Rezensionen / Book Reviews ASEAS 3(2) 286 287 Rezensionen / Book Reviews Haacke, Jürgen & Morada, Noel M. (Eds.) (2010). Cooperative Security in the Asia-Pacifi c: The ASEAN Regional Forum. Oxon, UK and New York: Routledge. ISBN: 978-0-415-46052-1. 280 pages. Regional security architecture is one of the Asia-Pacific region’s pressing issues at this moment. The need to manage, if not resolve, the multifarious issues besetting the region has been pushed by advocates of regional arrangements as the reason for re-evaluating where the region is and the future directions that it should take. This book is an excellent contribution to that debate. Edited by Jürgen Haacke of the London School of Economics and Noel M Morada of the Asia-Pacific Centre for the Responsibility to Protect, Cooperative Security in the Asia-Pacific: The ASEAN Regional Forum brings together in one volume the most authoritative analysis to date of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) by a set of scholars and analysts who have been contributing to the analysis of Asia-Pacific regional institutions and issues. The book has twelve chapters, a bibliography, an index, and, mercifully, a list of abbreviations necessary for readers to navigate the alphabet soup that ASEAN and related processes constantly generate. The various chapters are divided into overviews, security- or issue-related discussion, and country studies of participant- states’ relations with the ARF. The first chapter by Haacke and Morada provides a summary of the other contributions to this volume and also sets forth the aims of the book. Haacke and Morada discuss the concept of co-operative security, which has been closely associated with the ARF and its role in forging regional order. They also seek to frame the discussion within the context of the security environment in which the ARF finds itself. The second chapter, by Morada, is an overview of the origins and evolution of the ARF. He places the beginnings of the ARF in the context of a post-Cold War world and its influence over the ASEAN member states to create a multilateral security framework encompassing the Asia-Pacific region. He also investigates the reason why ASEAN has the leading role in the ARF, its security agenda, the impacts of 9/11 and the Bali bombings on the ARF’s institutional and security concerns, and the expansion of ASEAS 3(2) 288 289 its activities after 2001. Morada’s main thesis is that the ARF has not progressed into a true regional institution and towards preventive diplomacy because of the conflict between the activist participating states, who seek the implementation of security co-operation agreements, and those states which are fearful of losing a portion of their sovereignty if they engage in such activities. This has affected and will continue to affect the future directions of the ARF. Brad Glosserman, Executive Director of the Pacific Forum CSIS, authors the third chapter on the United States’ engagement with the ARF, which he describes as a delicate balancing act. Glosserman traces the US’s engagement with the region since the Cold War up to the Second Bush Administration. He emphasises that the US remains suspicious of multilateral institutions that may seem to constrain it (p. 46) and that it will continue to strengthen its bilateral alliances where it has the advantage. However, the US has also been keen in promoting Track II engagements and the Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacific (CSCAP). Its US Committee (or USCSCAP), is active in ensuring the flow of information between it and the US Government. The fourth chapter, by Christopher Hughes (LSE), focuses on China and its participation in the ARF. His main argument is that China’s participation in the ARF is more complex than the common assumption that it was ASEAN’s way of socialising China into its ‘way’. Rather, when China perceives that its national security is being compromised, the ARF becomes of little value to it. The Forum’s main use for China is that it is able to use the principles on which the ARF is built to articulate and advance its national interests. In the fifth chapter, Takeshi Yuzawa (JIIA) tackles Japan’s relationship with the ARF. According to Yuzawa, Japan was enthusiastic in participating in the ARF at its inception because it was a means for lessening suspicion of its potentially active role in Asia-Pacific security. Also, Japan believed that after the Cold War the time was ripe for the region to expand political and security co- operation. However, it eventually lost its enthusiasm for the ARF because of the lack of progress in addressing what Japan sees as security concerns in the region. Kuniko Ashizawa (Oxford Brookes University) then discusses the Australian-Japan- US Trilateral Strategic Dialogue (TSD) and its potential impact on the ARF. She argues that these states’ growing disenchantment with the ARF has led them to experiment with a new type of relationship called ‘minilateralism’. While new political leaders in these states have led to the eventual watering-down of active dialogues among ASEAS 3(2) 288 289 the three, defence and military officials have found the TSD a useful avenue for consultation and dialogue on their particular remits. In the seventh chapter, Rizal Sukma of the Jakarta-based CSIS takes a critical stand towards ASEAN’s role as the driver of the ARF, labelling it as only accidental. For Sukma, ASEAN’s claim to centrality is tenuous and resented by other participants. Sukma sees that there will be no significant change in the ARF’s future because of ASEAN’s own inability to consolidate its internal political and security co-operation. The eighth chapter by Haacke on the ASEAN Regional Forum and its response to transnational challenges focuses on the challenge of securitising certain transnational issues and the problems of their adoption at the national level. Haacke provides a discussion of securitisation theory and applies this to a whole range of issues being discussed in the ARF. Participating states have only moved towards full securitisation of international terrorism but have remained wary of securitising other issues such as migration, maritime security, and disaster management. The ninth chapter, by Morada, on the ARF and