Publication Year: 2020
India–Thailand Security Cooperation: Strengthening the Indo-Pacific Resolve
DOI: 10.1177/2347797020906651
Abstract: In the past, India’s resolve to connect with countries further to its east centred on its relationship with ASEAN as a group and lacked a holistic outlook as it emphasised on a lopsided approach that left out the security dimension. The bilateral relationship between Bangkok and New Delhi marks an emerging departure from this past trend. In the recent past, Thailand has emerged as a bright spot in India’s vast array of security relationships, with growing focus on maritime security, counterinsurgency and counterterrorism operations, joint patrols and exchange of personnel in training. Besides boosting interoperability, increasing joint actions seek to marry India’s Act East policy with Thailand’s Look West policy, both of which emerged in the past decade of the twentieth century. Both countries look to strengthening their resolve in the Indo-Pacific, even as the region’s stability gets further complicated by sharpening Great Power politics. This article scrutinises the India–Thailand relationship from a security perspective and tests the compatibility of this emerging bilateral relationship with a regional security architecture conceptualisation in the Indo-Pacific. As such, this article seeks to fulfil two important goals: fill the literature deficit in India–Thailand relations that has often been eclipsed and subsequently neglected by the overarching canvass of India–ASEAN relations and analyse India–Thailand bilateral relations from the perspective of an emerging security partnership in the complex labyrinth of relationships in the Indo-Pacific.
Abstract
This article aims to provide an overview of the development, progress, and problems of the Asia Cooperation Dialogue (ACD)–the only continent-wide forum in Asia–emphasizing the role of Thailand, the founding country. The ACD serves as the missing link in Asian cooperation, constituting an informal and a non-institutionalized forum for Asian Foreign Ministers. It is a useful diplomatic asset, which is not recognized as ASEAN, APEC, or ASEM but can still provide a forum for Asian Foreign Ministers to informally exchange views on matters of common interest. A lack of leadership and political will is among the major factors that have considerably undermined the significance of the ACD.
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This article analyses two security challenges facing the Royal Cambodian Government (RGC) and the Cambodian Defence Organization at the strategic level for the next decade. The first obvious challenge relates to the stalemated territorial dispute along the Cambodia–Thailand border, particularly the question of ownership of the Preah Vihear (called PhraViharn in Thailand) temple and its surrounding area since October 2008. Bilateral talks to manage the crisis and dispute failed, and the same happened to mediation and peacekeeping efforts by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in general and Indonesia in particular. This is considered to be a top security challenge for Cambodia’s national security and drives the military forces’ capability adjustment. The second challenge arises from the overlapping maritime boundary dispute with Thailand in an area which is believed to contain significant oil and natural gas reserves. The article will focus on the nature of the current border conflict with Thailand and its implications for the Cambodian Defence Organization given its limited budget and capability. This article argues that these two key security factors have significantly underpinned Cambodia’s strategic environment and have greatly impacted upon and shaped Cambodia’s reform agenda, defence posture and international engagements. It is also argued the conflict severely tested the regional organization ASEAN and Indonesia as its Chair.
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Abstract
The rise of mega-regionalism in the Asia-Pacific has become a significant development for the region itself as well as the global trading system. Europe, in particular, has a great deal at stake in this process. This paper considers the economic costs of EU exclusion from Asia-Pacific economic cooperation initiatives.
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The dynamics of institutional balancing is the predominant factor prompting East Asian countries to move to mega-FTAs. Rather than seeking mega-FTAs purely on the basis of economic benefits, these countries, particularly major powers, have attempted to form mega-FTAs to counter the target state’s vision of the regional architecture.
