Taming the tigers? Reforming the security sector in Southeast Asia

Despite global trends towards military reform characterized by processes of professionalization and democratization, militaries in Southeast Asia have continued to play prominent roles in domestic politics since 11 September. This suggests that wider patterns of global military reform have not had as great an impact on the control, capacity and cooperative functions of armed forces in Southeast Asia as they may have elsewhere. In order to explore why the security sector reform agenda has had so little impact in the region, we investigate recent patterns of civil-military relations in Southeast Asia by focusing on the experiences of four of the region's militaries: Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines and Indonesia. We argue that the security sector reform agenda is informed by a predominantly North American approach to civil-military relations based on a number of core assumptions that do not reflect Southeast Asian experiences. Hence, we ask whether the reform agenda itself could be modified to better suit the Southeast Asian context. We suggest that although the regional military sector has not reformed along a 'Western' path it is nonetheless possible to see other types of, and potential for, reform.