Advancing the Regional Commons in the New East Asia


Book Description

Advancing the Regional Commons in the New East Asia highlights a number of interests which members of ASEAN and Plus Three countries collectively recognize. This set of common interests includes not only economic development but also social development. Written by nationals in their respective countries, the different chapters in this volume highlights the different foundations for such common interests and these reflect the different constructive ways in which ASEAN and Plus Three countries come to see a multi-strand cooperative partnership. The task of advancing the regional commons will involve efforts to recognise and nurture ASEAN’s and Plus Three’s common interests in terms of broad social development, managing regional security issues, the development of a regional infrastructure, and ensuring collective progress for all member countries. ASEAN becomes a community in 2015 and the idea of embracing, protecting, sustaining and advancing the regional commons become a vital process. Concurrently, APT has also realized that its contribution to the achieving goal of community and promoting regional commons is absolutely critical for both ASEAN and the Plus Three countries. Academics will find in this volume a clear analytical treatment of issues which regional groupings are currently facing and this can provide the basis for a comparative analysis. This volume will also be of interest to students and the general public looking for a systematic introduction to the successful implementation of cooperative ventures and also an assessment of the new collaborative energies which shape this dynamic region.




Regional Community Building in East Asia


Book Description

This volume is a collection of papers written by nationals or former nationals of the respective country in ASEAN and Northeast Asia. Unlike other works written by scholars outside ASEAN or East Asia, it offers an insider’s point of view of the 10 ASEAN states, China, Japan and South Korea on regional community building. While a nationalist perspective may permeate throughout the study, it is also clear that pursuing regional cooperation is considered to be important by the respective author, denoting the non-exclusivity between nationalism and regionalism and the mutual reinforcement of the two. Each author of this volume has made a deliberate effort to introduce and survey the developmental challenges and experiences of his or her country from a historical perspective. All authors, without exception, have emphasized the importance and advantages in staying with ASEAN or linking up with ASEAN by China, Japan and South Korea in political-security, economic and socio-cultural terms. Their papers also reveal that the self-help and self-strengthening mechanism emphasized by the ASEAN Plus Three process will take time to bear fruits. In the meantime, it seems that bilateral interactions and cooperation between ASEAN and Northeast Asian states remain to be more dominant as shown in this study. One can argue that bilateral interactions are the building block of multilateralism interactions. To be sure, there is a deliberate effort in this study to highlight "unity in diversity" in East Asia in general and ASEAN in particular.




Holistic Development And Security For Esszone


Book Description

Holistic Development And Security For Esszone Editors : Diana Peters, Jennifer Chan Kim Lian, Gusni Saat, Ebentin Estim, Martin A. Sebastian. This book is an attempt to contextualise the issues occurring in this part of the region which is not only solely constrained by security in the traditional sense, but also to ensure the livelihoods of citizens are being protected. The four pillars for a holistic approach identified in this book are based on the inputs by stakeholders in four workshops organised in throughout 2016, under the same theme. It is realised that the challenges to the security of Eastern Sabah has many faces – piracy, illicit trafficking, and kidnappings – and these challenges are evolving. As such, an all-encompassing solution is needed.




Human Security in Southeast Asia


Book Description

There is a growing interest in human security in Southeast Asia. This book firstly explores the theoretical and conceptual basis of human security, before focusing on the region itself. It shows how human security has been taken up as a central part of security policy in individual states in Southeast Asia, as well as in the regional security policy within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). The book discusses domestic challenges for human security including the insurgencies in southern Thailand, the Philippines and Indonesia. Transnational security issues such as terrorism, drugs, human trafficking and the situation in Burma are explored by the author, and the ‘ASEAN’ way of contrasting the values and approaches of Southeast Asian countries with those in the West is assessed. By focusing on the ongoing changes and efforts to achieve human security in Southeast Asia, this book contributes to theoretical debates on human security as well as regional studies on Southeast Asia.




Security and Southeast Asia


Book Description

From internal oppression in Burma to interstate conflict in the South China Sea, the people of Southeast Asia face a range of threats. This book identifies and explains the security challenges -- both traditional and nontraditional -- confronting the region. Collins addresses the full spectrum of security issues, discussing the impact of ethnic tensions and competing political ideologies, the evolving role of ASEAN, and Southeast Asia's interactions with key external actors (China, Japan, and the United States). The final section of the book explores how the region's security issues are reflected in two current cases: the South China Sea dispute and the war on terrorism.




Japan's Peace-Building Diplomacy in Asia


Book Description

This book examines Japan’s foreign policy and its emerging identity as an important participant in conflict prevention and peacebuilding in Southeast and South Asia, demonstrating that Japan has increasingly sought a positive and active political role commensurate with its economic pre-eminence.




Human Security in Southeast Asia


Book Description

There is a growing interest in human security in Southeast Asia. This book firstly explores the theoretical and conceptual basis of human security, before focusing on the region itself. It shows how human security has been taken up as a central part of security policy in individual states in Southeast Asia, as well as in the regional security policy within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). The book discusses domestic challenges for human security including the insurgencies in southern Thailand, the Philippines and Indonesia. Transnational security issues such as terrorism, drugs, human trafficking and the situation in Burma are explored by the author, and the ‘ASEAN’ way of contrasting the values and approaches of Southeast Asian countries with those in the West is assessed. By focusing on the ongoing changes and efforts to achieve human security in Southeast Asia, this book contributes to theoretical debates on human security as well as regional studies on Southeast Asia.




Human Insecurities in Southeast Asia


Book Description

This book is a collection of work by scholars currently pursuing research on human security and insecurities in Southeast Asia. It deals with a set of ‘insecurities’ that is not readily understood or measurable. As such, it conceptually locates the threats and impediments to ‘human security’ within relationships of risk, uncertainty, safety and trust. At the same time, it presents a wide variety of investigations and approaches from both localized and regional perspectives. By focusing on the human and relational dimensions of insecurities in Southeast Asia it highlights the ways in which vulnerable and precarious circumstances (human insecurities) are part of daily life for large numbers of people in Southeast Asia and are mainly beyond their immediate control. Many of the situations people experience in Southeast Asia represent the real outcomes of a range of largely unacknowledged socio-cultural-economic transformations interlinked by local, national, regional and global forces, factors and interests. Woven from experience and observations of life at various sites in Southeast Asia, the contributions in this volume give an internal and critical perspective to a complex and manifold issue. They draw attention to a variety of the less-than-obvious threats to human security and show how perplexing those threats can be. All of which underscores the significance of multidisciplinary approaches in rethinking and responding to the complex array of conditioning factors and interests underlying human insecurities in Southeast Asia.




Philippine Security in the Age of Terror


Book Description

As the twelfth most populous nation, the Philippines diverse religious and ethnic population makes it an ideal example of the changing tenet of what is deemed national security post 9/11. Issues previously considered social or public are now viewed as security issues. Food production is now analyzed in the context of food security and environmenta