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Author: Pavin Chachavalpongpun
Publisher: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies
Published: 2011-12-16
Total Pages: 156
ISBN-13: 9814311553
DOWNLOAD EBOOK"This book is the result of a workshop of the ASEAN Studies Centre (ASC) held in July 2010"--P. ix.
Author: David Shambaugh
Publisher: ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute
Published: 2018-07-18
Total Pages: 36
ISBN-13: 9814818763
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe United States maintains a comprehensive and robust presence throughout Southeast Asia that has grown dramatically since the 1980s. It includes the commercial, security, education and diplomatic, and other domains. America’s strengths and contributions to the region lie particularly in both hard and soft power, but the U.S. economic footprint is both broad and deep. However, this presence is not very well appreciated or reported by regional media — whereas China’s presence and influence is pervasive. Most Southeast Asian governments are often reluctant to recognize or publicize the U.S. presence or contributions to regional security, stability, and growth. America’s diplomatic engagement of ASEAN and the region has rightly been criticized for its episodic engagement, and Washington should substantially elevate Southeast Asia within its broader Asian and Indo-Pacific diplomatic priorities. Southeast Asia was made the highest priority ever for Washington during the Obama administration. While receding somewhat under the Trump administration, the region remains an important priority — but Washington must devote sustained attention to match the region’s importance to American national interests. As U.S.–China competition escalates, Southeast Asia will become an epicentre of this competition. Southeast Asian states and societies may not realize the significance of the escalating U.S.–China competition for them, as most countries are internally preoccupied and buy into ASEAN’s rhetoric of inclusive engagement of external powers. Southeast Asian countries are likely to become increasing objects of this competition, and it will be become increasingly difficult for them to ignore it. Meanwhile, Southeast Asian states and ASEAN must elevate their own emphasis and engagement with the United States. The U.S. brings many more strengths and benefits than does China and is a far more comprehensive actor in the region. In particular, it would be helpful if ASEAN and its member states would more publicly recognize the contributions and importance of the United States.
Author: Peter A. Petri
Publisher:
Published: 2014-02-21
Total Pages: 75
ISBN-13: 9780866382465
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is strategically significant because of its size, dynamism, and role in the Asian economic and security architectures. This paper examines how ASEAN seeks to strengthen these assets through "centrality" in intraregional and external policy decisions. It recommends a two-speed approach toward centrality in order to maximize regional incomes and benefit all member economies: first, selective engagement by ASEAN members in productive external partnerships and, second, vigorous policies to share gains across the region. This strategy has solid underpinnings in the Kemp-Wan theorem on trade agreements. It would warrant, for example, a Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement with incomplete ASEAN membership, complemented with policies to extend gains across the region. The United States could support this framework by pursuing deep relations with some ASEAN members, while broadly assisting the region's development.
Author: Donald K Emmerson
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Published: 2020-08-04
Total Pages: 313
ISBN-13: 1931368597
DOWNLOAD EBOOKWill the nations of Southeast Asia maintain their strategic autonomy, or are they destined to become a subservient periphery of China? This book’s expert authors address this pressing question in multiple contexts. What clues to the future lie in the modern history of Sino-Southeast Asian relations? How economically dependent on China has the region already become? What do Southeast Asians think of China? Does Beijing view the region in proprietary terms as its own backyard? How has the relative absence, distance, and indifference of the United States affected the balance of influence between the US and China in Southeast Asia? The book also explores China’s moves and Southeast Asia’s responses to them. Does China’s Maritime Silk Road through Southeast Asia herald a Pax Sinica across the region? How should China’s expansionary acts in the South China Sea be understood? How have Southeast Asian states such as Vietnam and the Philippines responded? How does Singapore’s China strategy compare with Indonesia’s? How relevant is the Association of Southeast Asian Nations? To what extent has China tried to persuade the “overseas Chinese” in Southeast Asia to identify with “'the motherland” and support its aims? How are China’s deep involvements in Cambodia and Laos affecting the economies and policies of those countries? “This rich collection,” writes renowned author-journalist Nayan Chanda, answers these and other questions while offering “fresh insights” and “new information and analyses” to explain Southeast Asia’s relations with China.
