Regional Politics of Southeast Asia: Contemporary Dynamism and Revisiting Indonesia’s Role

As a region of vast geopolitical and geo-economic interest to the world,
Southeast Asia continues to rise as a major region of importance. This book attempts to
implement basic international relations concepts to understand and fully grasp the
continued dynamics in the region and further capture and comprehend Indonesia’s
contemporary role in the region. It focuses on understanding how concepts such as the
norm life cycle, regional and global hegemons, middle power foreign policy, regional
security complex, and conflict management can be effective in construing the
contemporary dynamics in the Southeast Asian region. It starts by contextualizing the
historical aspect of the Southeast Asian region identity, followed by the process of extraregional forums under the authority of ASEAN. And continues by highlighting the the great
power contestation and the involvement of middle powers to the Southeast Asian region.
It then concludes by elaborating the issue of the South China Seas and human security,
as well as how ASEAN responded to them.