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The Southeast Asian Security Complex Author(s): BARRY BUZAN Source: Contemporary Southeast Asia, Vol. 10, No. 1 (June 1988), pp. 1-16Published by: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS)Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25797984Accessed: 08-10-2015 08:00 UTC

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Contemporary Southeast Asia, Volume 10, Number 1, June 1988

The Southeast Asian

Security Complex

BARRY BUZAN

This paper applies the idea of security complexes to the study of regional security in Southeast Asia. First, the idea of security complexes is introduced, followed by a sketch of the pattern of security relations withm the Southeast Asian complex, and also sets that pattern into the broader context both of the other local

security complexes in Asia, and of the global pattern of great power rivalries. The paper concludes by Jinking together the patterns of security at the globaJ and local levels, with some consideration

given to the continuity and change in the structure of the Southeast Asian complex.

The Idea of Security Complexes The idea of security complexes arose from the need to find some systematic framework within which to consider the problem of regional security. The

regional level of analysis is widely used to address Third World security issues, but the concept of region invariably amounts to little more than an arbitrary geographical designation usually determined by the location

of some current crisis. A classic example of this is the idea of "Southwest Asia" that became fashionable after 1979 following the onset of the Iranian

revolution, the Iran-Iraq war, and the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Southwest Asia defines an area where superpower interests clash. It tells us very little about the pattern of security relations generated among the

local states themselves, and, indeed, is quite misleading in that regard. The most striking feature of the local pattern is the boundary of relative

security indifference between Pakistan on the one hand, and Iran on the

other. The idea of Southwest Asia masks the fact that the local security

1



2 Barry Buzan

dynamics have two centres, one in the Gulf, and the other between India

and Pakistan. The superpower-derived notion of Southwest Asia thus tries

to impose itself over a boundary between two local patterns of security interaction that are largely independent of each other, and which stand

virtually back to back right in the middle of Southwest Asia.1

The idea of security complexes injects some firm meaning into the re

gional level of analysis by identifying durable, and relatively self-contained,

patterns of security relations generated by the local states themselves. The

idea of a security complex has been defined as follows:

... we can attempt to define regional security subsystems in terms of

patterns of amity and enmity that are substantially confined within some particular geographical area. The assumption is that local sets of states exist whose major security perceptions and concerns link

together sufficiently closely that their national security problems cannot

realistically be considered apart from one another. ... Unlike most other attempts to define regional subsystems, security complexes rest, for the most part, on the interdependence of rivalry rather than on the

interdependence of shared interests. . . . Security complexes are an

empirical phenomenon with historical and geopolitical roots. They are characteristic products of an anarchic international system, and

represent durable rather than permanent substructures within such a system.2

Security complexes are part of a larger scheme aimed at constructing a

multi-level, holistic approach to the analysis of security problems. They are designed to insert a middle level of analysis between the global system level, which is very often dominated by great power perspectives, and the

individual country level, which is always very narrow, and frequently marred by partisan biases. All three levels are necessary to any compre hensive analysis of security problems. The fact that each has its own

distinctive character and dynamic makes it possible to separate them for

purposes of analysis. But each also interacts with the others in important ways, and it is only by reintegrating the three levels that full understanding can be achieved.3

The identification of security complexes tends to rest more on patterns of enmity, fear and rivalry, than it does on patterns of amity, trust and

co-operation. On this basis, some have suggested that these regional entities could more appropriately be called "insecurity complexes". Since they are largely based on local manifestations of the power/security dilemma,4 there is a case for this view. As Ole Waever has suggested, the internal

dynamics of a security complex can, in theory, vary across a broad spec trum.5 They might, at one extreme, be governed by unrestrained balance



The Southeast Asian Security Complex 3

of power rivalries like those in eighteenth century Europe. At the other extreme, they could have settled into a security community, in which all the states within the complex had accepted mechanisms for the peaceful settlement of disputes with all the other members, and no member ex

pected, or planned, that any other would resort to military force against it. Relationships among the Western European states (excepting Greece and

Turkey) have had this character for more than three decades. In between lies Jervis' notion of a security regime,6 exemplifed by the nineteenth

century Concert of Europe, in which states observe, and expect others to

observe, certain norms or rules of restraint in their military relations. Waever also points out that the degree of amity/enmity within a security complex need not be uniform.7 Both the Nordic group within Europe, and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) within Southeast

