Between a hegemon and a hard place: the ‘war on terror’ and Southeast Asian–US relations

Abstract

The ‘global war on terrorism’ has imposed new challenges for Southeast Asian governments in their dealings with the United States. Regimes in Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines have found themselves caught between a need to work with the most powerful state in the international system and a variety of domestic pressures. The result has been a mix of cooperation and constraint in bilateral ties. While this might be expected to provide an incentive for revitalized multilateral cooperation, both ASEAN states and Washington continue to prefer working ­bilaterally on security issues. This article considers ties between three ASEAN members and Washington against the backdrop of theoretical expectations about security alignment. Despite unprecedented American power and an increasingly assertive US role in the region, Southeast Asian states have not balanced against nor fully bandwagoned with the United States. Nor have they reacted like ‘civilizations’. Rather, their responses to the war on terror have been pragmatic and driven primarily, although not exclusively, by domestic considerations. The article argues for the importance of integrating state–society relations into analyses of US–ASEAN security ties.