The Armed Forces In Contemporary Asian Societies

First published in 1986. This book integrates current knowledge about the military, political, economic, and cultural roles of the armed forces in sixteen Asian countries, examining the interplay of these factors and their bearing on each society's civil-military relations. The authors explore the history, current status, and potential future course of each country. Analyzing all key Asian armed forces, they provide a comprehensive view of the military's domestic role-a crucial factor in assessing the foreign and defense policy options facing Asia as a whole.

This volume examines ethnicity in relation to one major facet of Asian life—the military. Ethnicity, now being studied on a variety of scholarly and geographical fronts, is a fruitful topic for consideration in the study of the relationships between the Asian armed forces and their governments and societies. While Ethnicity and the Military of Asia profits from recent explorations of ethnicity, it also benefits from the current interest in a close scholarly examination of the relationship between armed forces, war, and society. Since the military institutions of so many Asian societies have played or are playing leading roles in their country's government, the military has a relationship, often ambiguous, to the development of the expression of nationhood—a central factor in the new states of Asia. This study shows that policies concerning the military have importance for intergroup relations by expressing policies on ethnicity and by modifying relations between ethnic groups. One factor that correlates with this is that policy concerning membership in the military has a relationship to the search for "modernization" and to social mobility.

This volume traces the historical roots and evolution of insurgencies and counter-insurgencies in modern Asia. Focusing on armed rebellions and use of armed forces by both Western powers and indigenous states from the nineteenth century till present day, the volume unravels the problematic of change–continuity and addresses key questions on the nature of warfare. The book looks at eight different regions of Asia: US counter-insurgencies in Philippines; the British initiative in Indonesia and independent Indonesia’s counter-insurgency against its domestic populace; post-World War II Malaya; French and US war in Vietnam; British and Indian counter-insurgencies in North-East India between the nineteenth and early twenty-first century; Indian and Sri Lankan operations in Sri Lanka during late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries; British and US-NATO war in Afghanistan from the nineteenth century till 2014; and British and US counter-insurgency in Iraq during the twentieth and first two decades of the twenty-first centuries. The volume will greatly interest scholars and researchers of modern Asian history, military and strategic studies, politics and international relations as well as government institutions and think-tanks.

The essays included in this volume focus on conventional war on land, sea and air fought by the states of South Asia and their impact on the host societies and economies. The authors are drawn from academia and the military in India and Pakistan, as well as from outside the subcontinent in order to give a wide perspective. In the introduction the editors describe the changing contours of warfare in South Asia, and the similarities and dissimilarities with warfare in the Middle East and South East Asia. The volume highlights the influence of extra-regional powers like China, Russia and the US in providing arms, munitions and shaping the texture of military doctrines and force structures of the South Asian powers.

In the late 1990s, prominent scholars of civil-military relations detected a decline in the political significance of the armed forces across Southeast Asia. A decade later, however, this trend seems to have been reversed. The Thai military launched a coup in 2006, the Philippine armed forces expanded their political privileges under the Arroyo presidency, and the Burmese junta successfully engineered pseudo-democratic elections in 2010. This book discusses the political resurgence of the military in Southeast Asia throughout the 2000s. Written by distinguished experts on military affairs, the individual chapters explore developments in Burma, Thailand, the Philippines, Vietnam, East Timor, Indonesia and Singapore. They not only assess, but also offer explanations for the level of military involvement in politics in each country. Consequently, the book also makes a significant contribution to the comparative debate about militaries in politics. Whilst conditions obviously differ from country to country, most authors in this book conclude that the shape of civil-military relations is not predetermined by historic, economic or cultural factors, but is often the result of intra-civilian conflicts and divisive or ineffective political leadership.

This book offers a comprehensive study of the dynamics of civil-military relations in Pakistan. It asks how and why the Pakistan military has acquired such a salience in the polity and how it continues to influence decision-making on foreign and security policies and key domestic political, social and economic issues. It also examines the changes within the military, the impact of these changes on its disposition towards the state and society, and the implications for peace and security in nuclearized South Asia.

In The Military and Democracy in Asia and the Pacific, a number of prominent regional specialists take a fresh look at the military's changing role in selected countries of Asia and the Pacific, particularly with regard to the countries' performance against criteria of democratic government. Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, Burma, Pakistan, Bangladesh, South Korea, Fiji and Papua New Guinea all fall under the spotlight as the authors examine the role which the military has played in bringing about changes of political regime, and in resisting pressures for change.