Asia, constitute subsystems that are significantly less conflictual within themselves than is the norm for the larger regional complex in which

they are embedded. The key point about a security complex is that it defines a relatively

self-contained pattern of security relationships among a geographically coherent group of states. In defining the complex, the internal character of those relationships is less important than the distinctiveness of the local pattern from the surrounding patterns. Thus, South Asia and South east Asia both contain patterns of local rivalry intense enough to have

generated several large wars. But despite the physical adjacency of the two complexes, these wars have had virtually no impact across the bound

ary between them. A similar boundary of relative indifference has operated between South Asia and the Gulf, where wars within one complex make little difference to security affairs in the other. Given that the security dynamics of adjacent local complexes are, by definition, largely distinct, one would not expect the character of security relations within any parti cular local complex to have much impact on adjacent complexes. If such

cross-boundary influences begin to become important, then one would need to question whether or not a major redefinition of the local patterns of security is under way.

As we shall see, however, this criterion of relative insulation does not hold true for relations between the local security complex and the more

wide-ranging dynamics of rivalries among the great powers. Since the

higher level of great power relationships impinges on all the local com

plexes, the particular pattern and intensity of amity/enmity relations within a local complex is crucial to the opportunities for penetration of great power interests into the security relations of the local complex. The more divided the security relations within the local complex, the easier it will be for great power rivalries to penetrate the region.



4 Barry Buzan

The Southeast Asian Security Complex A full exposition of the Southeast Asian security complex would require detailed examination and cross linkage of four different levels: 1) the do mestic level within each of the Southeast Asian states; 2) the patterns of

amity and enmity that define the regional complex; 3) the relationship between the security dynamics of the Southeast Asian complex and its

neighbouring security complexes; and 4) the relationship between the Southeast Asian complex and the pervasive global rivalry of the super powers. Given the limits of space and the fact that most readers of this

journal will already be familiar with domestic politics in the Southeast Asian states, the discussion here will be confined to the last three levels.

The Regional Complex

The Southeast Asian security complex is composed of nine states sharply divided into two groups: a communist-led, Soviet-aligned, and Vietnamese dominated group of three (Vietnam, Laos, Kampuchea); and a non-communist, Western-orientated group of six, organized since 1967, in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, and since 1984, Brunei). Burma is arguably a tenth member, but in security terms can most accurately be described as a buffer state, or zone of relative security indifference, between the local complexes in South and Southeast Asia.

The internal structure of the Southeast Asian security complex is rather complicated. It is unlike the simple bipolar structure in South Asia,

where the rivalry between India and Pakistan dominates the local pattern of security, leaving only peripheral and subordinate roles for the smaller states. In Southeast Asia, the structure is defined by a pattern of relations among several medium-sized powers. Of the nine states within the local complex, four have populations of more than 50 million, two have between 6 and 20 million, and three have less than 5 million. Although Singapore is small in terms of population, its GNP is comparable to that of Vietnam, three times that of Burma (population: 40.5 million) and nearly half that of Thailand (population: 53 million).8 In addition, especially in Indochina, there are several national rivalries of long historical standing, which are quite comparable to those in European history. The most notable of these are among the Burmese, the Thai, the Khmer, and the Vietnamese. Before the Europeans imposed their colonial order on the region (except Thailand), these four nations went through cycles of greatness, decline and rivalry in which their relative territorial domains underwent many dramatic changes. Just as in Europe, the echoes of this regional history still in fluence current security perceptions.




Under these quite evenly divided political conditions, no single coun

try can easily threaten to dominate the local security environment. A

multipolar power structure within the complex lends itself most easily to the alignment flexibility of a classical balance of power system, and con

sequently, no rigid, single pattern of relations has dominated the history of the complex as it has, for example, in South Asia. Only the two most

populous states, Indonesia and Vietnam, actively cultivate images of them selves as regional great powers, but both have economies much too weak to support any bid for regional hegemony.

The internal history of the Southeast Asian security complex, par ticularly in its first decades, was marked by a variety of disputes and

conflicts, many of which reflected a difficult process not only of decolon

ization, but also of the new post-colonial states coming to terms with each other. The tortured history of Vietnam, marked by unusually intense and extended great power intervention, was the biggest, and longest running, of these problems. Others, such as the territorial disputes between Malaysia on the one hand, and Indonesia and the Philippines on the other, were

largely settled by the mid-1960s. The formation of ASEAN facilitated the development of a major security community incorporating three of the region's four most populous countries. As a result of various wars

and agreements, the Southeast Asian security complex is now polarized between capitalist ASEAN and the Vietnamese communist empire. As

Samudavanija and Paribatra have observed, this pattern represents a trans formation from an earlier situation in which most of the Southeast Asian states had severe ideological divisions within themselves, to one in which the ideological polarization is along regional lines.9 This local pattern looks

stable, and seems likely to define the internal dynamics of the Southeast Asian security complex for the foreseeable future.

