Southeast Asian Security

This course surveys the main issues of Southeast Asian security, giving due attention to traditional concerns with interstate conflict as well as non-traditional themes like the economy and the quality of democratic governance. It also provides a grounding in the Cold War-era conflicts that shaped the region as we know it today. The central focus, however, is on contemporary internal armed conflict rooted in processes of state formation and state decay (for instance, ethnic conflict in Myanmar, separatist violence in Indonesia or the attempts to create an autonomous region in Muslim Mindanao in the Philippines). Key internal conflicts affecting the human security of millions of Southeast Asians, as well as near neighbours like Australia, will be analysed in their unique historical and cultural context, and related to cross-cutting questions with broad inter-disciplinary significance negotiating views from above and below, from inside and outside.