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Volume 15, Number 2, June 2003
Contributors
Security Sector Reform: Prospects and Problems by Alex J. Bellamy
This article evaluates the prospects and problems associated with applying the security sector reform agenda in Southeast Asia. It argues that although the reform of regional security sectors along democratic lines provides an important opportunity to improve regional peace and security, by creating security sectors that are able to perform their tasks legitimately, effectively, and efficiently, the implementation of reform is fraught with problems. Such reforms may be perceived as being imposed by outsiders and hence may not take root, and reform may itself foster instability and may prompt states to redirect resources away from other activities to fund expensive professionalization programmes in the armed forces. Attempts to create armed forces in East Timor are indicative of some of the challenges confronting the security sector reform agenda.
Globalization and Security in the Taiwan Straits by Uwe Wunderlich
Only recently the Sino-Taiwanese issue has again been in the headlines of the international media. On Saturday, 3 August 2002, Taiwan's President Chen Shui-bian insisted in a passionate speech that there is 'one country on each side' of the Taiwan Strait. He went even further by calling for new legislation that would allow a referendum to be held on changing the island's current international status, saying that this would be a 'basic human right'. Chen's remarks resulted in a furious response from the mainland. Although the conflict between Beijing and Taipei can be interpreted as a legacy of the Chinese Civil War, the tensions intensified during the 1990s. The following article suggests that the linkages and dynamics between the globalization process and international security are increasingly important for a better understanding of the development of relations at the international level in general and in the China-Taiwan conflict in particular.
Imagining/Desiring Cosmopolitanism by Chan Kwok Bun
What happens when two cultures meet? While assimilation continues to be a dominant discourse, this essay argues there are indeed several other possibilities such as alternation, hybridization, and innovation. Three narratives of cultural hybridization and innovation are constructed to provide the empirical substance for an exploration into the cosmopolitanism idea: the importation of Buddhism from India into China; China's social history when read as moments and sites of culture contact as a result of massive migrations and population dispersal; and, in the contemporary era, the syncretism of wedding and burial rituals among the Chinese of Thailand. In all three narratives, the analytical gaze is upon the unspectacular, practical, everyday life fusion and hybridization that happen when groups share a neighbourhood, a history and memory based on living together and collectively solving the practical problems of living that require a transcendence of group loyalties. One culture 'slips into' another culture, half forgetting and remembering itself, and half changing the other. One is allowing oneself to be inhabited by the other, while still recognizing oneself and the other as different. Anyone can be a cosmopolitan; but one must labour against habits of 'mental blindness', through self-cultivation. Dialectically, one is then no less than one, but more than a sum total of two because something new is produced. But it should also be pointed out the cosmopolitan has his or her moments of nervousness-- the so-called dark side of cosmopolitanism.
War Crimes Accountability: Justice and Reconciliation in Cambodia and East Timor? by James Rae
The end of the Cold War witnessed a renewed attempt to deal with massive human rights violations. Efforts to establish accountability in Cambodia and East Timor through war crimes tribunals or truth commissions regarding the Khmer Rouge and Suharto's Indonesia have been obstructed by domestic forces and outside powers. Since the domestic courts lack impartiality and resources, tribunals and truth commissions must be integrated in a comprehensive and international manner to administer justice and begin the process of reconciliation. Dilemmas of justice versus peace, and amnesty versus accountability are subordinate to the role of great powers. Thus, individual criminal responsibility must apply to those directly responsible but also to the decision-makers of great power patrons such as China and the United States, which aided the Khmer Rouge and Indonesian military, respectively. Therefore, the time span of the conflict must be broadly defined to incorporate the harmful role of all actors.
A Chinese View of Beijing's Foreign Policy by Joseph Cheng
Book Reviews