Cambodia's uncertain future

Japanese government interests in Southeast Asia continue to expand. Official speeches refer to the growth of a ‘community that acts together’, while institutional linkages have been strengthened with the creation of the ASEAN Plus Three process and by a proliferation of bilateral arrangements. These developing networks raise questions about Japan’s future orientation towards its wider region. This article assesses recent developments, by challenging some of the fundamental assumptions about Japan’s regional behaviour. First, it examines how a tendency to render mutually exclusive bilateral and multilateral forms of behaviour serves to obfuscate a focus on the fundamental processes of regional engagement. Second, this article delineates Japan’s changing orientation towards the region as part of a process of ‘complex regional multilateralism’, in which a range of often ad hoc engagements have resulted in a loose framework for interaction. In so doing, it suggests that Japan’s current policy-making approach towards Southeast Asia may be regarded as a continuation of policy that is, nevertheless, being buffeted by a range of – primarily regional – external influences. The resulting set of perceived strategies demonstrates not an either/or approach to regional engagement but, rather, shows how the Japanese government manages changing circumstances to carve out a new role for itself in Southeast Asia.     

ASEAN as the ‘regional conductor’: understanding ASEAN's role in Asia-Pacific order

This paper analyses ASEAN's prominence in regional order negotiation and management in Southeast Asia and the Asia-pacific through the lens of social role negotiation. It argues that ASEAN has negotiated legitimate social roles as the ‘primary manager’ in Southeast Asia and the ‘regional conductor’ of the Asia-Pacific order. It develops an English School-inspired role negotiation framework and applies it to three periods: 1954–1975 when ASEAN's ‘primary manager’ role emerged from negotiations with the USA; 1978–1991 when ASEAN's role was strengthened through negotiations with China during the Cambodian conflict; and 1991-present when ASEAN created and expanded the ‘regional conductor’ role. Negotiations during the Cold War established a division of labour where great powers provided security public goods but the great power function of diplomatic leadership was transferred to ASEAN. ASEAN's diplomatic leadership in Southeast Asia provided a foundation for creating its ‘regional conductor’ role after the Cold War. ASEAN's ability to sustain its roles depends on maintaining role bargains acceptable to the great powers, an increasingly difficult task due to great power rivalry in the South China Sea.     

The elusiveness of regional order: Leifer,the English school and Southeast Asia

Abstract

‘Regional order’ was Michael Leifer's yardstick of choice to assess the international relations of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Leifer's recurrent theme was how elusive, and at times how illusory, regional order was for Southeast Asia. The elusiveness of regional order is attributed to ASEAN's lack of a set of genuinely shared assumptions about their interrelationships with each other and external states. This article challenges Leifer's portrait of a Southeast Asia devoid of regional order. I argue that Leifer's notion of order is theoretically underdeveloped and methodologically imprecise, allowing the analyst to see disorder in every minor perturbation in the region. I propose replacing ‘regional order’ with ‘peace and stability’, the preferred terms of the discourse by ASEAN's policy elites. By the latter criteria, ASEAN and the Asia-Pacific, contrary to the skeptics, have made impressive progress in the last forty years.     

Democratization,regional integration,and human rights: the case of the ASEAN intergovernmental commission on human rights

Abstract

In the post‐Cold War era, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has attempted to maintain and enhance its institutional status in the Asia‐Pacific by increasing its membership and range of activities. ASEAN has tried to assume significant responsibilities for regional security and economic relations through initiatives like the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) and the ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA) and by demanding a major role in the Asia‐Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum. This paper critically evaluates ASEAN's attempts at institutional expansion. It argues that ASEAN lacks the political, economic and military resources necessary to play the dominant role that it envisions for itself within the Asia‐Pacific. Its attempts to increase its diplomatic weight by increasing its membership actually have the potential to undermine ASEAN's unity as well as its standing in the world community. The East Asian economic crisis is largely exacerbating ASEAN's inherent weaknesses. If ASEAN is to remain relevant in the twenty‐first century its members need to modify their expectations of the level of international influence that ASEAN can afford them. They must also use ASEAN to directly address issues of dispute between member states. There is little evidence that ASEAN's members are prepared to reform the organization in this way. Therefore, ASEAN is likely to lose its pre‐eminent regional status to other institutions, and may even fade into irrelevance, in the next century.     

