Title: To cage the red dragon : SEATO and the defence of Southeast Asia, 1955-1965 /
Authors: Fenton, Damien.
Publisher: NUS Press,
Year: 2012
Subjects: Southeast Asia Treaty Organization History.; Communism Southeast Asia History; World politics; Southeast Asia Defenses History; Southeast Asia Foreign relations
Abstract: It is now 20 years since the Cold War effectively ended with the dramatic collapse of the Soviet Union and its client states in Eastern and Central Europe, and just over three decades since the final bloody climax of the Vietnam War played itself out on the streets of Saigon, Phnom Penh and Vientiane. The historiography of the wider Cold War has burgeoned accordingly, greatly assisted by increasing access to all manner of archival material belonging to former foes on both sides of what was once the Iron Curtain. That of the Vietnam War, at least insofar as the West is concerned, had already established itself as a field of significant depth and breadth by the end of the 1980s. However, it too has benefited and continued to grow in the wake of the large-scale release by many Western governments of their remaining official material from that era into the public domain.
Contents: Maps -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction -- Chapter 1. SEATO's place in the Cold War -- Chapter 2. The conventional military threat -- Chapter 3. SEATO's military organisation 1955-1965 -- Chapter 4. SEATO's strategic concepts -- Chapter 5. Planning for limited war -- Chapter 6. Plan 5: The first counter-insurgency plan -- Chapter 7. SEATO counter-insurgency planning for South Vietnam and Thailand 1960-1963 -- Chapter 8. The beginning of the end 1964-1965 -- Appendices -- Glossary -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index.