Much time has passed since formal democratic rule was restored in the Philippines, but the military remains a powerful institution enjoying spheres of autonomy and various political prerogatives. Since the end of martial law in 1986, the country undertook re-democratization that sought to re-impose civilian supremacy and control over the armed forces through legal and institutional reforms. Though necessary, this has not been sufficient in keeping the military in the barracks during serious political crises and preventing its exercise of undue influence in different policy areas as well as matters related to defence and security (Arugay, 2011). Furthermore, by focusing on the military during the democratic transition, other institutions within the security sector such as the police and the intelligence services failed to undergo significant reform efforts.

Like other third wave democracies, the Philippines attempted to embark on reforming the military given the critical role it played as an institutional partner of the Marcos dictatorship. The push for democratizing civil–military relations was reinforced by the experience of numerous mutinies and political interventions carried out by military officials during periods of legitimacy crises faced by civilian governments. Thus, the Aquino administration (1986–92) was subjected to seven coup attempts from politicized and disgruntled junior officers, some of whom were the leaders of the putsch that led to the 1986 People Power Revolt (Final Report, 1990). Military intervention led by the top brass resulted in the ousting of democratically elected president Joseph Estrada in 2001. The military withdrew its allegiance from the president and transferred it to the constitutional successor Vice-President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. This paved the way for a more politicized role of the military under the settings of a polarized elite conflict from 2001 to 2010 (Arugay, 2011). Since then, the military made significant commitments to transform itself as an institution through the framework of SSR, particularly the adoption of democratic principles such as transparency, accountability, respect for human rights and political neutrality (Hernandez, 2014). The government also embarked on a modernization programme that aims to equip the military with a ‘credible defence posture’ to defend the territorial integrity of the republic (de Castro, 2014) and divert the military mission from internal security to external defence.

North Korea remains the only communist state that has successfully completed three-generation hereditary successions, that is, Kim Il-sung (1948–94), to Kim Jong-il (1997–2011), and to Kim Jong-un (2011–current). Compared with other dictatorial regimes that suffered leadership succession dilemmas and political turmoil, the family successions in Pyongyang occurred without noticeable political unrest. Given that regime collapse in Pyongyang seems improbable through elite opposition, organized popular protests or intervention by foreign political forces, the KPA may be the only political force that possesses the means of physical violence to pose an immediate threat to the Kim-family regime (Jeon, 2000; Byman and Lind, 2010). One may wonder why the KPA demonstrates unwavering loyalty to the Kim family rule from the state-building years through to the current Kim Jong-un regime.

When Kim Jong-il promulgated his leadership with the slogan of Songun (military-first) politics in 1998, many North Korea watchers interpreted the Songun political system as one dominated by the KPA (Oh and Hassig, 2000; Suh, 2002; Kim, I., 2006). Kim Jong-il’s Songun politics resulted in a massive increase in defence spending and adventurous foreign policies with the pursuit of nuclear weapons and Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) in a time of economic distress and massive famine. The Songun system focused on Kim’s regime survival at the expense of the national economy and ordinary people’s well-being. A logical corollary was the assessment that Kim Jong-il’s political survival was heavily dependent upon the KPA’s political support; therefore, the military’s political influence has been significantly expanded in recent decades. Moreover, a military coup might have been a possibility when the suspected power vacuum emerged after the death of Kim Jong-il (Saxonberg, 2013, pp 316–20). Contrary to such expectations, however, the hereditary power succession to his son Kim Jong-un has been smooth, as the current dictator has consolidated his undisputed leadership in the Korean Workers Party (KWP), the cabinet and the KPA.

The date 6 January 2021 has gone down in US political history as the day of a Trumpian insurrection against democratic procedures in the wake of a lost presidential bid. Closer scrutiny, however, reveals that this was also a timely reminder that the lived realities of civil–military relations in the United States are not radically different from the issues that Asian civil–military relations deal with. The ‘Battle of the Capitol’ revealed that citizens who were soldiers and policemen cast aside constitutional niceties to define what they personally felt were patriotic actions to defend the Republic. The policemen defending the premises of the Capitol, members of Congress and senators accused pro-Trump rioters of violating their professional oath of protecting the constitution. This was plausible in one direction because a good number of the rioters were retired military personnel who believed President Trump was the saviour of white supremacist causes in the country and legitimately won the presidential elections of 2020. It was no small irony that the rioters with military experience threw the same challenge against those defending the Capitol and the legislators within it: the enforcers of law and order were themselves breaking the oath of protecting the constitution (Steinhauer, 2021). Reflecting on the incident of 6 January, a former US Marine and intelligence officer wrote an editorial for The New York Times and commented:

In Asia, where the vast majority of political systems are republics in name only, and mostly afflicted with ‘endemic political dysfunction’ under the tumultuous challenges of nation and state-building, civil–military divides are deliberately fudged as a strategy. In many instances, the fudge transformed into a fusion to expedite national construction, political coalition, the consolidation of national identity and even defence diplomacy.

