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Not wishing to be left out from the brutal closed border system that has characterised COVID-19 policy in Australia, New Zealand has also been every bit as extreme in limiting the return of its nationals.  Pandemic policy, if not logic, has taken issue with the nature of citizenship, which, truth be told, is simply not worth the print or the paper.

In theory, New Zealanders should have more claim to a right of return than their Trans-Tasman cousins.  Australia lacks a charter or bill of rights that protects such entitlements; New Zealand does not.  Article 18 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990 outlines provisions on the freedom of movement, including the right for all New Zealand citizens to enter and leave the country.

Australians can only rely on the mutable constructs of common law and weak judicial observations.  At best, international law, fortified by Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, offer mild protections that have done little to make governments in Australia and New Zealand more tolerant of their returning citizens during these pandemic times.

The barriers placed upon returning citizens have been onerous, including cost of air travel and those associated with managed isolation.  Granted return spots are overseen by the Managed Isolation and Quarantine (MIQ) body.  The immigration website of the government is also blunt to those wishing to enter New Zealand.  “The border is currently closed to almost all travellers to help stop the spread of COVID-19.”

Epidemiologists have also been busy drumming up concerns about such new variants as Omicron, suggesting that further limits are necessary.  One is Otago University’s Michael Baker, who is more keen on the process of containment than the legal implications of citizenship.  “A big change is the virus is now more infectious and we’re seeing more people arriving in New Zealand in our MIQ (managed isolation and quarantine) facilities.  Our risk has risen, our responses need to rise up to this challenge and manage it.”

In reference to a returnee who had tested negative on two occasions for the virus while in MIQ, only to then receive a positive test result when released into the community, Baker felt that “timing suggests most likely” that the infection took place at the facility itself.  For New Zealanders already struggling to return, Baker suggested the “need to turn down the tap.”

Legal authorities such as Kris Gledhill also remark that the right to return might well be protected by the Bill of Rights, but it was hardly absolute.  The government had its own obligations to protect those in New Zealand from COVID-19, which justified placing caps on numbers. There is also the competing interest of protecting the healthcare system.  Then there are the “rights that flow from having a robust economy, including the right to an adequate standard of living.”

Reading such lines of priority yields only one, sorry conclusion.  If you, as a New Zealander, happen to be outside the country, best lump it.  Parochial considerations are to be prioritised.  “So yes, there is a right to return,” writes the unconcerned Gledhill, “but it is a right that can be delayed to protect those already here.”

An example of such a tolerable delay came when a pregnant New Zealand journalist based in Afghanistan found it impossible to return to her country to give birth.  Charlotte Bellis, in a piece explaining her circumstances, noted how she “started playing the MIQ lottery, waking up at 3am and staring at my computer, only to miss out time and again.”  She resigned from Al Jazeera in November, had lost income, health insurance and her residency.

The New Zealand government, having promised to open the borders to citizens – at least in a more liberal way – by the end of February, postponed matters.  The MIQ lottery was suspended.  Applying for emergency MIQ spots was hardly promising: 5% of NZ citizens were approved if unable to stay in their current location and only 14% being accepted on health and safety grounds.

Alternatives for Bellis were running out.  In a profound twist of fate, she found herself seeking potential assistance from, of all groups, the Taliban.  She explained to a senior Taliban contact that she was dating “Jim [Huylebroek] from The New York Times, but we’re not married”.  The contact explained that he respected the couple’s status.  Were she to come to Kabul, “you won’t have a problem.  Just tell people you’re married and if it escalates, call us.”

Such an observation led Austrian-Afghan journalist Emran Feroz to remark acidly that the media savvy Taliban had taken a distinctly softer approach to non-Afghan journalists.  “Journalists who were seen as Afghans often faced threats, beatings, torture and murder while non-Afghans … had tons of privileges and were welcomed and treated softly by all sides.”

Muzhgan Samarqandi, a former broadcaster from Afghanistan having recently emigrated to New Zealand, felt the red mist descending on seeing reactions to the Bellis case.  The situation in her country, she raged, had been “trivialised”.  “If a person in power extends privileges to someone who doesn’t threaten their power, it doesn’t mean they are not oppressive, extremist, or dangerous.”

Bellis had certainly done herself few favours on that score, having secured a degree of approval amongst Taliban circles, much to the chagrin of an Afghan journalistic community that has suffered abductions, torture, and killings. In one interview, she is found stating that the Taliban had “always treated me respectfully” and had “never intimidated me.  I’m surprised at the image of them around the world, that they’re so inhuman.”  With such assurance, it is little wonder that Bellis had little concern querying the Taliban on their record on treating girls and women.  In journalistic terms, she provides the tinsel and baubles.

