Think Tank (2/2020)
HIGHLIGHT
Global Health Security: COVID-19 and Its Impact
30 Apr 2020
The COVID-19 global pandemic has affected our lives, the way we work and connect. How does it affect food security? What about climate change? With Covid-19 pandemic, is terrorism held at bay? RSIS researchers have analysed and written about the implications on security and geopolitics under the series on “Global Health Security” .
In this issue, we have shortlisted some RSIS Commen ...
RECENT BOOKS BY STAFF
Non-Traditional Security Issues in ASEAN: Agendas for Action
Mely Caballero-Anthony, Lina Gong
Non-Traditional Security Issues in ASEAN examines the current state of governance of non-traditional security challenges confronting the ASEAN region. The book takes an issue-specific approach to investigating how ASEAN states and societies govern many of the pressing non-traditional security issues, such as climate change, food security, environmental protection, humanitarian assistance and disaster response, health security, nuclear security, and human trafficking and forced displacement.
With non-traditional security as an established concept in the policy and scholarly communities in ASEAN, this book moves beyond securitization and focuses on capacity-building, regional cooperation and institutions for dealing with non-traditional security challenges in the region. Through the development of a comprehensive analytical framework that examines the processes of governing non-traditional security problems, the editors put together chapters that identify some of the major gaps and challenges in managing many of the pressing security issues in Southeast Asia.
Non-Traditional Security Issues in ASEAN provides a systemic assessment of the state of governance of the most pressing challenges in the region. The authors analyse the ways in which particular issues are addressed at national and regional levels and by different stakeholders. In spite of the differences among various non-traditional security issues, the analysis of the chapters converge on three core themes for enhancing governance, which include engagement of multiple actors, effective enforcement of national and regional laws and regulations, and better coordination between different actors. As such, Non-Traditional Security Issues in ASEAN contributes to policy making by highlighting the key agendas that call for national action and promoting and deepening regional cooperation in governing non-traditional security.
Smart Cities in Asia: Governing Development in the Era of Hyper-Connectivity
Joo Yu-Min, Tan Teck Boon
At a time when Asia is rapidly growing in global influence, this much-needed and insightful book bridges two major current policy topics in order to offer a unique study of the latest smart city archetypes emerging throughout Asia. Highlighting the smart city aspirations of Asian countries and their role in Asian governments’ new development strategies, this book draws out timely narratives and insights from a uniquely Asian context and policymaking space.
Each carefully curated chapter studies a national or local government-led smart city project and how it specifically relates to local institutions, political dynamics and development challenges in a region that is rapidly urbanising and growing economically. Collectively, these pressing contributions offer a comparative look at the policies and practices of smart cities, seen through the lens of local scholars and experts.
Thoughtful and engaging, this book will prove valuable reading for students and scholars of public policy and Asian studies, as well as those with a specific interest in urban studies and planning, and science and technology policy. Policymakers and practitioners will also benefit from the rich information and up-to-date analysis on offer.
Counter Terrorist Trends and Analyses (CTTA)
23 Apr 2020
The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has redefined almost all spheres of modern life. While states around the world are redeploying their financial resources, energies and military capabilities to cope with the challenge of the coronavirus, terrorist groups across the ideological s ...
COVID-19: What Changes – and What Doesn’t
17 Apr 2020
The COVID-19 crisis blurs the boundaries between private and public life. Measures to curb the spread of the virus often infringe upon personal choice and privacy.
COVID-19 makes salient how decisions made by any one individual — whether relating to movement, personal hygiene, consumer ...
COVID-19 Crisis: Timely Reminder for Climate Change
17 Apr 2020
The responses to the COVID-19 outbreak are unprecedented. Among the various measures that governments have introduced, there is one distinct characteristic that is visibly different from the usual policymaking processes. It is their readiness to relegate the economy’s timeless supremacy in pla ...
War on COVID-19: More Than One Front
15 Apr 2020
As Singapore continues its fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, much has been written about what should or should not be done to keep the nation safe. Granted, the COVID-19 fight is at its core very much a public health issue, and one should take care not to hastily “securitise” the matter.
Coronabonds: Backdoor to Collective Debt?
14 Apr 2020
The debate about debt pooling among the Eurozone has haunted the single currency ever since it was first conceived. In 1998, German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, a champion of the Euro, promised a sceptical German public that a common currency would not lead to German liabilities for other economies ...
COVID-19 and School Closures: Why Education Sector Needs Protecting
09 Apr 2020
Schools are where socialisation is encouraged and rightfully so. They are microcosms of the societies within which students will ultimately be embedded to live their lives. But schools are also more than that. They are places, for many students in this world, where access to food, water, safet ...
Post COVID-19 World: Will It Reshape Global Leadership?
07 Apr 2020
The outbreak of a mysterious virus affecting thousands of Chinese citizens in Wuhan late last year had drawn little global concern, let alone taking action to prepare for what later turned out to be a pandemic. The general consensus among many countries – especially in the West – was that this ...
COVID-19 and Global Health Diplomacy: Can Asia Rise to the Challenge?
03 Apr 2020
People around the globe are waking up to a new reality of a world shutting down, as countries desperately try to contain the spread of this raging COVID-19 virus. In three months since the outbreak of this disease, people’s lives have severely upended with cities locked down, millions of jobs ...
COVID-19 Pandemic: What It Means for US National Security
30 Mar 2020
Already at this early stage of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, a temperamental set-to has emerged between two poles: those who see the virus as revealing American institutional decay across the board, and view the playing out of the pandemic as worsening it; and those who espy a si ...
COVID-19 Pandemic: Lessons from Lee Kuan Yew
26 Mar 2020
The fifth anniversary of the death of Singapore’s founding prime minister Lee Kuan Yew passed quietly on 23 March 2020. The uneventful day was hardly surprising in a world brought almost to a standstill by the ravages of the COVID-19 pandemic. It is a time of unprecedented crisis, testing the ...
COVID-19: Its Impact on Food Sufficiency
26 Mar 2020
Food is an existential need for Singapore. That this has always been so was brought home to many Singaporeans when Malaysia’s recent nationwide lockdown on travel massively affected the vital supplies of food to the country via land. While the immediate impact has abated, this has affirmed wha ...
COVID-19 and Sinophobia in Singapore
24 Mar 2020
Singapore fight against the spread of COVID-19 has drawn international commendation, reflecting its capacity to manage resources and crisis communications, as well as carry out efficient detection and isolation of new cases.
Despite these best practices put in place by the government, p ...
COVID-19 & Humanitarian Response: Leave No-One Behind
20 Mar 2020
The Red Cross Movement has had an active global awareness raising campaign during the COVID-19 outbreak along with other international organisations and NGOs. They all highlight those most vulnerable to coronavirus, but many media outlets miss out a number of these categories: the elderly, hea ...
Trust During the Time of COVID-19
18 Mar 2020
G7 leaders on Monday, 16 March 2020 announced a slew of measures to address the COVID-19 pandemic; in a spate of relief for the multilateral system, the emphasis was distinctively on coordination and cooperation: information sharing, global economic relief, and coordinated public health measur ...
COVID-19: Impact on Bintan’s Tourism Sector
03 Mar 2020
The COVID-19 outbreak in Indonesia has been responded to with nonchalance by the central government, which emphasised that Indonesia has not encountered many cases of infection, if at all. The Indonesian health minister had also caused a stir with his public statement on the COVID-19 when he e ...