In Southeast Asia, porous borders are closely associated with transnational security challenges, including environmental degradation, irregular migration, smuggling and human trafficking of women and children. Against a rapidly changing environment, the concept of security has evolved further encompassing not only traditional human security challenges but also unseen threats. One such ‘novel’ threat comes from lethal biological diseases, pathogens, toxins, and weapons, also commonly referred to as biosecurity threats.

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A rapid and widespread institutionalization of climate security is underway, led by powerful states and international organizations. Recognition of the climate crisis by security actors as a serious threat to humanity is long overdue, but it is imperative that this institutionalization is critically scrutinized. This commentary highlights specific dangers that accompany the institutional mainstreaming of climate security, including a non-reflexive integration into traditional security paradigms, a growing geopolitical separation between discourses emerging from the Global South and North, and policymaking that tends to draw from a narrow view of the science. Science-based and actionable research informed by pluralistic understandings of climate security is needed to counter this trend.

Climate change is today one of the greatest risks to peace and security, but arguably remains at the margins of policy action amid the loss of trust in multilateral institutions. The impacts of climate change are already felt by local communities in regions on the frontline. While communities have exercised agency to generate local impact and promote trust, the overwhelming impact of climate change necessitates effective state responses, and regional and global cooperation. Global cooperation, in turn, needs to better address the challenges to peace and security faced by regions most exposed to the impacts of climate change.

Southeast Asia is already experiencing direct climate change impacts from changes in temperature, precipitation, sea-level rise, ocean warming, and more frequent and intense extreme weather events. The subsequent indirect climate change impacts on food and water security, and changes in natural resource exploitation and migration patterns, affect the lives and livelihoods of people and communities across the highly diverse region and threaten its peace and security.

In Southeast Asia, the cross-cutting impacts of climate change on peace and security can be analysed through the framework of comprehensive security. Comprehensive security is the organising concept of security in the region, integrated and widely reflected in the security lexicon in the ASEAN region and beyond. Unlike the conventional notion of security, which is narrowly defined to mean defending state borders from military attack, comprehensive security is a much broader conceptualisation of security that “[goes] beyond (but does not exclude) the military threats to embrace the political, economic and socio-cultural dimensions”.

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Cooperation in disaster management provides a convenient avenue for external powers such as China to court friendships with Southeast Asian states and enhance their status in regional security, due to the region’s vulnerability to disasters. China’s engagement with ASEAN and its member states on disaster issues has developed in line with its evolving strategic goals in the region—from ending self-imposed isolation in the late 1990s, building a benign image in the 2000s, to presently striving for greater achievements under President Xi Jinping. Against this backdrop, China has been pursuing a higher status for itself in the regional security architecture by strengthening disaster relief cooperation with Southeast Asian states. This essay will assess China’s success in this endeavour.

China’s Status Aspiration and Disaster Diplomacy

In President Xi’s tenure, China’s interest in establishing a more distinctive security partnership with Southeast Asia has become increasingly evident. When addressing the Indonesian Parliament in 2013, he highlighted China’s joint efforts with regional organisations, such as ASEAN, in dealing with security challenges. In the same year, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang suggested that China and ASEAN formalise the informal Defence Ministers’ Meeting. This was followed by a proposal in 2016 for an exclusive joint military exercise between ASEAN member states and China.

In disaster relief, China has sought to deepen security partnerships with regional states at multilateral and bilateral level. The ASEAN Defence Ministers’ Meeting Plus (ADMM Plus) is the primary platform where the Chinese military collectively engages with its Southeast Asian counterparts. It volunteered to co-chair with Vietnam for the first ADMM Plus Expert Working Group (EWG) on humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HADR) between 2011 and 2014. The grouping established new mechanisms and workplans that laid the foundation for greater HADR cooperation. A proactive posture in this platform provided opportunities for China to influence the intangible dimension of military disaster relief cooperation in the region.

In bilateral contexts, deployment of military assets is a way to differentiate China’s disaster relief efforts. After Cyclone Komen in Myanmar in 2015 and the dam collapse in Laos in 2018, China was among the leading responders, deploying a number of military assets to support the relief efforts. Beijing’s friendly relations with these two countries facilitated the deployment of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to deliver assistance following these disasters.

By contrast, China’s role in disaster relief, particularly its use of military assets, has been more subdued in other parts of the region. In response to Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines in 2013, the Chinese government initially offered a small amount of aid, which drew strong international criticism. Subsequently, it provided additional aid, including sending military medical teams and a single military hospital ship. Nevertheless, the Philippines reportedly rejected some of Beijing’s offers and only accepted the deployment of a non-governmental search and rescue team from China. In the wake of the earthquake and tsunami in Palu, Indonesia in 2018, dozens of countries deployed military assets to assist in logistics, but China did not. Instead, a chartered civilian aircraft of China Postal Airlines was used to deliver Chinese aid to the affected area.

