The pace of Japan's economy is picking up again after more than a decade of stasis. During this long period of economic stagnation, the many personnel practices favoring employees known by the rubric “lifetime employment” have been subjected to increased criticism by pro-investor, neo-liberal voices. Yet other less-well-amplified voices in Japan offer an alternative criticism of, and look for opportunity in, the changing status quo as well. In the last quarter of the 20th century efforts to create worker-owned and democratically governed businesses in Japan began to emerge with the support of a wide variety of economic actors – among them labor unions and union organizers, consumer cooperatives, incomeseeking housewives, the elderly, employees of small businesses, farmers and farm workers, employees of failing firms and maverick employees of large firms. And as worker owned and managed businesses have increased in size and number, their awareness of each other and their common interest in alternative ways to organize production has also grown.

Speaking on May 4, 1902, at the newly opened Arlington Cemetery, in the first Memorial Day address there by a U.S. president, Theodore Roosevelt placed colonial violence at the heart of American nation building. In a speech before an estimated thirty thousand people, brimming with “indignation in every word and every gesture,” Roosevelt inaugurated the cemetery as a landscape of national sacrifice by justifying an ongoing colonial war in the Philippines, where brutalities by U.S. troops had led to widespread debate in the United States. He did so by casting the conflict as a race war. Upon this “small but peculiarly trying and difficult war” turned “not only the honor of the flag” but “the triumph of civilization over forces which stand for the black chaos of savagery and barbarism.” Roosevelt acknowledged and expressed regret for U.S. abuses but claimed that for every American atrocity, “a very cruel and very treacherous enemy” had committed “a hundred acts of far greater atrocity.” Furthermore, while such means had been the Filipinos’ “only method of carrying on the war,” they had been “wholly exceptional on our part.” The noble, universal ends of a war for civilization justified its often unsavory means. “The warfare that has extended the boundaries of civilization at the expense of barbarism and savagery has been for centuries one of the most potent factors in the progress of humanity,” he asserted, but “from its very nature it has always and everywhere been liable to dark abuses.”

The Straits of Malacca is one of the world's busiest and most important shipping lanes. It is a vital artery linking the region's economy with the rest of the world. Carrying a third of world trade and half of its oil supplies, security in the Straits is a concern of everyone with a stake in the waterway. Located in one of the world's most vibrant economic growth areas, the Straits is a pivotal link in international trade and transportation. It is therefore not surprising that security in the Straits is a matter of grave concern among the littoral states and internationally.

This article offers an holistic perspective on security in the Straits of Malacca. It attempts to counter the tendency by some analysts to view security in the Straits from the restrictive lens of piracy and terrorism, two issues which have dominated discourse on the subject of late. It lays out the extent of the challenges faced by the littoral states in managing security in the Straits and advocates a comprehensive approach in carrying out the task.