Seminar on "Systems of Alignment in the Asia-Pacific"
by Dr. Thomas Stow Wilkins
Date: 5th February 2009, Thursday
Venue: RSIS Conference Room 1, Level B4
Time: 2.30pm - 4.00pm
Abstract:
The seminar addresses the diverse and evolving security architecture in the Asia-Pacific security complex. It identifies and analyses three different typologies of ‘alignment’: the American-led ‘hub/spoke’ alliance network, the ASEAN ‘security community’ and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) ‘strategic partnership network’. It employs three different analytical frameworks to make sense of these comparative alignment systems both strategically and academically. These perspectives include ‘the intra-alliance politics’ approach, an ‘organisation theories’ approach and the ‘security community’ (constructivist) approach. Using these three theoretical perspectives as analytical ‘lenses’ it seeks to deepen our understanding of comparative alignment systems and their place in the overall Asia-Pacific security architecture by probing the nature and behavioural dynamics of the three case studies identified above.
About the Speaker:
Dr Thomas Wilkins specialises in Security Studies and Strategic Studies, with a particular emphasis on the Asia-Pacific region. He wrote his PhD thesis on the topic of Coalition Warfare at the University of Birmingham and as an Exchange Visitor at the School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University.
Before joining the University of Sydney he was a Lecturer in Military History/Security at the Department of Politics and Contemporary History, University of Salford, and held Post Doctoral Fellowships at the University of San Francisco, the East West Center (Honolulu) and the International Institute for Asian Studies (Amsterdam). In addition to contemporary International Relations and Security Thomas Wilkins retains an active interest the field of international history, where he regularly contributes to Military History journals.
Posted on: 5/2/2009 2:30:00 PM |
Topic: Other NTS Issues
