Non-Traditional Security

This presentation captures the historical adaptation of medieval warriors’ methods for security and thwarts toward adversarial attacks on fortifications for protective areas. History can often be a good teacher for modern day designers for security protection because the evolution of human beings has not changed since the beginning of time. Applicable lessons are applied to all aspects of security to include physical, technical, personnel, information and operational security. The article provides examples of the original concept of access controls, vaulted areas, chemical warfare, and the origins of physical security.

""GLOBAL moves towards free trade over the past decade have ended in failure. The Doha Round is effectively dead.

As a result, world leaders have adapted. Free trade agreements are now procured piecemeal rather than in toto, regionally rather than globally.

From December 3 to 12 in Auckland, New Zealand, the Obama administration hopes to finalise by the end of next year just such a regional trade agreement: its much vaunted Trans-Pacific Partnership.

The 11-nation TPP is seen as an essential part of Obama's Asian pivot and crucial to expanding American exports and economic influence in the Asia Pacific.

But the TPP is running into sizeable competition.

At the recent Association of Southeast Asian Nations meeting in Cambodia, its 10 member states - along with Australia, China, Japan, India, South Korea, and New Zealand - unveiled what promises to be the world's largest-ever regional trade agreement, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership .""

"In December 2006, Indonesian Health Minister, Siti Fadilah Supari,
shocked the world when announcing her government would no longer be sharing
samples of the H5N1 avian flu virus, collected from Indonesian patients, with the
World Health Organization, at a time when global fears of a deadly influenza
pandemic were running high. For observers of Southeast Asian politics, the
decision reinforced the view of the region as made up of states determined to
protect their national sovereignty, at almost all costs. This established view of the
region, however, generally neglects the variable and selective manner in which
sovereignty has been invoked by Southeast Asian governments, or parts thereof,
and fails to identify the conditions shaping the deployment of sovereignty. In this
paper, it is argued that Siti’s action was designed to harness claims of sovereignty to
a domestic political struggle. It was a response to the growing fragmentation and, in
some cases, denationalisation of the governance apparatus dealing with public
health in Indonesia, along with the ‘securitisation’ of H5N1 internationally. The
examination of the virus-sharing dispute demonstrates that in Southeast Asia
sovereignty is not so much the ends of government action, but the means utilised by
government actors for advancing particular political goals."

This chapter investigates the security impacts of climate change in three Southeast Asian cross-border areas– the Greater Mekong Subregion, the Heart of Borneo and the Coral Triangle – through an examination of the ways in which climate change results in human insecurity and possibly social unrest, tension and conflict. The three cross-border areas are significant in that they host unique but threatened large-scale freshwater, terrestrial forest, coastal and marine ecosystems. In addition, they are home to more than 400 million people and provide important ecosystem goods and services to many countries in the region. This paper explores and evaluates regional agreements and actions in each of the three areas, with an emphasis on the mainstreaming of climate adaptation as well as mitigation in the development agenda. The analysis also points to the importance of reaching out to other actors beyond state and intergovernmental ones if adaptation and mitigation efforts were to succeed. There is a need to identify other actors, such as the business sector, local communities and the public, with the aim of getting them involved in these important issues.

The paper approaches the “vertical expansion of the concept of security” reconstructing the debate on the concept of security within the discipline of International Relations after the Cold War. Considering that security is an “essentially contested concept”, it offers a handful of comparisons between different conceptions, which provide different accounts of “broadening” security. Barry Buzan’s Securitization approach was the first to engage seriously the challenges of “broadening” security in IR. For its merits, however, Buzan’s communitarian ontology poses a problem to “broadening” security, as it reiterates the state as the gatekeeper of protection and as the authoritative site for defining existential threats. In this sense, in spite of all its overriding ambiguity, Human Security provides a better alternative for the “vertical expansion of the concept of security” than securitization. The paper, therefore, considers the respective contributions of securitization and human security to the debate on the vertical expansion of security under the light of the relationship between states and human beings.

