Hard Choices
Description:... The region's most powerful organization, ASEAN, is being challenged to ensure security and encourage democracy while simultaneously reinventing itself as a model of Asian regionalism.Should ASEAN's leaders defend a member country's citizens against state predation for the sake of justice - and risk splitting ASEAN itself? Or should regional leaders privilege state security over human security for the sake of order - and risk being known as a dictators' club? Should ASEAN isolate or tolerate the junta in Myanmar? Is democracy a requisite to security, or is it the other way around? How can democratization become a regional project without fi rst transforming the Association into a "e;peoplecentered"e; organization? But how can ASEAN reinvent itself along such lines if its member states are not already democratic?How will its new Charter affect ASEANA*s ability to make these hard choices? How is regionalism being challenged by transnational crime, infectious disease, and other border-jumping threats to human security in Southeast Asia? Why have regional leaders failed to stop the perennial regional "e;haze"e; from brush fi res in democratic Indonesia? Does democracy help or hinder nuclear energy security in the region?In this timely book - the second of a three-book series focused on Asian regionalism - ten analysts from six countries address these and other pressing questions that Southeast Asia faces in the twenty-first century.
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