Securitization against Democratization: War on Terrorism, Authoritarian Liberalism, and Neo-Liberalism in Post-9/11 Southeast Asia

 

The paper argues that 9/11 has accelerated the Americanization of security-development architecture in Southeast Asia as shown in the increasing institutionalization of principles and practices that are easily ascribed to US hegemony. In particular, the Americanization of security-development has paved the way either to the strengthening or resurgence of the hegemony, both in policy and discourse, of:

 

[a] “global war on terrorism” over historically sensitive conflict resolution mechanisms;

[b] “authoritarian liberalism” over democratization; and

[c] neo-liberalism over developmental statism.

 

Each of these phenomena is inherently unstable and conflict-ridden. Hence, the securitization of social life in the region is not resulting in the reproduction of security-development agenda patterned after the US, but in the reproduction of social antagonisms that spring from the very contradictions of the securitization project itself. The paper concludes with a proposal for a “democratic security-development policy” built from the bottom up in which security and development is seen both as “political” and “economic” ideals in organic synergy.