All focus, and energy, turned to seeking entry into New Zealand.  Despite the assistance of lawyer Tudor Clee, letters from New Zealand obstetricians and medical experts on the dangers of giving birth in Afghanistan, including levels of induced stress – all in all, 59 documents submitted to MIQ and Immigration NZ, the couple received their rejection notice on January 24.

With characteristic, border control peevishness, the authorities took issue with travel dates being more than 14 days out.  Insufficient evidence had been provided to show that Bellis had “a scheduled medical treatment in New Zealand”, that it was “time-critical” and that she could not “obtain or access the same treatment in your current location.”

Publicity for her case was drummed up.  The PR channels were worked.  Politicians took notice.  Suddenly, the MIQ application status was changed from “deactivated” to “in progress”.  Her partner was duly informed that he had received a visa and could apply for an emergency MIQ spot.

The Bellis example suggests an unsavoury practice at work in the NZ COVID-19 border protection regime.  Clee, having taken to court eight cases where pregnant New Zealand citizens were rejected, has seen MIQ budge just before court proceedings officially commence.  Bellis is astute enough to see what is at play here.  “It’s an effective way to quash a case and avoid setting a legal precedent that would find that MIQ does in fact breach New Zealand’s Bill of Rights.”

COVID-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins was untroubled about the distinctly flawed methodology used by MIQ.  The policy had “served New Zealand exceptionally well, saved lives and hospital admissions and kept our health system from being swamped.”  All Bellis had to do was apply for a separate emergency category.

The head of MIQ, Chris Bunny, in commenting on the Bellis case, saw little problem with the way it had been managed.  “It is not uncommon for people who have been declined an emergency allocation to reach out to a Member of Parliament.”  The fact that such a case would even have to happen never bothers Bunny.

Forget human rights; it’s the contacts and standing that count.  If you can scream loudly enough and seek the ear of a calculating politician, the system just might work for you.  On that score, the plodding wallahs defending Fortress New Zealand and Taliban officials with an eye to cosmetic media touches, might just have something in common.

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Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.  He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne.  He is a regular contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research. Email: [email protected]

Featured image: Journalist Charlotte Bellis. (Photo / Jim Huylebroek)

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***

A district head in Sumatra could face human trafficking charges after he was found to have imprisoned 48 men at his compound who worked for no pay at his oil palm plantation.

While police and other government authorities have been reluctant to declare this a case of modern-day slave labor, advocacy groups say the evidence against Terbit Rencana Perangin Angin, the head of Langkat district in North Sumatra province, is indisputable.

Terbit also faces charges of corruption (the raid on his compound was associated with a bribery allegation), and illegal wildlife possession (the raid also uncovered an orangutan and other protected species being kept as pets).

While the case has captured national attention, watchdog groups say the problem of labor violations in the palm oil industry are widespread, and have called for the swift passage of a bill to boost protections for workers.

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A sting by anti-corruption officers in Indonesia’s North Sumatra province has uncovered evidence that a powerful local official allegedly used slave labor on his oil palm plantation.

Agents from the KPK, Indonesia’s anti-corruption commission, found 48 men locked up in barred cells during a raid on Jan. 18 at the residential compound of Terbit Rencana Perangin Angin, the head of Langkat district. Police said at least one of the men was found to have bruises.

Terbit, who was wanted on separate allegations of bribery, was not at home during the sting, but surrendered to the authorities the next day. He denied allegations he was keeping the men in captivity to work without pay on his oil palm plantation.

But the evidence says otherwise, according to labor rights advocates.

Anis Hidayah, executive director of the migrant worker advocacy NGO Migrant Care, said the detainees were forced to work every day from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., were only given two meals a day, and were subjected to physical assaults.

“These palm oil workers also reportedly do not receive wages at all and are not given proper meals,” she said.

The detainees have since been released into the care of their families, while Migrant Care has filed a report against Terbit with the national human rights commission.

The detainees locked up in the barred cells of the house of Terbit Rencana Perangin Angin, the head of Langkat district in North Sumatra province. Image courtesy of Tiorita Rencana YouTube channel.

No pay, but extra pudding

In a video uploaded to his wife’s YouTube channel last year, Terbit claimed the men caged at his house were drug addicts being rehabilitated. (As a district head, or bupati, he has zero authority to detain anyone.)

