TERORIS SEBAGAI NON-STATE ACTOR BARU DALAM HUBUNGAN INTERNASIONAL

Peristiwa 11 September 2001 yang lalu telah membuka kembali mata dunia, bahwa ancaman terhadap keamanan negara dapat terjadi kapan saja, dalam bentuk apa saja dan aktor pelaku yang semakin tidak dapat ditebak. Begitu tiba-tibanya serangan pada gedung WTC dan Pentagon yang menjadi kebanggaan Amerika tersebut, menimbulkan kepanikan yang luar biasa pada dunia internasional. Bahkan banyak kalangan akademisi hubungan internasional yang menilai bahwa peristiwa ini menjadi titik balik yang menentukan dalam sejarah modern dunia seperti pada saat berakhirnya Perang Dingin tahun 1989.
Seperti saat berakhirnya Perang Dingin, sejarah setelah peristiwa 11 September akan berlainan seperti sebelumnya. Kita tidak pernah tahu apa yang akan terjadi selanjutnya. Pola hubungan antar negara juga mulai berubah seiring dengan meningkatnya anggaran belanja militer negara-negara dunia. Ketegangan, kecurigaan, dan kontrol keamanan dilakukan lebih ketat akan mewarnai interaksi antar negara di berbagai bidang. Sebaliknya kerjasama keamanan akan marak dilakukan baik bilateral, regional bahkan pada level internasional (multilateral).

DILEMA KEAMANAN ASEAN DALAM KONFLIK LAUT CINA SELATAN

I. Pendahuluan
Berakhirnya Perang Dingin membawa perubahan-perubahan besar dan terjadi dengan sangat cepat dalam sistem internasional. Perubahan yang menciptakan transformasi pada sistem internasional ini menimbulkan harapan dan tantangan sekaligus baru. Salah satu tantangan baru yang mengundang banyak perhatian adalah mengenai konsep keamanan. Pengkajian masalah keamanan yang semula berpusat pada kekuatan militer dan penggunaannya dalam mencapai tujuan-tujuan politis, mendapat tantangan baru dalam mengatasi ancaman perubahan dimensi-dimensi keamanan. Kepentingan ekonomi negara, isu-isu baru seperti lingkungan hidup, Hak Asasi Manusia (HAM), keimigrasiaan, narkotika dan seterusnya, menjadi ancaman baru bagi kajian keamanan.
Perubahan-perubahan yang diakibatkan oleh berakhirnya Perang Dingin juga telah berperan menonjolkan isu dan perkembangan baru di Asia Tenggara yang mempengaruhi perspektif keamanan negara-negara ASEAN.

Foreign Policy Goes Gaga

By John Feffer, July 12, 2011

Lady Gaga and Alice Walker don’t have much in common. One dresses in red meat; the other doesn’t even eat the stuff. One writes lyrics like “I want your ugly, I want your disease, I want your everything as long as it’s free.” The other writes The Color Purple.

But they are both cultural celebrities, and the media gravitates to them for comments. And they both have used this celebrity status to weigh in on global issues.

Alice Walker, for instance, was a passenger on the Audacity of Hope, one of the boats that tried to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza. She appeared in the first paragraph of The New York Times story on the second flotilla’s formation, made her case on CNN, parried questions in a Foreign Policy interview, and prompted a disparaging Commentary commentary entitled “The Alice Walker Flotilla.” Walker used her celebrity status to raise the media profile of the initiative but also to bring her own sensibility to bear on the issue. She compared the blockade-busting to the civil rights movement and spoke of her “awareness of paying off a debt to the Jewish civil rights activists who faced death to come to the side of black people in the American south in our time of need.”

Ideas, Identity and Ideology in Contemporary Japan: The Sato Masaru Phenomenon

By Gavan McCormack, December 2, 2010

Originally published in Japan Focus

Rasputin in Tokyo

Sato Masaru is not a name well-known to students of contemporary Japan, but perhaps it should be. Sato, b. 1960, a Foreign Ministry intelligence analyst and Russian expert, was driven from office and detained in the Tokyo Detention Centre for 512-days from February 2002 to October 2004 on “malpractice” charges. He was accused, and in due course convicted, firstly, for improperly disbursing Foreign Ministry funds to pay for the visit of Israeli academics to Japan and for the convening of an academic conference in Tel Aviv, and secondly for providing to a Japanese trading company confidential information relating to a contract for construction of a facility on the Russian-occupied Northern Islands. Sato protested that he was simply following established Ministry procedures, and his prolonged incarceration was an unusually severe punishment for what were at most administrative misdemeanours. The April 2000 Tel Aviv conference on “The New World Order – Russia between East and West” attracted a wide range of scholars from Japan, Russia, Israel and other countries, and seems to have been a conventional academic event, of a kind the Japanese Foreign Ministry might not unreasonably have supported out of its special Russia-related fund. The “leak” allegation was not associated with any suggestion of personal benefit. Sato seems to have been driven rather by excess of zeal in pursuit of what he saw as the national interest, in particular to resolve the long-standing issues of difference with Russia over the so-called “Northern Islands” so that relations between the two countries could be normalized.

