Policing Uncertainty: Intelligence,Security and Risk

Today, the idea of risk is ubiquitous, a presence in debates across a range of fields, from investment banking to politics, from anthropology and sociology to health, environmental and cultural studies. While this ubiquity attests to the importance of the concept it is at the same time a potential weakness in that it injects the term into a wide range of debates in each of which its meaning can be subject to different emphases and meanings. The notion of risk is of obvious importance to security intelligence, but here too its ubiquity has had an impact on specificity of meaning. While the term is widely used in both the profession and study of intelligence, its usage can carry different meanings and it can be used interchangeably with linked terms. Given the importance of the idea of risk to intelligence, clarity of meaning is essential. This article sets out to consider the meaning of, and relationship between, uncertainty and risk in a security intelligence context, propose a framework on which a common understanding can be built, and illustrate how this can help in thinking about the nature and role of security intelligence.     

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.     

Seeds of an Asian European Union? Regionalism as a hedge against the United States on telecommunications technology in Japan and Germany

Abstract

Germany and Japan have both used regionalism as a hedge against American power in the area of telecommunications, but this strategy has taken very different forms. Germany's regionalism is within the European Union. Since 2002 Japan has developed an ad hoc technology alliance in telecommunications with China and South Korea. Both the European Union and Northeast Asian countries have used industrial policy to promote telecommunications technology and both regional organizations have expressed concern about American dominance in telecommunications. Both Germany and Japan have looked to their lower income neighboring countries for investment opportunities in telecommunications, but each has taken a different approach. Japanese telecommunications firms have not been very successful in investing in other countries or in exporting Japan's very sophisticated and expensive telecommunications equipment. The Japanese government and business organizations have taken the lead in trying to promote joint research and pursue development of joint standards. Germany's Deutsche Telekom has been much more active than Japanese firms in international investment. The European Union differs from the Northeast Asian group in that it has pressed Germany to keep its domestic telecommunications market open and to make Deutsche Telekom compete internationally. It is surprising that China, Japan and South Korea have reached out to each other to cooperate on technology and standards development despite longstanding mutual antagonisms. The Northeast Asian agreements on telecommunications recall the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) of 1952, an initiative that also sought to link economically states divided by deep resentments. Like the ECSC, the current Asian initiative targets some of the most important economic sectors of the day. However, strong market pressures tend to undermine cooperation, and it is uncertain how much impact the agreements on telecommunications will really have.     

The problems of economic adjustment

Unkept Promises, Unclear Consequences: US Economic Policy and the Japanese Response, edited by Ryuzo Sato and John A. Rizzo. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1988. viii+200 pp. £25, ISBN 0-521-35201-0.Beyond Trade Friction; Japan-US Economic Relations, edited by Ryuzo Sato and Julianne Nelson. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1989. xiii+201 pp. £25. ISBN 0-521-36467-1.Global Adjustment and the Future of Asian-Pacific Economy, edited by Miyohei Shinohara and Fu-chen Lo. Institute of Developing Economies, Tokyo, and Asian and Pacific Development Centre, Kuala Lumpur, 1989. xxi+585 pp. $80. ISBN 4-258-54009-9.Asia-Pacific Economies: Promises and Challenges (part B), edited by M. Dutta. JAI Press, London, 1987. xxi+308 pp. £95 (for two volume set). ISBN 0-89232-647-6.Politics and Productivity: How Japan's development strategy works, edited by Chalmers Johnson, Laura D'Andrea Tyson and John Zysman. Ballinger Publishing Company, Cambridge, Ma., 1989. xxi+332 pp. $34.95. ISBN 0-88730-350-1.Between MITI and the Market: Japanese Industrial Policy for High Technology, by Daniel Okimoto. Stanford University Press, Stanford, 1989. xv + 267 pp. $26.50. ISBN 0-8047-1298-0.     

