Ang Cheng Guan is presently Associate Dean, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS). His previous positions include Deputy Director of Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies (IDSS); Head of Graduate Studies (RSIS); Head of Studies (IDSS) and Head (Humanities and Social Studies Education, National Institute of Education).
He specialises in the international history of contemporary Asia, with a focus on Southeast Asia. He is the author of Vietnamese Communist Relations with China and the Second Indo-China Conflict, 1956-1962 (Jefferson: MacFarland, 1997, reprinted in paperback, 2012), The Vietnam War from the Other Side: The Vietnamese Communists’ Perspective (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2002, paperback 2006), its sequel, Ending the Vietnam War: The Vietnamese Communists’ Perspective (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004, paperback 2006); Southeast Asia and the Vietnam War (London: Routledge, 2010, hardback, paperback and e-book); Lee Kuan Yew’s Strategic Thought (London: Routledge, 2013, hardback, softback and e-book) and Singapore, ASEAN and the Cambodia Conflict, 1979-1991 (Singapore: NUS Press, 2013). He also co-edited Perspectives on the Security of Singapore (Singapore: World Scientific and London: Imperial College Press, 2015), which includes a chapter on “Singapore’s Conception of Security”. He has published in edited volumes as well as in journals including Asian Survey, Journal of Contemporary History, War and Society, War in History, Australian Journal of International Affairs, Security Dialogue, Southeast Asia Research, Cold War History, Asian Security, Asian Studies Review and the Journal of Southeast Asian Studies.
He was a Gerald R. Ford Foundation Research Grant Award recipient (Fall 2005), Fulbright Singapore Researcher award recipient (2006-2007) and a Woodrow Wilson Public Policy Scholar (2006-2007). He is also a recipient of the Public Administration Medal (Bronze) and the National Institute of Education (NIE) Excellence in Teaching Commendation (2013). He was a member of the Resource Panel, Government Parliamentary Committee for Defence & Foreign Affairs (2002-2006).
His more recent publications include Southeast Asia’s Cold War: An Interpretive History (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2018) and its sequel, Southeast Asia after the Cold War: A Contemporary History (Singapore: NUS Press, 2019). The latter has been translated into Chinese as 東南亞的當代新秩序: 後冷戰時代的東南亞國際關係史 (Taipei: 八旗文化, 2023); The Southeast Asia Treaty Organisation (London: Routledge, 2022); and a pair of books, Reassessing Lee Kuan Yew’s Strategic Thought (London: Routledge 2023) and Singapore’s Grand Strategy (Singapore: NUS Press, 2023), which has been translated into Chinese as 新加坡大戰略―小國的政治、經濟和戰略之道 (Taipei: 八旗文化, 2025). His latest publications are The Third Indochina War; An International History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024) and The Five Power Defence Arrangements: From Origin to Fifty and Beyond (London: Routledge, 2025). He is working on two new books: In chronological order, The Second Indochina War: The Vietnamese Communists’ Perspective (which will also be published by Routledge) and another entitled Ordering Southeast Asia: A Contemporary International History, (which continues from his Southeast Asia after the Cold War: A Contemporary History).
