Japan's Human Security Role in Southeast Asia

Abstract

Japan is playing an active human security role in postCold War Southeast Asia, especially in crises where thousands of lives are at stake, displaced, or even lost. This approach includes: providing massive financial assistance to the region during the 199798 Asian financial crisis, engaging in peacemaking in Cambodia & Aceh, peacebuilding in East Timor, Aceh, & Mindanao, offering financial & medical assistance when East Asia was hit by the SARS epidemic, & deploying the largest contingent of Japanese troops since the end of World War II for humanitarian assistance to tsunami-stricken Aceh in early 2005. A broad human security framework which encompasses peacemaking, post-conflict peacebuilding, & the dispatch of troops for humanitarian relief in Southeast Asia allows Japan to not only play a more active political role but also to avoid being branded as an aspiring military power by its domestic & international critics. Tables, References.