The ten ASEAN members states have committed themselves to the establishment of a fully integrated ASEAN Community with political-security, economic and socio-cultural pillars. The community vision, set to be achieved by the end of 2015, is explicitly modeled on the European Union. But how far has ASEAN really progressed in implementing the goals of the "Roadmap for the ASEAN Community"? The current approach to monitoring regional integration, particularly in the economic field, is mainly driven by political motives, i.e. the need for national governments and ASEAN collectively to demonstrate substantial process towards the implementation of the community vision. Headlines such as “ASEAN 75% ready for 2015 economic integration” suggest impressive progress towards establishing the community but reports seldom provide robust analysis of what has been achieved. Nor do the media delve into the reasons for delays of, and the clearly existing political and economic limits to, community building. I will show that in reality little progress has been made. National sovereignty rules and recent developments - for examples intra-regional disagreement on how to handle the South China Sea disputes - demonstrate that ASEAN unity is a myth.

The basic goal of this paper is assessing, whether the Trans-Pacific Strategic Partnership  will increase the competitiveness of the Asia-Pacific region by creating a high-quality Free Trade Area, having in mind various obstacles characterized in the text. As President Barack Obama set a goal of concluding the negotiations of 9 parties till November 2011, there are doubts whether it’s possible to conclude negotiations of an FTA encompassing trade in goods and services, rules of origin, technical trade barriers, sanitary and phytosanitary measures, IPR, but also government procurement and competition policies in participating countries. The need for success may lead to looking for the solution acceptable for all the different parties, but of poor quality, basing on lowest common denominator.

""This short paper intends to (or attempts to) underline the social, economic and political
consequences of the policies undertaken by the Colombian government against the guerrillas. In
order to fully appreciate the dimension of this phenomenon, it is important to focus not only how
it has affected the combatant parties (the State and the guerrilla fighters) but rather its effects
onto the local population. It is therefore necessary to shift from a traditional concept of security
(realist, State security) to a more comprehensive one: Human Security. More specifically, the
current situation in Colombia has two main features that distinguishes it from other internal
conflicts around the world: its duration (nearly 50 years) and the fact that the government is a
democratic one, holding fair elections since the end of the dictatorship in 1958 and cannot be
defined as an authoritarian state.
In the first part I will define shortly what led to the appearance of the Human Security concept
and how it simultaneously is a better instrument to assess the level of security the population
enjoys and sets better security standards to strive for.
I will then present some phenomena that are plaguing the society due to the conflict: forced
displacement (and therefore displaced people), demobilised former paramilitary operatives and
the militarization of society. These are the main by-products of the current approach of the
Colombian political establishment to the issue.
In the concluding remarks I will attempt to assess whether this dynamic is likely to change in the
future or not.""

Le fait maritime a vu son importance s’accroître au cours de la dernière décennies. Dans un contexte d’expansion de la globalisation, 90% des échanges commerciaux mondiaux se font par voies maritimes. Zone d’échanges et de ressources, le domaine maritime voit de part le monde une plus grande considération de la part des acteurs politiques. L’Asie du Sud-est s’affirme aujourd’hui comme une région d’importance stratégique primordiale, par laquelle passe des routes maritimes essentielles. Si la Chine a su attirer un nombre croissant d’investissements étrangers, plusieurs nations du sud-est asiatique sont aujourd’hui en passe de devenir de nouveaux eldorados économiques (Vietnam, Malaisie et dans une moindre mesure Indonésie et Philippines).  Composée de détroits qui sont autant de points sensibles, mais aussi de vastes étendues maritimes, théâtres de disputes territoriales et d’activités plus ou moins licites. Face à un ensemble de risques et de menaces, les nations d’Asie du Sud-est ont entrepris de coopérer. Toutefois, cette volonté – pas toujours partagée avec le même enthousiasme par l’ensemble des acteurs – se retrouve confrontée à différents obstacles.

