Southeast Asia: regional security post-September 11

Abstract

Since the end of the Cold War by 1991, the Asia-Pacific Region began to focus more on geoeconomics rather than geopolitics on the assumption that the critical issues of the Cold War, based on ideological rivalry between Capitalism/Democracy and Communism/Socialism had been resolved by the collapse of the Soviet Union and empire. The principal Asia-Pacific powers-United States, China, Japan, and Russia, along with an emerging Asian Power, India-seemed prepared to achieve a modus vivendi regarding their interests and involvement in the region in the context of the emerging post-Cold war balance of power. Apart from conventional security threats such as the Korean Peninsula, issues of economic development and cooperation, as well as promoting economic regionalism seemed to gain priority until the onset of the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis, which exposed certain inherent weaknesses in Asian micro and macro economic management. In the midst of serious attempts at financial restructuring, economic reform, and economic recovery in the past 4 years since the July 1997 episode, a major, unprecedented terrorist attack in the United States on 11 th September, 2001, has apparently altered strategic priorities in the Asia-Pacific region including Southeast Asia. In the post-September 11 scenario, all ten Southeast Asian states, which are now members of ASEAN as well as the the ASEAN Regional Forum(ARF) have been obliged to strongly condemn global terror, and to formulate specific measures to enhance regional cooperation to contain this global as well as regional threat. This paper will examine and evaluate the post-September 11 regional security scenario in terms of (a) emerging new strategic perceptions and policies of regional and global powers alike, especially the United States, and (b) strategies and policies adopted to counter international terrorism in Southeast Asia, and to strengthen regional stability and security . Finally, the paper will consider the major strategic challenges ahead for ASEAN and Asia-Pacific security, as well as the prospects for regional cooperation in Pacific Asia in the New Millennium.