In 1964 Britain's defence presence in Malaysia and Singapore was the largest and most expensive component of the country's world-wide role. Yet within three and a half years the Wilson Government had announced that Britain would be withdrawing from its major Southeast Asian bases and abandoning any special military role 'East of Suez'. Drawing upon previously classified government records P.L. Pham examines and explains how the Wilson Government came to this
conclusion, one of the most significant decisions in the decline of British global power after the Second World War.

Substantially revising earlier accounts, Pham exposes the inner workings of government, the close but strained relations between the United Kingdom and the United States in the midst of Cold War tensions, and how politicians and policy makers managed the decline of British power, providing an in-depth and comprehensive study of British policy processes of the era.