Australian Prime Minister John Howard's government has strongly reaffirmed the ANZUS (Australia-New Zealand-US) alliance and his country's cultural ties to Europe. Critics have replied that these policies impede the development of Australian relations with Southeast Asia, especially now that the US is so unpopular in much of the region. How valid is the critique? And how will likely trends in Southeast Asia and the outcome of the American presidential election affect Australia's search for a balance between its proximity to Asia and its alliance with America? In addition to addressing these questions, Dr. Engel will argue that in making foreign policy, identity politics need not be sacrificed to or precluded by pragmatic interest. In Southeast Asian international relations, rhetoric and realism hardly rule each other out.

Dr. David Engel's responsibilities at the Australian Embassy in Washington include policies toward Southeast Asia. He has directed the Indonesia section of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (2001-03) in Canberra, served in Jakarta (1998-2001) and Phnom Penh (1993-95), and worked on Australia's relations with Vietnam and Laos as well. He received his PhD from the University of Edinburgh in 1989.

This is the Forum's 1st seminar of the 2004-2005 Academic Year

Daulah Islamiyya (Islamic sovereignty, or an Islamic state) is a declared objective of the Southeast Asian terrorist group Jemaah Islamiyya. In Malaysia, where parliamentary elections are expected to be held in April, both the Muslim-Malay party (UMNO) in the ruling coalition and the Islamist party (PAS) opposed to UMNO have offered rival visions of Malaysia as an Islamic state. Radical groups in Indonesia have proposed replacing the "Pancasila state" in their country with an Islamic state. So what exactly is an "Islamic state"? And why does it matter so much for politics -- radical or democratic -- in Muslim Southeast Asia? Dr. Martinez will review and explore the contexts, in theory and in practice, that can help us understand what this debate is about. Patricia Martinez, a Malaysian, is among the most highly regarded and widely published scholars working on Islam in Southeast Asia. She is based at the University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur, where she is senior research fellow for Religion and Culture and Head of Intercultural Studies at the Asia-Europe Institute. Her writings relevant to her talk include "Islam, Constitutionalism and the Islamic State" (2004) and "The Islamic State or the State of Islam in Malaysia"(2001). A 2003 essay, "Deconstructing Jihad; Southeast Asian Contexts," is available at http://www.ntu.edu.sg/idss/new-publi.asp. Dr. Martinez has just returned to Stanford from speaking engagements in Australia.

Many have argued that the terrorist attacks on the U.S. in September 2001 and the bombings in Indonesia in October 2002 (Bali) and August 2003 (Jakarta) have revamped the security situation for America?s partners in and near Southeast Asia. Is this true? What security challenges do America?s partners now face in the region? Are these challenges so thoroughly domestic and political in nature that that they cannot be addressed by military force, or through military cooperation? And to the extent that military approaches are viable, are America?s Southeast Asian and Australian partners equipped and trained to undertake them? For example: How interoperable are the relevant Southeast Asian, Australian, and American forces? How well does Australia in particular fit into this picture? Is Canberra disdained by Southeast Asian governments as a ?deputy sheriff? of Uncle Sam? Should Washington develop meetings of defense ministers into an alternative to the so far unimpressive ASEAN Regional Forum? Or is hub-and-spokes bilateralism the better way to go? Should Washington try to upgrade its warming security relations with Singapore into a fully fledged security treaty along U.S.-Japanese lines? How should nontraditional security threats?not only terrorism but piracy, drugs, and people-smuggling?be factored into these calculations? Sheldon Simon is a leading American specialist on Southeast Asian security. The author or editor of nine books--most recently The Many Faces of Asian Security (2001)--and more than a hundred scholarly articles and book chapters, Professor Simon has held faculty appointments at George Washington University, the University of Kentucky, the University of Hawaii, the University of British Columbia, Carleton University (Ottawa), the Monterey Institute of International Studies, and the American Graduate School of International Management. He visits Asia annually for research and is a consultant to the U.S. Departments of State and Defense. He earned his doctorate in political science from the University of Minnesota in 1964.

Asked his reaction to the Iraq war, the accused Bali bomber Amrozi said: "It just goes to show I was not wrong to bomb." The October 2002 bombings of two nightclubs on Bali were the worst act of terrorism since 9/11. 202 people died; 350 were seriously injured. Preliminary analysis of what the suspected perpetrators have said about the case suggests that they were motivated mainly by deep hatred of the United States. This lecture will explore the ideology and psychology of the accused bombers and, more broadly, the likely impact of the war in Iraq on terrorism in Southeast Asia. Greg Fealy is a leading specialist on Islam and the history and politics of Indonesia. His publications include two co-edited books, Nahdlatul Ulama, Traditionalism and Modernity in Indonesia and Local Power and Politics in Indonesia: Decentralisation and Democratisation. He has worked as an Indonesia analyst for the Office of National Assessments in Canberra and as a consultant for the Asia Foundation and the U.S. Agency for International Development in Jakarta. The history of Indonesia's largest Muslim party was the subject of his dissertation (PhD, Monash University, Australia, 1998).

