Southeast Asian Security into the 21st century: Emerging patterns and challenges

By the early 21st century, Southeast Asia's security situation will exhibit three principal trends: (a) ASEAN will have expanded its membership from seven to nine (or ten) members; (b) the region's shift from internal defense to external security will be bolstered by high technology weapons purchases, including missile-armed frigates, small helicopter aircraft. carriers, submarines, and upgraded F-16s and F-18s; and (c) a gradual enlargement of ASEAN responsibilities will occur toward a functional security regime in the South China Sea. Each of these trends is controversial and is subject to opposition or complication both within and from outside the region. And these practices may retard these governments' admission to or, if admitted, their full absorption into, the association. Secondly, regional weapons purchases, while not technically constituting ''arms races,'' cause anxieties among various Southeast Asian governments. Finally, ASEAN has been slow to move beyond forums, workshops, and confidence-building measures to actual functionally integrated external security measures. United States policy towards Southeast Asia's trends is correct to emphasize democracy, market economics, and external security, However, US policy finds itself at odds with a majority of current ASEAN governments (if not all the people within those societies) which are ecr looking the other way on human rights violations, and are uncomfortable, so far, with external security missions. Nevertheless, US policy has some leverage: Washington can withhold investments and credits to the most egregious violators. And, by virtue of the US military presence in Southeast Asia and American security guarantees, regional governments want Washington to continue underwriting Southeast Asia's external security while Chinese political-military expansion continues.