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The Clandestine War in Asia, 1945-65: Western Intelligence, Propaganda. and Special Operations. Edited by Richard J. Aldrich, Gary D. Rawnsley, and Ming-Yeh T. Rawnsley. Portland, Ore.: Frank Cass, 2000. ISBN 0-7146-8096-6. Photographs. Figures. Notes. Index. Pp. 298. $24.50.
In their wide-ranging introduction to these essays (which first appeared in a special issue of Intelligence and National Security 14 [Winter 1999]), the editors suggest that Asia was the "hottest" theater in a global Cold War, and remind us that of the five occasions when the United States gave serious consideration to the use of nuclear weapons, four of them arose over conflicts in Asia. On the other hand, they suggest that for the United States, Asia was deemed to be of lesser importance than Europe and the Middle East, which were regarded as the "flashpoints" in the 1950s, even though the combination in Asia of nationalist and anticolonialist movements, the emergence of postcolonial neutral and nonaligned positions, and the on-going Sino-Soviet rivalry produced an unusually volatile situation in which the tensions of the Cold War assumed new proportions. The essays that follow deal with intelligence aspects of Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Burma, the Philippines, Cambodia, the Malayan Emergency, and the Indonesian "Confrontation." Each of them...