Key developments that began to affect international politics in the immediate aftermath of the Cold War – globalisation, humanitarian intervention at odds with previously unquestioned prerogatives of state sovereignty, and the development of multilateral institutions to manage emerging security and economic challenges – gained further momentum in the late 1990s. Paradoxically, the Australian–US relationship was both reaffirmed and tested in some very traditional ways over this period. The Howard government was elected in March 1996 with a pledge to ’reinvigorate’ that relationship, which it felt had been neglected by its Labor predecessors.

The economic, political, strategic and cultural dynamism in Southeast Asia has gained added relevance in recent years with the spectacular rise of giant economies in East and South Asia. This has drawn greater attention to the region and to the enhanced role it now plays in international relations and global economics.

The sustained effort made by Southeast Asian nations since 1967 towards a peaceful and gradual integration of their economies has had indubitable success, and perhaps as a consequence of this, most of these countries are undergoing deep political and social changes domestically and are constructing innovative solutions to meet new international challenges. Big Power tensions continue to be played out in the neighbourhood despite the tradition of neutrality exercised by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

The Trends in Southeast Asia series acts as a platform for serious analyses by selected authors who are experts in their fields. It is aimed at encouraging policy makers and scholars to contemplate the diversity and dynamism of this exciting region.

As the Barack Obama administration moved towards its last year in office, the United States’ relations with ASEAN were ostensibly sound. However, Washington's future ties with the region remained contingent on larger forces of global change that could undermine such relationships. Most regional leaders quietly welcomed, for example, the American naval destroyer USS Lassen's passage within the twelve nautical mile territorial limit claimed by China at Subi Reef near the Spratly Islands during late October 2015, as a symbolic demonstration of the United States’ determination to maintain freedom of navigation (FON) in the South China Sea. If China continues to rise, the United States will invariably be viewed by ASEAN policymakers as an indispensable counterweight for maintaining regional stability in Asia. American policy planners, however, are facing increasingly daunting challenges in the Middle East, in Europe and from international terrorism which is increasingly threatening to envelop their homeland. Given the growing intensity of such challenges, matching resources with the capabilities required to implement and sustain a viable U.S. geopolitical footprint in Asia will become increasingly formidable.

The case of the U.S. “pivot” or “rebalancing” strategy is illustrative. This policy approach was touted by key officials serving during President Obama's first term in office (2009–12) as “a sustained and multi-dimensional strategy” rather than as “simply a shifting of [U.S.] military resources” to the Asia-Pacific region. It was represented as a posture with widely diverse diplomatic, economic and cultural designs underpinning Washington's regional engagement. However, one of its key instigators, Kurt Campbell (Obama's initial Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs) has since lamented that the military aspects of this strategy have been exaggerated relative to its broader objectives, including the solidification of the international norms and law upon which Asia- Pacific order-building should be predicated, strengthening regional prosperity and promoting democratic values.

A subsequent policy correction in this regard has indeed been realized, but largely by default. Confronted with intensifying budgetary constraints affecting all U.S. government expenditures, the U.S. Department of Defense has recently served notice in key documents forwarded to the American Congress that the FY2016 U.S. defence expenditures would be predicated on a “global” rather than an “Asian basis” due to intensifying global strategic concerns. How the United States has adjusted its rebalancing policy as it applies to Southeast Asia during the period 2014–15 is initially discussed.

The growing prominence of the individual as a significant factor in international relations is a striking characteristic of contemporary world politics. Yet the role of the state remains critical to ‘either reducing or exacerbating the underlying causes of threats to human security’ (Lee 2004: 102). The extent to which ‘traditional’ state-centric, and ‘non-traditional’ people-oriented, approaches to security politics are being reconciled in the Asia-Pacific is an increasingly central component of that region's international relations.

Long-standing tendencies by elites within the region to favour the preservation of absolute national sovereignty over the well-being of the citizens who live within a state's boundaries and to prioritise the power of the state over human rights or ‘good global governance’ are softening in the aftermath of recent transnational security events such as the Asian financial crisis, the SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) outbreak, bird flu epidemics and the Indian Ocean tsunami crisis. These events have threatened human safety and welfare across boundaries without regard to traditional security preoccupations by individual states. The importance of external military threats, structural changes that introduce new power balances, and competition over resources, ideology and faith remain critical to the ‘regional–global security nexus’. However, they are increasingly subject to ‘a mutually reinforcing dynamic between state, societal and individual security’ (Hoadley 2006: 20; also see Michael and Marshall 2007: 10).

As the Cold War recedes further into history, organising security has become manifestly more challenging. Recent international security debates have underscored how even the concept of ‘security’ is vigorously contested. The traditional preoccupations with state-centric survival and positionality are becoming increasingly supplanted by concerns that transcend sovereign borders and that focus on individuals and intra-state factions. The geopolitics of power-balancing and great power primacy is now coexisting with such dynamics as humanitarian politics, democratisation, climate change and pandemic controls to shape a new and broader set of security referents.

This paradigmatic evolution has been assessed extensively, and what role the Asia-Pacific region has played in this process has been an important component of the discussion. In recent years, important and highly respected works have appeared to assess this issue. Analysts have continued to disagree, however, over what is most causally important in determining and understanding the increasingly critical link between what happens in that region and how global security politics is ultimately shaped and implemented. It may be that providing a truly comprehensive definition is beyond the reach of any single study. Yet the effort to capture and explain its significance is decidedly relevant as Asia ascends to economic primacy, as it increasingly counts for more within the world's diplomatic channels and as it becomes a central factor in its military balance.

Asia has arguably become the most critical region in an evolving international order. Geopolitically, the region includes three of the world's great powers – China, Japan and India – and two others, the United States and Russia, lie just beyond its peripheries and interact with it extensively. Demographically, over half of the world's total population is Asian and that total is forecast to reach 60 per cent by 2050 (United Nations 1999). Economically, it is projected that China and India alone will account for more than 50 per cent of global growth between 2005 and 2030 (Economist 2006a). Militarily, four key players in the broader Asia-Pacific – the US, Russia, China and North Korea – are nuclear weapons states. Asian defence budgets constitute the world's largest arms market (US$150 billion in purchases between 1990 and 2002) and the region's ‘defence transformation’ programmes are growing (Bitzinger 2004; IISS 2006b: 398–401; Tellis 2006a). The combination of spectacular regional economic growth, the cultural and religious diversity of its massive population base and the sheer material resources it will generate and consume over the course of this century justify the observation that ‘(t)here is now a broad consensus that the Asian continent is poised to become the new center of gravity in global politics’ (Tellis 2006a: 3).

Security analysts are increasingly concerned with how Asian security politics will affect international security or will, in turn, be influenced by global events and structures.