See Seng Tan is President and CEO of International Students Inc. (ISI), a faith-based nonprofit serving international students and visiting scholars in colleges and universities throughout the United States. He is concurrently Research Advisor at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) and Senior Associate at the Centre for Liberal Arts and Social Sciences (CLASS), both part of Nanyang Technological University (Singapore), where he was previously Professor of International Relations. His latest books include Awaiting the Impossible: A Dialogue with Derrida, Deconstruction, and the Endless Wait for Messiah (Wipf & Stock, 2022), The European Union’s Security Relations with Asian Partners (Palgrave, 2021, co-editor), The Responsibility to Provide in Southeast Asia (Bristol UP, 2019), and The Legal Authority of ASEAN as a Security Institution (Cambridge UP, 2019, co-author). Seng has a Ph.D. from Arizona State University and a D.Min. from Biola University's Talbot School of Theology.
This introductory chapter presents the aims and architecture of the book. It introduces an emergi... more This introductory chapter presents the aims and architecture of the book. It introduces an emerging ethic of responsible sovereignty in Southeast Asia, which it calls the ‘responsibility to provide’ (or R2Provide), and seeks an ethical explanation for it. The chapter provides synopses of the eight chapters that follow, which collectively accomplish the book’s three objectives. Firstly, it identifies and assesses a number of regional developments in defence, security, diplomatic and economic cooperation in which Southeast Asian countries, individually as well as institutionally through ASEAN and its various functional manifestations and modalities, have sought to assist one another in collective response to challenging situations. Secondly, it discusses how the R2Provide has taken root in Southeast Asia, albeit more deeply so in some countries than others, as well as within ASEAN and its various functional subsidiaries and spinoffs, such as the ADMM, the ADMM-Plus, the AHA Centre and the like. Thirdly, contra communitarian and liberal perspectives on ethics, it introduces and critically applies the ethics of Emmanuel Levinas, specifically his notion of responsibility for the other, to the R2Provide and more broadly to the quest for responsible interstate conduct in Southeast Asia.
This chapter examines how the logic of responsible provision has been applied to three areas of i... more This chapter examines how the logic of responsible provision has been applied to three areas of intraregional cooperation – HADR, conflict management and human rights. The section on HADR cooperation looks at how, in the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis, crucial pieces of the regional architecture for HADR – the ASEAN Agreement on Disaster Management and Emergency Response (AADMER), the AHA Centre for disaster management, the ASEAN Militaries Ready Group (AMRG) on HADR, the ADMM and ADMM-Plus, as well as national-level assets like the Singapore-based Regional HADR Coordination Centre (RHCC) – have been put in place. The chapter also looks at how Southeast Asia’s response to the threat of terrorism has evolved not only in terms of the militarisation of national and regional counterterrorism strategies, but on a normative note, the growing acceptance of conflict management – previously eschewed because of the region’s fidelity to noninterference – in response to the changing tactics of the militants and terrorists themselves. Finally, the chapter examines how the region has addressed the human rights challenge, at best only in a half-hearted fashion.
Firstly, this chapter introducesLevinas’ ‘responsibility for the other’ notion as an alternative ... more Firstly, this chapter introducesLevinas’ ‘responsibility for the other’ notion as an alternative to the liberal and communitarian conceptions of responsibility and sovereignty. Both liberal and communitarian ethics are problematic because of theirshared assumption that responsibility is first and foremost to the self. The chapter introduces key features of Levinas’ ethics – the place and role of hospitality, reciprocity and justice in the responsibility for the other. It also examines how friendly critiques by interlocutors(Derrida, Ricoeur, Caputo, etc.) help moderate Levinas’ idealism without necessarily taking things in overly pragmatic or realist directions or, worse, blunting its moral force. Secondly, the chapter assesses the relevance of Levinas’ ethics to the questions of responsible sovereignty and the R2Provide in Southeast Asia. With reference to the regional conduct described in Chapters 4, 5 and 6, it is argued that Levinas’ ideas redefine the terms of the relationship between responsible providers and their recipients in three key ways: one, our assumptions and expectations over one’s extension of hospitality to one’s neighbours; two, the rethinking of mutuality and reciprocity between providers and recipients; and three, the ways in which the considerations for justice play out within the Southeast Asian context are concerned.
New developments in the Asia-Pacific region call for a review of our current understanding of the... more New developments in the Asia-Pacific region call for a review of our current understanding of the security order there. These developments are forcing regional elites to rethink and alter, in varying degrees, the way they manage security issues. Against this backdrop of ...
