Ngoei issues a sad warning about the costs for the peoples of the area subjected to the new and re-emergent Asian cold war challenges. This is an important scholarly contribution.
~Choice
Wen-Qing Ngoei's Arc of Containment: Britain, the United States, and Anticommunism in Southeast Asia is a thought-provoking, compelling, and significant contribution to the study of American hegemony and intervention in postwar Southeast Asia.
~Southeast Asian Studies
In this well-argued and convincing book, Wen-Qing Ngoei... delivers a perceptive and comprehensive... overview of the diplomatic and strategic evolution of Southeast Asia in the 1950s and 1960s. Arc of Containment situates the Vietnam War in a regional context, and students of history, diplomacy, politics, and security should find it interesting and illuminating.
~The Journal of Asian Studies
Arc of Containment, which is based upon adroit trawling in the archives of the principal nations at issue—Great Britain, the United States, Singapore, and Malaysia—is certainly one of the more intriguing explorations of Washington's excruciating encounter in Southeast Asia; and, like many good books, it sheds light relentlessly on matters not necessarily addressed frontally: most pointedly, Washington's conflict then entente with China.
~Diplomatic History
By bringing the agency and influence of Southeast Asian actors into his analysis, Ngoei's book offers more regional insight to interested readers seeking knowledge about American influence in Southeast Asia. The book itself represents a noteworthy intersection of historical, comparative, and security scholarship and would be of equal interest to historians, political scientists, and regional scholars alike.
~PACIFIC AFFAIRS
This relatively slim volume illuminates as it enlightens [a] vivid testament to its immense value.
~Diplomatic History
