EASTASIAFORUM Quarterly   (Vol.14 No.4 October–December 2022)

Comprehensive regional security

From the Editors’ desk 

Southeast Asia has long understood that effective national security goes well beyond military preparedness to encompass a variety of ‘non-traditional’ security issues. This idea is at the heart of political cooperation within ASEAN and competes with traditional notions of regional security in East Asia. Japan’s sogo anzen hosho (comprehensive security) philosophy has also underpinned its plurilateral pursuit of non-military security objectives since the 1970s. This goal has driven Japan to champion multilateral trade liberalisation and institution-building, and the whole of Asia has been the beneficiary. This issue of East Asia Forum Quarterly explores the idea of comprehensive regional security—an approach that embraces economic, environmental and energy security as well as military interests, and considers how they are collectively secured within today’s economically interdependent and politically cooperative regional system. The vocabulary developed in the face of growing geopolitical tensions— decoupling, dual circulation, friend-shoring, ‘strategic’ supply chains, securitisation—suggests that the big powers are working towards their own notion of comprehensive security. But there is nothing comprehensive, or regional, about this. Indeed, it subordinates key national interests to a process of geopolitical competition that is, by its nature, a zero-sum game. Securitising the economic arenas which facilitated the mutually-beneficial, cooperativelyachieved growth of the past 70 years has unwelcome externalities for the rest of the world—at the expense of economic openness, growth and adaptable supply chains. Contributors in this issue recognise that comprehensive regional security can only be secured collectively: one country’s resilience to climate change, or access to free and well-served markets for energy and food doesn’t come at the expense of others’, for instance. They emphasise the ‘regional’ in comprehensive regional security for good reason. In East Asia multilateralism and international integration have a fighting chance against protectionism and hyper-nationalism. Asia’s homegrown multilateral platforms—including ASEAN’s Treaty of Amity and Cooperation, the Asian Regional Forum, the East Asian Summit and now RCEP—offer powerful instruments for integrating the security and economic domains within multilateral rule-making and cooperation. Our Asian Review section suggests one way through the North Korean roadblock and scores political progress on gender equity in Indonesia. 

Nicola Cole and Liam Gammon 

CONTENTS 

3 SHIRO ARMSTRONG Core element of security in Asia 

5 YOSE RIZAL DAMURI An agenda for regional economic and security cooperation 

8 M CHATIB BASRI Indonesia’s chance to lead as next ASEAN chair 

10 MELY CABALLERO-ANTHONY Securitising climate policy will keep the Indo-Pacific afloat 

13 ADAM TRIGGS & SAMUEL HARDWICK The false economy of supply chain resilience 

16 CHUNG-IN MOON ASIAN REVIEW: Fixing the deadlock in North Korean denuclearisation 

21 KATHRYN ROBINSON ASIAN REVIEW: Empowering women’s rights in Indonesia 

26 PAUL HEER Blind spots in Washington’s Indo-Pacific Strategy 

28 QINGGUO JIA Reconstructing China’s role in regional security 

30 TOMOHIKO SATAKE Revisiting Japan’s comprehensive security strategy 

32 IMAN PAMBAGYO RCEP benefits extend beyond economic cooperation 

34 MONTEK SINGH AHLUWALIA Climate change challenges Asia-Pacific security

The full publication can be found under:

https://press-files.anu.edu.au/downloads/press/n10684/pdf/book.pdf

Excerpts from CHUNG-IN MOON​, Chairman of the Sejong Institute are attached as file.