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High stakes are involved in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade negotiations: the United States seems to be on the verge of redirecting Asian regionalism towards an Asia–Pacific trade grouping that proclaims will not tolerate sectoral exclusions and will tackle head on non-tariff barriers (long considered glaring deficiencies of most free trade agreements). However, US domestic politics may prevent the realization of these lofty objectives. The influence of internal political constraints is evident in three areas: (i) the United States has pushed for a hybrid approach on market access negotiations that clouds the prospects of TPP adhering to the no-carve-out mantra; (ii) US trade negotiators have ramped up their negotiation objectives into a so-called platinum standard that could impose heavy preconditions on accession for new members and diminish the chances of growing the TPP membership; and (iii) the protracted ratification process and lack of trade promotion authority undermines the credibility of the United States in the eyes of prospective trade partners.
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A strategic choice is fast approaching between accepting China’s sub-regional hegemony and pushing back through strategies that would impose costs.
During the course of 2015, China used land-reclamation techniques to expand many of the features that it occupies in the South China Sea, most of which were then militarised. This development – alongside many other important signs of assertiveness, including China’s large-scale naval modernisation; its expanding deployment of maritime paramilitary forces to coerce other Asian states, including Japan, in the East China Sea; its efforts to undermine the unity of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN); and its attempted creation of an alternative regional security architecture – not only indicated Beijing’s intent to reinforce its maritime claims, but also highlighted China’s drive to create a new regional order in which it plays a dominant and arbitrating role. Such an order could only undermine the interests of other regional states and the West. While the success of these efforts is by no means inevitable, the United States and its regional allies and security partners will need to respond more firmly to China, particularly in the South China Sea (SCS). By late October 2015, an initial ‘freedom of navigation’ patrol by the US Navy, which took one of its ships inside the 12-nautical-mile territorial waters claimed by China around one of the features that it occupies in the SCS, indicated that Washington recognised the necessity of stronger countermeasures. However, to succeed, this tougher approach will need to be both persistent and supported by US allies and security partners in the region and beyond.
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One of Asia’s best-respected writers on business and economy, Hong Kong-based author Mark L. Clifford provides a behind-the-scenes look at what companies in China, India, Japan, Korea, the Philippines, Indonesia, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Thailand are doing to build businesses that will lessen the environmental impact of Asia’s extraordinary economic growth. Dirty air, foul water, and hellishly overcrowded cities are threatening to choke the region’s impressive prosperity. Recognizing a business opportunity in solving social problems, Asian businesses have developed innovative responses to the region’s environmental crises.
From solar and wind power technologies to green buildings, electric cars, water services, and sustainable tropical forestry, Asian corporations are upending old business models in their home countries and throughout the world. Companies have the money, the technology, and the people to act—yet, as Clifford emphasizes, support from the government (in the form of more effective, market-friendly policies) and the engagement of civil society are crucial for a region-wide shift to greener business practices. Clifford paints detailed profiles of what some of these companies are doing and includes a unique appendix that encapsulates the environmental business practices of more than fifty companies mentioned in the book.
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This book presents a conceptualization of social emergence in international relations as a novel angle to analyse institutional dynamics in East Asia, introducing the concept of emergence from a critical realist perspective. The author examines East Asia’s characteristic mesh work of regional institutions that affect integrative processes and regional policies, exploring how such institutions emerge and acquire their own nature and why this pattern persists over time, an unresolved and contested subject in the field of International Relations. This book suggests that regional institutions are emergent entities of the international system that arise as forms of self-organization by states to achieve certain emergent properties and powers. The author’s approach sheds light on the particular emergent properties and powers of regional institutions and identifies discourse as a key mechanism of social emergence. Besides engaging in relevant questions of the philosophy of science and its methodological implications for studying social emergence in world politics, the book also analyses the concrete case of two East Asian regional institutions: ASEAN Plus Three and the East Asia Summit. This book will engage scholars and postgraduate students of Asian Studies and International Relations.