Within this pattern, the principal unresolved security issue concerns the status of Kampuchea and, to a lesser extent, Laos, as buffers between Vietnam and Thailand. Thailand, with the support of its ASEAN partners, is unsettled by the prospect of immediate adjacency to Vietnamese com

munist power that results from Vietnam's current domination of Laos and Kampuchea.10 Vietnam seems to be pursuing its own vision of an Indochina "federation", and also faces the problem that an independent

Kampuchea seems likely to be hostile to it, whether communist ruled or

not. Thai desires for a more neutral Kampuchea, free of Vietnamese troops, are difficult to reconcile with Vietnam's hegemonic aspirations. The whole

boundary is consequently alive with tension, from Thai-Laotian clashes over disputed territory in the north, to volatile juxtapositions of Vietnamese, Thai and Khmer military forces along the Thai-Kampuchean border.

Despite its serious conflict, the Southeast Asian complex is also



6 Barry Buzan

unusual, and fortunate, in having many of its internal and external bound

aries moderated by water. The analogy of the water moderator in a nuclear

reactor is not inappropriate ? a water gap between state land boundaries

damps down potential security interactions across them in much the same

way as the heavy water in a nuclear reactor absorbs neutrons that would

otherwise generate fission chain reactions. At its crudest, the reasoning here is simply that it is much more difficult to mount major military attacks across water than it is across land. Water also tends to provide clear boundaries, or if it does not, to arouse much less passion than dis

putes over land territories.11 It cannot be without significance that the

most intense and intractable conflicts within the region are in the areas

where states share long land boundaries, while many of the six members

of the ASEAN "quasi-security community"12 are separated by water.

The Regional Complex and its Neighbours

The Southeast Asian security complex borders on three neighbouring

complexes: South Asia, South Pacific, and Northeast Asia. The first two

of these, like Southeast Asia, are local complexes composed of states

whose power is very largely confined to their own regions. The Northeast

Asian complex, however, contains several great powers, and is therefore an entity of a "higher" type in the global pattern of security.

To the west, Burma acts as a buffer between the South Asian and

Southeast Asian complexes by being neutral in orientation, politically and militarily weak, and relatively peripheral to the security dynamics on

either side of it. Since independence, there has been relatively little direct

security interaction between Burma and any of its neighbours when com

pared with the levels of interaction among the groups of states lying east and west of it. Consequently, the local dynamics in South and Southeast Asia are almost completely separated from each other. If Burma were

stronger, its traditional rivalry with Thailand might come into play, but so long as it remains economically stagnant, politically introverted, and absorbed in its several domestic rebellions against the central government, there is no reason to expect any change in its role. The only faint hint of interaction across the Burmese buffer is the diplomatic support given by India to Vietnam, which arises from their common hostility to China, and their shared alliance with the Soviet Union.

To the south lie the members of the South Pacific Forum, a group of

mostly micro-states insulated by generous expanses of water both from each other and from the Southeast Asian complex. The group is dominated

by Australia and New Zealand, has low levels of inter-state friction among its members, and poses no threat to the Southeast Asian states. A few




residual security links to Southeast Asia remain from the heyday of the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), but these mostly reflect common ASEAN and antipodean ties to the United States, rather than durable local security patterns. Australia might feel some long-term unease about the juxtaposition of its huge open spaces with the teeming migration minded masses of Indonesia, but this is a long way from defining any immediate security concern.

To the north, the Southeast Asian complex borders on the great power

complex in Northeast Asia. In part, these two complexes are also insulated from each other by water, but the major factor for the Southeast Asian

complex is its long land and sea boundary with China. China is a regional great power whose presence is a major independent factor in Southeast Asian security, but which for the purposes of the analytical scheme used here is not counted as part of the Southeast Asian complex. The clearest

way to define the security relationship between China and the South east Asian security complex is to look at the 4'super-regional'' pattern of

security in the whole of Asia.13 In that context, China's principal security rivalry is with the Soviet Union, and both are part of the higher level Northeast Asian security complex, which includes Japan.14 The Sino-Soviet

great power rivalry forms the core of an emergent Asian supercomplex in which the competing security issues of these two regional great powers

