In the past few years, an increasing number of Private Security Companies (PSCs – also sometimes referred to as Private Military Companies, PMCs2) has emerged and is offering and conducting maritime security services in Southeast Asia. These companies offer services in addition to security provided by Southeast Asian states and their government agencies. This paper...

Yasuji Ishigaki from Tokai University Law School discusses how Japan sees its own situation in Asia and the Pacific region. How different for Japan is the current political situation in Asia from that of some years back? Secondly, if the situation has become very different, how should Japan act to fit in the present situation...

In this chapter on Singapore’s authoritarian control of the media, Terence Lee and Lars Willnat seek to identify the tactics and strategies employed by the Singapore government to manage the media’s ability to engage in political communication. They provide a summary of recent research on political communication research in Singapore and consider why there is...

As Australia’s prominent role in the ‘coalition of the willing’ in Iraq demonstrates, the strategy of cultivating close ties with the Leviathan or – in more contemporary parlance – the hegemon, is alive and well. In this essay Mark Beeson asks whether this is an appropriate strategy at the beginning of the twenty-first century, and...

Today, private companies offer services for every aspect of life, including the security and military sector. They are also employed to secure the world's oceans. In the last ten years an increasing number of private companies offering anti-piracy services have surfaced and expanded. Despite their growing numbers, there is a number of problems and controversies...