When former Thai general, coup-maker and junta leader Prayuth Chan-ocha swore an oath of loyalty to Thailand’s monarch following the 26 March 2019 election, he and his cabinet omitted a pledge to ‘uphold and observe the Constitution of the Kingdom of Thailand in every respect’ (‘Ombudsman refers oath blunder to Constitutional Court’, Bangkok Post, 27 August 2019). To this date, the omission has not been rectified and the Constitutional Court refused to accept a case on its unconstitutionality. If it were needed, after 18 coups producing 19 constitutions (Harding and Leyland, 2011, p xxx), the absent oath eloquently conveyed the uncertain place of constitutional law in the governance of Thailand, particularly in the eyes of its two most important institutions, the military and the monarchy.

Western civil–military relations, and especially the principle of civilian control of the military, reside in a framework in which rule of law is fundamental. It is law that defines the relations between civilian and military leaders. So what kind of rule of law applies in Thailand? While Thailand formally adopted a Western criminal code in 1908, and established a Constitutional Court in 1997, Thailand’s practice of law remains far from that of Western states (Wise, 2019). This applies at the top echelons of the legal system, with judges demonstrably unable to truly accept the constitution as the highest law. It also applies in civil matters, with northern Thais preferring Buddhist ethics and karmic justice to courts and litigation for dealing with the wrongdoings encountered in their daily lives. This is not to say that Thai rule of law is unchanging. The reforms of 1997, including the establishing of independent organizations such as anti-corruption and electoral commissions, and indeed the constitutional court, have brought the law into new spheres and established new norms.

The relative weakness of rule of law and especially constitutionalism, however, reflects the enduring coexistence of modern and traditional notions of legitimacy in governance. Some observe that Thailand’s history, as a polity never formally colonized, has provided greater scope for continuity with its pre-colonial past (Wise, 2019, p xvi).

In late May 2020, George Floyd, a middle-aged African American was killed by police in Minneapolis, Minnesota, during an arrest for an alleged misdemeanour. The resulting outcry against the killing convulsed the United States. Its impact was felt across a world already numbed by the death and mayhem caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. While protestors made their rage felt on the streets, President Donald J. Trump threatened to use the military to bring order back to the cities. The situation took a new turn when on 1 June, the President accompanied by the US’s top military officer, Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley in combat uniform, walked over for a photo opportunity in front of Washington DC’s St John’s Episcopal Church through an area that had just been violently cleared of demonstrators. The resulting furore led General Milley to issue a remarkable apology, admitting his presence had raised an uncomfortable perception of the US armed forces getting involved in domestic politics. While the apology put an end to the immediate uproar, the event raised questions about the state of civil–military relations in an established democracy like the US. Writing in Foreign Policy, one commentator forewarned that problems in civil–military relations in the country have been simmering for decades and, if the present trend of relying on the military to take sides to protect democracy continues unchecked, the future of US democracy will be imperilled (Golby, 2020).

The US example is interesting for it questions the state of civil–military relations in a country where democracy has been a stable feature for centuries and, in spite of challenges, is considered as a ‘shackled Leviathan’ (Acemoglu and Robinson, 2019, pp 24–7). In this connection, one may wonder about the state of civil–military relations in countries where democracy is more of a recent phenomenon and has faced many bumps on the road.

Bangladesh, the eighth most populous country in the world, and also the youngest nation-state in South Asia, is one such country.

In contrast to most countries in the Asia-Pacific in which threats and occurrences of military coups are not uncommon, Malaysia’s civil–military relations have remained non-turbulent and uneventful, such that scholarly studies on this topic have gained little traction. Moreover, due to its partially democratic and soft-authoritarian political system, Malaysia has been a peculiar case where the civilian government has been able to exert considerable control over the military over a long period in a manner resembling civil–military relations in Western democracies (Liew, 2019; Matsuura, 2002, pp 1–2).

