The U.S. Psychological Warfare Policy With Respect To Southeast Asia In The Early Cold War Period

After the Second World War, the cold war began and the United States and the SovietUnion turned from cooperation to confrontation. With the establishment of People’s Republicof China and the eruption of the Korean War, Southeast Asia has more importance position inU.S. global strategy than before. In order to counter the Communist Party of China and toprevent Southeast Asian countries from falling into the forces of communism, the UnitedStates decided to promulgate an official document on its psychological warfare towardsSoutheast Asia, which is PSB D-23. It is the purpose of this article to explore the UnitedStates psychological warfare policy towards Southeast Asian countries in the early Cold Warby focusing on PSB D-23.This article is divided into three parts. The first part is that the implementation ofpsychological warfare policy background which United States with respect to Southeast Asiancountries, before the PSB D-23document, U.S. Policy in Southeast Asia is to contain Chinaas its primary goal, and recognize that Southeast Asia is not give up the strategic focus areas,to ensure that countries in Southeast Asia from communism expansion.The second part is to discourse of the formulation and implementation of national policyin Southeast Asia with PSB D-23. The United States in Southeast Asia’s overallpsychological warfare objectives and specific psychological warfare objectives for SoutheastAsian countries, as well as the implementation of the psychological warfare. And OperationsCoordinating Board on the inheritance and development of psychological warfare projects inSoutheast Asia.The third part is to discusses the evaluation of the U.S. psychological warfare policy inSoutheast Asia on the basis of the paper, the analysis of short-term impact and long-termimpact of the implementation of psychological warfare, and with Thailand, Indonesia andIndonesia, for example all the major countries and regions war effect comparative analysis,and finally to make the overall evaluation of the psychological warfare policy.The View of this article is that psychological warfare policy to Southeast Asian countriescan not use a simple success or failure of the review, different policies obtained differentresults. But in general, the psychological warfare of the United States’ national particularity isindeed successful. Under the campaign in the United States, the major countries in SoutheastAsia such as Thailand, the Philippines and Indonesia has become American ally in SoutheastAsia. They all became encirclements to resist communist expansion in Southeast Asia. Also in Southeast Asia today, the U.S. influence is still very strong, and the concrete influence of thepsychological warfare of the Cold War policies also need further study.