Asian Security Issues


Book Description




Asian Security Reassessed


Book Description

This book traces changes in the concept of security in Asia from realist to cooperative, comprehensive, and human security approaches, and assesses a number of policy alternatives to management of both old and new security threats. It surveys not only orthodox security threats such as tensions between regional powers or armed ethnic antagonists but also new sources of anxiety such as resource scarcity, economic instability, irregular migration, community fragmentation, and international terrorism. Security policies of major powers such as China, Japan, and the United States, and the moderating roles of regional organizations such as ASEAN, ARF, SCO, and KEDO are evaluated in historical and contemporary perspectives. Contributors proffer policy-relevant insights where appropriate. The book concludes that traditional security approaches remain valid but need to be adapted to the new challenges, and offers suggestions for incorporating fresh Asian security perceptions into the agendas of policy-makers, analysts, and scholars.




Enduring and Emerging Issues in South Asian Security


Book Description

Analyzing regional challenges and their implications for U.S. foreign policy This book is an impressive overview of security and governance issues in South Asia and their implications for U.S. foreign policy in the region. The focus is on major enduring issues that include India-Pakistan relations, India-China relations, conventional forces, and nuclear weapons. The book's contributors also tackle a number of often underexplored issues, including democratic backsliding in India, authoritarian hardening in China, and the international ramifications of both. The impact of Pakistan's political culture on democracy, and the insurgency in Pakistan's Baluchistan province, along with examinations of the internal security challenges in Nepal, Bangladesh, and the Maldives provide lessons for other states on how to counterviolent extremism and insurgencies related to identity and marginalization. Anyone interested in South Asian security and U.S. policy toward the region will be rewarded with new insights on these topics, written by academics and analysts specializing in the issues. The chapter authors were close colleagues or advisees of long-time Brookings Institution senior fellow Stephen Philip Cohen. Cohen was the first American scholar to work on South Asian security studies. He largely defined the field, trained and mentored many of its leading analysts, and was himself its most experienced and insightful scholar-practitioner until his death in 2019. This book is dedicated to Cohen in recognition of his contributions to scholarship and policymaking on South Asia.




Asian Security Handbook


Book Description

Featuring 19 individual country profiles, this volume seeks to shed light on the key political and security factors, and geo-political trends in the Asia-Pacific region that bear monitoring and that will have greater significance in the post-Cold War environment.




Asian Security Practice


Book Description

Despite the end of the Cold War, security continues to be a critical concern of Asian states. Allocations of state revenues to the security sector continue to be substantial and have, in fact, increased in several countries. As Asian nations construct a new security architecture for the Asia-Pacific region, Asian security has received increased attention by the scholarly community. But most of that scholarship has focused on specific issues or selected countries. This book aims to lay the groundwork for a comprehensive, in-depth understanding of Asian security by investigating conceptions of security in sixteen Asian countries. The book undertakes an ethnographic, country-by-country study of how Asian states conceive of their security. For each country, it identifies and explains the security concerns and behavior of central decision makers, asking who or what is to be protected, against what potential threats, and how security policies have changed over time. This inside-out or bottom-up approach facilitates both identification of similarities and differences in the security thinking and practice of Asian countries and exploration of their consequences. The crucial insights into the dynamics of international security in the region provided by this approach can form the basis for further inquiry, including debates about the future of the region. The book is in three parts. Part I critically reviews and appraises the debate over defining security and provides a historical overview of international politics in Asia. Part II investigates security practices in sixteen Asian countries, the countries selected and grouped on the basis of security independence. Based on the findings of the country studies and drawing on other published works, Part III compares the national practices with a view to identifying and explaining key characteristics of Asian security practice and conceptualization on the basis of the Asian experiences.




Non-Traditional Security in Asia


Book Description

Non-Traditional Security in Asia examines the critical security challenges faced by states and societies in Asia including health, food, water, natural disasters, internal conflict, forced migration, energy, transnational crime, and cyber security. Through the development of a comprehensive analytical framework that establishes the key ingredients to policy evaluation, the editors draw on a wide variety of experts to collaborate in investigating these crucial issues. This inclusive framework ensures that all voices are heard including those oftentimes under-represented and marginalized in society to ensure that academic and policy debates are well informed about the often complex and nuanced nature of these non-traditional security challenges. Through an investigation into these specific non-traditional security threats, Non-Traditional Security in Asia documents and evaluates many of the most pressing challenges faced by Asia today. The authors analyse the ways in which particular issues are addressed by the many stakeholders involved in the policy-making process, both within governments and across societies. The question of how these challenges are addressed across and between the different levels of global governance highlights the strengths and weakness that are directly attributable to policy successes and failures. It is through this layered and comprehensive approach, together with an evaluation of the role of stakeholders, which binds together the chapter contributions to this collection. The book undertakes an issue-specific chapter study of how Asian states and societies address these non-traditional security concerns from environmental adaptation and mitigation measures to conflict resolution. For each issue area, it identifies and explains the concerns of various policy communities, identifying the motivations behind some of the key decisions made to affect change or stabilize the status quo. Essentially it questions not only what a security issue is but also for whom the issue is important and the interaction this has with policy outcomes. With a focus on regional and global institutions as well as national and local ones, this collection illustrates the variety of stakeholders involved in non-traditional security concerns, and reflects on their relative importance in the decision-making process. Through a systematic evaluation of these non-traditional security issues by employing a comprehensive analytical framework, critical appreciation of the dynamics of the policy-making process surrounding issues of crucial national, regional and international significance in Asia are made. As a result of sharing these insights, the contributors provide the tools as well as a selection of issue-specific stakeholders to illuminate the key but complex characteristics of non-traditional security in Asia.




