David Capie

When does track two matter? Structure, agency and Asian regionalism

ABSTRACT This article examines the influence of ‘track two’ policy networks in shaping regional political and security cooperation in East Asia. It focuses on two of the most established and lauded political-security networks: the ASEAN-Institutes of Strategic and International Studies (ASEAN-ISIS) and the Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacific (CSCAP), critically exploring their effectiveness and influence today. Drawing on extensive interviews, participant observation and an analysis of documentary sources, it concludes that there is little evidence to suggest these networks have affected the significant institutional change described in much of the literature. Rather, there is persuasive evidence that their influence on track one has waned in recent years. After canvassing a range of alternative explanations for this state of affairs, it argues that recent scholarship on track two has paid insufficient attention to the scope conditions that are a necessary, if not sufficient, condition for unofficial networks to successfully achieve policy diffusion. Non-official diplomacy can affect institutional change, but it is less common than most accounts suggest.

The Shangri-La Dialogue and the institutionalization of defence diplomacy in Asia

Abstract The gradual institutionalization of defence diplomacy is becoming an increasingly prominent and potentially important feature of security dialogue in the Asian region. This stands in marked contrast to Asias recent history, where across the region multilateral defence or military interactions have traditionally been regarded with suspicion. This article examines the emergence of Asias most prominent exercise in defence diplomacy: the Shangri-La Dialogue (SLD). Within a relatively short space of time, this forum has developed into one of the most important opportunities for regional defence ministers and senior military officers to meet and exchange views on security issues. Yet despite its growing standing, the SLD has received virtually no scholarly attention. The article begins by reviewing the origins and development of the SLD, before outlining its operating modalities. It seeks to account for the apparent appeal of the SLD, measured in terms of its capacity to consistently attract high-level representation and favourable reviews. The article explores how the SLD might develop in the future and outlines some of the challenges it faces, including the rise of potentially competing mechanisms for defence diplomacy in East Asia. The article closes by outlining a number of areas for further research.

The Responsibility to Protect Norm in Southeast Asia: Framing, Resistance and the Localization Myth

Abstract There is growing interest among scholars and advocates in the way that the nascent norm of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) is diffusing at the regional level. This article critically explores the spread of R2P in Southeast Asia against the backdrop of recent scholarship on norm localization. It argues that, contrary to some recent analyses, the R2P norm has not been localized in Southeast Asia. Constitutive localization requires the active borrowing of transnational norms by local or regional actors who build congruence with local practices. Although some regional states have used the language of ‘sovereignty as responsibility’ there are few signs that local actors are driving the reception of the norm in the region, nor have they institutionalized it. Rather, outsider proponents are the primary advocates and the norm lacks a champion or well-connected ‘insider’ proponent among regional governments or civil society groups. Second, despite an energetic campaign by advocates, emphasizing consensual and capacity-building activities, many governments are still wary of R2P as a potential threat to sovereignty and regime security. As a result, regional states have taken an ‘à la carte’ approach to R2P, accepting aspects of the R2P agenda that they find least threatening or that support their national interests, while ignoring or quietly resisting those they find challenging. Rather than localization, what we are seeing with respect to R2P in Southeast Asia is a dramatic change in the way outsiders are reframing the norm.

The United States and Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (HADR) in East Asia: Connecting Coercive and Non-Coercive Uses of Military Power

Abstract Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (HADR) is increasingly important for East Asian militaries, but there is little scholarship on how HADR relates to broader national strategies. This article considers US involvement in HADR in East Asia in relation to changing conceptions of national power. HADR is frequently described as use of ‘hard’ military assets to further soft power goals. Looking at recent US experiences, this article shows that HADR also serves instrumental ends linked to traditional military objectives. Rather than considering power as ‘soft’ or ‘hard’, it argues that HADR illustrates connections between non-coercive and coercive uses of military power.

The United States and Southeast Asia

The development of what has come to be thought of as Southeast Asia has been profoundly shaped by its interaction with other, more powerful, forces from outside the region. Whether this has been the impact of religious traditions from other parts of Asia, the impact of expanding economic relations within Asia itself, or the more recent and revolutionary impact of ‘the West’ (Beeson 2001a), the contemporary nature of the Southeast Asian region is in large part a consequence of influences from outside the region itself. As earlier chapters in this volume have demonstrated, in the last two hundred years or so European powers, and more recently the United States, have had a major impact on Southeast Asia’s development (see McCloud 1995). This pattern of regional susceptibility to external influences and power shows no sign of abating.

Welcome to the dark side? Mittelman's encounter with global insecurity

In Hyperconflict: Globalization and Insecurity, James Mittelman has set out an imaginative, bold and somewhat bleak account of the multiple insecurities he sees at the heart of the current global order. While he is not the first to have explored the dark side of globalization, this book is among the first to attempt to draw some clear structural connections and to offer new language and concepts to explain the links between rapid technological change, neoliberalism and insecurity. The book’s thesis is that there are two systemic drivers of contemporary security and insecurity. The first is what Mittelman calls hypercompetition, the ‘intensified competition that agglomerates markets’. Accelerated by ‘new technologies, the rise of transnational capital and increasing labour mobility’, national production systems are giving way to global firms with supply chains extending across the world. The language of war has permeated commerce, with corporations embracing aspects of a Hobbesian ‘warre of all against all’ as they seek to cut costs, raise efficiency and dominate markets. Hypercompetition is ‘heavily but not totally American’ in several of its facets, including the long reach of US markets, investment in R&D, the prevalence of neoliberal ideas about the ordering of the economy and society as well as the prevalence of American popular culture. The second is the concentration of power in an historically unprecedented hegemonic actor: the United States of America. The book puts aside the traditional vocabulary of geopolitics, arguing that the USA is not a superpower or even a great power enjoying a unipolar moment. Rather, ‘in light of the large distance between the United States and the other major powers in a globalizing world’, the preferred term is hyperpower. The idea builds on the notion of hyperpuissance coined by French foreign minister Hubert Vedrine in 1998, but, drawing on Gramscian notions of consensual hegemony and Foucauldian biopolitics, Mittelman gives it more precision and extracts greater analytic leverage from it. Notably, in his vision, although there can be only one hyperpower, the concept extends beyond the USA as a state. Instead, hyperpower is imperial in character, a ‘weblike structure, including a net of overseas military