Commentary
The Thai-Cambodian conflict highlights the limits to China's peacemaker ambition and the significance of this role on Southeast Asia’s balance of power.
Pongphisoot (Paul) Busbarat
{
"authors": [
"Cornelius Adebahr",
"Benedetta Berti",
"Mohamed Eljarh",
"Kristina Kausch"
],
"type": "legacyinthemedia",
"centerAffiliationAll": "dc",
"centers": [
"Carnegie Endowment for International Peace",
"Carnegie Europe"
],
"collections": [
"Europe’s Southern Neighborhood"
],
"englishNewsletterAll": "",
"nonEnglishNewsletterAll": "",
"primaryCenter": "Carnegie Europe",
"programAffiliation": "EP",
"programs": [
"Europe"
],
"projects": [],
"regions": [
"Middle East",
"North Africa",
"Iran"
],
"topics": [
"Security"
]
}
Source: Getty
In The Media
Nonstate Actors in the Broader Southern Mediterranean
From peaceful political and social grassroots movements to violent extremists, nonstate actors can put pressure on flawed states by demanding accountability, justice, revolutionary change, or power.
Published on Nov 1, 2016
Source: Konrad Adenauer Stiftung
The state system in the Arab world is being challenged from within. Weak institutions, hollowed out for decades under successive authoritarian strongmen, are besieged by a myriad of newly empowered non-state actors. Spanning across widely diverse groupings, from peaceful political and social grassroots movements to violent extremists, non-state actors can put pressure on flawed states by demanding accountability, justice, revolutionary change, or power.
Deficient state institutions and enhanced socio-economic and security challenges have created governance vacuums in which prospective alternative providers have been able to thrive. However, the deterioration of state-citizen relations not only rests on the states’ failure to deliver services, but also on its fading value as a provider of a cohesive national identity. As sources of higher authority – such as Arab nationalism or royal families – lose ground, sectarian and communitarian sources of identity gain traction. States’ lacking capacity to provide social services and security has pushed many people to seek shelter and assistance within their traditional communities. At the same time, the strengthening of local identities makes consensus on how the shared state should be designed in order to accommodate the various communities’ needs and preferences increasingly difficult.
Governments have reacted to the global rise of non-state challengers in many different ways. The rise of the Islamic State (IS) as an expansionist territorial project and the spread of violent jihadi movements have led to military responses of different kinds and magnitude. At the same time, incumbent regimes have utilized the tangible security threat posed by violent extremism to justify pre-emptive repression of political and social grassroots movements which they perceive as a threat to their rule and privileges. Non-state actors have also increasingly become proxy agents in national conflict scenarios by state players who seek to further a larger regional agenda.
Who are the emerging influential non-state actors in the Southern Mediterranean; and how does their interplay with state institutions of a given territory affect local and regional security?
Read Full Text
This publication was originally published by the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung.
Carnegie does not take institutional positions on public policy issues; the views represented herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of Carnegie, its staff, or its trustees.
More Work from Carnegie China
- China’s Mediation Offer in the Thailand-Cambodia Border Dispute Sheds Light on Beijing’s Security Role in Southeast Asia
- China Is Determined to Hold Firm Against Trump’s PressureCommentary
Beijing believes that Washington is overestimating its own leverage and its ability to handle the trade war’s impacts.
Rick Waters, Sheena Chestnut Greitens
- A Second Trump Term: Will Southeast Asia Tilt Toward China?Commentary
Tapping our network of China experts in the region, Carnegie China offers this latest “China Through a Southeast Asian Lens” report to offer preliminary assessments of whether the U.S. effort to reshape the global trading order will lead countries in the region to tilt toward Beijing.
- +6
Selina Ho, Khin Khin Kyaw Kyee, Joseph Ching Velasco, …
- China Through a Southeast Asian LensResearch
Because strategic, economic, and ideological perceptions of China contain multiple, sometimes contradictory facets in Southeast Asia, receptions of and responses to Beijing diverge across and within state lines.
Evan A. Feigenbaum, Chong Ja Ian, Elina Noor
- Northeast Asia Is for Deterrence and Southeast Asia Is (Mostly) for Freeriding: Appreciating Divergent East Asian Approaches to Order, Uncertainty, and ContestationArticle
Most Southeast Asian states behave as if the actions of their Northeast Asian neighbors and the Philippines will be sufficient to maintain a regional status quo from which they can benefit.
Chong Ja Ian
