SEATO and Burma's Civil War: The Failure of Cold War Appeal in the mid-1950s

Abstract

Amongst the many reasons cited for the failure of the South East Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), SEATO's meager representation in the Southeast Asian region itself finds itself pretty high on most lists. The question of why it failed to develop a substantial regional base of support is more complicated. In Burma's case, scholars point to factors as varied from the peaceful inclinations of Buddhism to the potential threat of a PRC invasion if membership in the organization was taken up. This paper explores an intellectual approach to the Cold War that reflected domestic constraints and conditioned the responses of the Nu regime to recruitment strategies by the Eisenhower administration.