Paul Chambers and Napisa Waitoolkiat (eds.): Khaki Capital. The Political Economy of the Military in Southeast AsiaSören Köpke

ASIEN – Nr. 150/151 (2019) pp. 139–40

Copenhagen: NIAS Press, 2017

Political power comes “out of the barrel of a gun”, Chairman Mao (1965: 225) is frequently quoted as having said. The cover of this collected volume spots a variation: “Economic power ‘out of the barrel of the gun’”. This lays the foundation of what the work is about, namely the economic activities of militaries in Southeast Asia, viewed from a political economy perspective. Complicated relations between the military and civilian administrations mark all the countries in the region, albeit to differing degrees. Hence the collection discusses an important topic: The way in which military’s involvement in the economy gives it political leverage and insulates it from civilian control and budgetary decisions. This economic activity of the military takes different forms – legal or illicit, formal or informal – and is subsumed as “khaki capital”, as defined in the introductory chapter. Khaki capital appears in many different sectors of the economy, be it telecommunication, agriculture or construction works. It is used to finance standing armies, provide social security to veterans, but also to enrich high-ranking officers and to give the military more weight within society. Overall, it gives the armed forces a decisive advantage in the “tug-of-war” (p. 10) between military and civilian politics that mark at least some Southeast Asian countries. The general hypothesis is that the higher the influence and political power of the military within a society, the more khaki capital will be accumulated and the less transparent it will it be (p. 9–10).