WikiLeaks: War, Diplomacy & Ban ki-Moon’s Toothbrush

By  Phyllis Bennis, December 1, 2010

Let’s start with what the WikiLeaks trove of diplomatic cables is not. It’s not a collection of documents whose release will undermine all potential f or solving global problems through diplomacy rather than war. It’s not a set of shocking revelations of positions or opinions that completely reverse our understanding of global issues. And it’s not a bunch of documents providing nothing but new justifications for going to war against Iran.

What it is is two things. First, it is an ineffably sad body of evidence that President Obama’s promise to engage with the world in a whole new way still remains unfulfilled, and that continuity, rather than change, still shapes the Obama administration’s foreign policy. And second, it is an orchard of exposés over-ripe for cherry-picking.

Russia tracked dissident spy Litvinenko’s killers but UK warned it off – WikiLeaks

By RIA Novosti,  Published Globalsecurity.org   10:58 12/12/2010

MOSCOW, December 12 (RIA Novosti) – Russia was tracking the killers of Russian security service defector Alexander Litvinenko before he was poisoned but was warned off by Britain, which said the situation was under control, The Guardian reported on Sunday referring to WikiLeaks cables.

Litvinenko died of radioactive poisoning on November 23, 2006 in London. Large traces of polonium-210 were found in his body. British investigators accused Russian agent-turned-businessman Andrei Lugovoi of the murder, and demanded his extradition, sparking a major diplomatic row.

The paper referred to a leaked U.S. diplomatic cable recording a 2006 meeting between an ex-CIA bureau chief and a former KGB officer.

Arah Politik Keamanan Amerika Pasca 11/9 untuk Asia Tenggara

Serangan 11 September 2001 dan perubahan kepentingan serta tujuan kebijakan pertahanan Amerika Serikat.

Serangan 11 September 2001 yang lalu telah terbukti memberikan efek yang luar biasa tidak hanya bagi Amerika Serikat (AS), tetapi juga terhadap perkembangan keamanan secara global. Tantangan keamanan dunia pasca perang dingin yang selalu didengungkan selama ini adalah munculnya AS sebagai negara dengan kekuatan unipolar. Dan sejak perang dingin berakhir, hegemoni AS di berbagai belahan dunia semakin terlihat.

Terminologi terorisme sendiri sebenarnya bukanlah sesuatu yang baru. Bahkan jauh sebelum peristiwa 11/9 terjadi, Dick Cheney yang pada saat itu menjabat sebagai Menteri Pertahanan AS dibawah Administratif Clinton (1993),

GARIS BESAR PEMERINTAHAN AMERIKA SERIKAT

Dokumen  Abadi

Undang-undang Dasar Amerika Serikat merupakan instrument utama bagi pemerintah AS dan juga kekuasaan hukum tertinggi di negeri tersebut. Selama 200 tahun UUD tersebut telah menuntun proses perubahan berbagai lembaga pemerintahan dan menjadi dasar bagi stabilitas politik, kebebasan individu, pertumbuhan ekonomi dan kemajuan sosial.

UUD Amerika adalah hukum tertulis tertua di dunia yang masih berlaku dan menjadi contoh bagi banyak undang-undang dasar lainnya di dunia. Kekuatan UUD tersebut terletak pada sifatnya yang sederhana dan luwes. Mulanya dirancang pada akhir abad ke-18 sebagai sebuah kerangka kerja untuk memerintah 4 juta orang di 13 negara bagian yang berbeda di sepanjang atlantik.

Pearl Harbor, Part II?

by JOHN FEFFER | Tuesday, June 23, 2009

The war in Afghanistan is ugly. The conflict in Iraq is still seething. The prospect of Pakistan’s collapse is terrifying.

But the real nightmare scenario, or so the media headlines suggest, involves North Korea. Its leader is wacko. It’s adding to its nuclear arsenal. It’s making preparations for a missile launch aimed at Hawaii.

The Japanese attacked us 68 years ago. The Pentagon is bracing for Pearl Harbor, part II. This is serious stuff. The Taliban might be crazy, but they don’t have nukes and we don’t expect them to bomb Waikiki any time soon.

Never fear: the Obama administration has crafted a robust response to North Korea. We pushed through a UN resolution, with Chinese and Russian support, that ups the sanctions against Pyongyang and authorizes the naval interdiction of North Korean vessels suspected of delivering weapons or other suspicious materials. We sat down with South Korean leader Lee Myung-bak and reaffirmed our willingness to retaliate with nuclear weapons if the South is attacked. We’ve beefed up our defenses in Hawaii. We’re currently tailing a North Korean ship as it heads toward Burma.

ASIA TENGGARA DALAM KEPENTINGAN AMERIKA SERIKAT

Perkembangan hubungan internasional yang dinamis mempengaruhi arah kepentingan politik luar negeri Amerika Serikat (AS). Dari beberapa aspek, kawasan Asia Tenggara mungkin kehilangan signifikansi nilai strategisnya dibandingkan dengan kawasan Asia Timur. Meskipun demikian, AS tetap memiliki kepentingan yang sangat luas dibidang ekonomi, politik serta keamanan yang membutuhkan perhatian khusus.
Sebagai sebuah kawasan yang dengan penduduk sekitar 525 juta dan Gross National Product (GNP) yang mencapai hingga 700 milyar dolar, letak geografis yang strategis,