Abstract
Since the Cold War was a global phenomenon, it had been described primarily in terms of either its major protagonists — the United States and the Soviet Union — or principal crises, such as Berlin or Cuba. To nations in specific regions, however, such a narrative may not be the only one or even the most important picture of the Cold War. Due to its historical background and geo-strategic complexities, for instance, the Asian Cold War was both volatile and fluid, whereas the European Cold War was far more structured and solid. This paper tries to demonstrate the major features of the Asian Cold War by analyzing the origins, developments and implementations of ZOPFAN. ZOPFAN was first proposed by the Malaysian parliament in 1968 as the ‘neutrality of Southeast Asia guaranteed by the three great powers including Communist China,’ and was endorsed by an ASEAN foreign ministers’ meeting in 1971, which declared a ‘Zone of Peace, Freedom and Neutrality.’ At the outset, agreement on ZOPFAN was tentative at best, but in the course of its implementation, ZOPFAN was modified and transformed into a so-called ‘ZOPFAN-II,’ which in turn led to the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation (TAC) in 1976.
As was often the case in ASEAN projects, agreement on ZOPFAN did not mean a consensus on approaches regarding its implementation. The main locomotive of ZOPFAN was non-aligned Malaysia under Prime Minister Tun Razak: the staunchly anti-communist Philippines and Thailand were unenthusiastic about reconciliation with their Asian communist neighbors, while Indonesia proposed yet another approach of strengthening ‘national resilience.’ What made ASEAN one of the most successful regional bodies in the Third World was its modus operandi, the ‘ASEAN Way’, which enabled it to overcome its heterogeneity and maintain the ‘unity in diversity’ among its member countries. Persuant to the logic of ZOPFAN-II, ASEAN members managed to overcome the Cold War mentality — if not the Cold War structure — in improving diplomatic relations with previously hostile socialist nations like China and the Indochinese countries. To put it simply, the Cold War was not monolithic, but rather mosaic in nature, with regional settings giving the local Cold War a particular rationale. In a nutshell, ZOPFAN was an ‘ASEAN Way’ to deal with the Cold War in Southeast Asia.
