International Relations Of Southeast Asia Research Articles

ASEAN´s Relations with Major External Powers

The international relations of Southeast Asia has traditionally been determined by external powers. During the Cold War until the conclusion of the Second Indochina War in 1975, the United States had overwhelming influence on the ASEAN states. Between 1975 and 1989, ASEAN achieved greater accommodation with China to address Thai security concerns. Since 1989, ASEAN has been relatively free of external power entanglements. Preliminary evidence from the past indicates a generally favourable appraisal of the United States and Japan and a more cautious attitude towards China. ASEAN's new latitude in managing its own affairs is complicated by its membership expansion and internal disagreements. However, ASEAN's manifest desire is that the major external powers will provide a favourable regional environment for peace and development. Introduction External powers have traditionally determined the contours and context of international relations in Southeast Asia. The earliest influences, until the sixteenth century, derived from China and India. However, beginning from the sixteenth century and especially after the eighteenth century, European colonial powers began to actively extend their empires into Southeast Asia. The only country that retained its sovereign status in the region was Thailand. [1] European influence on Southeast Asian international relations evaporated rapidly after World War II and the Japanese Occupation of the region from 1942 to 1945. The pressures of domestic independence movements, military engagements, and the crystallization of states as the primary political units in world affairs led to the breakup of colonial empires. The process began with the Philippines in 1946 as part of the first wave of decolonization and ended with the Geneva Accords of 1954 which partitioned Vietnam into two halves. [2] The second wave brought independence to the Malay Archipelago -- the Federation of Malaya in 1957, which was expanded to the Federation of Malaysia in 1963. Singapore separated from Malaysia in 1965, and Brunei was the last state to become independent in 1984. The process of decolonization dovetailed with the onset of the Cold War. Accordingly, Southeast Asia operated as a sub-system of broader global structural arrangements for most of the period from the 1960s to the 1980s. [3] Given the overwhelming influence of the United States, the Soviet Union, and China during this period, the region's destiny was understandably intertwined with and determined by these and, to some extent, other extra-regional powers. In this regard, both Southeast Asia as a region and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) as an organization have been relatively free of overwhelming external influences for only the last decade. This article examines the relationship between ASEAN and three major extra-regional powers -- China, Japan, and the United States. Two caveats are necessary at the outset. The first of these is that whereas Southeast Asia is a region comprising ten sovereign states, ASEAN is only an organization in which all ten states have collective membership. In this regard, the region is, to all intents and purposes, much larger, both philosophically and in terms of its major attributes, than ASEAN. Accordingly, the two units should not be used interchangeably. In this regard, ASEAN is but one of many international fora available to regional countries to create and utilize opportunities, ensure greater collaboration and calibration of policies, achieve and enhance familiarity and accommodation, and serve as a vehicle for extra-regional representations. The second caveat pertains to the treatment of ASEAN as a unitary corporate entity. It should be noted that insofar as collaboration and co-ordination is concerned, there are often significant differences or disagreements between the policy positions of individual member countries. Collective pronouncements are therefore often premised on the lowest common denominator principle, given ASEAN's consensual decision-making model. …

Philippines - Filipino Politics: Development and Decay. By David Wurfel. Foreword by George McT. Kahin. Politics and International Relations of Southeast Asia. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1988. Pp. xiv, 361. Suggested Readings, Index.

Philippines - Filipino Politics: Development and Decay. By David Wurfel. Foreword by George McT. Kahin. Politics and International Relations of Southeast Asia. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1988. Pp. xiv, 361. Suggested Readings, Index.

The Road to Becoming a Regional Leader: Japanese Attempts in Southeast Asia, 1975-1980

THE END OF THE VIETNAM WAR in April 1975 brought about many changes in the international relations of Southeast Asia: rapidly declining American commitments, a growing Soviet influence and the polarization of Indochina and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Many studies have been undertaken to account for these changes, yet the growing Japanese role in the region has not generated any substantial analysis.' One of the reasons for the limited scrutiny of Japan's Southeast Asian policy is the view that Tokyo has never changed its traditional economic policy and that its reactions to the changing regional environment are being induced by external pressures.2 Also, the consistency of Japan's low-profile economic diplomacy has led many scholars to believe that Japan, without adequate military power, does not stand a chance of playing a significant role in Southeast Asia. This article intends to present a different perspective, focusing on how Japanese policy-makers have come to define Japan's new role in a turbulent region. In fact, Japan has gone through a significant experiment in playing a political role in Southeast Asia between 1975 and 1980. This period dates from the fall of Saigon to the Vietnamese invasion of Kampuchea in December 1978, which resulted in the termination of Tokyo's pursuit of a political role by 1980. The most pronounced statement of Japan's new role was the so-called Fukuda Doctrine announced by Prime Minister Takeo Fukuda on August 18, 1977. In reference to changes in Japanese foreign policy, American Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke had this to say in 1980:

Characteristics of International Relations of Southeast Asia -A hypothesis-

Characteristics of International Relations of Southeast Asia -A hypothesis-

Malaysia and Its Impact on the International Relations of Southeast Asia

The international relations of Southeast Asia in modern times have involved primarily either the relations between powers external to the region or between these powers and the governments of such Southeast Asian countries as were then independent. So it was that the British fought three wars in the nineteenth century with Burma, while Thai foreign policy sixty and seventy years ago concentrated on playing off Englishman against Frenchman in order to preserve a precariously sustained independence. Although they established self-governing nation-states in the years which followed the Second World War, the political elites of Southeast Asia did not immediately succeed in altering the pattern of externally oriented international relations that had so long characterized the region. In 1954, for example, the conference that brought an end to the eight-year FrancoVietnamese war included no representatives from any Southeast Asian state other than those which comprised formerly French Indochina. That same year eight nations, meeting in Manila in the Philippines, signed a collective defense treaty that inaugurated the Southeast Asian Treaty Organization (SEATO), but only two of the signatories, Thailand and the host country, were of Southeast Asia. The international relations of Southeast Asia in 1961 seemed to be little different from the situation that had prevailed in 1954-the year 1961 being singled out because it was in May of that year that Malayan Premier Tengku Abdul Rahman made the unexpected suggestion that Singapore, which wanted union with Malaya, might be able to attain this end within a federal framework that also included the British governed or protected northern Borneo territories of Sarawak, Sabah, and Brunei. The most threatening problem in Southeast Asia in 1961 was the war in Laos, which had brought SEATO to the brink of intervention and which was to be the subject of a second Geneva Conference in which a larger number of Southeast Asian states would participate. The other chief trouble spot, the war in Vietnam, mounting even in 1961, also seemed to fit the previous pattern of extraregional forces fighting over, and in, parts of Southeast Asia-the Americans encouraging and aiding the so-called South Vietnamese and the Chinese and the Russians supporting the allegedly sharply differentiated North Vietnamese. But was the old pattern as much intact as this line of description seems to suggest? Was the war in Vietnam primarily, let alone exclusively, part of a world-wide conspiracy to extend the embrace of communism over as

Malaysia and Its Impact on the International Relations of Southeast Asia

Malaysia and Its Impact on the International Relations of Southeast Asia