COMMENT | Few parts of the world paid as high a cost during the Cold War as Southeast Asia. The superpower conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union divided the region into pro-and anti-communist camps, spawning five wars in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam over four decades.

Today, US-China competition is fuelling a so-called "new cold war" with familiar structural characteristics.

In fact, the Sino-American great-power confrontation is a continuation of an unfinished ideological struggle, this time pitting the US-led and Western-based alliance system against a China-centric...