Nontraditional Security in a Changing Global Order

Introduction
Mely Caballero-Anthony and Jose Ma. Luis Montesclaros

Food Security and Crises in Southeast Asia: Is This Time Different?
Jose Ma. Luis Montesclaros

The Changing Global Order and Southeast Asia’s Low-Carbon Energy Transition
Margareth Sembiring and Danielle Lynn Goh

Biosecurity in the Changing Global Order: The Case of Southeast Asia
Julius Cesar Trajano and Jeselyn

Rising to the Challenge: Advancing the Women, Peace, and Security Agenda in Southeast Asia
Nanthini S. and Junli Lim

Humanitarian Action in a Changing Global Order
Alistair D.B. Cook and Keith Paolo C. Landicho

Achieving Resilience amid a Changing Global Order
Jose Ma. Luis Montesclaros and Mely Caballero-Anthony

Introduction

by Mely Caballero-Anthony and Jose Ma. Luis Montesclaros

In today’s rapidly changing security landscape, attention is increasingly shifting beyond traditional military threats to encompass a wider range of nontraditional risks. The international community now recognizes that some of the most pressing dangers for the survival and stability of states and societies originate from nonmilitary sources. Situated within the broader framework of “comprehensive security,”[1] nontraditional security (NTS) issues—such as climate change, resource scarcity, pandemics, natural disasters, irregular migration, food insecurity, and transnational crime—are understood to be equally capable of undermining national resilience and posing existential threats. Responding effectively to these challenges requires a fundamental reconceptualization of security, one that accounts for the complex, interconnected, and transboundary nature of contemporary risks.

Climate change, in particular, exemplifies the destabilizing impact of NTS threats. Widely characterized as a “threat multiplier,” climate change has generated profound humanitarian and security consequences: it has displaced populations, damaged critical infrastructure through increasingly frequent and severe weather events, jeopardized food and water security, and contributed to the spread of infectious diseases through disruption of ecological systems. The world’s recent experience with the Covid-19 pandemic illustrates how cascading impacts from transborder threats compound vulnerabilities across political, economic, and social systems, reinforcing the imperative for urgent, coordinated, and multisectoral responses to safeguard human security and promote global stability.[2]

At the same time, the 2020s have so far witnessed a resurgence of traditional security threats. Armed conflicts—such as the Russia-Ukraine war, the Hamas-Israel conflict, instability in the Red Sea, tensions in the South China Sea, and the ongoing crisis in Myanmar—are eroding the foundations of the post–Cold War rules-based international order and threatening to dismantle the fragile “long peace.” This deterioration is compounded by intensifying U.S.-China rivalry, which has exacerbated economic fragmentation and heightened vulnerabilities in regions prone to external shocks. In response, emerging powers are advancing initiatives such as the expansion of the BRICS, reflecting broader efforts by the global South to recalibrate the international system and challenge the dominance of the Western-led global order.

These global changes have profound impacts on the nature of security challenges and on the well-being and security of peoples and states. To be sure, traditional geopolitical risks are intersecting with transnational NTS risks and raising serious concerns about how security should be governed at the national, regional, and global levels.

While states are traditionally responsible for protecting their people from existential threats, NTS issues are more challenging as they are transboundary in nature and thus might require collaborative solutions across countries. Given the disparate capacities, interests, and priorities of states, there has been an expansion of the role of nonstate actors in providing security. These include nonprofit organizations, think tanks, epistemic communities, and even private and multinational companies. The need to coordinate among a diverse array of state and nonstate actors further compounds the complexity of governing NTS issues, while raising critical questions about the effectiveness of existing policies and institutional frameworks designed to address them.

Among the key institutions in Asia is the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), whose unity as a regional body and continued centrality are increasingly challenged by the complex shifts in the global security environment. How states and regions respond to NTS matters and whether such efforts can effect meaningful change in the global order remain questions that scholars are likely to debate for decades to come. The pressing issue before us here, and the central focus of this Asia Policy roundtable, is whether the evolving global order is transforming the landscape for NTS issues. Specifically, this roundtable seeks to examine whether, and in what ways, changes in the global order are shaping the governance of NTS issues globally, as well as how these dynamics are translating into regional responses in Southeast Asia.

