The international context of the Cold War in East Asia: processes of security and economic co-operation between alliances

Abstract

The study aims to clarify how the Cold War in East Asia was formulated in an international context. The Cold War originally was a result of the tension between the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics due to differing political ideologies and economic systems. Although actual military conflicts between the two superpowers never erupted during the Cold War era, several confrontations between nations from different blocs occurred after the end of the Second World War. However, since then, regional circumstances were disparate, and uncertainties prevailed in each nation or region. In East Asia, the majority of nations split and, in certain cases, conflicts developed into a civil war or a full-scale war. Many nations were divided into two blocs and were built on collective security cooperation and simultaneously fought colonialism. The paper is built on a previous research rather than a novel observation. However, it examines the reality of the Cold War in East Asia by focusing on facts at four levels, namely, divided nations due to a civil or fullscale war, competition in building collective security cooperation between communist and capitalist blocs, nuclear arms race, and an examination of differences in economic aspects between Europe and East Asia and among countries in East Asia.