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Diverse solar PV business models and financing options exist in the international landscape, helping expand and accelerate the adoption of rooftop solar PV systems. The conditions for their emergence are context specific, depending on the policies, regulations, incentives, and market conditions of each country. After a review of the international landscape, this paper compiles and analyzes business models and financing options for rooftop solar PV investment in Thailand that have emerged during the period between 2013 and 2015. Despite policy discontinuity for the support of rooftop solar systems, diverse business models and financing options are driving market expansion and expanding solar access to more Thai consumers. Drawing on our policy and regulatory analyses and in-depth interviews with business representatives, we identify four types of business models and one financing option. The business models include Roof Rental, Solar PPA, Solar Leasing, and Community Solar, and the financing option is the solar loan. We analyze the drivers for their emergence, barriers to their success, and the risks from the business owners’ and consumers’ viewpoints. Our policy recommendation is focused on crafting a net-metering regulation with evidence-based studies on the potential costs and benefits to different stakeholders.
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This paper examines the impact of increasing intra-state conflict in the Asia Pacific on domestic, regional and international security. It focuses on secessionist conflicts and self-determination disputes in South-East Asia and the South Pacific. It looks at the reasons behind the increase in such internal conflicts, including the proliferation of weak, ethnically diverse states; the impacts of modernization and democratization; and changing international norms in relation to the creation of new states. Finally, it examines the way that intra-state conflict impacts upon the international security agenda via the involvement of distant actors; the internationalization of domestic disputes; cross-border movements of arms and people; increasing threats to maritime transport; and the potential for increased superpower competition in the region.
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Understanding the upstream oil and gas (O&G) industry’s responses to climate change and what factors can be influential to trigger their mitigation strategies is crucial for policy-makers to harness the huge resources that this industry can mobilize towards environmental protection. Considering that individual climate change efforts are unlikely to affect global mitigation paths, the study investigates the possibility that sectoral approaches can help in the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, using Thailand as a case study. It conducted online questionnaire surveys and semi-structured interviews to acquire primary data from companies and key informants from the government, NGOs, NPOs and academics. The results suggested that, among three possible groups of factors that could affect company decisions on whether to promote sectoral approaches, domestic politics (particularly the Thai government) is the most important, though other factors also play important and interrelated roles. The most welcomed type of scheme that could be envisaged would appear to be a sectoral agreement between government and industry. Finally, the authors provide two main policy recommendations, namely the establishment of an industrial association of O&G companies and for it to target how to start looking at measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions amongst large companies in the sector.
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Does a trade-off exist between energy efficiency and economic growth? This question underlies some of the tensions between economic and environmental policies, especially in developing countries that often need to expand their industrial base to grow. This paper contributes to the debate by analyzing the relationship between energy efficiency and economic performance at the micro- (total factor productivity) and macro-level (countries’ economic growth). It uses data on a large sample of manufacturing firms across 29 developing countries to find that lower levels of energy intensity are associated with higher total factor productivity for the majority of these countries. The results are robust to a variety of checks. Suggestive cross-country evidence points towards the same relation measured at the macro-level as well.
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While the existing literature emphasizes that elites often have incentives to pander to nationalist sentiment, much less attention has been paid to elite efforts to subdue popular nationalism, either to avoid domestic instability or international escalation. This article examines how different governments respond to nationalist protests and the resulting effects on the risk that interstate disputes will escalate to armed conflict. We argue that government responses to nationalist protests tend to vary in patterned ways across regime types. Nationalist protests present particular dangers in weakly institutionalized democracies, where demonstrations often pose serious threats of instability but are difficult or costly for the government to subdue, tempting or forcing leaders to escalate to appease domestic critics. We illustrate the theory with four cases representing a range of regime types: Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, and the Philippines.
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This important book analyzes nuclear weapon and energy policies in Asia, a region at risk for high-stakes military competition, conflict, and terrorism. The contributors explore the trajectory of debates over nuclear energy, security, and nonproliferation in key countries—China, India, Japan, Pakistan, South Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam, and other states in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Arguing against conventional wisdom, the contributors make a convincing case that domestic variables are far more powerful than external factors in shaping nuclear decision making. The book explores what drives debates and how decisions are framed, the interplay between domestic dynamics and geopolitical calculations in the discourse, where the center of gravity of debates lies in each country, and what this means for regional cooperation or competition and U.S. nuclear energy and nonproliferation policy in Asia.
