Book Review: 'The Cold War in East Asia 1945-1991'

Abstract

Based inter alia on use of hitherto unused archival materials, the book synthesizes influencing today’s politics developments in East Asia during the Cold War, focusing on the periods of 1945-56 (the beginning of the Cold War), 1956-73 (multipolarization), and 1973-91 (détente, the New Cold War, Gorbachev’s Perestroika) consisting of a scholarly introduction adding toward balancing of the US policies with regard to the SU, China, Japan, South Korea and North Korea, and on Southeast Asia, including Vietnam and the relationship between the Vietnam War and the East Asian Cold War (Hasegawa), and eleven thematic chapters written by historians on interrelations between the quadrangular powers, Seoul, and Pyongyang, mostly focusing on the SU policies and strategies toward the West and Asia through specific areas such as the Chinese Revolution, the Korean War, the Sino-Soviet conflict, the US-Japanese relations, the territorial dispute between the SU and Japan, the strategic triangle (Westad, Gaiduk, Jian, Lee, Shimotomai, Lüthi, Togo, Hasegawa, Brazinsky, Zubok, Radchenko).

Keywords: East Asia, Cold War, 1945-56 (the beginning of the Cold War), 1956-73 (multipolarization), 1973-91 (détente, the New Cold War, Gorbachev’s Perestroika)

JEL Classification: Z00, P51, N45, N00, K33, H77, H56, F42, F01, E00, B00. B30, B20, B25, A13