Enduring and Emerging Issues in South Asian Security


Book Description

Analyzing regional challenges and their implications for U.S. foreign policy This book is an impressive overview of security and governance issues in South Asia and their implications for U.S. foreign policy in the region. The focus is on major enduring issues that include India-Pakistan relations, India-China relations, conventional forces, and nuclear weapons. The book's contributors also tackle a number of often underexplored issues, including democratic backsliding in India, authoritarian hardening in China, and the international ramifications of both. The impact of Pakistan's political culture on democracy, and the insurgency in Pakistan's Baluchistan province, along with examinations of the internal security challenges in Nepal, Bangladesh, and the Maldives provide lessons for other states on how to counterviolent extremism and insurgencies related to identity and marginalization. Anyone interested in South Asian security and U.S. policy toward the region will be rewarded with new insights on these topics, written by academics and analysts specializing in the issues. The chapter authors were close colleagues or advisees of long-time Brookings Institution senior fellow Stephen Philip Cohen. Cohen was the first American scholar to work on South Asian security studies. He largely defined the field, trained and mentored many of its leading analysts, and was himself its most experienced and insightful scholar-practitioner until his death in 2019. This book is dedicated to Cohen in recognition of his contributions to scholarship and policymaking on South Asia.




Studying Non-traditional Security in Asia


Book Description

The security challenges confronting Asia today go beyond the traditional dimensions of security and tend to be more diverse than what the region has ever known before. Issues like infectious diseases, trafficking in illegal drugs, irregular migration, environmental degradation, financial crises, and natural disasters are increasingly being treated as pressing concerns with serious security implications. Such concerns pose threats to the national sovereignty and territorial integrity of nation-states as well as to the welfare and security of their respective societies and individuals. Consisting of a collection of essays, this volume presents current trends and research directions in non-traditional security in Asia. It is structured around research projects undertaken by various research institutes in the region, showcasing their major findings and highlighting key implications for the field of non-traditional security studies.




The Routledge Handbook of Asian Security Studies


Book Description

The Handbook of Asian Security Studies provides a detailed exploration of security dynamics in the three distinct subregions that comprise Asia, and also bridges the study of these regions by exploring the geopolitical links between each of them. This Handbook is divided geographically into four main parts: Part I: Northeast Asia Part II: South Asia Part III: Southeast Asia Part IV: Cross Regional Issues Despite the richness and complexity of security issues in Asia, and the theoretical and conceptual debates these have spawned, there is no single volume that scholars can turn to for succinct, cogent and dispassionate analysis of these issues. The Handbook of Asian Security Studies fills this important gap in the literature, dealing with all major security issues in the area which range from unresolved territorial disputes (maritime and inland), irredentist claims and intra-state conflicts to transnational terrorist movements and nuclear rivalries. This volume contains essays by many leading scholars in the field and will be essential reading for all students of Asian security, Asian politics, and International Relations in general. Sumit Ganguly is a professor of Political Science and holds the Rabindranath Tagore Chair in Indian Cultures and Civilizations at Indiana University, Bloomington. He is the author, co-author, editor or co-editor of some 15 books on South Asian politics. He is also the founding editor of the only refereed, social science journal devoted to the study of contemporary India, The India Review and a founding editor of Asian Security. Andrew Scobell is Associate Professor of International Affairs and Director of the China Certificate Program at the Bush School of Government and Public Affairs at Texas A&M University located in College Station, Texas. He is co-editor of the journal Asian Security and has edited or co-edited 12 books on Asian security topics. Joseph Chinyong Liow is Associate Professor and Head of Research at the Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technical University, Singapore. He is co-editor of Order and Security in Southeast Asia (Routledge 2005) and author of The Politics of Indonesia-Malaysia Relations: One Kin, Two Nations (Routledge 2005).




Perspectives on South Asian Security


Book Description

This book is a collection of speeches and lectures delivered by political luminaries, practitioners and noted scholars on South Asian security at the Institute of South Asian Studies, National University of Singapore.It offers interesting insights on the emerging security dynamics of South Asia. The issues covered are highly topical and include analyses of the conflict in Afghanistan, counter-terrorism in Pakistan, conflict management in Kashmir, post-conflict restructuring in Nepal and militarization in Asia. Some of the chapters provide in-depth analyses of the regional power politics and competing foreign policy priorities, with particular emphasis on India, the major regional power. India's foreign policy and defense relations with Southeast Asia, China and Russia are covered in detail in individual chapters.The book brings together insights from experts who have served at the highest levels of government as well as scholars and experts with firsthand experience in the field. It highlights some of the significant security issues that have a vital bearing on the future of South Asia and will be of interest to policy makers, students and observers of the South Asian security scene.