International Order and Global Public Goods

It is essential to clarify how the term “global order” is operationalized in this roundtable, and, further, how it relates to NTS issues. Hedley Bull presented the classical problem: a system of sovereign states is anarchical by default since all states are equal, yet this causes unease among states owing to a lack of order and predictability. This roundtable posits that earlier state-led approaches in attaining a functional international order were insufficient in addressing NTS threats amid a changing global environment, thus calling for broader engagement with actors at multiple levels of governance.

Much thinking on attaining international order in the post–World War II era has been largely state-focused, considering frameworks such as a Hobbesian world order where some states rise to hegemony and primacy while others are subordinated; a Kantian social contract that ensures the freedom of each state following an agreed set of moral principles; and an international “society of sovereign states,” which Bull explored, wherein states are interdependent and therefore “consciously united together for certain purposes.” This in turn, according to Bull, would shape their conduct in relation to one another.[3]

Bull’s “international society” initially envisioned order as guided by a combination of the rule of law and a balance of powers so as to “enjoin respect for the legal and moral rules upon which the working of the international society depends.”[4] States would then be assigned duties and rights as members of this society, ensuring a constitutional order in which the interests of the society are ideally reflected in the rules and norms.[5] These would be further supported by mechanisms for maintaining a balance of power and regulating the influence of the hegemon. Ikenberry summarizes the international order as the “governing arrangements among a group of states, including its fundamental rules, principles, and institutions.”[6]

As the rules and norms were meant to reflect the international society’s common values and interests, the effectiveness of the global order is best assessed through the extent to which international institutions function coherently to advance these collective interests. These interests are represented in this roundtable in the form of global public goods, defined as goods that offer benefits that are shared or experienced by all countries and that are not zero-sum (i.e., goods where one country’s consumption does not reduce that of another).[7] For instance, in the post–World War II era, the international order promoted “open markets, international institutions, cooperative security, democratic community, progressive change, collective problem solving, shared sovereignty, and rule of law.”[8]

However, the shortcomings of state-focused approaches in achieving global public goods are readily seen in the historical challenges to attain them. For example, maintenance of international peace and security is considered a key global public good, prompting the establishment of UN Security Council after World War II. But as seen in the last two decades, the Security Council has increasingly shown itself to be unfit for this purpose, repeatedly failing to mobilize coherent responses to egregious violations of territorial integrity, ranging from the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, to Russia’s aggression against Ukraine in 2022, to the escalating Israel-Palestine conflict in 2023. These instances underscore the council’s growing paralysis in the face of major-power interests and geopolitical deadlock.

There have also been repeated deviations from the established multilateral system for achieving global economic development through free and open trade, despite rules such as the World Trade Organization agreements. This has given rise to perceptions that free trade has led to uneven progress, whether across countries or industries, including within those deemed “sensitive” that are critical for domestic food and economic security (e.g., agriculture, energy). In 2025, this can be observed, for instance, in the United States’ unprecedented level of tariffs imposed on China in an effort to reduce the U.S. trade deficit. These examples of challenges in maintaining global public goods show that the state-focused view of global order was not perfect to begin with. Global discord—driven by entrenched economic inequality, underdevelopment, and internal conflicts—has not only revealed the limitations of multilateral governance and institutional capacity but also underscored the failure of global leadership, particularly among the major powers traditionally responsible for the provision of such public goods. This leadership vacuum has contributed to the fragmentation and ineffectiveness of efforts to address transnational challenges. Recurring failures in the provision of global public goods thus call for a strategic reconsideration of whether the older, primarily state-based notions of order are a sufficient foundation for them.