increasingly penetrate the two lower level, or local, security complexes on

their southern periphery: South Asia and Southeast Asia. Thus, although China is a major security concern for the Southeast Asian states, in them

selves, they are only a secondary or even tertiary security concern for China. It is that disproportion which, for purposes of analysis, justifies defining a boundary between them as one between a higher level and a

lower level complex, despite the significant security interactions across

the boundary. The principal security dynamic of the Asian supercomplex is the

great game of containment being played by the Soviet Union against China, and the Chinese attempt to foil it. This dynamic looks set for a long run, since it is based on both a geographically-rooted security dilemma and an

ideologically-based power struggle. The rising power of China represents a long-term security problem for the Soviet Union. Though their relation

ship will doubtless continue to swing from periods of detente to periods of hostility, the underlying rivalry will continue. The Soviets have already done well, having acquired as allies India, by far the strongest power in

South Asia, and Vietnam, the major military power in Indochina. China has breached containment by linking with the weaker power in South Asia, Pakistan. In Southeast Asia, it hangs on to the discredited Khmer Rouge resistance in Kampuchea, and enjoys only a rather tenuous friendship with



8 Barry Buzan

Thailand. It is this game of containment that explains China's sensitivity to both the Soviet position in Afghanistan, and the Vietnamese control of

Kampuchea. This higher level of analysis, therefore, reveals strong parallels between external linkages in South Asia and those in Southeast Asia, even

though the internal security dynamics of the local complexes themselves are quite independent of each other.

Since the transformation of the Sino-Soviet relationship from an

alliance to a rivalry during the early 1960s, the dynamics of the Asian

supercomplex have gained steadily in importance within Asia in compar ison to the influence of the global superpower rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union. This process has all the hallmarks of classic

balance of power behaviour, and represents an early stage in a systemic shift from bipolarity to multipolarity as American power slowly declines from its early post-war peak. As China has increased its importance in

Asia, the United States has waned. It is their common interest in opposing Soviet influence that has made China a kind of half-superpower in the

pattern of security at the global level. The United States retains a strong position in Northeast Asia, and still has a significant commitment to

Pakistan, but since its defeat in Indochina, has largely withdrawn from mainland Southeast Asia. Although the United States is still an important backer of the ASEAN states, especially the Philippines, its involvement in Indochina has largely been supplanted by the Sino-Soviet rivalry. China

provides the United States with a major opportunity to pursue the ideals of the Nixon Doctrine, whereby the United States would pursue its own

(usually anti-Soviet) security interests by supporting sympathetic local

powers rather than by asserting its own military power directly. China's local strength as a counter to Soviet influence thus complements America's desire to focus on a maritime strategy, and avoid further direct engagements on the Asian mainland. The increase in Chinese support for Thailand is a significant marker in this respect. In effect, the United States is at long last beginning to learn how to base its own security interests more on the favourable operation of the local balance of power, and less on the direct

imposition of its own military forces. Even with the broader view provided by the Asian supercomplex,

however, the boundary between China and Southeast Asia remains an awk ward element m the analytical scheme. The problem is that it is crossed not only by the Sino-Soviet rivalry, but also by direct disputes and security tensions between China and some states within Southeast Asia. The same is true of the Chinese border with the South Asian security complex.15 In both cases, locally rooted territorial and political disputes have given rise to short wars and long-lasting tensions between China and a major local state (India and Vietnam). Many of the states in Southeast Asia, in




addition to Vietnam, also have strong historical reasons for seeing China as a threat. China's historical suzerainty over Indochina, and sometimes

occupation of it, is felt particularly strongly by Vietnam, but is not insigni ficant elsewhere, particularly Indonesia and Malaysia.16 Beijing's claim

(echoed by Taiwan) to the Spratly Islands, which lie in the southern part of the South China Sea, is a potent reminder of how far China's historical and security interests penetrate into Southeast Asia. In addition, most Southeast Asian states contain significant populations of Chinese, which at worst gives rise to fears of fifth-column treason.17 These latter fears are

amplified by the history of post-independence links between local Chinese

populations on the one hand, and communist parties supported, and/or

inspired by Beijing on the other.18 This combined fear is present in most of the ASEAN countries, but is particularly strong in Malaysia and Indo

nesia, where the fusion of the local Chinese and communism precipitated major domestic conflicts during the period following independence.

