We already had a Southeast Asia communist problem that had our full attention. It was called Vietnam or has the author of the article forgotten?
That’s the damn thing, Vietnam was an utterly pointless war to fight after 1965, the Communist threat to SE Asia had been all but eliminated after the Indonesian army defeated them.
The reason the US fought in Vietnam was the “domino theory”, ie if one SE Asia country fell they would all do so. And of course the biggest domino was Indonesia, it didn’t matter if Vietnam, Laos or Cambodia fell to the Communists (as they eventually did anyway) what was important was stopping the massive nation of Indonesia falling.
With the wipe out of the Communists in Indonesia (and the earlier defeat by the Brits in Malaya) there was no goddamned reason to fight in Vietnam, the threat had been neutralised, but instead the US fought on for another disastrous six years fighting a war that was utterly pointless.
Suharto had already saved SE Asia.