A handful of studies on Malaysia’s civil–military relations have sought to account for the stability in the Malaysian Armed Forces’ (MAF) subordination to the former Barisan Nasional (BN) government. Some scholars opine that the MAF’s lack of involvement in political affairs can be explained by both constitutional restraints which prevent the military from participating in politics, and the MAF’s adherence to the democratic principle of a civilian-military divide and professionalism inherited from British colonialism (Ahmad, 1985, pp 127–29; Jeshurun, 1989, p 92; Jeshurun, 1994, pp 200–3; Matsuura, 2002, p 5). As Bellamy and Beeson (2008) have highlighted, the MAF has been playing only a secondary role in the BN’s political survival, whereas the police have performed a far more politicized function in preserving the BN regime (pp 88–9). Other scholars argue that given the military’s strong professionalism and subordination to civilian authority, the military would most likely engage in a coup or political intervention only if there were to be major political upheavals in the country (Nathan and Govindasamy, 2001, p 274). Overall, then, these studies reflect what Feaver describes as the tendency of civil–military relations studies to focus on the occurrence or non-occurrence of coups (Feaver, 2003, pp 10–11). As Bellamy and Beeson (2008) have noted, the relatively constant and stable civil–military relations in Malaysia could hardly warrant a fresh study of this topic (pp 88–9).

Debates on ‘Japan’s pivot in Asia’ have highlighted how ‘the Japanese government has been generating and deploying a fuller spectrum of strategic tools to position it to achieve its longer-term foreign policy objectives’ (Samuels and Wallace, 2018, p 710). Many of these initiatives have involved the JSDF. While scholarly debate has questioned just how radical or transformative Japan’s defence policy has been (Hughes, 2017), security practices have been more ‘evolutionary’ than revolutionary (Oros, 2008), even under a supposedly transformative leader like former Prime Minister Abe Shinzo (Liff, 2015). Military evolutions in Japan can be seen as an adaptive process whereby civil–military relations change and evolve slowly according to particular local concerns, interests, and tastes. The mechanisms can work in several ways over time incrementally. They can be developmentally driven, with initiatives launched by municipal authorities and/or private industry that relate to JSDF activities or bases. They can also be communication-driven, with initiatives coming from the JSDF to better explain and engage with the public.

This chapter investigates several key questions that underpin this volume as a whole. In stark contrast to other regional countries which suffered colonization, the JSDF has to deal with a colonial legacy whereby Japan was an imperial colonizer in Southeast Asia. Wartime history and past militarism have also doubtlessly shaped civil–military relations in Japan. As Japanese governments have worked to gain legitimacy and public acceptance for the JSDF both domestically and internationally, the effectiveness of civil–military relations here may be further viewed in terms of domestic/regional acceptance of JSDF existence and roles, on top of the conventional emphasis in the civil–military relations literature on achieving developmental and modernization goals. A key evolutionary process for the JSDF has been to reach out to the civilian population through demonstrating its role in humanitarian and disaster relief missions (HADR) as well as cultivating an approachable image through the use of popular culture including anime or public events linked to military cuisine such as “kaigun kare” (navy curry).

On 1 February 2021, the Myanmar military (Tatmadaw) launched a coup against the civilian government that was led by the National League for Democracy (NLD) patron, Aung San Suu Kyi. The coup that occurred during the early period of the COVID-19 global outbreak has certainly tilted the civil–military balance in the country. Furthermore, the military coup confirmed the speculation about the military feeling uneasy towards its civilian counterpart. Prior to the coup, there had been several incidents that displayed the growing enmity of the military. The Tatmadaw immediately detained most of the senior NLD members, including Suu Kyi who was put under house arrest by the military. Soon after the coup, the military formed a caretaker government under the so-called State Administrative Council (SAC) in which General Min Aung Hlaing, the coup orchestrator and Tatmadaw commander, holds the Chair position (The Myanmar Times, 2021). The installation of the SAC has put the Tatmadaw back at the helm of Myanmar’s government.

The 2021 coup has mostly destroyed the political transition that was marked by the transfer of authority from a military-led government to a quasi-civilian government in 2011. General Tan Shwe, commander-in-chief of Myanmar’s Military (1992–2011), announced the disbandment of the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) on 30 March 2011. Before it dispersed itself, the SPDC government held general elections in 2010 that were won by the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), which allowed the party to form a majority government and installed former military general Thein Sein as president of the country (2011–16). The 2010 general elections marked a milestone for the so-called democratization, or what others might only see as a temporary transition, from direct to partial military rule in Myanmar. Robert Taylor (2013, p 400) described this reform as a window dressing that failed to bring real change, since the military still maintained significant political control. Such doubt was indeed materialized when the 2021 military takeover occurred.

Existing studies on the Tatmadaw’s continued domination after political transition mainly point at the military’s control over political liberalization as the enabling factor for the armed forces to maintain its strong political influence (Callahan, 2012; Macdonald, 2013; Croissant and Kamerling, 2013; Egreteau, 2016; Selth, 2018).