For all these reasons, the looming presence of China is an important independent element in any assessment of security in Southeast Asia. The existence of significant security issues between China and the Southeast Asian states makes the boundary of the local complex somewhat messy. For the purpose of analysis, however, one gets a much less distorted picture by placing China outside the Southeast Asian complex, than by trying to

fit it into the local pattern. This approach requires careful handling of the China issue at the system level of analysis.

The Southeast Asian Complex and the Superpowers

For the reasons given above, it is difficult to separate the adjacent great power influence from the global dynamics of superpower rivalry. The local pattern of security relations in Southeast Asia clearly reflects an

independently rooted regional security dynamic. But the operations of

the larger rivalries between the Soviet Union and China, and the Soviet

Union and the United States, have heavily penetrated and distorted the

local pattern. These two pairs of rivalries are sometimes connected and

sometimes independent. After the decolonization of Southeast Asia, Amer

ican intervention dominated the region until the collapse of the United States position in Vietnam during the early 1970s. The American presence was part of its containment policy against the Soviet Union and China, and manifested itself in terms of bilateral and multilateral alliances, mili

tary aid, and direct military presence. The long American engagement in Southeast Asia certainly helped to define both the geographical and

the ideological terms of the current polarization in the structure of the

Southeast Asian security complex. The partial withdrawal of the United



10 Barry Buzan

States after 1975, and the accompanying transformation of the Sino-Soviet

presence in the region from reluctant alliance to active rivalry, set the

terms for the current pattern of great power penetration into the region. The Soviet Union supports Vietnam's position both within the local com

plex, and against China and the United States. In return for this, it gains an important ally in its containment of China, and limited local basing facilities for its naval and air force deployments in an area previously

monopolized by American maritime power.19 The combined Soviet-Vietnamese position leaves China with a difficult

hand to play. Beijing holds no military trumps, and the outcome of events in Southeast Asia over the last fifteen years has been strongly against its

preferences. Since 1954, its preference has been for a Southeast Asia kept weak by its internal divisions. China was perhaps never keen to see its

historic rival Vietnam reunified,20 and certainly opposed the extension of Vietnamese hegemony over Laos and Kampuchea.21 China's interests were

thus served by American policy only to the extent that the war delayed Vietnam's victory and left it weak. But the outcome of the war was bad for China, both m terms of Vietnam's victorious position in the region, and the consolidation of Soviet influence in Vietnam. From this perspec tive, American policy was totally misguided inasmuch as it mistakenly supposed the danger to be Chinese hegemony over Southeast Asia.

China has also to struggle against the fact that most of its potential allies in the region view it as a threat for the reasons discussed above. Since the late 1970s, after the consolidation of the Soviet-Vietnamese alliance and the Vietnamese occupation of Kampuchea, China's natural security interest has been to identify itself with ASEAN's fears of both Vietnam and the Soviet Union. But the complex interplay of local and great power security dynamics makes this logic far from straightforward. Thailand is the most amenable of the ASEAN states to China's position because it-is

by far the most exposed of the ASEAN states to the threat from Vietnam, and welcomes the Chinese counterweight. Malaysia and Indonesia, by contrast, focus more on the longer-term threat of Chinese hegemonism to the region than on the more immediate, but in the long-run, much

smaller, threat from Vietnam.22 Because opinion in ASEAN is divided, Viet nam can portray itself and the Soviet Union as serving regional interests

by resisting the reassertion of Chinese hegemony over Southeast Asia.23 This interaction between local and great power security dynamics

explains why all attempts to create a security community covering the whole region have failed. ASEAN's promotion of a Zone of Peace, Free dom and Neutrality (ZOPFAN) confronts two difficulties. Firstly, it creates divisions within ASEAN about the meanings of the terms in relation to the trade and security links that individual members already have with




outside powers. Secondly, it can make no progress as long as the local

complex is acutely divided between the ASEAN group and Vietnam.24 The Soviet proposal for Asian Collective Security first floated in 1969

attempts to approach the problem from a different angle. As in South Asia, the Soviets wish to de-emphasize the local security rivalries in order to highlight the common threat to the region posed by China. The Soviets

want local conflict resolution in order to strengthen their containment

programme against China.25 The Chinese, in turn, now favour an ASEAN

style ZOPFAN as a means of excluding the Soviet Union from the region. Inasmuch as a coherent regional interest exists in excluding all great

power penetration into the local complex, it is thwarted by the stronger interest in calling in outside support against local rivals. In addition, as

Girling argues, most of the states in the region also seek outside support against domestic threats. Although the ASEAN states seem to trust each other enough to have created a security community among themselves, "... if any regime felt gravely threatened it would be more likely to appeal for help from outside the region than from fellow members within it".28 In this way, as also in South Asia, the domestic, local and great power security dynamics reinforce each other to keep the region both divided within itself, and penetrated by more powerful outside interests.

