Securing Southeast Asia by M. Beeson & A. J. Bellamy

MARK BEESON & ALEX J. BELLAMY

Securing Southeast Asia: the politics of security sector reform

London: Routledge, 2009. 224pp. ISBN: 978-0-415-41619-1, hb £85; ISBN: 978-0-415-49174-7, pb £22

Reviewed by Alan Collins, Swansea University

The objective of Securing Southeast Asia: the politics of security sector reform are two-fold. Firstly, to discern whether a gap exists between the rhetoric of reform and reality, and secondly, where the driver of reform originates. The reform Mark Beeson and Alex Bellamy, two prolific writers on East Asia and security respectively, are interested in is essentially, have the militaries of Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines narrowed their roles and withdrawn from their country’s politics.

The writing style is engaging and the chapters are very well sign-posted taking the reader smoothly through the material. The argument hails from the constructivist school, with attention focused on ideational factors trumping material explanation for understanding civil-military relations. This concentration on context specific factors, such as strategic culture, underpins their criticism of the traditional approach of applying the Western model, with its emphasis on civilian control of the military and the military’s professionalism, to non-Western regions. For example, noting the close correlation between civilian and military elites/institutions in Southeast Asia, they argue, makes the explanation for military intervention in politics because of weak civilian control unhelpful. The process of state- and nation-building in which Southeast Asian states were engaged, and arguably still are, gave their militaries an internal function that blurred such distinctions.

The constructivist approach adopted emphasises three factors that have greater agency than material considerations in explaining security sector reform; norms, both regulative and constitutive; strategic culture (beliefs, practices); and bureaucratic processes. Those readers familiar with constructivist discourse will recognise the language of embedded norms, logics of consequence and appropriateness and the function of institutions and epistemic communities, and here, they are applied to understanding two categories of change: fundamental and fine-tuning. The significance of material forces in two of the four fundamental changes, and the need for intensive fine-tuning in one of the other fundamental changes, indicates material factors are perhaps more significant than the writers are comfortable admitting. Nevertheless, the constructive approach is persuasively argued and the authors make a compelling case.  

When the text turns to the case studies, and each country (Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines) is examined separately in turn, the focus broadens from a concentration on civil-military relations to examine their historical and political developments. In the case of Malaysia very little detail is provided about the military and instead another security-institution (the police) receives comment. While the function of the Malaysian police can be captured by the broader sense of ‘security sector reform’ the Malaysian chapter sits oddly in a book that concentrates on the military in the other country studies and the first three conceptual chapters. The other three country studies provide detail about the function of the military in the states’ state- and nation-building projects. They are well-researched, clearly written and provide an excellent coverage of the relationship between civilian and military institutions from colonial to contemporary times. The Thai chapter provides an accessible coverage of the 2006 coup, and the Indonesian chapter provides incisive commentary on the ‘New Paradigm’ and Yudhoyono’s reform programme.

It is though in the country studies that a tension can be discerned. Having dismissed the notion of applying Western-centred ideas on what civil-military relations should be, and instead noting ideational factors, including strategic culture and historical experiences, as explanatory factors for how they are, the authors then adopt a critical stance on the limited extent of sectoral reform; hence their ‘overall conclusions are fairly gloomy’ (p. 173). The gloomy conclusion that these states are unlikely to adopt Western-inspired security sector reform and, at best pay lip service to it, is only gloomy if there was an expectation that such reform would be undertaken. However, the author’s constructivist approach explains that such an outcome is highly unlikely and indeed misplaced. If we are to accept that civil-military relations are a construction of powerful constituencies within each of the states under examination, rather than a consequence of Western-inspired directives about military professionalism, then rather than decrying rhetorical fine-tuning and looking for fundamental change, we should instead be asking why the need for rhetorical fine-tuning, what does this tells us about the changing nature of ideas, and the power relations between the various actors in this sector. For example, why is the conclusion about security sector reform in Indonesia ‘sobering’ (p. 151)? The chapter provides a clear, detailed and concise explanation for why we shouldn’t expect anything else.

The book is part of a growing literature that applies constructivist thinking to a variety of security topics; while in this instance it might appear to be civil-military relations in four Southeast Asian states the text is broader than this. In the country surveys the focus is more about corrupt practices in general and how these inhibit security sector reform. In this respect the empirical material does not quite provide the detail on the militaries that some readers might be seeking (it is detailed on Indonesia and Thailand but has relatively little on the Philippines and Malaysia). It is though a compelling read, using constructive discourse to explain the central role militaries have had in state- and nation-building and how this has acted as an obstacle to security sector reform.