“Flying Brothers: The Cold War & America’s Airpower Allies in Southeast Asia”
Major Daniel Jackson
USAF
While most Cold War histories of airpower in Southeast Asia focus on unilateral US efforts in Indochina, America’s treaty allies in the region—Taiwan, Thailand, and the Philippines—not only enabled and participated in those efforts but also became sites of conflict themselves. This ongoing research for the speaker’s dissertation attempts to recenter the experiences of America’s allies in examining some of the most important effects of US policy on allied air forces—issues of sovereignty, security, and political stability. Moreover, it seeks to explain the complications of intercultural relationships and the partial failure of US security objectives. Though the United States claimed to emerge from the Cold War victorious, by the end of this global conflict, its power, prestige, and presence had suffered serious damage in Southeast Asia.
Major Daniel Jackson spent 11 years as a pilot in Air Force Special Operations Command and served all over the globe, including two deployments as an aviation advisor specializing in Southeast Asia. He has done extensive research on US airpower in East and Southeast Asia and has published three books on World War II in China. The Air Force Historical Foundation selected his most recent book, Fallen Tigers: The Fate of America’s Missing Airmen in China during World War II, as the recipient of its 2022 National Book Prize. The research for Fallen Tigers included field research in China and Thailand and resulted in a US government team locating two crash sites of US warplanes that had been missing in action since 1944. Daniel is interested in the intersection of air warfare and cross-cultural interactions between the US and East and Southeast Asia.
This event is free and open to the public. A recording will be available on the CSEAS YouTube channel following the event.