Southeast Asia: moving beyond the construction of a mascent security community?

Southeast Asia: moving beyond the construction of a mascent security community?

This study applies Deutsch’s security community framework to the states of Southeast Asia in order to assess whether or not, as at September 2002, there exist dependable expectations of peaceful change. The study has three primary goals. The first is to develop the framework so it may better reflect the realities of interstate and communal relations in Southeast Asia. The second is to assess whether or not Southeast Asia has in fact moved beyond the construction of a nascent security community where there exists adequate empirical evidence to suggest a future sustainable course towards ‘dependable expectations of peaceful change’. The third seeks to analyse the potential for Southeast Asia, as a community of states, to evolve to the higher tiers of integration and be characterised as a mature security community, where disputes between states and state-elites will be resolved without recourse to violence. In investigating these tasks, the dissertation considers a broad range of issues, including (but not limited to): the multilateral security frameworks embracing the region; the impact of ethnic and religious tensions as well as non-traditional security issues (with a focus here on narcotics and piracy); and the impact of terrorism and the recent economic crisis on the normative behaviours and ideologies of state elites throughout the region. It is found that while a substantial degree of interaction, integration and cooperation has developed in Southeast Asia, these developments have been insufficient to alleviate a number of traditional security issues and tensions (such as border and territorial conflicts). Consequently, there exists only a transient sense of expectations of peaceful change throughout Southeast Asia and this level of integration is characterised by the dissertation to represent nothing more than the embryonic phase of a security community’s evolution.