One of the dangers books and scholarly publications in International Relations face is that of being overtaken by the reality of events. This is certainly not the case with Mely Caballero-Anthony's book, Negotiating governance on non-traditional security in Southeast Asia and beyond, which despite being published more than two years before Covid-19 shook the foundations of the international system, seems to greatly anticipate current debates and reflections about what security is, and how in such a dynamic, interdependent and complex world to address a plethora of non-traditional security threats (NTS), which are no longer ‘limited to the balance of power politics’ (p. 15), and which are proving to be extremely severe, the effects of which can be effectively managed only through common effort.
Until a few years ago, NTS looked to be a rather mundane field of study, particularly in East Asia and Southeast Asia, where traditional security perspectives have overly dominated academic debates as a result of long-standing territorial disputes and a strict attachment to Westphalian norms of noninterference and respect for national sovereignty. This book moves away from these traditional state-centric approaches and defines security in much broader and inclusive terms to incorporate individuals and communities as important security referents alongside the state. The state is also no longer considered as the only security provider. The book argues in fact, that in a deeply changed security environment a dense network of regional and sub-regional institutions, formal and informal arrangements, think-tanks, civil society groups, epistemic communities and business actors, is increasingly working alongside national governments to promote, formulate, contest and implement new strategies, norms and measures to tackle NTS challenges. The concept of security governance, so far applied to study developments in European security, is utilised here to shed light on the increasing differentiation within East Asian security policy-making.
East and Southeast Asia provide a captivating and highly powerful case for this analysis. Explosive population growth, industrialisation, environmental degradation, resettlement of populations into natural areas containing potentially lethal pathogens, increased connectivity and economic interdependencies have dramatically increased regional exposure to NTS challenges, while amplifying transboundary implications. Responses to the unprecedented Covid-19 pandemic, which originated in Wuhan and rapidly spread to the rest of the world, seem to echo Caballero-Anthony's analysis of the transnational reach and devastating cross-cutting impact of NTS on individuals, states and global relations as a whole, compounded by the growing need for multilayered responses.
Overall, the book provides a timely and well-researched discussion of the growing relevance of NTS. It contributes to explaining governance formation in NTS, trying to pinpoint the wide array of actors, which at different levels and with diverse responsibilities and capacities influence the content and management of security in East Asia. Security governance processes are examined in detail in a number of NTS crises that have confronted the region, namely health (chap. 3), environmental security (chap. 4), migration (chap. 5), humanitarian assistance and disaster relief operations (chap. 6), nuclear energy (chap. 7) and food security (chap. 8). These studies provide an excellent overview of multifaceted efforts to define the challenges, and to improving effective regional preparedness. The chapter on health security is a compelling read for scholars and students keen to study regional responses to the Covid-19 pandemic. Among other things, the chapter clearly illustrates how SARS, which affected the region in 2003, catalysed an unmatched level of coordination at the national and regional levels, thereby leading to the creation of a number of mechanisms for pandemic preparedness, including cooperation on surveillance, laboratory collaboration, risk communication and capacity building. This might therefore well explain why East Asia's lessons learned in the realm of health security could have allowed the region to better contain the spread of the Covid-19 virus and, to keep fatalities low in comparison to the West.
Maybe the book could have also benefited from a more systematic discussion of the different levels of preparedness achieved in the NTS issues presented. The author could have also attempted to examine in greater detail why there are such divergent outcomes in the security governance of NTS threats. Indeed, while human security has been more successfully advanced in some domains, in others, such as migration, processes of security governance are still embryonic or even contested. Lastly, the book seems primarily to focus on less contentious NTS arenas while it would have been interesting to see whether security governance processes are also surfacing in areas such as terrorism and maritime security, which generally speaking are more sensitive to individual sovereignty.
However, none of these comments lessen in any way the high value of Caballero-Anthony's book. Negotiating governance on non-traditional security in Southeast Asia and beyond, is a very comprehensive and detailed account of NTS in East Asia and can be considered as an essential reference for anyone interested in understanding regional governance dynamics in NTS, including changes in the content and delivery of security.
