Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies

Strategic Currents: China and US Competition for Influence

The advent of the 4th Industrial Revolution amidst the increasingly intensified global competition between the United States and China promises to be a major inflection point in human history. The authors assembled in this volume provide a sober assessment of this techno-nationalist contest and their implications for the rest of the world.

Indonesia and Islam in Transition

This book focuses on Islam in Indonesia, showcasing the wide range of Muslim organisations, belief systems and movements, together with an analysis of the political behaviour of Indonesian Muslims. It includes an investigation of the structure of groups, organizations, and societies, and how Muslims within the archipelago interact within these contexts. In doing so, it promotes a more nuanced understanding of Indonesian Muslim society by approaching it through the utilisation of scholarly frameworks. Theories related to religion and society are used, especially in characterising the transition of the Indonesian Muslim society from pre-New Order to post-New Order. Particularly significant is Abdullah Saeed’s framework in understanding one’s attitude towards key and contemporary issues, originally used to understand one’s attitude towards the religious ‘other’. The authors thus adopt this framework in the book, as a method of categorising people in a diverse society which in turn helps readers to understand the nuances of Islam and Muslims in a huge country like Indonesia.

Modernising the People’s Liberation Army: Aspiring to be a Global Military Power

This volume examines the progress made by the Chinese military (the People’s Liberation Army, PLA) as it strives to meet its commander-in-chief’s directive to transform itself into a more capable fighting force.

The book tracks the reforms undertaken by the PLA in meeting its commander-in-chief’s grand objectives set at the 2015 Central Military Commission Reform Work Meeting: for China’s armed forces to transform themselves into a more professional and modern military. Focusing on those changes since late 2016 at corps level and below, the first and second sections of the volume document the subsequent force structure and operational changes to the PLA’s four conventional services, and two newly established PLA branches: the Strategic Support Force and Joint Logistic Support Force. To that end, the contributors examine the reforms promulgated by the Chinese high command and measure them against observable developments in the PLA’s power-projection capabilities. In view of how the instrumentalization of military power is writ large in Beijing’s strategic calculus and in regional hotspot issues, the final part of the book also provides pathbreaking insights into two critical but not so well-understood phenomena: the now regular PLA aerial activities in the Taiwan Strait and the PLA Navy’s submarine operations in the South China Sea.

This book will be of much interest to students of East Asian security, Chinese politics, and military and strategic studies in general.

Climate Change in the Asia-Pacific Security Architecture – The Case of ASEAN

Human-induced climate change will likely cause more intense and frequent cyclones and typhoons, as noted in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis. Within the Asia-Pacific region, regional security discussions at the leadership level focus on the imminent threats to states and societies of more frequent and intense extreme weather events and sea-level rise as it is the world’s most exposed region. This article examines recent developments and discourse regarding climate change in the Asia-Pacific security architecture using the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) as a case study. It finds increasing recognition of climate change and its implications for peace and security within the regional security architecture. Debates over how best to address it to overcome an atomised approach to climate change impacts on peace and security in the region remain unresolved, but recent pronouncements at the leadership level signal an emerging mindset shift in understanding climate change within the regional security discourse. However, the substantive discussions largely take place in hybrid forums, albeit with official recognition in more traditional platforms, which may undermine efforts for an inclusive regional discourse on the climate change impacts on peace and security in ASEAN.

Middle Powers in Asia Pacific Multilateralism: A Differential Framework

Drawing on insights from differentiation theory, this book examines the participation of middle powers in multilateralism. Taking Australia, Indonesia and South Korea as examples, the book examines these countries’ roles in regional organizations, and particularly during the creation of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) and East Asia Summit. Through its analysis, the book argues that middle powers pursue dilution of major power stratificatory forces, as well as functionally differentiated roles for themselves in multilateral diplomacy. The book sets out a valuable new framework to explain and understand the behaviour of middle powers in multilateralism.