"This chapter analyses the water- food- energy nexus, mainly from the perspective of developing Asia. The important question that this chapter addresses is whether resource constraints will disrupt Asia’s growth, and adversely affect its stability, peace, harmony and prosperity in relation to realizing the Asian century. It also explores prospects for cooperation at the national, regional and sub- regional levels to utilize resources more effectively, as well as taking ‘Resource Centered Strategies (RCS)’ to overcome
constraints related to law, policy and financing. Considering the high significance of energy among these three resources, this chapter examines issues related to the energy sector more elaborately. Taking financing into consideration as the major constraint, it explores how domestic and international funds can best be used to ensure energy security in Asia. It examines the role that Asian regional institutions can play in addressing financial and policy constraints at national, sub- regional and regional
levels. Using a sustainable enterprise economy perspective, the chapter explores what can be done at national and regional levels to promote ecoinnovation and looks at what regional cooperative framework should be explored to promote green growth in Asia."

This is a presentation given to the Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacific (CSCAP) Water Security Meeting. It summarises the paper "Dams, Power and Security" that I have also uploaded on this site. It is not in depth, but is designed to get a quick insight into some of the major security issues that are associated with dam building on the Lower Mekong.

Iskandar Malaysia, a major economic zone in the southern part of Malaysia, is experiencing meteoric growth. Given that the zone lies along the Straits of Johor, how will the increasing industrialisation and urbanisation seen in the area affect the marine and coastal environment? Also, what are the implications of this growth for Singapore, whose northern coast lies on the other side of the Straits? This NTS Insight investigates these questions and suggests ways to mitigate the potential impacts of developments in Iskandar Malaysia on Singapore’s marine and coastal environment.

In 2007 South Korea and ASEAN signed a free trade agreement (FTA) completed by an investment agreement in 2009. Also in 2009 the Asean-Korea Center had been created in Seoul. It aims is to promote economic relations and socio-cultural cooperation between South Korea and Asean countries. In 2010 on the sidelines of the ASEAN summit in Hanoi a joint statement Asean / South Korea for a strategic partnership has been adopted. The latter is accompanied by a concrete action plan covering the period 2011-2015 whose objective is to enhance economic and cultural ties and to strength dialogue and partnership on security issues. Furthermore the South Korean President Lee Myung-bak has proposed to create a structure allowing the Minister of Economy of the five Mekong countries (Burma, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam) and their Korean counterpart to meet regularly to work on development programs. These actions are a part of the Korean strategy launched in March 2009 and called the New Asian Initiative that aims to develop relations with countries beyond South Korea usual scope (U.S, Northeast Asia and European Union)

ASEM as a representative of interregionalism, a new trend of today’s global governance, has been launched in Bangkok in 1996 with the potential of increasing cooperation and strengthening ties between the European and the East Asian region in the political, the cultural and more importantly the economic level. Under the economic pillar of ASEM much attention has been given to the stimulation of FDI flows between the two regions and especially from the developed Europe to the developing Asia. Indeed, the attraction of FDI has been a field of competition between both developed and developing countries which is growing importance in parallel with the annual growth of the levels and value of global FDI flows. As the importance of FDI for economic development grows so do the efforts for their attraction, efforts that have partial passed from the national to the regional level. The question that arises with the rise of interregionalism in world politics (APEC, ASEM and potentially TAFTA) is whether it, and more specifically one of its representatives ASEM, can serve as a tool for stimulating FDI flows in this very competitive, as described, environment.     

The ASEAN Community is highly criticized for mostly employing the elitist approaches. It lacks the necessary efforts and instruments to gather the voice of the people. As the elites aspired for a more cohesive regional cooperation under the flag of ASEAN Community, the obstacles from the views of the public have not yet been understood. This study, therefore, analyses the perception of the public in Indonesia of the obstacles for establishing proposed ASEAN Community. It argued that the public perception on the obstacles for establishing the regional community should be given enough attention to get support from the people. The study discussed the perception of obstacles for establishing the regional community by using primary data from several surveys in five cities. Secondary data to support the finding were also exhibited. Finally, some implications of the study to the establishment of the ASEAN Community were discussed.