Andrew T H Tan

Andrew T H Tan (PhD, Sydney; M. Phil, Cambridge; B Soc Sc Honors and BA, NUS) is author, co-author, editor and co-editor of 27 books and 80 journal and chapter articles. As on 21 July 2026, Google Scholar reported 2,296 citations (25 in the h-index and 48 in the i-10 index) - an indicator of the substantial impact he has had on research.

Andrew is Honorary Professor, Centre for Future Defence and National Security, and is also Non-Resident Principal Fellow, Institute of Indo-Pacific Affairs, New Zealand. Until February 2024, he was Professor in the Department of Security Studies and Criminology, Macquarie University, one of Australia’s largest centers of education for the security community. Whilst at Macquarie, Andrew regularly taught 400-500 students every year in his undergraduate and postgraduate classes, apart from supervising PhD students. In 2021, he was the lead in the research report on Military Modernization in the Indo-Pacific that was supported by a grant from the Australian Department of Defence: https://doi.org/10.25949/20499624.v1

Since 2001, Andrew has been consulted by governments and agencies from around the world, including in the Track 2 semi-official circuit, eg he was speaker at the inaugural US Homeland Summit held in Hawaii in 2002, and more recently, a speaker at the Seoul Security Dialogue in South Korea in 2023 attended by senior defence ministry personnel from around the world, where he was part of a panel discussion on the global defence industry. In 2013, Andrew was Chair of Global Security Asia, Asia's largest homeland security conference.

In June 2026, Andrew (together with Michael Rainsborough, Deakin University and Principal, Australian War College) presented on the re-emergence of leftwing terrorism to the United States Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) which was attended by many members of the US Administration.

Andrew currently also serves on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Policing, Intelligence and Counter-Terrorism (JPICT), a leading Routledge journal for these disciplines with a practitioner focus and wide readership in the United States. He was also, until February 2024, the co-commissioning editor of Edward Elgar's New Horizons in East Asian Politics series.

Born in Singapore, he served in the Singapore Armed Forces and worked in the Singapore Foreign Service as well as in the private sector as a corporate executive in various roles, such as human resources, corporate planning, television journalism, business communication training, and training consultant to various mult-national corporations.

Andrew was educated in Singapore, the UK, Japan (at Sophia University, Tokyo, where he was an exchange student), and Australia. He holds degrees from the National University of Singapore, the University of Cambridge and Sydney University. He has held numerous university awards and scholarships, as well as university prizes, eg Cambridge Commonwealth Trust scholarship, Mitsui Bank Scholarship, Straits Steamship Prize, Cunningham Essay Competition award (Cambridge), Japan Air Lines Scholarship. After completing his PhD, he was recruited by S R Nathan (later President of Singapore) to work at a security studies institute in Singapore as an Assistant Professor.  

He then joined King's College London in the UK as Senior Lecturer and was based at the Joint Services Command and Staff College in Watchfield/Shrivenham, where he trained senior military commanders from the UK, United States, NATO and the rest of the world. Many of his students later served in Iraq and Afghanistan. He was later recruited by the University of New South Wales (Australia) where he became Associate Professor and Convenor of International Studies (involving coordinating the work of several disciplines in his role as director of the Bachelor of International Studies degree program in the Faculty of Arts), and then Convenor of Development Studies and International Relations (ie providing leadership over 18 staff in the Development Studies and IR disciplines), in the School of Social Sciences. He then joined the Department of Security Studies and Criminology, Macquarie University, where he was Associate Professor, and then a full Professor. He was Director of Research in his department and was acting head on two occasions. At Macquarie, helped train around 500 undergraduate and postgraduate students every year; many were already part of or later joined various security services in Australia or in the Indo-Pacific. 

Andrew specialises in global and Indo-Pacific security and international relations, terrorism, insurgency and defence studies.  Many of his book projects are large international collaborative efforts involving large teams of academics and policy analysts from around the world. Some have been generously funded (eg Ford Foundation, Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation, Australian Department of Defence).

Amongst his books are: US Strategy Against Global Terrorism (New York: Palgrave), Security Strategies in the Asia-Pacific: The USA's Second front in Southeast Asia (New York: Palgrave), The Global Arms Trade (London: Routledge), East and Southeast Asia: Security Perspectives and International Relations (London: Routledge), Conflict in East Asia (London: Routledge), The Arms Race in Asia (London: Routledge), US-China Relations (Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar) and The United States and Asia (Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar). More recent works include:  an edited volume with some of the world's leading arms trade experts, entitled The Arms Trade (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2020), The Future of the US-Australia Alliance (London: Routledge, 2021; co-edited with Lt-Colonel Scott McDonald, US Marine Corps), China's Foreign Policy: The Rise of a Great Power (London: Routledge, 2022; co-authored with Andrea Benvenuti, C. P. Chung and Nicholas Khoo), and Geopolitics, Military Modernisation and the Future of the Indo-Pacific (London: Routledge, 2024; co-authored with Bates Gill, Adam Lockyer and Yves-Heng Lim) – this is the book version of the report supported under an Australian Defence Strategic Grant.

His latest book projects include: a Handbook of Global Security Challenges (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2026) involving 32 international security analysts (co-edited with M L R Smith and Alexander C. Tan) - this book aims to set the security agenda for traditional and non-traditional security issues for the coming years; Global Terrorism (5th edition; London: Routledge; co-authored with Brenda Lutz and Julian Droogan) – this has been a much-used textbook in universities around the world; and Terrorism Challenges in the Indo-Pacific (London: Routledge, 2025; co-edited with Nell Bennett and Julian Droogan) - this is the book version of the Special Edition of the Journal of Policing, Intelligence and Counter-Terrorism on the same subject that appeared in 2024.