Beijing’s haphazard bilateral engagement with individual Southeast Asian countries has resulted in disparate views of China’s viability as a security provider for the region. While some countries have accepted the rising power as a key security partner, others are clearly more hesitant, and view the deployment of Chinese military assets around their territories with suspicion.

Southeast Asia’s Responses: Calculus and Means

In additional to China’s own endeavours, Southeast Asia’s responses perhaps play a more important role in shaping China’s status in the region. Disaster relief cooperation in Southeast Asia serves two main purposes—maintaining ASEAN’s relevance in regional security through engagement with external powers and drawing on external expertise and resources to build individual and collective capacities to deal with disasters.

Strategic considerations require Southeast Asia to have an inclusive approach to external powers. The membership of ADMM Plus is an example of this approach, which includes major partners of Southeast Asian security. To preserve the appeal of ASEAN-centred mechanisms as relatively neutral platforms, ASEAN tries to avoid showing preferential treatment to any individual partner. For example, mechanisms for the ASEAN Ministerial Meeting on Disaster Management (AMMDM) were separately established with China and Japan on the same day (October 14, 2021), while a similar mechanism with South Korea was made the following year. ASEAN agreed to China’s suggestion on a joint maritime exercise in 2018, and later carried out similar exercises with the United States in September 2019 and with India in May 2023. These steps show that ASEAN actively tried to avoid giving the impression that it was taking sides with any of these powers while partially accommodating China’s status pursuit.

A similar approach has been seen in bilateral interactions. The Philippines agreed to the deployment of a Chinese military hospital ship after Typhoon Haiyan even though bilateral relations were severely strained at the time by the South China Sea disputes. Vietnam continued to engage with the United States to enhance its disaster response capabilities while maintaining good relations with China and cooperating with India on HADR issues.

Regional normative preferences and ASEAN’s institutional design has enabled the grouping to shape the outcome of China’s status pursuit from a position of relative weakness. With non-interference as the underlying principle of regional affairs, each member state has absolute authority to shape how external powers get involved in the relief effort when a disaster strikes.

Multilateral platforms such as ADMM Plus allow ASEAN to shape and propagate important norms and practices related to military HADR in the region. The chairpersonship of ADMM Plus rotates among ASEAN member states, and the working groups are co-led by an ASEAN member state and an external power. This modality of cooperation ensures that ASEAN takes the lead in agenda-setting and operation of these institutions, and is able to respond collectively to the different policy goals of external powers.

In addition, control over the rules of engagement within the ADMM Plus allows ASEAN to ensure that interactions with external powers favour the region’s interest. In response to China’s proposal to formalise the ASEAN-China Defence Ministers Meeting, ASEAN updated the ADMM documents, reaffirming the informal nature of the ADMM+1 meetings and capping the number of meetings to two per year.

Conclusion

China’s disaster relief cooperation with Southeast Asia is increasingly active at the regional level, evidenced by its institutionalised engagement with ASEAN entities and its willingness to lead HADR work under ASEAN-centred institutions. These are manifestations of China’s status as a key security partner and provider in multilateral contexts. However, its quest for distinctive security partnerships has made little progress, with bilateral military HADR cooperation being perceived differently by regional countries and only those that maintain friendly relations with China accepting it as a security partner in military terms. Southeast Asia’s response is an important factor that determines the success of China’s pursuit through disaster relief cooperation. Norms and multilateral institutions have enabled Southeast Asian countries to collectively negotiate with the more powerful external power over its status in the region.

Lina Gong, PhD, is a Research Fellow with the Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief Programme at the Centre for Non-Traditional Security Studies, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University (NTU).

This article is based on the author’s paper, “Status-seeking through Disaster Relief Cooperation: China and India in Southeast Asia,” published in the journal, Contemporary Southeast Asia. The paper can be accessed here.

This project report provides the findings from the assessment of utilization of digital technologies in agriculture to achieve food supply chain resilience and food security in Southeast Asia, conducted in 2020-2021, and commissioned to the Centre for Non-Traditional Security Studies (NTS Centre), S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU). This project was supported by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Secretariat as well as the Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia (ERIA). It is the second component of the larger project, “Enhancing Food Supply Chain Resilience and Food Security in ASEAN.”

