Singapore: ISEAS, 2013. xvi, 349 pp. (Tables, figures.) US$42.90, paper. ISBN 978-981-4414-60-9.
This volume is a compilation of works by the Centre for Non-Traditional Security (NTS) Studies in the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. As the editors explain in the first chapter, the Rajaratnam School’s securitization approach builds on the Copenhagen School of securitization approach (i.e., as proposed by Ole Wæver and Barry Buzan in the mid-1990s). The Rajaratnam School approach, they say, “moves away from the Eurocentric orientation” of the Copenhagen School and asks the “why and how questions of securitization and desecuritization, and identifies the catalysts and motivations that drive such processes” (6). With this approach—a focus on catalysts and motives that makes up securitization processes—this volume takes up nine areas for analysis, utilizing their “securitization analysis,” namely, health, food, water, natural disasters, internal conflict, forced migration, energy, transnational crime and cyber security. To shed light on the processes of securitization, the editors propose a framework to analyze policy processes that reach (or do not reach) final decisions and implementation. This framework, named in this volume “NTS Analysis,” identified eight variables that are foundations for good policy making: participation, rule of law, transparency, responsiveness, consensus-oriented, equity and inclusiveness, effectiveness and efficiency, and accountability.
How successful was this volume in addressing the process of securitization in these nine areas? In general, although this volume addressed how and why these nine areas develop into security problems and how governments, civil society organizations, and international organizations responded to these, the emphasis and analytical rigour to address the process of securitization varies from chapter to chapter. Chapter 2, on health, is one of the more rigorous chapters. For example, despite the acute need to respond to HIV and infectious diseases and improve coordination among ASEAN member states, the authors see a need for further institutionalization in pandemic preparedness. In a nutshell, the authors call for action “beyond discourse” in addressing health security. On the other hand, chapter 3, on food security, did accurately address the impact of sudden food price increases that were often exacerbated by climate change and policy failures, including the failure to combat corruption. The analytical section in this chapter on policy-making, however, falls short by providing only mostly anecdotal national responses to food shortage. Furthermore, chapter 4, on water, ends with “four guiding principles” for sustainable water management, but did not elaborate on the process itself, and is probably the weakest chapter.
The most readable among all, however, is the chapter on forced migration that addressed issues of statelessness by surveying the legal dimension at both the national and international levels, civil society participation, and national government and international organization responses. The chapter soundly limits itself to the case studies in Thailand, Malaysia and Myanmar, surveys legal instruments and government policy responses to address statelessness, and ends with an analysis of ASEAN’s concrete effort to address forced migration through two relatively new commissions created in 2009 and 2010. These commissions—the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights and the ASEAN Commission on the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Women and Children—were described to be “promising policy entry points” to address forced migration in Southeast Asia. As correctly pointed out by the authors, the establishment of these commissions was possible because of the deeper regional integration after the signing of the ASEAN Charter that came into force in 2008. Throughout this chapter, and to a lesser extent chapter 9 on transnational crime, the importance of regional integration with democratic value sharing to tackle NTS issues becomes clear. ASEAN integration through the landmark ASEAN Charter can become a critical vehicle in addressing NTS issues. Although it is correct that the editors in the concluding chapter call for actual implementations beyond meetings and gatherings in ASEAN, this volume implicitly acknowledges the importance of the meetings buttressed by the ASEAN Charter to address NTS issues. In this sense, the Arab League’s ineffectiveness is a good comparison to ASEAN. For example, when the UNDP’s Arab Human Development Report was rightly calling for people’s security as the first policy priority in its 2009 report (written in 2008), precisely pointing out the same NTS issues such as health, water, food and nutrition, and human trafficking, the Arab League failed to address these issues effectively. What followed in the Arab region was a food crisis that triggered a series of political crises.
Although this volume contributed to explaining how non-traditional security issues were dealt with and why, there were several shortcomings. First, the title that captures “Asia” as a whole is misleading. Most of the examples come from Southeast Asia, probably reflecting the strength of the Rajaratnam School’s research network, built on a long collaboration of the ASEAN-ISIS network. While the chapters on water and energy brought in China and India as examples for their sheer size, and thus higher impact in the region, other chapters predominantly discuss examples from Southeast Asia. Second, more careful editing is necessary. Aside from simple typo errors, such as “issue inkage” for “issue linkage” on page 7, there are inaccurate cut-and-paste sections from a previously published newsletter, reproduced without acknowledgement. For example, a section on Myanmar in chapter 6 has the lines: “this NTS Insight also identifies” (128) and “this NTS Insight tests” (141) indicating the section came from the centre’s newsletter called NTS Insight, published on their website in March 2011. Abbreviation errors include the Indonesian abbreviation of BNPB as BNBP (93), and HKH (Hindu-Kush Himalaya is abbreviated this way) as KHK instead (71). Finally, the materials and examples in almost all chapters date only up until 2010, and are rather outdated for a 2013 publication.
Takeshi Kohno
United Nations Development Programme, New York, USA
pp. 297-299