Towards A New ASEAN? A Critical Assessment and Policy Review of ASEAN Political Security Amidst the Evolution of Terrorism in Southeast Asia

• In Event: The Other Side of Integration: Questions in the Wake of ASEAN Community 2015

Abstract

In the years following the 11 September 2001 attacks on the United States of America, Southeast Asia—dubbed as the ‘Second Front’ in the Global War on Terror—has become a theater for the metamorphosis of terrorism as a political movement. Post 9-11, ‘Old Terrorism’ as typified by Southeast Asia’s many long-running separatist movements has been side-lined and subsumed into the ‘New Terrorism’ linked with transnational terror networks such as Al Qaeda and the Islamic State. The transnational nature of this ‘new’ terrorism was an opportunity for Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to come together and deepen security cooperation. But despite the member-states largely adopting the labels and rhetoric of ‘New’ Terrorism by linking domestic separatists with Al Qaeda and transnational terrorists, ASEAN as a regional institution remains ill-equipped to address the myriad challenges of transnational terror. ASEAN’s ability to come together on these and other issues is severely limited by its own institutional rules and norms that dis-incentivize concrete multilateral action, the region’s historical aversion to any form of hegemony either local or extra-regional, and long-running history of distrust among the member-states themselves. Given the structural impediments to coordinating counterterrorist efforts, this paper proposes a radical revaluation of ASEAN as a regional institution to more effectively combat transnational terrorism in Southeast Asia.

Authors

• Erick Nielson Javier, Armed Forces of the Philippines

• Jose Raphael L. Limiac, Senate of the Republic of the Philippines