Author: Cheng Guan Ang
Publisher: National University of Singapore Press
Published: 2019
Total Pages: 0
ISBN-13: 9789813250789
DOWNLOAD EBOOK"International politics in Southeast Asia since end of the Cold War in 1990 can be understood within the frames of order and an emerging regionalism embodied in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). But order and regionalism are now under siege, with a new global strategic rebalancing under way. The region is now forced to contemplate new risks, even the emergence of new sorts of cold war, rivalry and conflict. Ang Cheng Guan, author of Southeast Asia's Cold War, writes here in the mode of contemporary history, presenting a complete, analytically informed narrative that covers the region, highlighting change, continuity and context. Crucial as a tool to make sense of the dynamics of the region, this account of Southeast Asia's international relations will also be of immediate relevance to those in China, the USA and elsewhere who engage with the region, with its young, dynamic population, and its strategic position across the world's key choke-points of trade. This is essential reading for decision-makers who wish to understand our current situation, looking back to the end of the Cold War thirty years ago, and forward to an uncertain future."--Page 4 de la couverture.
Author: Wen-Qing Ngoei
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Published: 2019-05-15
Total Pages: 178
ISBN-13: 1501716417
DOWNLOAD EBOOKArc of Containment recasts the history of American empire in Southeast and East Asia from World War II through the end of American intervention in Vietnam. Setting aside the classic story of anxiety about falling dominoes, Wen-Qing Ngoei articulates a new regional history premised on strong security and sure containment guaranteed by Anglo-American cooperation. Ngoei argues that anticommunist nationalism in Southeast Asia intersected with preexisting local antipathy toward China and the Chinese diaspora to usher the region from European-dominated colonialism to US hegemony. Central to this revisionary strategic assessment is the place of British power and the effects of direct neocolonial military might and less overt cultural influences based on decades of colonial rule, as well as the considerable influence of Southeast Asian actors upon Anglo-American imperial strategy throughout the post-war period. Arc of Containment demonstrates that American failure in Vietnam had less long-term consequences than widely believed because British pro-West nationalism had been firmly entrenched twenty-plus years earlier. In effect, Ngoei argues, the Cold War in Southeast Asia was but one violent chapter in the continuous history of western imperialism in the region in the twentieth century.
Author: John Lee
Publisher: ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute
Published: 2018-06-26
Total Pages: 42
ISBN-13: 9814818631
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIn recent times, the United States, Japan and Australia have all promoted extremely similar visions of a Free and Open Indo-Pacific as the central organizing concept to guide their efforts in the region. The concept is essentially a reaffirmation of the security and economic rules-based order which was cobbled together after the Second World War — especially as it relates to freedom of the regional and global commons such as sea, air and cyberspace, and the way nations conduct economic relations. Be that as it may, the Free and Open Indo-Pacific is an updated vision of collective action to defend, strengthen and advance that order. It signals a greater acceptance by the two regional allies of the U.S. of their security burden and takes into account the realities of China’s rise and the relative decline in dominance of the U.S. There are a number of noteworthy “updates” which include: • A deliberate move from “Asia-Pacific” to “Indo-Pacific” as the primary geo-strategic and geo-economic area of interest and responsibility for the three countries; • An increased emphasis on creating and sustaining a “balance of power” in favour of the rules-based order; and • A greater emphasis on the liberal aspects of a preferred order including the importance of rule-of-law and limitations on how governments wield their power, and greater separation of political and strategic objectives on one hand with commercial activities on the other. While operationalization of the Free and Open Indo-Pacific concept is at an early stage, trilateral strategic cooperation between the U.S., Japan and Australia is significant and quickly deepening. On the other hand, and with respect to misalignment and inconsistency, the economic policies of the Trump administration are causing considerable frustration. The three countries have also been strong supporters for the revival of the Quadrilateral grouping which also includes India. However, and notwithstanding some apprehension in Southeast Asia, about where the “Quad” is heading, the latter grouping is only still a fledgling one and its shape and development will depend on the extent to which the four countries become concerned about China’s activities in both Oceans. Finally, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and its member states continue to delay any definitive response to the Free and Open Indo-Pacific concept. Although its principles are attractive to many ASEAN member states, long-held conceptions of ASEAN centrality and its meaning gives the organization apparent reason for hesitation. The reasons include fears of diminished centrality and relevance, and reluctance to endorse a more confrontational mindset being adopted by the U.S. and its allies — including the revival of the Quadrilateral grouping with India — with respect to China. The reality is that while ASEAN and major member states are focused primarily on the risks of action, there are considerable risks of inaction and hesitation. The current era will either enhance or lessen the relevance of ASEAN in the eyes of these three countries in the years ahead depending on how the organisation and its key member states respond. Indeed, the paper argues that ASEAN is more likely to be left behind by strategic events and developments if it remains passive, and that the ball is in ASEAN’s court in terms of the future of its regional “centrality”.