Conclusion

The pattern of security relations that established itself in Southeast Asia

during the late 1970s now looks quite durable, in that both the local and the great power alignments that support it have stabilized. This prospect contrasts notably with the three decades following decolonization, when both local and great power alignments underwent dramatic changes. The Soviets have every reason to want to maintain their alliance with Vietnam because of the advantages it offers in their rivalries with both the United States and China. Vietnam seems unlikely to give up either communism or its dominance over Laos and Kampuchea. Consequently, the general divide between it and ASEAN will endure, though that still leaves considerable leeway for variation between the present levels of

military confrontation, and some kind of uneasy detente based on a reduc tion of Vietnamese military presence in Kampuchea.

Given this general divide, ASEAN will have to endure its uncomfort able compromises of half-hearted support for ZOPFAN, reliance on a

reduced American presence offshore, and mixed feelings about China as

both an asset and a liability to ASEAN's security. China and the United States will also have to live with their uneasy alignment of security inter ests in Southeast Asia. China wishes to retain an American presence both



12 Barry Buzan

to offset Soviet power, and to moderate its difficult relations with the

ASEAN states. China and the Soviet Union seem destined to pursue their

rivalry in the region for the foreseeable future. So long as the Soviet Union

is entrenched in Vietnam, the United States is unlikely to withdraw further, and will have a general interest in taking China's side against the Soviet

Union wherever it can do so without alienating its local friends.

Other things being equal, then, the current pattern of mutual rein

forcement between external and internal security alignments looks quite firm. The principal variable within the Southeast Asian security complex is Kampuchea, where serious domestic divisions add to the regional and

global rivalries already in play.27 A solution that would restore enough

Kampuchean independence to revive its role as a buffer between Vietnam

and Thailand would certainly ease the security division within the region. If such a Kampuchean solution could be combined with a Sino-Soviet

agreement to reduce rivalry in the area, then the prospects for ZOPFAN would improve. It is, however, hard to think of reasons why the Soviets would give up their doubly useful position in Vietnam and given their concerns about China, hard to think why the Vietnamese would want the Soviets to leave. The only leverage available to the West is its ability to help Vietnam resuscitate its appalling economy. To the extent that Vietnam

fears losing power because of its weak economy, it may be open to such

leverage. For the West, however, such a strategy has to overcome not only American reluctance to deal with a country still seen as an enemy, but also the classic problem of the risk involved if Vietnam is made stronger and therefore more able to pursue its hegemonic aspirations.

There are only two obvious sources that could contribute towards a

major change in the pattern of security relations in and around Southeast Asia within the next decade or two. The first hinges on a major domestic

upheaval either in Burma or in one of the larger ASEAN states. Any such

instability would attract intense intervention from both within and outside the region, and its outcome could well shift the whole security equation

within the local complex. Should Burma or one of the ASEAN states look like joining the Soviet-Vietnam camp as a result of such a process, this would strengthen the identity of interests among China, the United States and ASEAN, and greatly sharpen the degree of polarization in the

region. As long as states with weak domestic political structures exist, such dramatic transformations can never be ruled out.

Paradoxically, however, as Sukhumbhand Paribatra has argued, South east Asia also derives security benefits from the fact that most of the states within it are weak both as states and as powers. Lack of means prevents old rivals like Thailand and Burma from pursuing their rivalry. Similarly, the ASEAN states hang together in part from a common awareness that




conflict among them would be more likely to exacerbate their domestic

political fragilities than to override them. Limited capability plus political weakness may thus be a formula for non-confrontation regional politics. In this way, Southeast Asia may differ from the European model, in which

long-term confrontations with neighbours played a major role in forging both the cohesive national identities, and the widely accepted government structures necessary for a strong nation-state.28

The second possible source of change is Japan. In general terms,

Japan still plays an anomalous role in the pattern of global security. Be cause of the long hangover from World War II, Japan's vast potential power plays a limited role in the security affairs of Asia except to underpin the pro-Western political economies of the ASEAN states. The fate of

ASEAN is, however, crucial to Japan's economy, a fact acknowledged in

Japanese defence policy.29 When Japan once again resumes a more normal and independent role ("when" rather than "if", leaving very open the

question of how long it will take), its power and its interests will make it one of the external forces impinging on Southeast Asia's security. A

more active Japan would transform the great power security complex in Northeast Asia, and in the process change the way in which that "higher level" security dynamic now penetrates Southeast Asia.