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Peace and security studies in Southeast Asia show a rich array of theoretical and policy-oriented research that highlights key themes in the prevention and management of conflicts. These themes also highlight salient concepts that define approaches to peace and security. Two themes are noteworthy. First, while peace and security are not mutually exclusive, security cannot be assured by focusing on negative peace alone but also by a purposeful pursuit of positive peace, hence comprehensive security is critical. The second theme is the importance of regional institutions like ASEAN in managing intra-state relations. Given the fluid state of the global security environment, there is now greater scope for new thinking on how approaches to peace and security can be made more responsive to achieve shared goals.

Against a backdrop of heightening competition between the United States and China, Southeast Asia has come under greater scrutiny as analysts examine where ASEAN states stand in this power rivalry.

With its history of managing intramural conflicts and as the pioneer of multilateral institutions in the Asia Pacific, there is growing interest in ASEAN’s preference for active neutrality in managing the regional order. For analysts and policymakers in Southeast Asia, development imperatives trump bandwagoning and containment.

Some observers may find this stance unrealistic given the close bilateral relationships that certain Southeast Asian states have with the United States and China. But what is often missed are the development and security imperatives of these states.

For Southeast Asia, development is security — an ideology that has prevailed since the postcolonial period until today. This thinking has translated to ASEAN’s notion of comprehensive security, which goes beyond concern for military threats to include political, economic and sociocultural issues. Most states in Southeast Asia have always put a premium on developmental issues, particularly now given the uncertainties in the global environment.

With troubled relations between the United States and China and threats to multilateral cooperation, it is important for Southeast Asia to reclaim the concept of comprehensive security and promote cooperative security. These are critical frameworks in crafting responsive policies to address the complex and cross-cutting challenges facing Asia and the rest of the world.

Comprehensive security has a long history in Southeast Asia. It was a key concept developed by ASEAN states in the late 1970s and early 1980s to inform responses to the challenges facing the region. To ASEAN countries, economic stability is fundamental to regime legitimacy and security. Comprehensive security paid close attention to economic problems, but also included important political issues affecting stability and regime survival.

In the mid-1990s, the emergence of the concept of human security introduced a focus on threats to individuals and communities, such as environmental degradation, food security and health. These issues have now been integrated into Southeast Asia’s notion of comprehensive security and remain important contributions to security thinking and practices within and outside Asia.

As the number of security challenges continued to grow, comprehensive security became even more important given the transnational impacts of these challenges. In the post-COVID environment, the global economic crisis and climate change-related issues like food security have become even more consequential to the wellbeing of Southeast Asia.

Indonesia, Myanmar, the Philippines and Vietnam are among the most vulnerable countries to climate change. The economic costs from these natural hazards are currently estimated to be US$780 billion and are projected to increase to US$1.1–1.4 trillion under worst-case scenarios.

The failure to institute mitigation and adaptation measures early, particularly for less-developed states in the region, has serious implications for human security. This has become more critical after the pandemic inflicted a severe blow to the global economy. The International Monetary Fund’s recent economic outlook warned of a ‘rocky road ahead’, with the lowest five-year growth projection since 1990 of 3 per cent per annum. While the growing economic risks are attributed to many factors — including the war in Ukraine — these have a multiplier impact on human security, worsening job security and rising food prices.

While the growing complexity of security challenges calls for deeper and more robust multilateral cooperation, there is growing fragmentation. Widening inequality, forced human displacement and alienation have led to an erosion of trust in institutions at all levels, from the national to the global. This is compounded by misinformation and disinformation. People’s lived experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic have shown how institutions failed to prepare states and societies to deal with 21st century transnational challenges.

With these daunting challenges, there are compelling reasons for Southeast Asia to reclaim comprehensive and cooperative security. This requires ASEAN to demonstrate their ability to push ahead with the slew of regional cooperation programmes outlined in the three ASEAN communities — political, economic and sociocultural.

Urgent agendas include expediting the integration of ASEAN economies and narrowing the development gap among its members. Also critical is helping communities deal with the impacts of climate change, building societal resilience, preparing for future pandemics and addressing transnational crimes like human trafficking and cybersecurity.

It is critical for ASEAN to continue championing comprehensive security to help its members cope in addressing increasingly complex internal and regional problems. They should deepen cooperation with their dialogue partners through the ASEAN Plus Three and East Asia Summit frameworks.

Small- and medium-sized countries in Southeast Asia should focus on working together to advance cooperative security instead of resorting to exclusive security arrangements like the QUAD and AUKUS, which tend to fuel fragmentation. Southeast Asia should once again exercise their agency and actively take the lead in advancing multilateralism in Asia.

Mely Caballero-Anthony is Professor of International Relations and Head of the Centre for Non-Traditional Security Studies at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

This article was developed based on the author’s presentation at the Southeast Asia Regional Geopolitical Update at The Australian National University on 1 May 2023.