Organizer: Center for Foreign Policy Studies, Seton Hall University and NYSEAN
Type/Location: In person / South Orange
Description:
In the aftermath of the Second Indochina War (Vietnam War) in 1975, Join NYSEAN and the Center for Foreign Policy Studies, Seton Hall University, for a discussion into the economic fabric of the non-Communist global market were met with enthusiasm by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and rekindled hopes of regional integration for the first time since the arrival of the Cold War in the region in the 1950s. But this nascent regionalism was interrupted by the outbreak of the Third Indochina War following a series of misunderstandings and miscalculations between Vietnam, China, and the Khmer Rouge leadership, which led to a renewed political rupture between ASEAN and the Indochinese states. Yet, the process of resolving the Cambodian crisis itself united the ASEAN countries and solidified the norms and institutions that would later allow for the revival of a more robust regional integration after the war. This project highlights the role of epistemic communities in helping the Indochinese states redefine their national interests and policies in a period of crisis, resulting in ASEAN’s rapid post-Cold War enlargement and transformation into the indispensable host of the most important Asia-Pacific security and economic fora. This research is situated at the intersection between the International Relations debate on the nature and driving force of regionalism and the historical debates surrounding the Cambodian Genocide and the Third Indochina War.
Vu Minh Hoang is a Faculty Member in History and Vietnam Studies at Fulbright University Vietnam, and a Visiting Research Associate at the Weatherhead East Asian Studies Institute and Adjunct Professor in History at Columbia University. He is a diplomatic historian of 20th century Vietnam and the Asia-Pacific, studying national and regional security, economics, interests and identity formation, and genocide.
His time at Columbia will be primarily dedicated to completing a book manuscript based on this PhD dissertation at Cornell University, which argued that the Third Indochina War is the key formative event of the present-day regional order in Southeast Asia, most notably by elevating the principle of non-interference above the protection of human rights. He will also be teaching classes on Modern Southeast Asian History and History of Asian Communism, helping carry forward Columbia-FUV collaborative projects including the Henry Luce Foundation-funded Digital Humanities Project, and working on several conference presentations and articles.