The Economic Crisis and Southeast Asian Security
Changing Priorities

The Asian economic crisis of 1997–98 has had profound implications for Southeast Asian security. ASEAN political cohesion, armed forces modernization, and the quest for greater security autonomy have all been challenged by the region’s most serious economic crisis since World War II.

The economic crisis presents an intra-regional problem that has not been addressed cooperatively. Rather, concerns about the transboundary implications of the region’s political and economic disarray have led ASEAN’s two most democratic states—Thailand and the Philippines—to challenge the Association’s nonintervention norm on the grounds that bad economic policies and political chaos in any single member can spill over and affect others, thus delaying the region’s economic recovery and undermining its political stature.

ASEAN armed forces have also shifted their orientation from the development of air and naval power projection to a reemphasis on ground forces for domestic social control. Mutual suspicions exacerbated by the economic crisis have undermined earlier interest in collaborative security and even arms control measures that could have been systematically addressed because of large-scale regional defense budget cuts. Finally, the economic setback to the development of an independent Southeast Asian defense capability vis-à-vis China implies the necessity of a sustained U.S. naval and air presence in the region well into the twenty-first century.