This paper deliberates about the nature of the Cold War in Southeast Asia by looking into the civil war in Portuguese Timor in 1975, which was then described by foreign observers as the “Cuba of Southeast Asia,” and in which opposing sides described themselves as “communists/leftists” and “anti-communists.” It traces how Timorese and Southeast Asian people imagined what were actually multiple local conflicts as parts of one global conflict, and how, because of such imaginings, they ended up inviting international reactions and interventions into the region. This chapter proposes the terms “the Cold War”—crossing out “Cold” but leaving it there—for clarifying the local and actual (hot) nature of warfare on the ground, while, at the same time, highlighting the un-erasable traces of the global conflict within local conflicts. As such, the paper intends to offer a theoretical standpoint for viewing Southeast Asia’s Cold War as a simulacrum constructed by local leaders and peoples’ simulation of the global confrontation between the capitalist and communist camps.
Day 3 – (May 29, Sat HK/SG time)
Panel 8: Cold War Traumas
11am-12:30pm HK/SG / 4-5:30am BST / 5-6:30am CEST / 11pm-12:30am EDT / 8pm-9:30pm PDT