Southeast Asian Affairs 2005

Since its inception 30 years ago, Southeast Asian Affairs (SEAA) has been an indispensable annual reference for generations of policy-makers, scholars, analysts, journalists, and others. Succinctly written by regional and international experts, SEAA illuminates significant issues and events of the previous year in each of the 10 Southeast Asian nations and the region as a whole.

Contains contributions by experts that discuss the significant issues and events of 2006 in each of the Southeast Asian nations and the region as a whole.

An annual review of significant developments and trends in the region. Though the emphasis is on ASEAN countries, developments in the broader Asia-Pacific region are not ignored. Readable and easily understood analyses are offered of major political, economic, social, and strategic developments within Southeast Asia. The volume contains twenty articles dealing with such major themes as international conflict and co-operation, political stability, and economic growth and development.

This balanced, comprehensive guide to Southeast Asian politics offers a sensible but nondogmatic realist approach to the region's international relations. Donald E. Weatherbee lucidly explains the dynamics of the Southeast Asian subsystem as a struggle for autonomy in pursuit of national interests. He explores three important questions, the answers to which will shape the future Southeast Asia. Will democratic regimes transform international relations in Southeast Asia? Will national leaders succeed in reinventing ASEAN as a more effective collaborative mechanism? Finally, how will the evolving Chinese position, balancing and perhaps displacing the United States as Asia's great power, affect Southeast Asia's struggle for autonomy?

The book examines ASEAN's mechanisms in managing challenges and threats to regional security. Its extensive analyses of the ASEAN story of managing regional security cover the different phases of ASEAN's development as a regional organization and explore the perceptible changes that have occurred in regional mechanisms of conflict management. The book also examines the roles of relevant actors beyond the states of ASEAN and the key interactions that have evolved over time, which have been instrumental in moving regional mechanisms beyond the ASEAN way. The book argues that the ASEAN way has not been impervious to change. As the association finds its way through periods of crises and continues to confront the many challenges ahead, ASEAN and its mechanisms are already being transformed beyond the narrow confines of the modalities associated with the ASEAN way. The changes in the political and security landscape of the region, as well as the democratic transitions taking place in some member states, have set the stage for a much more dynamic set of regional actors and processes that bring into question the kind of regionalism that is now taking place in the region. the way regionalism is changing in Southeast Asia.

"e;Southeast Asian Affairs is the only one of its kind: a comprehensive annual review devoted to the international relations, politics, and economies of the region and its nation-states. The collected volumes of Southeast Asian Affairs have become a compendium documenting the dynamic evolution of regional and national developments in Southeast Asia from the end of the 'second' Vietnam War to the alarms and struggles of today. Over the years, the editors have drawn on the talents and expertise not only of ISEAS' own professional research staff and visiting fellows, but have also reached out to tap leading scholars and analysts elsewhere in Southeast and East Asia, Australia and New Zealand, North America, and Europe. A full list of contributors over forty years reads like a kind of whos' who in Southeast Asian Studies. Regardless of specific events and outcomes in political, economic, and social developments in Southeast Asia's future, we can expect future editions of Southeast Asian Affairs to continue to provide the expert analysis that has marked the publication since its founding. It has become an important contributor to the knowledge base of contemporary Southeast Asia."e; - Donald E. Weatherbee, Russell Distinguished Professor Emeritus, University of South Carolina

Admiral Zheng He and Southeast Asia commemorates the 600th anniversary of Admiral Zheng Hes maiden voyage to Southeast Asia and beyond. The book is jointly issued by the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore and the International Zheng He Society. To reflect Asian views on the subject matter, nine articles written by Asian scholars Chung Chee Kit, Hsu Yun-Tsiao, Leo Suryadinata, Tan Ta Sen, Tan Yeok Seong, Wang Gungwu, and Johannes Widodo have been reproduced in this volume. Originally published from 1964 to 2005, the articles are grouped into three clusters. The first cluster of three articles examines the relationship of the Ming court, especially during the Zheng He expeditions, with Southeast Asia in general and the Malacca empire in particular. The next cluster looks at the socio-cultural impact of the Zheng He expeditions on some Southeast Asian countries, with special reference to the role played by Zheng He in the Islamization of Indonesia (Java) and the urban architecture of the region. The last three articles deal with the route of the Zheng He expeditions and the location of the places that were visited.