Regional instability: Asia adrift, Asia alone

Not since the Vietnam War has security in Asia seemed so fragile.

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By the time the United States withdrew after a decade of combat in Indochina, an estimated 1-3 million Vietnamese and more than 58,000 American soldiers had been killed, US domestic politics was in tatters, years of stagflation were just beginning, and many observers around the world believed that the Soviet Union was winning the Cold War. Across Asia, America’s abandonment of its South Vietnamese allies seemed to augur a bleak future of economic and political instability.Today, barely a decade after President Barack Obama announced a “pivot” to Asia, America’s commitment to the region is as tenuous as it was in 1975. True, formal mutual defense treaties with Japan, Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines, and South Korea are still in force, and the US retains bases, and basing rights, in many other places, including Singapore. But relations between the Trump administration and the governments of Asia’s democracies are a far cry from what one typically finds between longstanding allies. Instead, they more closely resemble those seen in commercial transactions, with shared values and security concerns counting for nothing.

For Asia's democratic leaders, the situation has induced an ominous sense of déjà vu. Many know how quickly America’s post-World War II security structures in the region unraveled after 1975. Within four years, Vietnam’s victorious communists would establish hegemony in Indochina by ordering their battle-hardened army to invade Cambodia, ousting the murderous Khmer Rouge regime and threatening the viability of the Thai monarchy.