Chansok Lak: Article Collection

"There are books so alive that you're always afraid that while you weren't reading, the book has gone and changed, has shifted like a river; while you went on living, it went on living too, and like a river moved on and moved away. No one has stepped twice into the same river. But did anyone ever step twice into the same book?" ~Marina Tsvetaeva

Dr. Kheang UN is currently a Visiting Fellow at the University of Louisville’s Center for Asian Democracy and on leave from his position as Assistant Director of the Center for Southeast Asian Studies and adjunct Professor of Political Science at Northern Illinois University. He earned a Doctoral Degree in Political Science and Southeast Asian Studies from Northern Illinois University in 2004. He is currently serving as research advisor to the Cambodia Development Resource Institute, a Board Member of Build Cambodia, a US based non-profitable organization, and an In-Country Coordinator for Tracking Development, a multi-disciplinary and multi-country project at Leiden University, examining the trajectory of development in Southeast Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa (2007-2011). Dr. Un’s research interests are democracy, human rights, non-governmental organizations and political economy focusing on Cambodia and Uganda. His publications have appeared in the Journal of Human Rights, Asian Survey, Journal of Pacific Affairs, and Asian Perspective. He is currently finishing a book manuscript Cambodia’s Hybrid Democracy: Neo-Patrimonialism, the State and Society, and co-editing a book, Economic Reform and Transformation in Cambodia (Nordic Institute for Asian Studies, in press). He is also serving as guest co-editor for Asian Affairs: An American Review. He has consulted for the World Bank, the Department for International Development of the United Kingdom, AusAID, UNDP, and the State Department of the United States.

Dr. Sok Udom DETH graduated from Zaman International School in 2002. He went to study his bachelor’s degree at Boĝaziçi University (Istanbul, Turkey) and received High Honors Diploma in Sociology in 2006. He received a scholarship to do his master’s degree in International Affairs (specializing in Southeast Asian Studies) at Ohio University and graduated in 2009. He obtained his PhD in Southeast Asian Studies at Humboldt Universitaet zu Berlin (Germany) in 2014. Dr. Deth taught Introduction to East and Southeast Asia in the Department of International Studies at the Royal University of Phnom Penh in 2009-2010. He is currently the Dean of Academic Affairs and teaches history and political science at Zaman University, Phnom Penh – Cambodia.

Dr. Vannarith CHHEANG is currently a lecturer at Leeds University, UK, and a senior research fellow at Cambodian Institute for Cooperation and Peace, the member of ASEAN-ISIS and CSCAP. He graduated from the Institute of International Relations (Vietnam) in 2002 and got MA in international relations from the International University of Japan in 2006. He received a graduate certificate in leadership from the East West Center (USA) in 2009. He got a PhD degree in Asia Pacific Studies from the Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University in 2010. He has published several academic and policy papers in his field of research. His research interests include international relations in East Asia and Cambodian political economy.

Dr. Ear Sophal earned his Ph.D. in the Department of Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley, in 2006, and spent the academic year 2006-07 as a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Public Administration at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University. He also has three master’s degrees: a Master of Science in Agricultural and Resource Economics, a Master of Arts in Political Science (both from UC Berkeley) and a Master in Public Affairs from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. His Bachelor of Arts degree, also from UC Berkeley, was in Economics and Political Science.

Here are his slides, drafts, honor theses, and some other articles.

National Security and China's Informational Security Standard
By Nathaniel Ahren
November 08, 2012

As part of a concerted effort to promote indigenous innovation, Chinese policymakers crafted a set of information security standards entitled “Regulations on Classified Protection of Information Security.” These far-reaching regulations (often referred to in English as the Multi-Level Protection Scheme, or MLPS)—in theory aimed at protecting China’s national security—actually serve to protect a great swath of Chinese industry from international competition. While in some cases the national security claims may be valid, these regulations appear to overstep the standard definition of national security in World Trade Organization (WTO) law. Not only could these information security measures have far-reaching commercial consequences, but if parties are not careful, they may also result in a long-averted delineation of the national security exceptions in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and other related WTO legal documents.

This report argues that China should steer clear of using the WTO’s national security exceptions to protect the information technology industry. China could take some immediate steps to reduce RCPIS Grade III coverage to just those entities that can legitimately be considered essential security concerns (or remove the domestic content mandate from Grade III), make policies more transparent, and ensure that assessment procedures are in line with international standards. If China is open to reasonable discussions with other countries on how they are dealing with similar matters, the national security exception should be able to be preserved and information security achieved in the least-trade-restrictive manner possible. While this report focuses on Chinese regulations, these issues have global dimensions. The nexus of information security and national security raises concerns that every country needs to address. Recent hearings in the United States relating to Chinese telecommunication providers Huawei and ZTE make evident the need to better delineate national security threats in a nondiscriminatory manner.