Re-envisioning the Western-Led International Order

While post–World War II notions of international order were foregrounded on the primacy of rules and values to guide the behaviors of states, much of the current discussion on international order revolves around great-power relations and the dominance and decline of a U.S.-led liberal order. These state-centric perspectives are found wanting in a changed global environment. In his book Constructing Global Order, Amitav Acharya argues that the prevailing conception of the (Western-led) rules-based international order can no longer ignore the role of non-Western states in shaping a new global order. He further notes that the changing global order is not unipolar or bipolar but rather multipolar, characterized by a proliferation of actors ranging from small to big states, international and regional bodies, private corporations, and nonstate actors. As Acharya argues, “In a world of multiple modernities, where modern liberal modernity is only part of what is on offer…a multiplex world is marked by a proliferation of consequential actors—including not just global great powers but also regional bodies, corporations, people and social movements.”[9]

This brings to the fore the importance of reforming global multilateral institutions and engaging emerging nonstate actors in ensuring the comprehensive security of states and societies from existential threats. In the past decade, there has been a growing understanding that the tasks involved in addressing NTS issues are themselves public goods.[10] Given the transboundary nature of NTS threats, however, these are not just localized public goods but also international, that is to say, global, public goods. For example, both climate change mitigation and pandemic prevention bring about global benefits. Yet these global public goods tend to be underprovided since the benefits are viewed as much smaller than the costs for any individual state.

While international peace and security is typically a traditional security concern, the past decades have shown an increasing impact on NTS threats. Further related to conflict are the issues of gender security and disaster resilience. Similarly, although economic development and trade are not in themselves NTS issues, they are linked to NTS issues of human, food, and energy security, following the Ricardian logic that international trade competition allows access to the greatest quantity of consumer goods at the most affordable prices for all countries. These critical issues impact the economic security of individuals with knock-on effects on issues such as food and health security, among others.

Beyond the need to work together to ensure that global public goods are provided, it is just as critical to achieve equality and inclusion so that that the benefits of cooperation, in the form of sustained development across economic, social, and political facets, are attained by countries equally, especially giving attention to those with weakest state capacities to do so alone.[11] This sets the stage for the need for global governance mechanisms, as in the multilateral framework supporting the UN programs in development, the environment, health, disaster mitigation, gender, and food security, among others. Such institutions empower communities to deal with NTS threats at their own level to ensure that they retain agency in shaping long-term development and security outcomes.

We apply this to the regional level. For Southeast Asia, addressing global public goods entails that the member states of ASEAN embrace the broader agenda of “regional resilience.” This concept ranges from inward-looking comprehensive security to a more outward-looking and regional view with a high degree of interdependence among geographically linked or proximate states.[12] Thus, the analysis in this roundtable focuses on explaining the changing dynamics of NTS issues amid the evolving global order, with the view that, for ASEAN, building resilience at the regional level and raising cooperation to a higher plane are key to promoting and maintaining comprehensive security. As argued by Inge Kaul, former head of the UN Development Programme and member of the International Task Force on Global Public Goods, “as the fate[s] of many nations become increasingly intertwined, transforming what were once national policy issues into regional issues…so too should they [be brought] together as partners in appropriately reformed public policy making.”[13]

Overview of the Roundtable Essays: Order, Global Public Goods, and NTS Issues in Southeast Asia

This roundtable seeks to elucidate further on the impacts of an increasingly unstable global order on NTS issues with a focus on Southeast Asia. This section briefly introduces the essays, which address food security, energy security, health security, gender security, and humanitarian assistance and disaster relief.

Impacts on regional food security. The first essay by Jose Ma. Luis Montesclaros examines food security, defined by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization as a situation “when all people, at all times, have physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.”[14] Within the region, over 300 million people are unable to afford a healthy diet. Of this population, more than half miss regular meals and the remainder are in more severe states of food insecurity. Among the geopolitical changes affecting food security, most prominent are those which disrupt global food trade. Trade is critical given the limitations of land, the diversity of consumer preferences, and the negative impacts of climate change on farming, for instance; thus, an unstable global food trade system poses a critical threat to regional food security.