... For example, in the year 2003 alone, the contexts wherein these appeals took place included m... more ... For example, in the year 2003 alone, the contexts wherein these appeals took place included myriad Track 2 meetings such as: the National Institute of Defence Studies conference on "Nontraditional Roles of the Military and ... Non-Traditional Security Issues in Southeast Asia. ...
This introductory chapter presents the aims and architecture of the book. It introduces an emergi... more This introductory chapter presents the aims and architecture of the book. It introduces an emerging ethic of responsible sovereignty in Southeast Asia, which it calls the ‘responsibility to provide’ (or R2Provide), and seeks an ethical explanation for it. The chapter provides synopses of the eight chapters that follow, which collectively accomplish the book’s three objectives. Firstly, it identifies and assesses a number of regional developments in defence, security, diplomatic and economic cooperation in which Southeast Asian countries, individually as well as institutionally through ASEAN and its various functional manifestations and modalities, have sought to assist one another in collective response to challenging situations. Secondly, it discusses how the R2Provide has taken root in Southeast Asia, albeit more deeply so in some countries than others, as well as within ASEAN and its various functional subsidiaries and spinoffs, such as the ADMM, the ADMM-Plus, the AHA Centre and the like. Thirdly, contra communitarian and liberal perspectives on ethics, it introduces and critically applies the ethics of Emmanuel Levinas, specifically his notion of responsibility for the other, to the R2Provide and more broadly to the quest for responsible interstate conduct in Southeast Asia.
This chapter examines how the logic of responsible provision has been applied to three areas of i... more This chapter examines how the logic of responsible provision has been applied to three areas of intraregional cooperation – HADR, conflict management and human rights. The section on HADR cooperation looks at how, in the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis, crucial pieces of the regional architecture for HADR – the ASEAN Agreement on Disaster Management and Emergency Response (AADMER), the AHA Centre for disaster management, the ASEAN Militaries Ready Group (AMRG) on HADR, the ADMM and ADMM-Plus, as well as national-level assets like the Singapore-based Regional HADR Coordination Centre (RHCC) – have been put in place. The chapter also looks at how Southeast Asia’s response to the threat of terrorism has evolved not only in terms of the militarisation of national and regional counterterrorism strategies, but on a normative note, the growing acceptance of conflict management – previously eschewed because of the region’s fidelity to noninterference – in response to the changing tactics of the militants and terrorists themselves. Finally, the chapter examines how the region has addressed the human rights challenge, at best only in a half-hearted fashion.
Firstly, this chapter introducesLevinas’ ‘responsibility for the other’ notion as an alternative ... more Firstly, this chapter introducesLevinas’ ‘responsibility for the other’ notion as an alternative to the liberal and communitarian conceptions of responsibility and sovereignty. Both liberal and communitarian ethics are problematic because of theirshared assumption that responsibility is first and foremost to the self. The chapter introduces key features of Levinas’ ethics – the place and role of hospitality, reciprocity and justice in the responsibility for the other. It also examines how friendly critiques by interlocutors(Derrida, Ricoeur, Caputo, etc.) help moderate Levinas’ idealism without necessarily taking things in overly pragmatic or realist directions or, worse, blunting its moral force. Secondly, the chapter assesses the relevance of Levinas’ ethics to the questions of responsible sovereignty and the R2Provide in Southeast Asia. With reference to the regional conduct described in Chapters 4, 5 and 6, it is argued that Levinas’ ideas redefine the terms of the relationship between responsible providers and their recipients in three key ways: one, our assumptions and expectations over one’s extension of hospitality to one’s neighbours; two, the rethinking of mutuality and reciprocity between providers and recipients; and three, the ways in which the considerations for justice play out within the Southeast Asian context are concerned.
New developments in the Asia-Pacific region call for a review of our current understanding of the... more New developments in the Asia-Pacific region call for a review of our current understanding of the security order there. These developments are forcing regional elites to rethink and alter, in varying degrees, the way they manage security issues. Against this backdrop of ...
... For example, in the year 2003 alone, the contexts wherein these appeals took place included m... more ... For example, in the year 2003 alone, the contexts wherein these appeals took place included myriad Track 2 meetings such as: the National Institute of Defence Studies conference on "Nontraditional Roles of the Military and ... Non-Traditional Security Issues in Southeast Asia. ...
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