Sea Piracy and Maritime Terrorism in South and Southeast Asia : Implications for Regional Organizations

Contents: Preface. Introduction. 1. Analyzing sea piracy and maritime terrorism within the non-traditional security paradigm in South and Southeast Asia. 2. Regional cooperation to combat sea piracy and maritime terrorism in South and Southeast Asia: examining the role of multilateralism in Asia. 3. Extra-regional powers-role of USA, Japan, China and EU in arresting sea piracy and maritime terrorism. 4. India\'s role in maritime cooperation in Southeast Asia. Conclusion. General Bibliography.

Sea piracy is no new phenomenon. It\'s been a lucrative profession for marauders for time immemorial. The only difference being that today\'s pirates are better equipped, better networked and more sophisticated. And sometimes they may also have an ideology.

This book is an effort to sneak into the problem of sea piracy and maritime terrorism in the South and Southeast Asian region, but with an added twist to place this problem within the broader international relations paradigm shift from unilateralism to bilateralism and the much talked of multilateralism and community building effort among nations of the world.

Both ASEAN and SAARC have minced out multilateral means to arrest asymmetric crimes of the post cold war period. In case of ASEAN, the regional effort of the organization practicing flexible engagement along with the efforts of the littoral countries and extra-regional powers have sufficiently enabled to cut down on sea piracy in the region. SAARC although younger to ASEAN, has still a long way to go. This has resulted in most South Asian countries to tilt towards bigger powers for help.

India\'s role in this arena has been of special concern to scholars who have tagged it as a walrus of the seas lacking in its capability to chalk out a proper maritime strategy for itself vis-a-vis a China that has gone far beyond commercial ties and innocent trading.

The lessons learned in curbing the menace of sea piracy and maritime terrorism can well be applied to arrest other non-traditional threats jittering states and civil society-terrorism and insurgency drug trafficking, trafficking in human and children, small arms transfer and other man made disasters of 21st century.