Foreword

Summary

In writing this preface I feel as if I were briefly back in a previous life, the life of an academic with the luxury of time—time to read and think and write books like Hard Choices.

In the first seven months of my term as ASEAN Secretary-General, I have been constantly in motion, trying to meet numerous commitments in ASEAN and elsewhere. Cyclone Nargis, which devastated Myanmar's Irrawaddy Delta in early May 2008, suddenly thrust both ASEAN and me into the international spotlight. We have had to help the government of Myanmar help the cyclone survivors in a massive humanitarian operation that is unprecedented in the more than forty years of ASEAN's history to date. The Nargis operation constituted yet another challenge to ASEAN's lengthening agenda. It has also multiplied the flights I have to take, the meetings and negotiations I pursue, and the new commitments to request and to make. In addition to the region's economic plans and challenges, it is as if I have been living, on a daily basis, the topics of this book-security, democracy, and regionalism in Southeast Asia.

I am glad that the authors of Hard Choices pay major attention to nontraditional security (NTS). The new regionalism in Southeast Asia is not only about free trade and economic engagements with external trading partners. This new regionalism is about community-building in ASEAN. It is about narrowing the development gaps and removing pockets of poverty. It also involves mobilizing regional efforts and international support to cope with new and NTS challenges.

The nature of insecurity in Southeast Asia has undergone great changes in recent decades. New kinds of dangers have arisen that cannot be solved by governments alone. These threats have taken root in the cracks between sovereignties, the spaces between states. Major natural disasters, global warming, cross-border pollution, infectious disease, and international crime are just a few examples.