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Asian Defense Spending 2010 - 2011
By David J. Berteau, Guy Ben-Ari, Joachim Hofbauer, Priscilla Hermann, Sneha Raghavan

This report analyzes the defense budgets of the five countries with the largest defense budgets in Asia: China, India, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. Unlike defense budgets in many other regions, defense spending in these five countries has been on the rise for over a decade. For each country, the report examines overall defense spending for the years 2000 to 2011 as well as spending on acquisition, personnel, operations and maintenance (O&M) and research and development (R&D). It closes with several key findings and suggestions for further research.

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New Analysis of Defense Budgets in Asia

By Guy Ben-Ari, Joachim Hofbauer, Priscilla Hermann, Sneha Raghavan

Despite the global financial crisis that began in 2008, many Asian countries experienced relatively less fiscal distress and continued to increase their level of involvement in global affairs during the crisis. In addition, unlike defense budgets in many other regions, including the United States and Europe, Asian defense spending continues to be on the rise. CSIS recently completed a study of the five largest Asian defense spenders: China, India, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. Together, these countries account for some 90 percent of defense spending in Asia, and three of them (China, India, and Japan) were among the top 10 defense spenders in the world in 2011. (For the full study report, click here.)

The combined defense budgets of China, India, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan equaled some $224 billion in 2011 (in constant 2011 U.S. dollars), nearly double the amount only a decade earlier. However, the growth rates of defense spending in these countries have not been uniform. China’s defense spending increased at the highest rate, with an 11-year compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 13.4 percent and some $90 billion spent in 2011. South Korea was second with a 4.8 percent CAGR and $29 billion spent on defense. Japan and India, the third- and fourth-largest spenders, were on similar growth trajectories with 3.5 and 3.6 percent CAGRs and defense budgets of $58 billion and $37 billion, respectively. Taiwan experienced the slowest increase in defense spending of the group with a CAGR of 1.8 percent; it also had the smallest defense budget of the five, at $10 billion in 2011.

The growth in spending in the five countries analyzed did not occur in a steady manner. Rather, defense spending in the first half of the decade (2000–2005) grew at nearly half the pace (4.5 percent CAGR) that it did in the second half (8.0 percent CAGR in 2006–2011) for all countries except South Korea. Furthermore, growth in defense spending occurred primarily in the personnel accounts (i.e., spending on payroll and benefits) and was less rapid in the investment accounts (i.e., research, development and acquisition of military goods and services).

Another noteworthy trend derived from the budget data relates to the relatively low levels of per-soldier spending in Asia. Per-soldier spending, derived by dividing total defense spending by total number of troops, measures how much a country allocates to recruit, train, compensate, equip, and sustain each soldier; it therefore serves as a proxy measure for the quality of personnel. Three of the five Asian countries analyzed (China, India, and South Korea) were in the world top 10 list of number of active troops. As a result, defense spending per soldier in these countries has consistently been relatively low. For example, China, India, South Korea, and Taiwan spent between $28,200 and $43,600 per service member in 2011. By comparison, European states in 2011 spent on average $140,400 per soldier, Australia spent $438,000 per soldier, and the United States spent $504,800 per soldier. This suggests that Asian countries prioritize force size over force quality. The exception is Japan, which spent $238,100 per soldier in 2011.

The range of sizes and military capacities in the region, with countries as large as India and as small as Taiwan, as well as the complexities inherent in the region’s security environment, all necessitate careful understanding of the structure and history of the region’s military buildup. While the top five defense spenders have been increasing their defense budgets at a rapid rate, this is by no means indicative of an arms race. Defense spending in Asia continues to be driven primarily by economic growth and a need to upgrade inventories and personnel-heavy militaries than by overt security threats. It remains to be seen whether Asian states will continue to field large militaries or if they will follow the trends in Europe and the United States, where force structure is being reduced in favor of higher-quality forces. Ample space for this is available in China, India, and South Korea. Yet security and other political considerations might make this course of action unviable for the foreseeable future.

Cambodia-US Relations: Human Rights Is A Variable
By Vannarith Chheang

The bilateral meeting between US President Barack Obama and Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen on Nov. 19 was in the spotlight, at least from the local reaction, during the 21st ASEAN Summit and related meetings. The meeting focused on human rights, fundamental political freedoms, and electoral democracy in Cambodia. The conversation was generally described as "tense" and straightforward since Obama touched a Cambodian nerve by raising concerns about the deteriorating human rights situation, the 2013 national election, and political prisoners. According to Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes, who accompanied Obama, it will be difficult to deepen bilateral relations if the Cambodian government does not improve its human rights record.

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