Framing Security Agendas

What has it meant to be labeled the "second-front" in the "global war on terror"? Have Southeast Asian states accepted that the primary threat their countries face is Al-Qaeda-inspired terrorist violence, or are other security concerns deemed more pressing? This study investigates threat perceptions in four Southeast Asian countries: Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Singapore. It probes the extent to which their security concerns align with those of Washington, together with their preferred means for dealing with the phenomenon of terrorist violence. The central findings are that, in all four countries, the U.S. counterterrorist security agenda has shaped security perceptions as well as security behavior, though to a greater extent in the Philippines and Singapore than in Indonesia and Malaysia. However, the most important effect in Southeast Asia of this change in the U.S. security priority after 9/11 has been sociopolitical in nature, even where an individual government might not perceive the threat from terrorism to be the major security challenge that it faces. In each of the four states, involvement in the U.S. decision to give overwhelming attention to counterterrorist action has sharpened the focus on long-standing security concerns, especially those connected with the security of the political regime or unity of society. In sum, these countries' domestic concerns interact in complex and subtle ways with their security relationship with the United States, as well as affecting the methods that the individual governments have used to deal with actual or potential terrorist violence inside their countries.

This book examines the gender dimensions of a wide array of national and international security challenges. The volume examines gender dynamics in ten issue areas in both the traditional and human security sub-fields: armed conflict, post-conflict, terrorism, military organizations, movement of people, development, environment, humanitarian emergencies, human rights, governance. The contributions show how gender affects security and how security problems affect gender issues. Each chapter also examines a common set of key factors across the issue areas: obstacles to progress, drivers of progress and long-term strategies for progress in the 21st century. The volume develops key scholarship on the gender dimensions of security challenges and thereby provides a foundation for improved strategies and policy directions going forward. The lesson to be drawn from this study is clear: if scholars, policymakers and citizens care about these issues, then they need to think about both security and gender. This will be of much interest to students of gender studies, security studies, human security and International Relations in general.

This interdisciplinary book explores how the policy goal of gender equality operates in arguably the most masculinist area of politics: peace and security. Gender equality was set on the international peace and security agenda with the adoption of UN Security Council Resolution 1325 in 2000 and the inception of the Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) agenda. Celebrated internationally as an outcome of feminist advocacy efforts, the WPS agenda has over time become a site of contestation. Security institutions have questioned the placement of the gender equality objective within the peace and security sector, whereas feminist advocates have expressed their concerns about the capacity of security institutions to support gender equality in meaningful ways. Drawing on insights of nearly seventy UN, government, international and local civil society experts, the book offers a systematic take on key gender equality debates within the WPS agenda in the case studies of UN Security Council, ASEAN and Pacific Islands Forum, and Governments of the Philippines and Australia. By looking back at the dilemmas of gender equality policymaking and their paradoxical effects in conflict and post-conflict situations, the book also looks forward to the third decade of the WPS agenda and the long-term impact of the agenda on the political struggle for gender equality in peace and security.

There have been dramatic changes to the landscape of European security in the twenty years since the fall of the Berlin Wall. The essays in European Security Since the Fall of the Berlin Wall collectively take stock of how approaches to security in Europe have changed, both in practice and in theory, since the end of the Cold War. Organized into three sections, this collection begins with an exploration of the broad changes in Europe's security environment relating to issues such as terrorism and the rising importance of energy security. The second section describes the adaptations of Europe's institutional framework, including the transformation of NATO and the evolution of European armed forces, while the closing essays examine regional security issues with the Middle East, the Balkans, and Russia. Covering a broad spectrum of theoretical approaches and written in a clear, engaging style, European Security Since the Fall of the Berlin Wall will illuminate European security debates for years to come.

This book explores the power of news coverage to render targeted groups suspicious and to spur support for government surveillance. It argues that the tendency of journalists to frame stories around individual targets of surveillance shapes citizens' judgments, leading them to support "Big Brother" and to limit the civil liberties of groups under scrutiny.

Food sovereignty is an emerging discourse of empowerment and autonomy in the food system with the development of associated practices in rural and some urban spaces. While literature on food sovereignty has proliferated since the first usage of the term in 1996 at the Rome Food Summit, most has been descriptive rather than explanatory in nature, and often confuses food sovereignty with other movements and objectives such as alternative food networks, food justice, or food self-sufficiency. This book is a collection of empirically rich and theoretically engaged papers across a broad geographical spectrum reflecting on what constitutes the politics and practices of food sovereignty. They contribute to a theoretical gap in the food sovereignty literature as well as a relative shortage of empirical work on food sovereignty in the global "North", much previous work having focussed on Latin America. Specific case studies are included from Canada, Norway, Switzerland, southern Europe, UK and USA, as well as Africa, India and Ecuador. The book presents new research on the emergence of food sovereignties. It offers a wide variety of empirical examples and a theoretically engaged framework for explaining the aims of actors and organizations working toward autonomy and democracy in the food system.

Long constrained as a security actor by constitutional as well as external factors, Japan now increasingly is called to play a greater role in stabilizing both the Asia-Pacific region and the entire international system. Japan's Security Agenda explores the country's diplomatic, political, military, and economic concerns and policies within this new context.

Since the early 1990s and the end of the Cold War, the implications of China's rising power have come to dominate the security agenda of the Asia-Pacific region. This book is the first to comprehensively chart the development of Southeast Asia’s relations with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) from 1949 to 2010, detailing each of the eleven countries’ ties to the PRC and showing how strategic concerns associated with China's regional posture have been a significant factor in shaping their foreign and defence policies. In addition to assessing bilateral ties, the book also examines the institutionalization of relations between the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and China. The first part of the book covers the period 1949-2010: it examines Southeast Asian responses to the PRC in the context of the ideological and geopolitical rivalry of the Cold War; Southeast Asian countries’ policies towards the PRC in first decade of the post-Cold War era; and deepening ties between the ASEAN states and the PRC in the first decade of the twenty-first century. Part Two analyses the evolving relationships between the countries of mainland Southeast Asia - Vietnam, Thailand, Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia - and China. Part Three reviews ties between the states of maritime Southeast Asia - Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, Brunei and East Timor - and the PRC. Whilst the primary focus of the book is the security dimension of Southeast Asia-China relations, it also takes full account of political relations and the burgeoning economic ties between the two sides. This book is a timely contribution to the literature on the fast changing geopolitics of the Asia-Pacific region.