Author: Murray Hiebert
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Published: 2020-08-15
Total Pages: 608
ISBN-13: 1442281405
DOWNLOAD EBOOKChina’s rise and stepped-up involvement in Southeast Asia have prompted a blend of anticipation and unease among its smaller neighbors. The stunning growth of China has yanked up the region’s economies, but its militarization of the South China Sea and dam building on the Mekong River has nations wary about Beijing’s outsized ambitions. Southeast Asians long felt relatively secure, relying on the United States as a security hedge, but that confidence began to slip after the Trump administration launched a trade war with China and questioned the usefulness of traditional alliances. This compelling book provides a snapshot of ten countries in Southeast Asia by exploring their diverse experiences with China and how this impacts their perceptions of Beijing’s actions and its long-term political, economic, military, and “soft power” goals in the region.
Author: Rosemary Foot
Publisher: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies
Published: 2008
Total Pages: 72
ISBN-13: 9812308660
DOWNLOAD EBOOKWhat has it meant to be labeled the "second-front" in the "global war on terror"? Have Southeast Asian states accepted that the primary threat their countries face is Al-Qaeda-inspired terrorist violence, or are other security concerns deemed more pressing? This study investigates threat perceptions in four Southeast Asian countries: Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Singapore. It probes the extent to which their security concerns align with those of Washington, together with their preferred means for dealing with the phenomenon of terrorist violence. The central findings are that, in all four countries, the U.S. counterterrorist security agenda has shaped security perceptions as well as security behavior, though to a greater extent in the Philippines and Singapore than in Indonesia and Malaysia. However, the most important effect in Southeast Asia of this change in the U.S. security priority after 9/11 has been sociopolitical in nature, even where an individual government might not perceive the threat from terrorism to be the major security challenge that it faces. In each of the four states, involvement in the U.S. decision to give overwhelming attention to counterterrorist action has sharpened the focus on long-standing security concerns, especially those connected with the security of the political regime or unity of society. In sum, these countries' domestic concerns interact in complex and subtle ways with their security relationship with the United States, as well as affecting the methods that the individual governments have used to deal with actual or potential terrorist violence inside their countries.
Author: Tarun Chhabra
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
Published: 2021-06-22
Total Pages: 430
ISBN-13: 0815739176
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe global implications of China's rise as a global actor In 2005, a senior official in the George W. Bush administration expressed the hope that China would emerge as a “responsible stakeholder” on the world stage. A dozen years later, the Trump administration dramatically shifted course, instead calling China a “strategic competitor” whose actions routinely threaten U.S. interests. Both assessments reflected an underlying truth: China is no longer just a “rising” power. It has emerged as a truly global actor, both economically and militarily. Every day its actions affect nearly every region and every major issue, from climate change to trade, from conflict in troubled lands to competition over rules that will govern the uses of emerging technologies. To better address the implications of China's new status, both for American policy and for the broader international order, Brookings scholars conducted research over the past two years, culminating in a project: Global China: Assessing China's Growing Role in the World. The project is intended to furnish policy makers and the public with hard facts and deep insights for understanding China's regional and global ambitions. The initiative draws not only on Brookings's deep bench of China and East Asia experts, but also on the tremendous breadth of the institution's security, strategy, regional studies, technological, and economic development experts. Areas of focus include the evolution of China's domestic institutions; great power relations; the emergence of critical technologies; Asian security; China's influence in key regions beyond Asia; and China's impact on global governance and norms. Global China: Assessing China's Growing Role in the World provides the most current, broad-scope, and fact-based assessment of the implications of China's rise for the United States and the rest of the world.