Terbit, who is also one of the richest bupatis in Indonesia, with declared assets of 85 billion rupiah ($5.9 million), said he built the cells 10 years ago and that the men locked inside them had come voluntarily for rehab. He also said he employed some of them for his palm oil operations; the video showed some of the men unloading palm fruit from trucks and processing them in a mill.

One of the men, identifying himself as Terang, said in the video that he had passed a year in rehab and expressed thanks to Terbit “because I’ve recovered and am now employed.”

Another of the detainees, Jefri Sembiring, who spent four months locked up before being released following the KPK raid, said he felt his life had been getting back on track, telling local media that “I was comfortable there.”

His wife, Hana, said she hoped the detention center wouldn’t be shut down because she wanted her husband to continue his recovery there.

Testimonies like these, according to police, make it difficult to conclude that the men were subjected to modern-day slavery.

“We see that their parents handed them over voluntarily, and they also consented [to being locked up],” Ahmad Ramadhan, a spokesman for the National Police, said at a Jan. 25 press conference. “Some of them are employed at the palm oil mill owned by the district head with the aim to provide them with skills that could be useful once they’re out of the rehabilitation place.”

Police also justified the lack of pay for the men’s labor, saying those who worked were rewarded with food. “They aren’t given wages as workers because they’re inmates,” Ahmad said. “But they’re given extra pudding and food.”

‘Exploit the victims’

Image on the right: Terbit Rencana Perangin Angin, the head of Langkat district in North Sumatra province.

The police’s ambivalence about treating the case as one of slavery chimes with the reluctance of other government agencies to strongly condemn Terbit’s actions.

The National Narcotics Agency (BNN), which oversees rehab centers across Indonesia, confirmed that the facility at Terbit’s compound wasn’t a licensed rehab center. Yet while the BNN’s district office inspected it in 2017, it didn’t shut down the site at the time, for reasons that are still unknown.

The national rights commission, meanwhile, has cautioned against declaring the case one of slavery.

“We want to see the bigger picture, whether it’s true there was a modern slavery here or whether it was just a rehabilitation center being run in the traditional manner,” said Choirul Anam, a member of the commission. He suggested it could plausibly be a rehab center if the detainees had access to medical care.

But legal experts outside the Indonesian government say there’s no question this is a case of slave labor.

“The goal was to exploit the victims,” said Ninik Rahayu, a legal expert and former national ombudsperson. “The victims didn’t have any other choice. Their labor was used. So this is slavery.”

She said Terbit exploited the drug addicts’ vulnerable position, making this a case of “human slavery,” for which the district head should be charged with human trafficking.

Maidina Rahmawati, a researcher at the Institute for Criminal Justice Reform (ICJR), agreed, saying the fundamental facts — that the men were deprived of their freedom and not paid for their labor — pointed to a clear case of exploitation.

She added the positive testimonies given by some of the men and their family members may have been coerced from them under intimidation.

Following the raid, the BNN carried out drug tests on 11 of the 48 inmates and all 11 tested negative, while the rest refused to be tested.

Widespread labor violations

Sawit Watch, an NGO that tracks violations in the palm oil industry, says the case in Langkat is just the tip of the iceberg in an industry where labor violations are widespread.

“This is because lack of monitoring,” Sawit Watch executive director Achmad Surambo told Mongabay. “The number of labor inspectors in the plantation industry is very small.”

In 2012, Sawit Watch uncovered a case in which people were trafficked from Sumatra to work on plantations in Borneo. They were kept locked up in a house, and only released in the morning to work.

“In the evening, they went back to the house and the door was locked,” Achmad said. “This was allowed to happen because of lack of monitoring, especially in a remote area [like this].”

Some 7 million Indonesians are employed in the palm oil industry, according to official data, of whom 70% work without contract and with little to no protection.

“What we want is humane working conditions,” Achmad said, pointing to legislation currently in parliament that would help improve protections for palm oil workers.

The bill is in the docket of priority legislation for passage, but progress has been sluggish. The Langkat case, and the public outcry that it has elicited, should be a wake-up call to spur parliament into passing the bill swiftly, Achmad said.

“I think this issue should be discussed in the public so that this kind of case doesn’t happen again,” he said. “What’s happening in Langkat is very degrading to people, where their freedom is taken away from them. That used to only happen in the past, so why are we still finding it in modern times?”

Trucks carrying palm oil fruit bunches from Terbit Rencana Perangin Angin’s plantation in Langkat, North Sumatra. Image courtesy of Tiorita Rencana YouTube channel.