India's security partnership with Singapore

Abstract

In recent years, India and Singapore have developed a strong bilateral security and economic partnership that has assumed a central position in India's strategic engagement in Southeast Asia. Having sought strategic engagement with India for many decades, Singapore has now successfully positioned itself as India's leading political partner and economic gateway to the region. At the same time, India and Singapore have actively pursued close defence ties, including frequent joint training and the assumption of an active maritime security role by India in Southeast Asia. The recent decision by India to allow the Singapore air force and army to operate long term training facilities on Indian territory represents a significant development in Indian strategic practice and may presage a more permanent Indian security presence in East Asia. This article will examine these developments and consider to what extent the emergent security relationship between India and Singapore should be seen as a desire to balance China's growing economic and political dominance of the region and to what extent it reflects a ‘natural’ strategic sphere for India stretching from Aden to Singapore and beyond into East Asia.     

War and other insecurities in East Asia: what the security studies field does and does not tell us

Abstract

Terrorism has become a challenge to which Southeast Asian studies need to respond. This article scrutinizes political and economic developments in regard to democracy and poverty in Southeast Asia, in particular the degree of change, and studies their influence on terrorism. The main question being asked here is whether external support for political and economic development could contribute to the Southeast Asian battle against terrorism. At the same time, this article seeks ways in which the international community, especially Europe, could support and participate in Southeast Asian efforts to address the root causes of terrorism. Finally, a global quantitative analysis of relevant factors is undertaken, and global conclusions are related to the developments and processes observed in Southeast Asia, especially in Indonesia. On the basis of the analysis, it can be established that some of the root causes of terrorism are indeed related to poverty and the lack of democracy. While it is clear that terrorist strategies to address these grievances by targeting innocent civilians are unacceptable, grievances related to poverty and the lack of democracy are perfectly legitimate. It seems that in order to inhibit individual terrorist motivations, democratization of political systems would do some good. However, the main economic and political grievances that are associated with the growth of terrorism are related to transnational communities. Thus, while Southeast Asian countries should continue to develop and democratize, they should also work together with the international community to democratize the international structures of governance.     

ASEAN’s inheritance: the regionalization of Southeast Asia, 1941–61

This article explores the establishment of Southeast Asia as a regional space in the international system before the advent of ASEAN. It challenges the traditional view that the region emerged from Japanese and Allied strategies and operations during the Second World War, focusing instead upon the important role played by academics in the creation of ‘Southeast Asian studies’ in the United States and Britain in the 1940s and 1950s. On a broader level, the article highlights the cyclical nature of the regionalization process. It suggests that once a region has been ‘created’, the repeated use of the regional idea by a variety of state and non-state actors fixes it in a broad cultural context, and opens the way for subsequent appropriation by regionalizers.     

Going out: China's food security from Southeast Asia

Abstract

China's new five-year plan recognised the looming insecurity in its agricultural sector. On the one hand, the country faces a diminishing arable land supply; on the other, a large population with rapidly increasing diets. Although large-scale trade and investment in this sector has been developing since the mid 1990s between China and a variety of African states, it is a relatively new addition to the more established China-Southeast Asian economic relationship. This article seeks to explore the impact that China's agricultural investments are having on two Southeast Asian countries – Indonesia and the Philippines – where there has been a marked increase in activities by Chinese firms in agricultural produce. The findings from these two case studies – and a series of smaller studies of the situation in other regional states – are used as a benchmark to clarify some of the consequences of China's agricultural investment from Southeast Asia for regional food security.     

The non-traditional security concept and the EU-ASEAN relationship against the backdrop of China's rise

The rise of China raises questions about international order and whether traditional power structures will be transformed peacefully or confrontationally. Actively engaged in trade and investment activities with its Southeast Asian neighbourhood, China has been exerting political influence on many Southeast Asian states, cleaving regional cohesion and raising levels of tensity in the region. This article presupposes that within so-called non-traditional security (NTS) areas, there is room for China and Southeast Asian countries to circumvent the political tensions, to some extent. It presumes that NTS issues facilitate greater interaction with/on China for Southeast Asian states, including enhanced European Union (EU)-Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) engagement on China. Recognising the increasing and rather underexplored importance of the NTS perspective on the official and scholarly levels, this article delves into the rhetoric of NTS from a European perspective with particular view towards the South China Sea issue to demonstrate the use and utility of the NTS concept in the EU-ASEAN context against the backdrop of China's rise.     

Dangerous dynamics: activists,militants and terrorists in Southeast Asia

This article critiques the view that Southeast Asia has emerged as a key theatre for terrorist activity. While accepting that al-Qaeda and the indigenous Southeast Asian group Jemaah Islamiyah have emerged as a potent threat to regional security, it interrogates the view that this renders Southeast Asia more dangerous than many other parts of the world. The article suggests that this exaggerated sense of threat rests largely on a failure to account for nuanced differences in the nature of Islamist politics in the region. As a small step towards redressing this problem the article outlines a typology of Islamist organizations. It also suggests that a person’s location within this typology is more than a function of religiosity but reflects instead relative degrees of social and political alienation.     

