Introduction

Summary

It is not possible to pull together into this introductory essay the many rich themes and insights contained in this volume. Instead I have selected eight points which, in my view, deserve the reader's attention when looking at Southeast Asia in the year 2008.

A Region Mostly At Peace

First, Southeast Asia enjoyed a relatively peaceful year. While it is true that Thailand and Cambodia fired at each other in anger, the fighting was quickly ended. As Michael Vatikiotis says in his chapter in this volume, “the instinctive avoidance of conflict which is rooted deep in the region's cultural DNA” helped to defuse a potential crisis. Southeast Asia has also been fortunate that relations between the major powers in its broader Asian and Pacific environment, especially U.S.-China relations, have remained generally stable, which is crucial for the region's peace and tranquility. Further, several internal conflicts within Southeast Asian states have been settled or mitigated in recent years, mostly within Indonesia. Al Qaeda-linked terrorism has continued to suffer setbacks (see below).

The principal blots on this generally peaceful scene have been the conflicts in the southern Philippines and southern Thailand. The unfortunate breakdown of the Malaysian-brokered peace negotiations between the Philippines government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), the main armed Muslim group confronting the government in the south of the country, was a significant setback, while the insurgency in the southern provinces of Thailand continued to rage as before with no prospect of an early end.

Given the virtual absence of interstate conflict and relative freedom from big power tensions and conflicts, at this moment in history, the security threats to Southeast Asia are largely of the ‘non-traditional’ type — like violence or tensions associated with ethnic, religious or separatist conflict; terrorism; illegal migrations; and pandemic diseases. ASEAN's Progress Second, ASEAN's institutional evolution advanced a few more steps.