Illegal wildlife possession

For Terbit, the troubles are just beginning. Besides the corruption charges that have already been pressed against him by the KPK, for which he could be jailed for five years, he also faces possible charges of human trafficking (up to 15 years) and illegal wildlife possession (seven years).

During the KPK raid on Terbit’s compound, officers found seven threatened animals, all protected under Indonesia’s conservation act and therefore illegal to keep in captivity.

The North Sumatra provincial conservation agency, or BBKSDA, confiscated the animals on Jan. 25 and moved them to wildlife rescue and rehabilitation facilities. They include a Sumatran orangutan (Pongo abelii), a black-crested macaque (Cynopithecus niger) and two Bali starlings (Leucopsar rothschildi), all listed as critically endangered, as well as a crested hawk-eagle (Nisaetus cirrhatus) and two common hill mynas (Gracula religiosa).

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Featured image: Terbit Rencana Perangin Angin, the head of Langkat district in North Sumatra province, standing outside the barred cells where his palm oil workers are being locked up in. Image courtesy of Tiorita Rencana YouTube channel. 

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***

The Public Health Ministry plans to declare Covid-19 an endemic disease by the end of this year, using its own criteria and with or without World Health Organization confirmation.

Health permanent secretary Kiattiphum Wongrajit announced the intention after a meeting of the ministry’s National Communicable Disease Committee on Thursday.

Dr Kiattiphum said the committee planned to declare Covid-19 endemic before the end of the year on its own academically acceptable criteria.

The criteria were –  no more than 10,000 new cases a day, the fatality rate does not exceed 0.1% and more than 80% of at-risk people have received two doses of vaccine, he said.

The Public Health Ministry was of the view that Covid-19 had spread for over two years, trends showed the disease was under control and was now not too severe, Dr Kiattiphum said.

“In principle, the disease could spread but is not severe. The fatality rate is acceptable. There can be waves of the disease. But importantly, people must have adequate immunity. People must be vaccinated, and treatment systems efficient.

“After these criteria have been met for a while, this disease can be declared endemic in Thailand,” he said.

“When the situation is promising and the criteria fulfilled, the ministry will make an announcement.”

The permanent secretary for health said officials would take action to speed up the process towards the announcement, rather than waiting for the disease to naturally become endemic by itself, or for the WHO to declare it an endemic disease. Otherwise, it would take too long, he said.

After Covid-19 was declared endemic, the government would treat patients according to their individual needs and may require everyone or only patients to wear face masks, Dr Kiattiphum said.

At present, the National Communicable Disease Committee requires everyone to wear a face mask while in a public place. Violators can be fined up to 20,000 baht.

Detailed criteria and appropriate future measures had yet to be finalised, he said.

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Featured image: Everyone was required to wear a face mask as they queued to enter the Pattaya Music Festival in November. The requirement may be eased when Covid-19 is declared endemic in Thailand later this year. (Photo: Chanat Katanyu)

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The relative success of the populist right-wing Japan Innovation Party (Nippon Ishin no Kai or JIP), which increased its vote to emerge as the third-largest party in the recent elections, has paved the way for the country to revise its 75-year-old Peace Constitution.

This constitution, which was drafted by US occupying forces under General Douglas MacArthur in 1946, bars the country from officially maintaining armed forces. The constitution’s key clause is Article 9. This denies Japan the right to possess an army, navy or air force. It also makes Japan’s use of belligerence to resolve international disputes illegal.

Yet, driven by hawkish factions of the dominant ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), in recent decades Tokyo has increasingly ramped up its remilitarisation. In fact, Japan now ranks as the world’s ninth biggest military spender. The next logical step, then, would appear to be constitutional revision. Something that could likely now be enacted, with recent election results having empowered the opposition JIP, who also support such a move.

So how has this shift occurred and does it mean that Japan’s pacifism is dead? The simple answer to the latter is “no”. Japan’s constitution was drafted and imposed by the postwar occupying American authorities as a means to prevent Japan ever again becoming a military threat. But its pacifist thrust was embraced by successive generations of Japanese citizens who were keen to remake their country’s image and reconstruct its identity.

Japanese school education still places a heavy emphasis on the virtues and merits of peace. Japan boasts some of the most active and longstanding pacifist NGOs and societies in the world. And more than half of its population remain not only opposed to war, but in favour of retaining Article 9. These aspects of Japanese civil society are closely linked to Japan’s status as the only victim of nuclear warfare. As such, they work to recast Japan as a victim of the horrors of war, rather than as a brutal wartime aggressor.