The form that Japan's role will take is impossible to predict, for any such development would already have wrought major changes in the global pattern of security. It is, however, unlikely to have a strong military com

ponent. Japan's role in Southeast Asia would depend on whether it had found a way of expressing both its nationalism and its security interests that did not trigger memories of its earlier imperialism. There can be no

doubt, however, that Southeast Asia still falls as much within the sphere of Japanese power and interest as it did during the 1930s and 1940s,

though obviously under wholly different domestic and international cir cumstances. But even the use of purely economic instruments is fraught with problems. Japan, for example, could not use such instruments to woo Vietnam away from Soviet influence without itself becoming entangled in the local security dynamics that affect relations between Vietnam and China and ASEAN.

On most levels, however, the prospect is more one of stability than one of change. Neither the power structure nor the pattern of alignment within the complex seems likely to undergo any sharp transformation.

Similarly, there is little sign that boundaries between the Southeast Asian

complex and any of its neighbours are going to break down. The essen

tially self-contained dynamics of the local complexes in the region look durable. Even the messy boundary with China looks unlikely to change in priority sufficiently to require redefinition. The pattern of great power



14 Barry Buzan

penetration also seems stable except for the possibility that a more inde

pendent Japan might create a more complicated set of rival interests.

Even here, however, the greater likelihood is that Japan's influence will

simply grow within the framework of the existing pattern. The case of Southeast Asia illustrates a relationship among domestic,

regional and global security that can be found throughout the Third World.

The governments of Third World states, particularly weak states, will

often trade a degree of support for one side or the other in great power rivalries in return for political support and arms in both domestic and

local conflicts. Politically, the effect is one of adding a complicating over

lay of a global pattern of rivalries onto the local pattern. Thus, in South

Asia, India is supported by the Soviet Union, and Pakistan by the United

States and China; and in Southeast Asia, Vietnam is supported by the

Soviet Union, and ASEAN in various ways by the United States, China

and Japan. Such alignments demonstrate how local rivalries and conflicts

provide the principal means of entry for the great powers into the domestic

and regional politics of the Third World. Disputes within and between

Third World countries make it easy for outside great powers to gain access

in order to pursue their own rivalry. By adopting this tactic, Third World

countries connive at the interference in their affairs by the North which so many of them loudly decry.

The Southeast Asian security complex also demonstrates the destabiliz

ing effect that weak states can have on the international anarchy when

whole regions are dominated by them. Such regions are not only inherently

conflict-prone in themselves, but also draw in and amplify the rivalries

among the great powers. External political and military support for compet

ing sides (either within or between states) within a local complex enables wars to be fought on a much larger scale than local resources alone would

permit. But more importantly, it tends to make local conflicts more difficult to end. As in Kampuchea, politically motivated external arms supply props up the weaker side and ensures that no indigenous state or faction achieves a dominant position simply by being able to marshall superior local resources. Since the superpowers are guided more by their own

rivalry than by concern for local outcomes, and since their access to local influence usually depends on their taking sides in local conflict, the natural outcome of their intervention in the Third World is to perpetuate local rivalries. If a local victory would mean the triumph of a superpower client, then the dynamics of the superpower rivalry will tend to ensure

compensating movements of resources to local opponents. The simple fact is that the easiest route to influence for great powers

is by taking sides in the disputes within and among the local states. In most areas of the Third World this process is facilitated by the dominance




of local rivalries and conflicts, both domestic and within the local security complex, over any joint interest in insulating the region from great power intervention. The fate of ZOPFAN shows the truth of this statement even for a subregional grouping like ASEAN, which within itself has made

impressive progress towards the development of a security community. Partly because of their different domestic vulnerabilities, partly because of their different attitudes towards the polarization between ASEAN and Vietnam within the Southeast Asian security complex, and partly because of their divergent perceptions of outside powers, particularly China, the ASEAN states have been unable to generate a coherent collective view of what "neutralization of the region" might mean, whether for ASEAN

itself, or for the Southeast Asian security complex as a whole.

NOTES

1. Barry Buzan and Gowher Rizvi et al., South Asian Insecurity and the Great Powers

(London: Macmillan, 1986); ch. 1.

