Suchergebnisse

Tracing ASEAN debates about Southeast Asia's intra- and extra-regional relations over four decades, this book argues for a process-driven view of cooperation, sheds light on intervening processes of argument and debate, and highlights interacting material, ideational, and social forces in the construction of regions and regionalisms in Southeast Asia, Asia Pacific, and East Asia

How best to assess ASEAN as a collective enterprise are longstanding. Producing often polar assessments of the organization and its activities, the question has been a recurrent one in the scholarship on ASEAN and any retrospective on the organization. Stubbs' (2019) article does not resolve the question, but it does offer ways to make sense of the debate. It also identifies ways forward with its identification of analytic criteria by which ASEAN's performance as an international organization has been assessed. How well his two-camp categorization of the literature captures the state of play, however, can be debated. It is also not without potential costs. (Pac Rev/GIGA)

China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is viewed by most as symbolic of a new era of Chinese initiative and ambition. But while much attention has focused on how the BRI fits into China's—and specifically Xi Jinping's—grand narrative of national rejuvenation, less has been said about regional narratives—that is, the narratives of China's target audiences. Toward addressing this oversight, I consider the case of Singapore in relation to BRI. Specifically, I give attention to strategic narratives that offer analytic windows into the complex relationships being negotiated between China and Southeast Asian states. Strategic narratives, as instruments of policy, also play roles in constructing the strategic space in which BRI enters, with implications for the opportunities and constraints faced by China in Southeast Asia. (Asian Perspect/GIGA)

In ASEAN, no state's development has been as deeply affected by the United States and its policies as the Philippines, where colonial legacies have left lasting marks on its political institutions and security orientation. Today, uncertainties about the future role of the United States underscore questions about adopting any strategy that overly or exclusively relies on the United States. Moreover, new President Rodrigo Duterte has created uncertainties of his own by reversing the very U.S.‐oriented strategy pursued by his predecessor, Aquino. This confluence suggests impending shifts in the national security orientation of each country and a potential turning point in U.S.‐Philippine relations. As this Special Issue of APP makes clear, however, for a variety of material, geopolitical, institutional, and domestic reasons, the U.S. alliance is likely to remain an important Philippine foreign policy priority, but changing strategic trends also compel ongoing recalibrations.