SE Asian Security

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Juris Doctor

Southeast Asia includes the ten countries of Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. It has a combined population of over 650 million. What is striking about the region is its diversity. It is home to a huge range of government types, from a theocratic sultanate (Brunei), to communist dictatorships (Vietnam and Laos) to autocracies (Thailand and Cambodia), to fragile democracies (Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Myanmar). Indonesia is the third largest democracy in the world, and the largest Muslim-majority democracy. Southeast Asia includes every major faith group: Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, Therevada and Mahayana Buddhism. It has the full range of economic systems, and has huge disparities of wealth that include amongst the wealthiest countries in the world (Singapore) and some of the poorest (Laos and Cambodia). But the region is economically thriving and part of the global supply chain. Collectively, ASEAN is America's third largest trading partner. We see the diversity in the region's security environment, as well. Several Southeast Asian states have longstanding territorial disputes with their neighbors and irredentist claims over colonial-drawn borders. The region includes a host of secessionist insurgencies, including ongoing ones in Indonesia, Myanmar, the Philippines and Thailand. The longest running communist insurgency in the world. While Southeast Asia has not been at the core of Salafist terrorism since 9/11, both Al Qaeda and Islamic State affiliates in the region remain a persistent threat. Mid-2017 saw IS militants siege the Philippine city of Marawi, while members of the Abu Sayyaf continue to engage in terrorism and kidnapping for ransom, including in Malaysia. Perhaps the most immediate threat to regional security is the territorial dispute over the South China Sea, where China has constructed six man made islands and militarized them. The US has carried out regular freedom of navigation operations to challenge China's excessive maritime claims, but those have been insufficient. China has effectively divided and neutralized ASEAN. And there remain a host of human security issues including political violence, the politicization of security forces, attacks on ethnic minorities, including wholesale ethnic cleansing, threats posed by transnational criminal syndicates. Arguably the greatest security threat to the region comes from climate change which is already causing changes immigration patterns and impacting food security. Southeast Asian states are keen to avoid being forced to choose between the United States and China, as competition between the two intensifies. Mosts states do see the United States as a benign superpower that has created the conditions for their growth and prosperity. But the United States is unable to compete with China on the economic front. China is the largest trading partner of every country in Southeast Asia, and its Belt and Road Initiative and new economic institutions carry weight in a region that is hungry for infrastructure development. More importantly the United States, under the current administration, looks to be a very inconsistent and unreliable ally and partner, unwilling to provide collective goods. While this course will not focus on how great power competition between the United States and China will play out, it will be a leitmotif. The goal of this course is to give Southeast Asian states agency, and focus on their regional security concerns.