International Relations in Southeast Asia
Authors: Nair Deepak 
Published: June 2023

Situated at the geographic and cultural crossroads of China and India, Southeast Asia has historically attracted the attention of larger powers and has been a site for several experiments in self-determination, regional autonomy, and order building. The region has featured prominently in global processes past and present: from colonial rule in its various Euro-American and Japanese permutations, and decolonization in revolutionary and neo-colonial stripes, to the three Indochina Wars that spanned the arc of the Global Cold War, and a new era of Sino-US Great Power competition. These historical experiences inform the themes that structure the academic study of Southeast Asia’s international relations. These include: the foreign policies of the regions’ states vis-à-vis one another and the outside world, the involvements of the Great Powers, and diplomatic projects spearheaded by Southeast Asian elites to express their vision for regional order. A conspicuous feature of the International Relations (IR) scholarship on Southeast Asia is the dominance of often apolitical and indeed depoliticizing “regionalism studies” centered on the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)—the region’s most enduring project in multilateral diplomacy created during the Cold War. Notwithstanding its significance, the focus on ASEAN and regionalism has been arguably excessive. It has led to a fixation with narrow theoretical debates centered on ASEAN and has stymied a wider exploration of the region’s international politics drawing on area studies, international history, foreign policy analysis, and political sociology which would shine the spotlight on how colonialism, race, gender, class, emotions, populism, trade, political parties, interest groups, state-society relations etc. have shaped the regions international politics. Indeed, some of the more exciting new scholarship on the international relations of Southeast has been emerging in other disciplines and fields, namely, Cold War international history, comparative politics, and new currents in IR inspired by political sociology and microsociology. This article outlines these new literatures with a view to open the study of international relations in Southeast Asia in historical, theoretical, and substantive terms. This essay is divided into nine sections. Following General Overviews, the section Colonial Legacies looks to the colonial period to understand patterns of class and identity formation that have structured contemporary fault lines in regional relations. Decolonization, Cold War, and the Emergence of a Southeast Asian International System foregrounds how Cold War international pressures internationalized decolonization struggles and shaped the birth (and splintering) of Southeast Asia’s post-colonial international system. The Indochina Wars highlights the pitched “hot” battles of the Cold War that unfolded in Southeast Asia, most famously as the three Indochina Wars. Diplomacy: From SEATO and Bandung to ASEAN examines the diverse diplomatic responses by Southeast Asian elites—including Bandung and ASEAN—in crafting a preferred vision for regional order. Foreign Policy surveys some of the key works in the genre of foreign policy analyses of Southeast Asia’s major states. Southeast Asian Security in the Era of United States-China Rivalry examines a body of conceptually innovative literature on how the region’s small and middle powers have responded to the escalating post–Cold War rivalry between the United States and China. In the First Image: Biographies and Memoirs foregrounds the large but underutilized genre of biography and memoir on Southeast Asia’s diplomatic players, a resource that could be better integrated with emerging “first-image” studies in IR. The final section identifies some of the major journals and platforms for online commentary that serve the study of Southeast Asia’s international politics.