13 - Securing a new frontier in mainland Southeast Asia

Summary

Introducing a change of direction

After devoting the first half of his academic career to the specifics of missiles, antennae and targeting protocols Professor Des Ball shifted his research in what might appear an unlikely direction. Inspired by many years as a regular traveller to Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand, and with a growing stable of Southeast Asia-focussed students, Des began a momentous pivot to this region. His earlier devotion to uncovering the details of sensitive strategic-level defence activities provided the analytical tools and mindset necessary for researching defence, security and political topics in mainland Southeast Asia. In this shift, which began in the early 1990s, Des de-emphasised his earlier academic interests in nuclear targeting, signals intelligence and Australian defence policy to focus, sometimes exclusively, on regional security issues. After beginning with analysis of Burmese military affairs, most notably the Tatmadaw's signals intelligence capabilities, he grew to become the foremost expert on Thai security forces, especially its mind-boggling array of paramilitaries. From the 1990s, the strategist, long accustomed to global-level threat analysis, became a regional tactician seeking to clarify the smallest details of deployments, configurations and tasking in a wide-ranging effort to deliver insights about what is commonly described as “human security”. Increasingly he has seen his role as offering “broader perspectives on security…to try and come up with greater balance in looking at the whole spectrum of threats to human security”.

During these years, Des has taken the study of security in mainland Southeast Asia in new directions. His close working relationships with officials from regional military and police forces have provided access that remains, in key respects, unique. These networks are reinforced and fertilised by his dogmatic commitment to regular field research.3 With a tempo of travel and field research that shames many other scholars, Des keeps up a heavy schedule of visits, especially to Thailand where he travels the length and breadth of the country to accumulate the obscure information that infuses the narrative of his books. Those books are packed with details not mastered by other scholars; they have become reservoirs of facts and analysis that serve to re-frame standard impressions of regional security dynamics. Lavishly illustrated with maps, photographs and tables they are encyclopaedias for interested students, scholars and journalists.