2. Ibid., pp. 7-8.

3. A full exposition of this logic can be found in ibid., ch. 1.

4. Barry Buzan, People, States and Fear: the National Security Problem in Internationa]

Relations (Brighton: Wheatsheaf, 1983), ch. 7

5. Ole Waever, "The Interplay of Some Regional and Subregional Dynamics of Security"

(Conference paper, Copenhagen, Centre for Peace and Conflict Research, November

1987) , pp. 2-8.

6. Robert Jervis, "Security Regimes", International Organization 36, no. 2 (1982): 357-78.

7 Waever, op. cit., pp. 9-22.

8. Figures from The Military Balance 1986-87 (London: International Institute for Stra

tegic Studies [IISS], 1986). 9. Chai-Anan Samudavanija and Sukhumbhand Paribatra, "Development for Security,

Security for Development: Prospects for Durable Stability in Southeast Asia", in Durable

Stability in Southeast Asia, edited by Kusuma Snitwongse and Sukhumbhand Paribatra

(Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1987), pp. 22-24.

10. Sheldon W. Simon, "The Two Southeast Asias and China's Security Perspective", Asian

Survey 24, no. 5 (1984): 306, 310-11; and Bernard K. Gordon, "The Third Indochina

Conflict", Foreign Affairs 65, no. 1 (1986): 66-85.

11. Barry Buzan, A Sea of Troubles? Sources of Dispute in the New Ocean Regime, Adelphi

Paper 143 (London: IISS, 1978). 12. Noordin Sopiee, "ASEAN and Regional Security", in Regional Security in the Third

World: Case Studies from Southeast Asia and the Middle East, edited by Mohammed

Ayoob (London: Croom Helm, 1986), p. 229.

13. Buzan and Rizvi, op. cit., pp. 17-18, 158.

14. The Northeast Asian security complex has some unusual characteristics that are

beyond the scope of this paper. There is a fuller assessment in Barry Buzan and Yuji

Suzuki, "Japan and Western Europe m the Superpower Security System" (unpublished,

1988) .



16 Barry Buzan

15. Buzan and Rizvi, op. cit, p. 11.

16. Sheldon W. Simon, "Davids and Goliaths: Small Power-Great Power Security Relations

in Southeast Asia", Asian Survey 23, no. 3 (1983): 312-13; and Takashi Tajima, China

and Southeast Asia: Strategic Interests and Policy Prospects, Adelphi Paper 172 (London:

IISS, 1981), pp. 9-10.

17 Sheldon W. Simon, "The Two Southeast Asias and China's Security Perspectives", Asian Survey 24, no. 5 (1984): 526-27; Simon, "Davids and Goliaths", p. 304; Tajima,

op. cit., pp. 21-26; and J.L.S. Girling, "A Neutral Southeast Asia?", Australian Outlook

27, no. 2 (1973): 127-29.

18. Simon, "The Two Southeast Asias", pp. 523-25, 527-30; and Tajima, op. cit., pp. 17-21.

19. Shee Poon Kim, "A Decade of ASEAN 1967-77", Asian Survey 17, no. 8 (1977): 92-95.

20. William R. Keylor, The Twentieth Century World (New York: Oxford University Press,

1984), p. 390.

21. Gordon, op. cit., pp. 68-69.

22. Simon, "Davids and Goliaths", pp. 310-311; Simon, "The Two Southeast Asias",

pp. 526-33; Peter Calvocoressi, World Politics Since 1945, 4th edition (London: Long man, 1982), pp. 19-20; and Tajima, op. cit., p. 15.

23. Simon, "Davids and Goliaths", pp. 312-33.

24. Ibid., pp. 309-10; Kim, op. cit., pp. 755, 766; Donald E. Weatherbee, "US policy and the

Two Southeast Asias", Asian Survey 18, no. 4 (1978): 411-13; Sheldon W. Simon, Asian

Neutrah'sm and US Policy (Washington D.C.. American Enterprise Institute for Public

Policy Research, 1975), pp. 53-57; and Girling, op. cit., pp. 125-26.

25. Tajima, op. cit., p. 30.

26. Girling, op. cit., p. 124.

27 Robert S. Ross, "Indochina's Continuing Tragedy", Problems of Communism 25, no. 6

(1986): 87-92.

28. Sukhumbhand Paribatra, discussant's paper, Workshop on "Leadership and Security in Southeast Asia" (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 10-12 December

1987), pp. 4-7

29. Simon, "Davids and Goliaths", pp. 306-7

Barry Buzan is Senior Lecturer, Department of International Studies,

University of Warwick, United Kingdom.



Jawad

Documents

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patterns of security

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