Recent changes

However, in the political sphere, the last four decades have witnessed a sea-change. Particularly following the bursting of Japan’s economic bubble in 1991, Japan faced a crisis of national identity. As unemployment rose and standards of living fell, nationalist politicians looked for an external target towards which public discontent could be redirected. As a result, the government’s anti-miltarist approach to foreign policy, which had proved so successful during the boom years of the 1960s-1980s, was questioned.

Conservative political actors began to target Japan’s pacifism as a source of weakness. This was made easier by a sabre-rattling North Korea and a rising China, both of which were recalibrated as grave risks to Japan’s security. This narrative was led by Japan’s two most successful recent prime ministers, Junichiro Koizumi and Shinzo Abe. Both rose to power on the back of a hawkish foreign policy stance, including the proposed revision of Japan’s constitution.

The result has been a substantive shift to the right across Japan’s major political parties, to the point where promoting pacifism is no longer politically viable. The culmination of these winds of change is evident from the latest election results, which saw Fumio Kishida, who had assumed the prime ministership when he won control of the LDP in a leadership election just prior to the October general election, retain power for the party, albeit with a reduced majority.

Kishida is considered more moderate and less hawkish than either long-serving Abe or his loyal short-term successor, Yoshihide Suga. But with an increased number of seats gained by the JIP, the newly elected prime minister is likely to be swayed by the growing momentum for legislative changes. The combined forces of LDP, JIP and – albeit reticently – junior coalition partner, Komeito, now put those in favour of constitutional revision in a position to enact the necessary legal reforms.

Regional implications

This has serious implications. Domestically, it reflects the rise and dominance of revisionist conservatism, and the decimation of more progressive, liberal opposition forces. Internationally, it will send alarm bells ringing across the Asia-Pacific. Any indication that Japan might revise its constitution is likely to spark angry reactions from Japan’s former colonies and victims of militarist wartime aggression.

This risks worsening relations with two of Japan’s biggest trading partners in China and South Korea, as well as damaging its regional image as a trustworthy leader of peaceful economic and investment regimes. It could also further isolate Tokyo amid an already tense security environment. Japan’s relations with both Koreas remain strained. And close alignment with its sole alliance partner, the United States, perpetuates tension with a more muscular China. This includes the issue of Taiwan. Meanwhile Japan, China and Taiwan all claim the disputed Pinnacle Islands, which are referred to respectively as Senkaku, Diaoyu and Diaoyutai.

Recent reinterpretations of Article 9 already allow Japan to operate various forms of collective defence with allied countries in exceptional circumstances. Tokyo also regularly dispatches the Japan Self-Defense Forces (JSDF) overseas. In this regard, with American backing and a flexible interpretation of “self defence”, there is little practical need to formally revise a constitution that has served Japan so well during peacetime.

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 is a Lecturer in International Relations and Japanese Foreign Policy, University of East Anglia.

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Thailand is passing a new NGO law that will require greater transparency from nongovernmental organizations. However, these organizations are resisting the bill despite wide public support for it – clearly because they have much to hide.

I discuss how many of these “NGOs” are in fact funded by foreign governments and engaged in sedition – how they have actively covered up their funding and their true agenda while posing disingenuously as “independent media” or “human rights” organizations.

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Sources

Bangkok Post – NGOs vow to stop bill policing their activities:
https://www.bangkokpost.com/thailand/general/2252099/ngos-vow-to-stop-bill-policing-their-activities

Prachatai – About Prachatai:
https://prachatai.com/english/about/prachatai

Prachatai – Transparency essential for democracy campaigner (2011):
https://prachatai.com/english/node/2753

National Endowment for Democracy (NED) – Board of Directors:
https://www.ned.org/about/board-of-directors/

The Guardian – US diplomat convicted over Iran-Contra appointed special envoy for Venezuela:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jan/26/elliott-abrams-venezuela-us-special-envoy

NED – Thailand 2020:
https://www.ned.org/region/asia/thailand-2020/

NED – Fellows, Chiranuch Premchaiporn (Prachatai executive director):
https://www.ned.org/fellows/ms-chiranuch-premchaiporn/

Featured image is from New Eastern Outlook

Japan, Korea, and Northeast Asia – The Abe Shinzo Legacy

January 25th, 2022 by Prof. Gavan McCormack

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Abstract: At the heart of Northeast Asia lie multiple contradictions and unresolved issues left over from Japan’s militarist and colonialist past. Author Wada has written prolifically on both Japan-North Korea and Japan-South Korea matters and for the past 20 years has been a tireless advocate of what he calls the “Common Homeland” or “Common House” concept of a post-war and post-Cold War Northeast Asian regional community. Here he analyses the policy framework (established by Abe Shinzo, according to Wada) of Japan’s “hostility” towards North Korea and “ignoring” South Korea. He raises questions as to the compatibility of a Northeast Asian community with the recently articulated (US and Japan-promoted and China-encircling) “Indo-Pacific” concept.

