The Limits of Empire

I would like to congratulate Robert McMahon for being the only author thus far that we have read that I have not accepted what he was trying to establish in his introduction. Most works I am willing to buy into what is needed to consider a book successful or not; this book turned me off at page xi. The offending passage stated “the strategic fears that proved instrumental to the creation of America’s Cold War empire in Southeast Asia seem, in retrospect, to have been grossly exaggerated” (xi). McMahon goes on to say that these fears were resting on “illusory, worst-case scenarios about impending strategic and economic disasters than on careful calculations of the “real” interests and threats at stake.”

How does McMahon or even the leaders during the Cold War know what was going to happen in Southeast Asia? There was no guarantee that the outcome that occurred would have been the same had the action not been taken by each successive president to intervene in Southeast Asia. While he does come up with valid sources, like on page 184 with the quote from the assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, which do say that U.S. interest in SEA was “overstated,” but that does not mean that all government officials believed that. If one looks more closely at the source, it is from a hearing before the "special subcommittee on investigations of the house committee on international relations" in 1976 (253). What else is a government official from the Ford administration, who has allowed Vietnam to go Communist, going to say at a subcommittee hearing for the Democratically controlled congress?

Overall, things like these points make me skeptical, but I could be interpreting this point very wrong so please feel free to disagree.