Abstract
This introductory chapter of the book first revisits conceptually the ASEAN Way of conflict management (AWCM)—its basic ideas and mode of operation—and identifies several challenges that has made it increasingly dysfunctional in the post-Cold War Southeast Asia. Based on this perception of the inadequacy of the conventional AWCM, the chapter sets up the overall goal of the book: to find emerging patterns of managing conflict within the domain of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), which may represent a new AWCM. To achieve this objective, seven conflicts—intrastate and interstate—in contemporary Southeast Asia are chosen for the investigation of the following chapters. These conflicts are: Aceh in Indonesia, the southern Philippines, southern Thailand, and the political conflict in Myanmar as intrastate conflicts, and the Thailand–Cambodia Preah Vihear temple dispute, the Indonesia–Malaysia Ambalat block dispute and the South China Sea (SCS) dispute as interstate conflicts. The chapter then introduces the concepts of incompatibility management and mediation regime, which would be used as analytical tools in the case study chapters.
Keywords
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- 1.
The new challenges will be discussed in more detail in Sect. 1.4 of this chapter.
- 2.
Different aspects of the internationalisation and intervention of external actors will be examined in detail in case studies in the following chapters.
- 3.
These two cases of interstate conflict and their management will be investigated comprehensively in case studies in the following chapters.
- 4.
One chapter of this book is dedicated to the SCS dispute and its management.
- 5.
There are more challenges to ASEAN in terms of maintaining regional security and stability, represented by the emergence of non-traditional security issues, such as transnational terrorism and criminal activity, outbreak of endemics and environmental degradation. While these factors may influence ASEAN’s capacity to manage conflict in some way or another, this book is concerned with factors that directly affect the manner in which intrastate and interstate conflict in the ASEAN domain are managed.
- 6.
A dispute over maritime sovereign rights generally takes place on the periphery of a nation state quite far from the national centre. For this reason, this type of conflict is not considered to pose an existential threat to the state unlike terrestrial dispute on land borders. For a detailed discussion on this difference, see Mak (2009: 115–118).
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Oishi, M. (2016). Introduction: The ASEAN Way of Conflict Management Under Challenge. In: Oishi, M. (eds) Contemporary Conflicts in Southeast Asia. Asia in Transition, vol 3. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-0042-3_1
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