Southeast Asia in the study of international relations: The rise and decline of a region

Three features stand out from the literature on Southeast Asia's international relations, written over the last fifty years: the dominance of extra‐regional scholarship; an overwhelming emphasis on regional security, and a related preponderance of realist perspectives; and the appearance, consolidation, and ebbing of the perceived utility of Southeast Asia as a useful analytical region. During the 1990s, there has been a questioning of the realist assumptions which have underlain international relations writing on the region, and there has been increased emphasis on economic issues. Southeast Asians are making an increasingly important contribution to the study of their own region's international relations, though mainly in terms of policy‐oriented research. The most important recent development has been the questioning of Southeast Asia's usefulness as an analytical region, in view of the growing intensity of economic and security relations between Northeast and Southeast Asia.     

The missing jihad. Why have there been no jihadist civil wars in Southeast Asia?

Why has there been no jihadist civil war in Southeast Asia? Although there has been a global surge in armed conflicts where at least one side fights for self-proclaimed Islamist aspirations, the region of Southeast Asia stands out by not having experienced a single jihadist civil war after 1975. Yet, so far, there have been no systematic comparisons of the frequency and nature of the Islamist violence in Southeast Asia and the rest of the world. This study therefore contributes by exploring the empirical trajectories in the region and situating Southeast Asia to global developments, utilizing new and unique data on religiously defined armed conflicts 1975–2015. We find that whereas the number of people killed in Islamist violence has increased in the rest of the world, it has decreased in Southeast Asia. We argue that Southeast Asia has prevented outbreaks of jihadist civil wars, and contained and partially resolved ongoing Islamist conflicts before they have escalated, due to three interrelated factors: the lack of internationalization of Islamist conflicts in the region, the openness of political channels for voicing Islamist aspirations, and government repression. This article suggests insights from the region that can be valuable from a global perspective.     

Role conflict and the limits of state identity: the case of Indonesia in democracy promotion

This paper aims to analyse why Indonesia projects democracy as a state identity by taking on the role of democracy promoter? This paper argues that Indonesia's aspiring role as a democracy promoter is not a manifestation of a firm and coherent democratic political culture, which is more likely to be a permanent feature of states. Thus, rather than seeing it as firmly established state identity, instead, Indonesia's democratic identity should be seen as role conception articulated by foreign policy elites in its quest for international prestige. Its role as a democracy promoter has enabled Indonesia to enhance its other roles conceptions such as a regional leader in Southeast Asia as well as a bridge-builder at the global level. However, this paper further argues that Indonesia's role as a democracy promoter has also been hindered due to the inter-role conflicts arising from its enactment of multiple roles. As a result, Indonesia's enactment of the role as democracy promoter has relatively less impactful towards democratization in the region. To substantiate this argument, the paper examines Indonesia's strategies in promoting democracy and human rights in three case studies, namely Indonesia's role in mainstreaming human rights in ASEAN, Indonesia's democracy promotion through the Bali Democracy Forum, and Indonesia's engagement towards democratization in Myanmar.     

Taming the tigers? Reforming the security sector in Southeast Asia

Abstract

Despite global trends towards military reform characterized by processes of professionalization and democratization, militaries in Southeast Asia have continued to play prominent roles in domestic politics since 11 September. This suggests that wider patterns of global military reform have not had as great an impact on the control, capacity and cooperative functions of armed forces in Southeast Asia as they may have elsewhere. In order to explore why the security sector reform agenda has had so little impact in the region, we investigate recent patterns of civil–military relations in Southeast Asia by focusing on the experiences of four of the region's militaries: Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines and Indonesia. We argue that the security sector reform agenda is informed by a predominantly North American approach to civil–military relations based on a number of core assumptions that do not reflect Southeast Asian experiences. Hence, we ask whether the reform agenda itself could be modified to better suit the Southeast Asian context. We suggest that although the regional military sector has not reformed along a ‘Western’ path it is nonetheless possible to see other types of, and potential for, reform.     

The concept of flexible engagement and the practice of enhanced interaction: Intramural challenges to the ‘ASEAN way’

Abstract

This article examines the challenges to the diplomatic and security culture of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) as posed by Thailand's spurned proposal for ‘flexible engagement’ and the pursuit of ‘enhanced interaction’ by some ASEAN members in intramural relations. It asks whether these challenges should be understood as turning points in the way in which regional leaderships in Southeast Asia interact. The article argues that while the ‘ASEAN way’ is indeed changing, this change, at least for the moment, focuses mainly on extending the range of issues and contexts traditionally defined as internal affairs in which other ASEAN governments may now legitimately become involved. Considerations about ASEAN cohesion, regime security and regional influence do not suggest an imminent or complete abandonment of ASEAN's diplomatic and security culture. The likelihood that enhanced interaction will continue to be pursued by ASEAN leaderships should therefore not be seen to imply that principles such as quiet diplomacy or restraint have already become obsolete.     