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Whoever takes office as Prime Minister in Japan inherits the policy towards the Korean peninsula established by former Prime Minister Abe Shinzo. The new Prime Minister promises to solve the abduction problem during his term of office, but is not allowed to cast any doubt on the three Abe principles. All he can do is to wear a Blue-ribbon Badge on his chest.1 Cries of praise for the king’s new clothes are endless even though everyone knows that he is naked. It is as if we are all living in a children’s story-book country.

The final version of Prime Minister Abe’s Korea policy was seen in his policy speech to the Diet on 28 January 2019, the final Diet sitting of the Heisei era [1989-2019]. He declared that he would undertake a complete overhaul of post-war Japanese foreign policy, carving out a new diplomatic path for Heisei and beyond. According to Abe, the security environment had “drastically changed,” and Japan could not just respond by continuing with its established policies. He declared that he would put finishing touches to the global diplomacy that Japan had practiced for the past six years under the banner of “positive pacifism.”

So far as neighboring countries were concerned, he would move the now normalized relations with China to a new phase, step up negotiations with Russia towards a peace treaty, and propose a new dialogue with North Korea:

“In order to resolve the North Korean nuclear and missile matters, and most important of all the abduction problem, I am prepared to meet face-to-face with Chairman Kim Jong-un, shedding the husk of mutual distrust and acting decisively, missing no opportunity to settle the unfortunate past and normalize inter-state relations. I will cooperate closely with international society, including especially the United States and South Korea.”

He concluded by declaring his resolve to build a “free and open Indo-Pacific.”

The Abe speech astonished me because it made no reference whatever to Japan-South Korea relations that had been cause for such concern since the end of 2018. It seemed to me that Prime Minister Abe was declaring that he was no longer treating South Korea as a negotiating partner. It reminded me of [former Prime Minister] Konoe Fumimaro’s statement during the Sino-Japanese war In January 1938, declaring “henceforth there can be no negotiation with the Kuomintang government” as he pressed ahead with war against China.

People might be surprised at the difference between earnestly seeking dialogue with North Korea while refusing to deal with South Korea. However, there is nothing particularly odd about it because what he had said about North Korea was an empty promise designed to give the impression of acting when he had no intention of acting. To his long continuing policy of hostility to North Korea Prime Minister Abe was adding a policy of ignoring South Korea.

1. Prime Minister Abe’s Hostile View of North Korea

First elected to the Diet in 1993, Abe Shinzo became Deputy head of the Parliamentarians’ League for Marking the 50th Anniversary of End of War, under Okuno Seisuke as head. It was his political debut. This organization proposed that there should be no resolution of critical reflection and apology over the Japanese aggression and colonial rule since Japan had fought for “survival and self-defense,” and “peace in Asia.” In 1995 their reactionary efforts bore no fruit as a 50th Anniversary of End of War resolution was carried in the House of Representatives and the Murayama [Tomiichi] Statement of apology for colonialism was adopted.2 Two years later, hoping to roll back this trend, Abe organized the Young Parliamentarians’ Association for Reflection on Japan’s Future and History Education and became its chief executive. Its purpose was to oppose the Kono Declaration and the teaching in schools about the Comfort Women issue. In 2000, when Abe became Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary and set up within government a project team to address the abduction problem, his hardliner proposals attracted attention. For this reason, he was not informed of the moves leading to the [Prime Minister] Koizumi’s visit to Pyongyang in 2002, but he accompanied Koizumi and subsequently garnered to himself the political support of the Sukuukai, the National Association for the Rescue of Japanese Kidnapped by North Korea, rapidly emerging as the leader of North Korea negotiation. The abduction issue was the key to his political rise. Eventually becoming Prime Minister in 2006, he identified the abduction as the key issue of his Cabinet. In his 29 September, 2006 policy speech in the Diet, he spoke as follows:

“Without resolution of the abduction problem there can be no normalization of relations with North Korea. In order to advance comprehensive measures on the abduction issue, I have set up an Abduction Measures HQ, headed by myself, with a full-time secretariat. Under the policy of dialogue and pressure, we will continue to strongly demand the return of all abductees, based on the premise that all abductees are still alive.”