Awakening the Sleeping Giant: Interstitial Transformation and the Cooperative Movement

In the past few decades, states across several disparate geographical contexts have adopted policies and initiatives aimed at institutionalizing their relationship with groups constituted as “their” diasporas. These practices, which range from creating new ministries for diaspora affairs and reserving seats in the national legislature to granting dual citizenship and allowing members of the diaspora to participate in domestic elections, seem to have a very specific purpose. They are aimed at integrating diasporas as part of a larger “global” nation that is connected to, and has claims on the institutional structure of the home state. This article argues that the best way to understand this phenomenon, conceptualized here as the “domestic abroad”, is to see it as the product of two simultaneous, ongoing processes: the diasporic imagining of the nation, and the neoliberal restructuring of the state. Furthermore, to make sense of the nature and relationship of these processes, we need to focus on the development of capitalist social relations on both global and national scales. This, it is contended, can be best done through the development of a theoretical framework based on the historical materialist concept of hegemony.     

Metropolitan-scale Planning in Neo-liberal Times: Financial and Political Obstacles to Urban Form Transition

Just as rising concern about its environmental, economic, social, health and quality of life downsides generates loud calls for a departure from the dispersed car-oriented urban model, conditions for such a transition have become more uncertain. The intended urban shift is hampered by dissonance between the generation of metropolitan-scale planning visions and the anti-interventionist characteristics of the current neo-liberal age. The paper identifies impeding effects of neo-liberalism—notably, public funding hardship and political dynamics—on attempts at carrying out transformative metropolitan planning. The difficulty in preventing major failures in the operation of cities under neo-liberalism is reflective of its inability, at a broader societal scale, to regulate the economy and thus avert economic and social crises. The paper draws its empirical substance from the gap in Toronto, Canada, between metropolitan planning visions and the urban development reality.     

Gunfight at the Not OK Corral: Reply to ‘High Noon for Microfinance’

Duvendack and Palmer-Jones claim to replicate Chemin (2008) and Pitt and Khandker (1998) but obtain different results and hence challenge the two papers' estimates of the impact of microfinance in Bangladesh. This response details a number of reasons to demonstrate that Duvendack and Palmer-Jones is not a replication so their results provide no evidence about the validity of either of the earlier papers or on the effectiveness of microfinance.     

The post-cold war predicament: A conclusion

The 1997 Asian economic crisis discredited the international discussion about ‘Asian values’ in Pacific Asia, replacing it with a globalised ‘good governance’ discourse. The financial breakdown undermined claims by Asian autocrats that government should be based on authoritarian ‘Asian values’, not ‘Western democracy’. Yet, seven years later, authoritarian regimes in the region are flourishing while the new democracies flounder. Why have dictatorships, not democracies, prospered politically since the Asian financial crisis? Pacific Asia began as an ‘imagined community’ of developmental dictatorships, making authoritarian development the ‘original position’ against which democratic governance is judged. While the demise of ‘Asian values’ contributed to the fall of the Suharto regime in Indonesia, it did less harm to authoritarian regimes in more economically developed Malaysia and Singapore. The US‐led anti‐terror coalition provided several authoritarian rulers in Pacific Asia with welcome support from the West, while allowing them to weaken internal opposition. The new democracies, by contrast, faced international pressures to combat terrorism, often arousing local protest. Finally, middle class‐based reformist movements have risked destabilising the region's new democracies in the name of good governance.     

Globalization,education, and the politics of identity in the Asia-Pacific

Abstract

This essay examines a resurgent interest in “regionness” as a response to globalization, and it looks at how governments and citizens have participated in the discourse on forging a new Asia-Pacific community that has developed over the past fifteen years. Part one distinguishes between “regionalization” and “regionalism” as competing visions for the construction of a future Asia-Pacific community. Regionalization, the dominant paradigm during the postcolonial period, centers on interstate forums dominated by officially recognized political and economic elites who seek interstate cooperation in order to protect state interests, state power, and national identity from foreign as well as domestic challenges. Regionalism, as an alternative paradigm, envisions the creation of transnational networks inclusive of nonofficial actors, whose identification with a particular state and set of national interests does not preclude the creation of a regional identity (or identities) and support for regional interests. Part two considers the challenges that regionalism poses for the nation-state and its leadership. It does so by highlighting the pressure for reform that globalization has brought to bear upon one particular institution that theorists of nationalism have long identified as central to the perpetuation of national identity, national unity, and state authority: schooling. Part three assesses the current prospects for such reforms by briefly examining recent educational developments in Japan, Australia, Malaysia, and Singapore.