This text offers a clear and comprehensive introduction to the international relations of contemporary Southeast Asia. Organized thematically around the central foreign policy questions facing regional decision makers, the book explores their struggle to overcome subordination to global political, economic, and social forces. The international agenda continually tests Southeast Asia's policy elites as they are buffeted by the security demands of the war on terrorism; the economic demands of globalism; and social and political demands centered on such contentious issues as democracy, human rights, the environment, and gender. One reaction is to give new urgency to regionalist initiatives, especially the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Yet, Donald E. Weatherbee argues, regionalism continues to be frustrated by national interests and ASEAN states' insistence on sovereignty and noninterference.