Montesclaros’s essay traces the impacts of geopolitically related changes such as Covid-19, the Russia-Ukraine war, and the recent tariff wars on Southeast Asian food security. It argues that this issue has been improving for the region as can be seen in declining food export bans relative to the global food price crisis of 2007–8. But more can still be done, especially when the threats to the region emerge from great-power competition. To minimize collateral effects on the food sector, a change in outlook will be necessary for ASEAN governments toward greater integration of and collaboration among governments, cooperatives, and private actors across the supply chain as well as enhanced regional coordination of commodity production where they are still vulnerable to disruption.

Impacts on regional low-carbon transition. The second essay, by Margareth Sembiring and Danielle Lynn Goh, focuses on the low-carbon energy transition in Southeast Asia toward greater adoption of renewable energy sources. This relates to the NTS issue of energy security, or ensuring a “reliable and adequate supply of energy at reasonable prices” for all.[15] In the 1960s and 1970s, energy security fears arose from the declining availability of nonrenewable energy sources (e.g., oil) to keep up with demand, but later discourses have sought to transition away from dependence on nonrenewable sources, given the carbon gases emitted that feed into climate change.

Renewable energy sources are needed to effect a low-carbon transition, but the pace of the transition is impacted by geopolitical disruptions, such as the United States’ second withdrawal from the Paris Agreement. Sembiring and Goh discuss alternative partner countries available to Southeast Asia in sustaining the low-carbon transition amid geopolitical disruption, including Japan, South Korea, and the developed Middle Eastern countries. Beyond country partners, they also recognize the roles of nonstate entities, such as private companies and banks, state-owned companies, and multilateral banks. They emphasize that “ultimately, the region must maintain its diversification strategy and ensure that no single actor…has excessive leverage over its low-carbon energy transition efforts in technology, financing, or infrastructure development, among others.”

Impacts on regional biosecurity. Global health security is defined by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control as “the existence of strong and resilient public health systems that can prevent, detect, and respond to infectious disease threats, wherever they occur in the world.”[16] One aspect of health security, apart from public health systems, focuses on biosecurity. In the third essay Julius Cesar Trajano and Jeselyn identify biosecurity as referring to regulating and preventing biological threats, including infectious disease outbreaks, bioterrorism, and laboratory accidents, from harming humans, animals, and the environment.

In the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic, attention to biosecurity has increased, as seen in the development of new vaccines and expanded capacities and investments in biotechnology. However, Trajano and Jeselyn note that international governance and regulation are not keeping pace with such developments, leading to risks and uncertainties regarding the storage and handling of hazardous biological materials that could also potentially be weaponized. These are further complicated by the United States’ retreat in its leadership and funding support for such endeavors and its escalating biotechnology competition with China, thus raising the importance for ASEAN of science diplomacy with other partners such as Japan, China, Canada, and the European Union. Science diplomacy will also involve the scientific communities and associations, which they argue “play a critical role in strengthening technical expertise, fostering cross-border collaboration, and standardizing best practices for biosecurity.”

Impacts on regional gender security. Gender security “can pose existential threats to segments of society that may be disadvantaged as a result of institutions which discriminate and fail to provide equal opportunity to individuals regardless of gender.”[17] In the fourth essay, Nanthini S. and Junli Lim use the Women, Peace, and Security agenda as a policy framework for tracking the gender security theme, looking also into “ensuring the ‘equal and meaningful’ participation of women as key actors in processes of peace and security.”

The effect of geopolitical changes has been to further deepen gender-related discrepancies. Amid the government reorganization in the United States, for instance, Nanthini and Lim note that the closure of “offices that previously served the interests of women in conflict-affected areas is bound to have a profound impact on women’s rights and inclusion.” At the same time, they highlight the evolving actors beyond the U.S. Agency for International Development, such as Australia and New Zealand, as ASEAN’s dialogue partners. They also recognize the need for nonstate actors to advance gender security, noting the historic Grand Bargain agreement in 2016, which comprised 68 signatories, with pledges made by states, NGOs, international NGOs, and UN agencies to “get more means into the hands of people in need and to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the humanitarian action.”[18]

