ABSTRACT
In the wake of the United States-led war on Afghanistan launched in October 2001, a largely transatlantic debate on global unipolarity escalated rapidly. The 2002 US national security doctrine reasserting claims of primacy and the right to launch pre-emptive war, an extra-territorial ‘war on terror’, and the invasion and occupation of Iraq starting in March 2003 provided further fodder for commentary. As these events dominated news headlines, critical analyses of American foreign policy and the unparalleled nature of American power proliferated. Nonetheless, in this period, Southeast Asian countries increased their cooperation with the US on issues ranging from counter-terrorism to military exercises and bilateral preferential trade agreements. Public perceptions of the US swung sharply to negative in Indonesia and Malaysia, but foreign policy elites across much of the region tempered criticism of post-2001 American foreign policy with beliefs in the positive and stabilizing role of the US. This chapter asks why, despite some variation across the region, many members of the foreign
policy community in Southeast Asia appear to view the US as a generally benign international power. The idea that the US is a benign power enjoys an intellectual lineage but, as shown in the first section of this chapter, it competes with intellectual traditions that have cast the US in a much more negative light. These more negative depictions do circulate in Southeast Asia, as shown in the second section here, but mostly outside of foreign policy circles. Societal views, therefore, have often been at odds with the generally cooperative and accommodating stance of Southeast Asian governments towards the US in the post-2001 period. The final section argues that acceptance (albeit with different degrees of enthusiasm) of American primacy by regional governments is based on a convergence between the regime interests of ruling groups and American priorities. Perceptions of the US in foreign policy circles reflect this convergence of interest but do not conceive of it in narrowly self-interested terms. Instead, their perceptions of the US are supported by a set of beliefs and narratives that have acquired the status of expert knowledge within foreign policy circles. Such beliefs warrant further analysis as
essentially political and moral statements that reflect positional understandings of history and progress.
