AHC/PC/WI: United Southeast Asia Post-WWII

The challenge is to get Southeast Asia to become a united nation after WWII. Even if there are the right factors to foster growth and camaraderie will it be possible? How does this affect the Cold War and beyond?
 
The challenge is to get Southeast Asia to become a united nation after WWII. Even if there are the right factors to foster growth and camaraderie will it be possible? How does this affect the Cold War and beyond?

The US never gets involved in Vietnam, and a unified communist Vietnam conquers all its neighbours?
 
Post-1900, impossible. The region is insanely diverse, and even with these diverse groups forced into several nations, their borders follow the ones set by the colonial powers in delineating their colonies (and Thailand). Questions on a common currency, the capital and so on are going to seriously impede efforts to form a united SEA. Hell, ASEAN is already pretty much a debate club as it is.

Pre-1900, it would take immense brute force from one of the colonial powers to bring it under a single domain. Even then, it's incredibly tenuous.
 
^All of this, along with the plain fact that unlike Europe, none of ASEAN's member nations have any possible interest in a political or economic union with their neighbours whatsoever.

Maybe (and this is probably ASB), a worse decolonisation process leads to a Vietnam-dominated Communist bloc and Greater Indonesia also encompassing Malaysia and Singapore to its south.
 
By after World War II, can that mean after a victorious Japan unites them all under their 'co-prosperity' sphere? Otherwise this is impossible.
 
By after World War II, can that mean after a victorious Japan unites them all under their 'co-prosperity' sphere? Otherwise this is impossible.

That, in itself, is a daunting task. Beside, plastering the word 'Japan' over the entire region that doesn't exactly fulfill the requirement of the WI. :V
 
By after World War II, can that mean after a victorious Japan unites them all under their 'co-prosperity' sphere? Otherwise this is impossible.

It's more likely that the region unites against Japan, in a 'fuck all these colonizers' bloc. Even then, it'd be closer to NATO than the EU, let alone the USA. You have the Philippines with its half-Hispanized weirdness, the Malays to the south, and the Indochinese weirdness on the mainland.
 
Top