Impacts on regional disaster resilience. Finally, vulnerability to disasters poses an existential threat to Southeast Asia, with 323.4 million people in the broader Asia-Pacific requiring humanitarian assistance in 2024, as Alistair Cook and Keith Paolo Landicho note in the fifth essay. Disasters can be naturally caused or human-made (including geopolitical threats), but the security situation significantly worsens when both types simultaneously emerge or when societies are battered by successive disruptions. In such cases of simultaneous or successive disruptions, there is less capacity to cope with disasters, as could be seen in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Cook and Landicho highlight the key problem in the present context of “an increasingly fraught international system dominated by major-power competition” and in turn “more interest-based humanitarian assistance.” They argue this comes alongside the “need to diversify funding sources and humanitarian actors to reach affected populations and meet their needs.” In light of the 2016 Grand Bargain, one trend has been the growing diversity of actors with humanitarian efforts occurring “locally, bilaterally, and regionally, particularly for those countries outside the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s Development Assistance Committee.” Amid the changing geopolitical dynamics, an emerging serious threat is that the very systems for providing humanitarian aid are evolving and becoming more fragmented. Access constraints, changing priorities, further policy shifts, and funding and operational hurdles are causing delays to effective action. As such, the authors call for “a new system for humanitarian action that is rooted in and reflective of global, regional, and local realities and safeguards humanitarian principles.”

This roundtable, therefore, offers concrete case studies showing how the evolving global order is impacting NTS issues, whether through the intensification of existing challenges or a change in their nature due to increasing interdependence among issue areas. It underscores the pressing need for a transformation in the governance of these issues at the national, regional, and international levels. Notably, the essays emphasize the growing importance of nonstate actors in complementing and supporting states in responding to complex NTS issues. The failure to adapt governance frameworks in a timely manner to the realities of a multiplex world endangers human security. Yet, states often do not have the capacities to adequately initiate reforms on their own. These disparities highlight the importance of regional resilience frameworks, exemplified by the ASEAN-led institutions working together with the wider regional community in fostering peace and stability amid a fluid global environment.

Mely Caballero-Anthony is Professor of International Relations at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) at Nanyang Technological University (Singapore) and holds the President’s Chair for International Relations and Security Studies. She is also the Head of the RSIS Centre for Non-Traditional Security Studies and Associate Dean (International Engagement). Her research interests include regionalism and multilateralism in the Asia-Pacific, human security and nontraditional security, nuclear security, conflict prevention, and global governance.

Jose Ma. Luis Montesclaros is a Research Fellow and the Food Security Lead at the Centre for Non-Traditional Security Studies at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) at Nanyang Technological University (Singapore), where he teaches a graduate module on the political economy of development. He holds a PhD in international political economy from RSIS and conducts policy analysis on dynamic models of food security and climate change alongside studying governance, institutions, and strategy development.

Margareth Sembiring is a Research Fellow with the Centre for Non-Traditional Security Studies at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) at Nanyang Technological University (Singapore). Her research focuses on sustainability governance, including low-carbon energy transitions and marine environmental protection in Southeast Asia.

Danielle Lynn Goh is an Associate Research Fellow with the Centre for Non-Traditional Security Studies at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) at Nanyang Technological University (Singapore). Her research interests include ASEAN and regional cooperation in Southeast Asia; labor flows and migration; health security; peace, human security, and development; and diplomacy and international relations.

Julius Cesar Trajano is a Research Fellow with the Centre for Non-Traditional Security Studies at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) at Nanyang Technological University (Singapore).

Jeselyn is a Research Analyst with the Centre for Non-Traditional Security Studies at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) at Nanyang Technological University (Singapore).

Nanthini S. is an Associate Research Fellow with the Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief Programme in the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University (Singapore).

Junli Lim is a Research Fellow with the Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief Programme in the Institute for Defence and Strategic Studies at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University (Singapore). She is also an international lawyer who specializes in public international law, including international humanitarian law, human rights, refugee, and criminal law.

