietnam that became a war zone and proposes that Singapore was able to prosper not only due to good governance, but also because of America's interest in keeping Singapore economically viable.

Australia’s policy towards Britain’s end of empire in Southeast Asia influenced the course of this decolonization in the region. In this book, Andrea Benvenuti discusses the development of Australia’s foreign and defence policies towards Malaya and Singapore in light of the redefinition of Britain’s imperial role in Southeast Asia and the formation of new post-colonial states. Placed within the emerging literature on the global impact of the Cold War, the book sheds new light on the choices made – by Australia, by Britain and the new emerging states – in these crucial years.

The Thucydides trap and a US-China face-off are not structurally inevitable; US-China relations are what the US and China make of them. Phua focuses on the ability to see "US as US" and "China as China" to trigger both countries’ cultural tendencies towards pragmatism. Phua examines China’s arduous journey to fit in the Westphalian system, the deep cultural misunderstandings by the West of Sunzi’s The Art of War, and attempts to offer an inside-out cultural synthesis of classical and modern Chinese thought as a proxy of their operational code, beyond the standard clichés about Confucian and Daoist thought. He builds on Jervis’ perception and misperception as well as Alastair Johnston’s cultural realism. Readers will benefit from a culturally-Chinese, western-educated and politically neutral understanding of "China as China". An essential primer for academics, practitioners and students of international relations, diplomacy and Chinese culture.