At the time of the Pyongyang meeting, North Korea apologized for the abduction of thirteen people, of whom eight had died and five survived. No matter how shocking the announcement of the eight deaths, and how unsatisfactory the explanations of the circumstances of their deaths, for Japan to insist the victims who were presumed dead were “all alive,” and to demand their return, was to treat the North Korean government as liars. Breaking off diplomatic negotiations and issuing this ultimatum was tantamount to simply demanding submission. This measure was undoubtedly in accordance with the thinking of the president of Sukuukai, Sato Katsumi, who declared “So long as the Kim Jong-il government exists it will be difficult to have any resolution of the abduction problem.” In 2006, launching an “North Korean Human Rights Violation Awareness Week,” Abe put out a newspaper advertisement pronouncing the North Korean abductions problem “the greatest problem Japan faces.” It became the first principle of the Abe Government’s North Korea policy. The second principle was that “without resolution of the abduction problem, there cannot be any normalization of relations with North Korea,” and the third was that “all the abduction victims are alive, and all must be returned.” From this time, all members of the Abe government took to wearing on their chest the Blue Ribbon Badge designed by Sukuukai.

The Sukuukai “Blue Ribbon Badge”

Thus, the Pyongyang Declaration’s admission of the “great damage and pain caused to the Korean people by Japan’s colonial control,” and Japan’s “heartfelt apology,” were forgotten. The Japanese posture of thoroughly pursuing North Korea’s aggression became established. As soon as North Korea started its nuclear tests, sanctions were imposed, and relations between Japan and North Korea quickly reached a state of complete breakdown, with trade and shipping cut off.

This Abe policy towards North Korea was softened under the subsequent Fukuda Yasuo government (2008-9) but then revived under Aso Taro government (2009-2010) and elevated to national policy under the following Democratic Party government (2009-2012). Under the Abe three principles, negotiations were impossible as one would have expected. No matter how much pressure was applied, the Kim Jon-il government could not be made to collapse. Then once Abe took office the second time around in 2012 and received the petition of the Kazokukai [Association of Abductee Families], he spoke of having been re-elected Prime Minister again in order to solve the abduction problem. He approved the Stockholm Agreement [2014] which was brought forward through the efforts of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and eventually requested the reopening of investigation of the abduction problem. However, when the interim report came out to the effect that eight had indeed died, Abe refused to accept it on the basis of his third principle. North Korea thereupon dissolved its re-investigation process.

As tension between US and North Korea reached a peak in 2017, Prime Minister Abe supported the President Trump position that all options were on the table. Abe went into a war mode, making statement such as that Japan would “step up pressure against North Korea,” and “strengthen Japan’s defence capabilities and do its best.” Under the 2015 revised security laws, an action plan was drawn up to align the Self Defence Forces with the US military. Communications were opened on a regular and ongoing basis between Kawano Katsutoshi, Chief of the Joint Staff of the Self-Defence Forces, General Joseph Dunford, Chair of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, and [Admiral] Harry Harris, US Pacific Commander-in-chief, and battle plans are said to have been drawn up.

However, fortunately US and North Korean leaders pulled back from the brink of extreme confrontation and suddenly shifted towards the June 2018 US-North Korea summit. Taken by surprise, Prime Minister Abe hastened to the US before the summit and called for “maximum pressure” and cooperation in solving the abduction problem. However, following the agreement between the US and North Korea, he too had to show he was ready for a summit [with North Korea]. But the three Abe principles would remain in place. He would wear the mask of dialogue, but his hostility towards North Korea would not change. His January 2019 policy speech was a consequence of this whole process.

Ministry of Justice Poster advertising “North Korean Human Rights Violation Awareness Week,” December 2016

2. Root Cause of the “Ignore South Korea” Policy

Why was the “Ignore South Korea” policy adopted on top of the hostility policy towards North Korea? Undoubtedly, Japan-South Korea relations had worsened since the end of 2018, with the South Korean Supreme Court judgements on the forced labour cases,3 the dissolution of the Reconciliation and Healing Foundation set up under the 2015 Japan-Korea agreement on the Comfort Women issue,4 and the [December 2018] incident of a South Korean naval vessel’s locking its radar onto a [Japanese] Self Defense Force aircraft. However, the Abe government’s dissatisfaction with President Moon Jae-in had been growing even before this time.