Alistair D.B. Cook is Coordinator of the Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief Programme and a Senior Fellow at the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies in the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University (Singapore). His research interests are disaster governance, humanitarian affairs, foreign policy, and regional cooperation in the Asia-Pacific.

Keith Paolo C. Landicho is an Associate Research Fellow for the Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief Programme at the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies in the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University (Singapore). He is a member of the ASEAN Emergency Response and Assessment Team and is an ASCEND-certified disaster information management officer. His research interests include ASEAN disaster management and the impacts of emerging technologies on humanitarian assistance and disaster relief.

Endnotes

[1] Mely Caballero-Anthony, “Reclaiming ASEAN’s Comprehensive and Cooperative Security Southeast Asia,” East Asia Forum, June 13, 2023.

[2] Mely Caballero-Anthony, ed., An Introduction to Non-Traditional Security Studies: A Transnational Approach (London: Sage Publications, 2016).

[3] Hedley Bull, “Society and Anarchy in International Relations (1966),” in International Theory: Critical Investigations, ed. James Der Derian (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1995): 79.

[4] Ibid.

[5] G. John Ikenberry, Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis, and Transformation of the American World Order (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011), 22–37. See also Jamie M. Johnson, Victoria M. Basham, and Owen D. Thomas, “Ordering Disorder: The Making of World Politics,” Review of International Studies 48, no. 4 (2022): 607–25.

[6] G. John Ikenberry, After Victory: Institutions, Strategic Restraint and the Rebuilding of Order after Major War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 23.

[7] Moya Chin, “What Are Global Public Goods?” International Monetary Fund (IMF), December 2021, https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/fandd/issues/2021/12/Global-Public-Goods-Chin-basics.

[8] Ikenberry, Liberal Leviathan, 2.

[9] Amitav Acharya, “After Liberal Hegemony: The Advent of a Multiplex World Order,” Ethics and International Affairs, no. 3 (2017): 272, 277; and Amitav Acharya, The End of American World Order (Cambridge: Polity Books, 2018). See also Mely Caballero-Anthony, Negotiating Governance on Non-Traditional Security in Southeast Asia and Beyond (New York: Columbia University Press, 2018).

[10] Raj Verma, “Instability in Afghanistan and Non-traditional Security Threats: A Public Good Problem?” Global Policy 13, no. 1 (2022): 152–59.

[11] Mely Caballero-Anthony, “Combating Infectious Diseases in East Asia: Securitisation and Global Public Goods Approach for Health and Human Security,” Journal of International Affairs 59, no. 2 (2006): 105–27.

[12] Mely Caballero-Anthony, “From Comprehensive Security to Regional Resilience: Coping with Nontraditional Security Challenges,” in Building ASEAN Community: Political Security and Socio-Cultural Reflections, ed. Aileen Baviera and Larry Maramis (Jakarta: Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia, 2017): 123–45.

[13] The taskforce was established in 2003 under the leadership of France and Sweden with a mandate to assess and prioritize international public goods, both global and regional, and make recommendations to policymakers and other stakeholders on how to improve and expand their provision. Inge Kaul, Providing Public Goods: Managing Globalization (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003).

[14] UN Food and Agriculture Organization, International Fund for Agricultural Development, and World Food Programme, The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2015 (Rome: FAO, 2021), 53, https://www.fao.org/publications/sofi/2015/en.

[15] Janusz Bielecki, “Energy Security: Is the Wolf at the Door?” The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance 42, no. 2 (2002): 237.

[16] “Global Health Security,” U.S. Centers for Disease Control, December 12, 2024, https://www.cdc.gov/global-health/topics-programs/global-health-security.html.

[17] Jose Ma. Luis Montesclaros and Mely Caballero-Anthony, “Non-Traditional Security Perspectives on the New Normal: An Introduction,” Non-Traditional Security Concerns in the New Normal, RSIS Monograph, no. 36. (Singapore: S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, 2022), 3–12.

[18] “The Grand Bargain,” Inter-Agency Standing Committee, https://interagencystandingcommittee.org/grand-bargain.