Yee-Kuang Heng
Lecturer
Room: 303
Office Hours
Tel: 1936
Email: ykh1
st-andrews.ac.uk
About
Dr Heng is Lecturer in International Relations at St Andrews. He received his PhD in 2004 from the London School of Economics and Political Science. Dr. Heng also holds a BSc in International Relations and History (First Class Honours) from the LSE. Prior to moving to St Andrews, he was Lecturer in Political Science at Trinity College Dublin (TCD), University of Dublin, Ireland from 2004-2007. Dr. Heng also served on the Royal Irish Academy's National Commitee for the Study of International Affairs and was on the editorial board of Irish Studies in International Affairs. He has held Visiting Positions at Waseda University, Japan as well as the National University of Singapore.
Teaching
IR3031: Globalisation and War on Terrorism
IR4531: Return of Great Power Politics
IR5035: The 'traditional' Security Agenda in the 21st Century
Research
Keywords: Strategic Studies; International Security, Globalisation and the War on Terror; Return of Great Power Politics; Japan's 'soft' power
- Strategic Studies and the Transformation of Warfare
I am interested in how the globalization of risks is shaping justifications and rationale for the use of force by the Western world, in particular the US and UK. This is an inter-disciplinary approach using sociological ideas from Ulrich Beck's World Risk Society to analyse changing security concepts and strategic doctrines in the post-Cold War world and after 9/11. It marries theory with policy through the study of ideas such as Donald Rumsfeld's 'unknown unknowns', Dick Cheney's 'One Percent Doctrine', Tony Blair's 'risk calculus' and the emergence of the Precautionary Principle in strategic thinking.
- Global Cities, Global Risks
Highly-connected urban centres, where much of humanity now lives, are integral to globalization. These global cities jostle for favourable positions at the centre of managing global flows in trade, technology, tourism and services. In terms of winners, these global cities are said to benefit the most from globalisation, in terms of attracting talent, investment flows or generating a cosmopolitan ‘buzz’. However, much less attention has focused on how global cities, by being so plugged into the global system, are also paradoxically most vulnerable to the increasingly apparent downsides associated with globalisation such as infectious disease pandemics and financial meltdown. This project explores the mechanisms through which global cities are exposed to global risks and the ways in which they have devised innovative policy responses to cope.
- The return of Great Power politics and Japan's 'soft' power
I am concerned with how traditional 'old' security concepts associated with Great Power politics such as the balance of power, geo-political competition, empire, and the security dilemma remain relevant in the 21st century, in spite of globalization and the emergence of a 'new' security agenda. My focus is mainly on the 'normalisation' of Japanese security policy, and how various Great Powers are responding to China’s rise. With the financial support of the Carnegie Trust and the Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation, I have also launched a new research project on Japanese 'soft' power and its projection in the Asia-Pacific region and beyond.
Books
2006 War as Risk Management: Strategy and Conflict in an age of Globalised Risks, London and NY: Routledge
2009 Risk, Global Governance and Security: the other War on Terror; London and NY: Routledge; (with Ken McDonagh)
Articles
2012, 'Confessions of a small state: Singapore's evolving approach to international peace operations', Journal of International Peacekeeping, Vol. 16 Issue 1-2
2012, 'What did New Labour ever do for us? Evaluating Tony Blair's imprint on British Strategic Culture', forthcoming , British Journal of Politics and International Relations
2011 (with K McDonagh) ‘After the ‘War on Terror’: Regulatory States, Risk Bureaucracies and the Risk-based Governance of Terror’, International Relations, Vol. 25 No. 3
2010 YK Heng, 'Ghosts in the machine: Is IR eternally haunted by the spectre of old concepts?’ International Politics, Vol. 47 No. 5
2010 YK Heng, ‘Mirror mirror on the wall, who is the softest of them all? Evaluating Japanese and Chinese strategies in the ‘soft’ power competition era’, International Relations of the Asia-Pacific, Vol. 10 No. 2
2008; (with K McDonagh) "The other war on terror revealed: Global governmentality and the Financial Action Task Force’s campaign against terrorist financing’"; Review of International Studies; 34(3):553-573
2007/08; Y K Heng; "The Return of Net Assessment"; Survival; Vol.49(4):135-152; Full text via DOI; More info
2007; Y K Heng; "Lost in translation? Why Japan and traditional Great Power rivalry remain key to East Asian international politics"; Irish Studies in International Affairs; 18
2007 YK Heng. ‘Old wine in new bottles? Reconfiguring Net Assessment as a framework of 21st century security analysis’, Contemporary Security Policy, Vol. 28 No. 3
2006 YK Heng, ‘The transformation of war debate: through the looking glass of Ulrich Beck’s World Risk Society’, International Relations, Vol. 20 No.1
2002 YK Heng, ‘Unravelling the ‘war’ on terrorism: A ‘risk-management’ exercise in ‘war’ clothing?’, Security Dialogue, Vol. 33, No.2
Book Chapters
2012 (forthcoming) ‘The New Security Concept: The role of the military in Chinese foreign policy’, in Emilian Kavalski (ed), The Ashgate Research Companion to Chinese Foreign Policy, Ashgate
2010 "'Reflexive rationality and the implications for decision-making'; Strategic Decision-making in Crisis and War,"; Finnish National Defence University, Helsinki; Heidi Kurkinen (ed)
2006. ‘The Iraq crisis: intelligence-driven or risk-driven?’ in Eunan O’Halpin, Robert Armstrong and Jane Ohlmeyer(eds), Intelligence, International Power and Statecraft, Dublin: Irish Academic Press
2004. Unravelling the war on terrorism’, in Alan O’Day (ed), The War on Terrorism, Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing
Administration
Co-convenor, Visiting Speakers Seminar Series 2008-2009
IR Admissions Officer 2008-2010
School Post-Graduate Committee 2008-2010
Affiliations
Visiting Scholar Nov-Jan 2011
Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies
Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan
Visiting Senior Fellow Aug-Nov 2010
Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy
National University of Singapore
Grants
Ministry of Defence, Tokyo, Japan December 2010- March 2011
Title: ‘International Peace Cooperation: A comparative analysis of deployment patterns and doctrines of the advanced countries’ (Collaborative project with colleagues from Aoyama Gakuin University, Tokyo
Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation Grant July 2009
UK-Japan Roundtable Workshop on Japan’s ‘Soft’ Power,
Sophia University, Tokyo
Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation Grant June 2010
Public exhibition on ‘Japan’s New Public Diplomacy: Japan’s kawaii culture comes to St Andrews’, St Andrews Town Hall, Scotland, UK
British Academy Overseas Conference Grant Mar 2008
The Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland Feb 2008
Project title: Sources and Limits of Japan’s ‘soft power’
Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences (IRCHSS) 2006-07
Graduate Research Education Programme Grants
(Joint collaboration with Irish universities)
Irish Higher Education Authority (HEA) PRTLI Programme 2005-2007
Title: ‘Regulation of Global Anti-Terrorist Measures in Foreign Policy:
A Multi-level analysis’
Editorial Positions
Editorial Board, Irish Studies in International Affairs (2005-07)
Manuscript referee for International Political Sociology, ISA Compendium Project, International Studies Review, Millennium, Review of International Studies, Political Studies, Security Dialogue, European Journal of International Relations, Studies in Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, Routledge; Pacific Review
Invited Talks, Lectures and Seminars
Invited talks
'Is there a security dimension to Japan's soft power', International Studies Seminar, Aoyama Gakuin University, Tokyo, 14 December 2011
'Japan's soft power as Global Trouble-Shooter', Asia Research Centre, Murdoch University, Perth, Australia, 18 November 2011
'The return of great power politics', Advanced Course for Senior Officiers, Ministry of Home Affairs, Singapore, 05 September 2011
‘Risk management and war: From Kosovo to Iraq’, International Studies Seminar, Aoyama Gakuin University, Tokyo, Japan, 18 November 2010
‘Terrorism’, Department of International Politics, Aoyama Gakuin University, Tokyo, Japan, 17 November 2010
‘Globalisation and Security’, Advanced Course for Senior Officers, Ministry of Home Affairs, Singapore, 09 September 2010
‘Japan’s Cooperative Approach to Soft Power’, Roundtable Workshop on Japan’s ‘Soft’ Power, Sophia University, Tokyo, July 2009
‘Risk and reflexive rationality’, The XII Annual Suomenlinna Seminar, Finnish National Defence University, Helsinki, April 2009
Roundtable on the Rise of India and China, with Deputy Indian High Commissioner to the UK, University of St Andrews Asian Society, UK, December 2008
‘Risk and security studies’, Nordic Security Workshop, General Staff Officer Course, Finnish National Defence University, Helsinki, Finland, November 2008
‘Non-military approaches to managing globalised risks’, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore, August 2008
Roundtable on ‘Risking War and Managing Insecurity: What the Risk Perspective has to offer Security Studies’, The Danish Institute for Military Studies, Copenhagen, Denmark, May 2007
‘Yoda and International Security’, School of Politics and International Relations, University College Dublin, Ireland, February 2006
‘Reassessing Net Assessment’, School of Government and Law, Dublin City University, Ireland, March 2005
CONFERENCE CONTRIBUTIONS
‘To Feign Control over the Uncontrollable’: The Discourse of Risk and the Politics of Catastrophe’, ISA Annual Convention 2012, San Diego, USA (with Ken McDonagh)
Risk, Human Rights and the Bureaucratisation of Counter‐ Terrorism’, ISA Annual Convention 2011, Montreal, Canada (with Ken McDonagh)
After the ‘war’ on terror: Overseas contingency operations and the risk-based governance of terror’, ISA Annual Convention 2010, New Orleans, USA
Chair, ‘Encounters with counter-terrorism’, and Presenter, ‘The Other ‘War on Terror’: Unheralded Global Governance and Risk Management Strategies’, ISA Annual Convention 2008 San Francisco, USA
Section Convenor, 'Approaches to International Relations in an age of Terror: Places, Spaces and Risks', ECPR Sixth Pan-European International Relations Conference, Turin, Italy, September 2007
‘Trans-national NGO coalitions: a global democratic deficit? IPSA World Congress 2006, Fukuoka, Japan
‘Re-orienting Net Assessment: From East-West to North-South’, ISA Annual Convention 2006 San Diego USA
‘Intelligence or Risk-driven: The War on Iraq’, The Irish Conference on Historians: Intelligence and Statecraft, Dublin, Ireland 2005
‘Trans-national NGO coalitions and implications for international security’, CSIS/ISA 4th International Conference: ‘Sovereignty and globalization: the new realities of managing the international system’, Brugge, Belgium, 2002
‘Risk management and the War on Terrorism’, Political Science Association UK Annual Conference, Aberdeen, 2002
Media
'Japan circles the aerial wagons', The Straits Times (Singapore), 09 November 2011
‘Best not to push Japan into a corner’, The Straits Times (Singapore), 21 December 2010
‘The Japanese art of adapting to crisis’, The Straits Times, (Singapore), 19 October 2010
‘Singapore’s unique identity sets it apart from China’, The Straits Times (Singapore), 05 September 2010
‘Soft Power: Singapore has what it takes’, The Straits Times (Singapore), 03 July 2010
PhD Supervision topics
Strategic Studies, especially the transformation of warfare
Asia-Pacific foreign policy, especially the role of 'soft' power
Japanese foreign and security policy