Unpacking a Wicked Problem: Enablers/Impediments to Regional Engagement

A case study approach is applied to review Local Government Authorities (LGA) regional engagement in the Australian context. We address the question ‘What are the key LGA enablers/impediments to regional engagement?’ by applying Leydesdorff's (2000) proposition that triple helix type network systems exhibit patterns of complex behaviour if the interaction factors that trigger enablers are reflexively declared. The three strands of the LGA triple helix network system are institutions, industry and government. In this case study the LGA's overall management of its regional stakeholder relationships resulted in impediments that limit strong regional engagement. Importantly, the findings inform practitioners, policy‐makers and research audiences of the nature of impediments and, by inference, the nature of enablers in LGA triple helix network systems.     

Environment,security and regionalism in the Asia-Pacific: is environmental security a useful concept?

From the very beginning the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has been occupied with the task of finding common solutions to common security problems. To a large degree, one may say that security questions have been a driving force for continued regional integration in Southeast Asia. In the future questions of environmental security may be playing the same role. The states around the South China Sea are to a large degree interdependent when it comes to questions of the human environment. They are interdependent to the degree that if they fail to find common solutions to environmental problems they may end up in violent conflict against each other. In general, environmental interdependence is both a source of conflict and a potential for international integration. The direction of the development, i.e. whether it leads to conflict or not, is to a large degree a question of how the decision-makers perceive the situation. This paper addresses the usefulness of the concept ‘environmental security’ in relation to political perception of environmental interdependence in Southeast Asia. If the political actors address serious environmental problems as security matters they are more likely to put them at the top of the agenda and deal with them in satisfactory manners, i.e. to cooperate and find solutions that are acceptable to all parties involved.     

Chinese Diaspora as a Virtual Nation: Interactive Roles between Economic and Social Capital

This paper attempts to analyse how and in what ways the Chinese diaspora interacts with globalisation in Southeast Asia through their economic and social capital. It explores the theories of globalisation and contrasts them with the thematic changes of Southeast Asia studies, and it conceptualises the economic power, the geographical dispersal nature and the social networking of Chinese diaspora in order to understand how a virtual nation is being constructed. It then examines empirical studies of that economic power using the specific case of Indonesia; comparative studies of Chinese companies in Southeast Asian countries; and foreign direct investment in China from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. Finally, it surveys the building of the virtual community through ethnicity, languages, associations and Confucianism, from which social capital has been generated among the Chinese diaspora in Southeast Asia.     

Digital diasporas and international development: Afghan‐Americans and the reconstruction of Afghanistan

Digital diasporas, diasporas organised on the Internet, offer potential to contribute relevance, representativeness and responsiveness in meeting development needs. Following a brief overview of thorny dilemmas faced by the changing international development industry, the article discusses diasporas and their current role in international development, and examines the potential mobilisation and communication benefits afforded by the Internet. Three organisations of the Afghan‐American digital diaspora are described, representing a range of development activities and intentions. Two sets of propositions are presented: those for digital diasporas seeking to promote effective development contributions and those for actors in the traditional international development industry. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Norm diffusion and the limits to forestry governance reform in Southeast Asia's new democracies

Abstract

The return of the World Bank Group (WBG) to Burma after some 25 years’ absence, along with other international financial organizations, follows a series of extraordinary political reforms that have taken place in the country since 2010. Burma has made a transition from 50 years of authoritarian rule to what its leaders call ‘disciplined democracy’. This paper examines the likely consequences of the Bank's return for the forestry sector in Burma and the potential outcomes in forestry governance given the evolution of its development agenda over the past 25 years. While measures to address deforestation have been applied in Southeast Asia, the success of forestry governance reforms depends to a large extent on their endorsement and adoption by local power structures and political figures, as well as on the nature of the political regime itself. The record on forestry governance in Southeast Asia is particularly poor and international financial organizations continue to neglect the local political economy of deforestation. Comparatively, few studies have attempted to investigate the relationship between types of political regimes and rates of deforestation. The paper examines two other new democracies in Southeast Asia (Indonesia and Cambodia), and the impact that governance reforms have had on their deforestation trends and land use, in order to contextualize the potential impact of the WBG's return to Burma. In Southeast Asia, powerful vested interests continue to outweigh the support inside governments or civil society for the forestry governance norms promoted by international organizations. The cases of Indonesia, Cambodia and Burma illustrate that deep patrimonial interests operate within the region and that local politics cannot be ignored by international organizations designing policy reforms. The WBG should effectively engage wherever possible with the local communities and a broad range of civil society groups before developing further initiatives.