Physically aligned as they are toward Mecca, the daily prayers and lifetime pilgrimages of Muslims around the world--hundreds of millions of spokes of religious practice--surround and sustain the Arabian hub of Islam as religious practice. Yet the demographic center of gravity of the Muslim world could hardly be farther from the Middle East. For it is in the vast arc of Asia, in countries such as Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Indonesia, and Malaysia, that the great majority of the world's Muslims live. How, if at all, does this striking difference between ritual focus and social fact affect the outlooks and actions of Asian Muslims? What, roughly, is the balance of militancy and toleration in this Asian context, especially in ethnically and religiously plural societies such as Malaysia? Is it realistic to think that Asian attitudes and behaviors could form the basis for a 21st-century reformation and renaissance of Islam in which the jihadist passions of Al Qaeda and the purist strictures of the House of Saud would be refuted and shunned in favor of intercultural cooperation and liberal democracy? Or has the American-Afghan crisis, on the contrary, ignited a chain reaction of sympathy for Arab (and Pashtun) resentments that will inflame Asian Muslims against unbelievers? Finally, what relevance do these questions have for the people and policies of the United States? Karim Raslan is one of Southeast Asia's leading public intellectuals. His diverse interests run from constructing fictional plots to restructuring all-too-real bankruptcies. When he is not writing short stories and newspaper commentaries, or appearing on CNN or the BBC, he partners a highly regarded Malaysian law firm, Raslan Loong. His first novel, Desire--the first of four planned volumes about a family of Malay Muslims--will be published next fall. A third collection of his short stories should be out next spring. His syndicated column, "Eye in Asia," appears weekly in newspapers in Malaysia and Singapore, and is often reprinted elsewhere in Asia and Australia. The specialties of his law firm include corporate finance, capital markets, and information technology. He is presently a visiting scholar at Columbia University. When he is not traveling, Mr. Raslan lives in Malaysia.

Nearly a quarter-century has elapsed since the Khmer Rouge held power in Cambodia (1975-78). Yet Cambodians still are shadowed by that catastrophic experience, and by conflicting legacies from other parts of their country's past. Cambodians continue to struggle to come to terms with what the Pol Pot era meant, and with what has happened to them since. After centuries of relative isolation, they must also contend with changes in Cambodia's identity in what seems to be an ever faster moving world. Views of Cambodia's history and destiny, formed in colonial and Cold War times, no longer seem to fit. But new interpretations have not yet taken hold. Epitomizing this confusion is the issue of bringing surviving Khmer Rouge leaders to justice. Over the last decade or so, efforts toward this end have inched forward and bogged down, beset by clashing political priorities and notions of justice and culpability. Cambodians ask themselves: Should we insist on remembering, or allow forgetting? Why? And with what implications for the future? David Chandler is the leading English-language historian of Cambodia. He holds degrees from Harvard College, Yale University, and the University of Michigan. From l972 to l997 he taught Southeast Asian history at Monash University in Australia. Since then he has held appointments at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the University of Oregon, and Cornell University. His books include A History of Cambodia (3rd ed., 2000), Brother Number One: A Political Biography of Pol Pot (2nd ed., 1999), and Voices from S 21: Terror and History in Pol Pot's Secret Prison (l999). His many other writings include coauthorship of the classic history text, In Search of Southeast Asia (1971), the 3rd revised edition of which should appear next year.

The prevailing view in international relations that security alliances are inevitably sustained by mutually perceived threats can be challenged in the present post-Cold War context. It will be argued in this presentation that 'alliance mutuality' can better explain ongoing U.S. security ties with Australia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand than traditional explanations for alliance politics. Dr. William T. Tow has been teaching with the University of Queensland's Department of Government since 1991. He was previously an Assistant Professor with the University of Southern California's School of International Relations. He has authored or edited ten books and numerous working papers, journal articles and book chapters on East Asian security problems and is completing a book on this issue as it relates to the 'realist/liberal' debate in international relations. He is a member of the Australian Foreign Minister's Foreign Affairs Council, the Australian Members Board of the Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia-Pacific (CSCAP), and the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS). In 1995, he co-authored a major study on US security policies in Asia for the IISS and he has consulted for several government agencies in both the United States and Australia. He is a dual Australian/US citizen.

After a brief description of historical legacies, Dr. Katahara looks at changes and continuities in the patterns and contents of civil-military relations through an exploration of the jurisdictional boundaries in the two areas: the structure of political domination; and national security policy making. This study is part of East-West Center's project on the State and the Soldier in Asia, directed by Muthiah Alagappa. Dr. Eiichi Katahara teaches Japan's diplomatic history and international relations in Asia and the Pacific in the Faculty of Law at Kobe Gakuin University, Japan (1992~). He held a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California's Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation (1991-1992) and at the Australian National University (1989-1991), lectured in Japanese Politics in the Department of Political Science and was a research fellow in the Australia-Japan Research Center. He has published articles on topics related to Japan's security policy, and security affairs in the Asia-Pacific region. His recent publications include "Japan's Plutonium Policy: Consequences for Nonproliferation" (The Nonproliferation Review, Vol.5, No.1, 1997); "Japan's Concept of Comprehensive Security in the Post-Cold War World" (in S. Shirk & C. Twomey eds. Power and Prosperity: Economic and Security Linkages in Asia-Pacific, 1996). He has also written background chapters on Japan for Asia Pacific Security Outlook 1998 and Asia Pacific Security Outlook 1999 (forthcoming) (edited by Charles Morrison).