ASEAN

This second edition of Constructing a Security Community in Southeast Asia takes the excellent framework from Acharya's first edition and brings it up-to-date, looking at ASEAN's comprehensive and critical account of the evolution of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) norms and the viability of the ASEAN way of conflict management. Key issues in determining the future stability of the Southeast Asian and Asia Pacific region are covered, including: intra-regional relations and the effect of membership expansion the ASEAN Regional Forum and East Asian regionalism ASEAN's response to terrorism and other transnational challenges debates over ASEAN's non-interference doctrine the 'ASEAN Security Community' and the ASEAN Charter the impact of the rise of China and India and ASEAN's relations with the US and Japan. The new edition will continue to appeal to students and scholars of Asian security, international relations theory and Southeast Asian studies as well as policymakers and the media.

ASEAN's role as a security provider remains largely a matter of scholarly debate. Through the lens of the concept of regional security partnership, this book uncovers a more nuanced understanding of ASEAN capacity, highlighting both its merits and fragilities in coping with traditional and emerging security problems.

Security has long trumped democracy as a priority for ASEAN. But the brutal dictatorship in Burma/Myanmar, political pluralism in Indonesia, and the global growth of democratic norms have led some Southeast Asians to question ASEAN's habit of turning a blind eye to domestic abuses by member states. The concept of regional security, meanwhile, is being reoriented from military threats toward new dangers to health and the environment and from state security toward human security. In this book, experts grapple with key and controversial questions for Southeast Asia.

Member states of ASEAN have developed a distinctive approach to political and security co-operation, which builds on the principles of sovereign equality, non-intervention and non-interference, quiet diplomacy, mutual respect, and the principle of not involving ASEAN in mediating bilateral disputes among the membership. This book examines the origins of ASEAN's diplomatic and security culture and analyses how over time its key principles have been practiced and contested as ASEAN states have responded to regional conflicts as well as challenges posed by the major regional powers, ASEAN's enlargement, and the Asian financial crisis.