Southeast Asian Security Challenges: America's Response? (2006)

Key Points Transnational and geopolitical challenges are shaping the security environment in Southeast Asia. Rapid economic change, actual and potential disease epidemics, and a growing sense of shared interest and grievance among the region's Islamic populations are among the region's main transnational concerns. In its most extreme form, Islamist sentiment has manifested itself in jihadist movements, including some with connections to al Qaeda. Geopolitically, China's rise poses a multifaceted strategic challenge to the region. For China, Southeast Asia is an arena of opportunity: geographically proximate, economically attractive, and historically subordinate with influential resident Chinese populations. Southeast Asia sits astride sea lanes that are rapidly becoming China's energy lifeline. Moreover, Chinese security analysts see Southeast Asia as the weak link in any U.S. effort to contain China. Following 20 years of rapid economic development, Southeast Asia in the early 1990s was an increasingly vibrant, cohesive, and self-confident region. Regional institutions, notably the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), reflected the growing sense of regional identity and shared purpose. The Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s produced a sudden adverse shift in the region's economic and political climate; undercut ASEAN; triggered political upheaval in Indonesia, the region's largest and most important country; and created openings for militant Muslim groups as the fabric of political and social authority weakened. These same forces generated something akin to a power vacuum and provided a strategic opening for China that Beijing has moved skillfully to exploit. After a long period of post-Vietnam inattention, America's security planners rediscovered Southeast Asia as a second front in the war on terror and built productive counterterrorism cooperation with most governments. The longstanding U.S. military (naval and air) presence continues to be seen as buttressing the region's stability and prosperity. What is missing is a comprehensive U.S. security strategy for the region that addresses the pervasive sense of Muslim grievance, which jihadists have exploited, and that takes seriously the Chinese strategic challenge in Southeast Asia. Regional Dynamism The security situation in Southeast Asia is remarkably complex, with multiple forces and trends emanating from within the region and impacting it from without. The forces at work fall into two broad categories. One involves globalized, transnational, and multinational factors, such as rapid economic change with profound implications for political stability; the sudden emergence of militant jihadist networks that have mounted violent attacks against the political and cultural status quo in much of the region; and transnational environmental and health issues typified by the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) epidemic and current concerns regarding avian flu. Second, the dramatic growth in Chinese power (economic, military, and diplomatic) confronts the region with a situation familiar to traditional geopolitics. Both Chinese policy and some regional responses (notably those of Singapore) reflect a sophisticated understanding of the nuances of classic realpolitik. An observer of Southeast Asia over the last three or four decades has to be struck by the sheer dynamism--the pace of change and transformation--that has characterized the region. Much of that dynamic has been economic. From roughly the mid-1960s through the mid-1990s, the core countries (Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia) were, along with South Korea and Taiwan, the fastest growing economies in the world. These were the Asian Tigers (less developed countries that had become newly industrialized countries). They were the subjects of a major World Bank study in 1993 entitled The Asian Miracle. The macroeconomic statistics were reflected in facts on the ground. …