counter-terrorism examines the ARF’s response to international terrorism after 9/11 in the US and the Bali bombings in Indonesia. For Morada, ASEAN’s perception of terrorism found re-articulation in the ARF statements (p. 151). While there was initial convergence between the US and ASEAN on co-operation in combating terrorism using the ARF as platform, they eventually diverged because of the unilateral invasion of Iraq by the former. ASEAN and like-minded participating states found themselves opposing the US through the ARF. Nevertheless, the ARF continued with the dialogues and initiatives in countering terrorism. In the next chapter, JN Mak, an independent analyst, discusses maritime security in the context of the ARF. His main issue with the ARF is its focus on dialogue rather than action. For a forum with many participants which are maritime or at least coastal states, the ARF should have been at the forefront of maritime security, however the ARF has had a limited maritime agenda. There are differing conceptions of maritime security within the ARF as maritime states tend to be at odds with coastal states over the critical uses of the ocean. For Mak, maritime security is an area where national interests produce deep conflicts among participant states in the ARF. Since the ARF uses ASEAN norms, especially consensus decision-making, inevitably progress in maritime co-operation is lost at the ARF level. In the eleventh Rezensionen / Book Reviews ASEAS 3(2) 290 291 chapter, David A Boyd and Jörn Dosch of the University of Leeds examine the potential impacts of securitisation practices at the national level on the management of security challenges at the wider regional level: in ASEAN and the ARF. Choosing Indonesia and the Philippines as case studies, they try to determine whether security practices in the two states’ national affairs have affected ASEAN and the ARF’s regional responses to security challenges, finding that the two states’ proactive position on transnational challenges do have an impact on ASEAN’s security co-operation agenda. However, the links between national security discourse and securitisation in the ARF are not established because securitisation moves are reflective of government perceptions of structural challenges and possible impact on national interests. Haacke and Morada provide a concluding chapter in which they ask if there is only more of the same with regard to ARF and co-operative security. There are many contradictory positions and stances on security issues in the ARF. Major powers themselves are divided on the future directions of the ARF. ASEAN still has to effectively provide leadership in the ARF, otherwise it will be eventually relegated only to the role of confidence builder. The ARF has engaged in practical co-operation on some transnational challenges such as terrorism and disaster management. Haacke and Morada contend that preventive diplomacy is not necessarily a barrier to further security co-operation but the question is how to promote it under the ARF (p.224). In the evolving regional security architecture, the ARF is limited in its role as major powers have their own agenda in developing alliances and bilateral co-operation. In conclusion, they posit the question: What if the ARF did not exist? Perhaps the region would not be the same. Clearly, this book is a heavy read. It is full of empirical detail and sophisticated analysis of the complex security environment of the Asia-Pacific region. The book’s main strength is its readability: jargon expressions are explained well and the authors make the effort to ensure that their main points are understood. The ordering of the chapters also allows people without a background on the ARF to understand the context around which the discussions in the more complex chapters revolve. The book also covers the essentials of the ARF: the complex relationship among participating states, the security challenges in the region, and the role of regional organisations and the major powers. The book could have been improved with a separate chapter on securitisation theory and a discussion of regional security ASEAS 3(2) 290 291 concepts and theories. These would have been helpful in providing a common point of departure among the chapter contributors. Overall, the book is an outstanding addition to the literature on the ARF and security co-operation. Policymakers can use the lessons in the book to understand the reason why there are tensions surrounding the ARF’s future directions. Students and scholars of the Asia-Pacific, South-East Asia, and ASEAN security and international relations would do well to have this book in their collection as it might end up as a classic due to the breadth of its coverage and the depth of its analysis. Julio S. Amador III Center for International Relations and Strategic Studies Foreign Service Institute, the Philippines Kingsbury, Damien (2009). East Timor: The Price of Liberty. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN: 978-0-230-60641-8. 246 Seiten. Seit 2002 unabhängig, ist Timor-Leste einer der jüngsten Nationalstaaten der Welt. Der Weg zur Unabhängigkeit verlief, wie auch in vielen anderen Fällen, alles andere als friedlich. Mit welchen vielschichtigen Problemen und Herausforderungen Timor-Leste auf dem Weg in die Unabhängigkeit konfrontiert war und ist, steht im Mittelpunkt der Arbeit mehrerer Wissenschafter und Forscher. Einer von ihnen ist der Politologe und Koordinator der australischen Beobachtungsmissionen von 1999 und 2007 Damien Kingsbury mit seinem jüngsten Werk East Timor: The Price of Liberty. In acht Kapiteln setzt sich der Autor mit der Geschichte Timor-Lestes, den präkolonialen Strukturen, portugiesischer und indonesischer Fremdherrschaft sowie der anschließenden UN-Verwaltung und der Zeit der Unabhängigkeit auseinander. Kingsbury befasst sich dabei mit lokalen Widerstandsbewegungen und dem regionalpolitischen Kontext der postkolonialen Phase um schlussendlich, vor allem Bezug nehmend auf die Unruhen von 2006 und den Machtwechsel bei den Wahlen 2007, die Frage zu stellen, ob Timor-Leste als Failed State zu bewerten sei oder Gefahr laufe, einer zu werden. Nach einer Einführung in politikwissenschaftliche Konzepte wie „staatliche Rezensionen / Book Reviews