America's Strategy in Southeast Asia: From the Cold War to the Terror War.

• Author: Simon, Sheldon W.
• Position: Book review

America's Strategy in Southeast Asia: From the Cold War to the Terror War. By James A. Tyner. Plymouth, UK: Rowman and Littlefield, 2007. Softcover: 240pp.

Studies of US foreign policy towards any world region, including Southeast Asia, are usually written by political scientists or historians who focus on decision-making conflicts among bureaucracies, the reciprocal impacts of domestic and international politics, and the effects of the personalities and decision-making styles of key decision-makers. Seldom do other social scientists venture into this arena. It was, therefore, with considerable anticipation that I read James Tyner's America's Strategy in Southeast Asia. Because Professor Tyner is a geographer I expected an assessment of Southeast Asia's spatial and resource characteristics on Washington's foreign policy debates: the differences between insular and mainland Southeast Asia, or an explanation of how and why the US Navy has dominated American strategic policy in Southeast Asia rather than ground and air forces whose roles are more prominent in Northeast Asia. Although some passing attention is paid to these issues, the thrust of the book's argument is quite different.

America's Strategy in Southeast Asia is a scholarly polemic, for the most part well researched and written. It is a condemnation of Western imperialism and neo-colonialism (Professor Tyner's description) in general and American depredations in particular from the nineteenth century to the present day. The book belongs in the new left tradition of the 1960s and 1970s and world systems analysis of the 1980s. Its intellectual forebearers are Noam Chomsky, Gabriel Kolko, Walden Bello and Howard Zinn. It is noteworthy that the author's extensive bibliography does not include such prominent scholars on the international politics of Southeast Asia and American policy in the region as Amitav Acharya, Muthiah Alagappa, Tim Huxley, Michael Leifer, William Tow, and Carl Thayer. (Perhaps their assessments do not conform to the author's ideology.)

Briefly, Tyner's underlying argument is that all world regions are social constructs, and these constructs are determined by the most powerful actors--since World War II the United States. More specifically, "the construction of Southeast Asia ... has been a crucial component in the creation of the American empire" (p. 1). (Somehow, I doubt whether the Southeast Asian states which have been organizing their own political, economic...