For Prime Minister Abe, who was intent on having the Kono statement rescinded, the 2015 Comfort Women agreement was difficult to swallow. But he was in a bind, under pressure from the persistent demands from South Korean president Park Geun-hye and also from the US. Biting his lip, for the first time he admitted government responsibility and apologized, and for the first time his government appropriated one billion yen in public funds towards helping the comfort women victims restore their honour and heal their psychological wounds. Abe attached conditions to the agreement: the apology was to be only in the form of a press conference by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, with no public text, and the disbursement out of public funds was to be one-off, with no follow-up measures. The Korean side should be understood to have agreed to take no further steps on apology in the form of a statement in documentary form, both Foreign Minster Kishida and Prime Minister Abe promptly refused. But with the advent of the Moon Jae-in presidency in South Korea the agreement was re-examined and opened to criticism from a victim-centred perspective. When the Government of South Korea appropriated one billion yen, proposing it substitute for the one billion put forward by Japan, the Japanese government reacted strongly. The problem was the breach of the agreement’s “final and irreversible” clause. That sentiment was reinforced by the Supreme Court decision in the forced labour case. Such criticism was created that raising again matters resolved by the “complete and final” clause in the Claims Agreement [of 1965] was a breach of international law.

3. Subsequent Development – Diplomatic Re-orientation and the Shift from North to South 

The entry in the Diplomatic Bluebook also changed in 2019. It simply recorded the facts of the Japan-South Korea confrontation without reference to “shared basic values,” “shared strategic interest” or being “indispensable for the peace and security of the Asia-Pacific region.” In that year, when President Moon participated in the G20 Osaka meeting at the end of June Prime Minister Abe deliberately avoided him, not exchanging even small talk. Then in July the Government of Japan notified the South Korean government that it had decided to suspend the special measures concerning the export of materials essential for semi-conductor manufacture. Since semi-conductor manufacture is of critical significance for the South Korean economy this was clearly a hostile act. South Korea experienced great shock. The Government of Japan went on to delete South Korea from its list of “white countries” entitled to preferential trade control measures. Since Japan publicly stated that South Korea was not to be trusted on security matters, South Korea then threatened withdrawal from GSOMIA [the three-sided 2016 “General Security of Military Information Agreement”] with Japan.

The geo-political understanding spread through Japan’s media that the relationship with South Korea was no longer important. Kawai Katsuyuki, special diplomatic adviser to the Prime Minister, said in a television debate “the 38th parallel has shrunk south to the Tsushima Strait.” The selected articles called “The Disease Called Korea,” in the September 2019 issue of the magazine Hanada suggested the prospect of the whole of the Korean peninsula passing to the Chinese camp, with a continental bloc comprising China, Russia, North Korea confronting a US, Japan, Taiwan bloc (a league of maritime states). Such a view could be found also in the journal Bungei Shunju, whose special issue for September was entitled “Japan-Korea in flames – the Moon Jae-in government joins the enemy camp.” One lead article was entitled “Prospects after the export restrictions: Japan-US alliance versus unified Korea.” Keio University’s Hosoya Yuichi, Abe’s more up-market brain, spoke as follows in Yomiuri Shimbun of 18 August, saying “Geopolitically what counts for Japan is what happens in the two great countries, US and China, and compared to US and China, South Korea is relatively unimportant.”

When a group of journalists and scholars could not ignore this trend anymore and issued a statement, “Is South Korea the enemy?” on the Internet. In a 4 October policy speech, Abe said, “South Korea is our important neighbour,” but went on to say “I think pledges between countries should be faithfully observed, based on international law,” renewing his anti-Korea thinking. In December, he voiced a similar notion in talks with president Moon on the occasion of the Japan-China-Korea leaders meeting at Chengdu in China, saying that everything had been settled by the Japan-Korea treaty of 1965 and that it was against international law for South Korea to make requests of Japan. He did not hesitate to adopt such haughty posture in addressing South Korea.

4. The Suga and Kishida Governments

In the autumn of 2020 Abe resigned because of the worsening of a pre-existing health condition. In his opening speech on 26 October as successor, former Cabinet Secretary Suga Yoshihide adopted in full the Abe line on North and South Koreas.

“The abduction problem will continue to be the biggest problem the government faces. I will do my best to secure the return to Japan of all the victims of abduction at the earliest possible date. I am prepared to meet directly and unconditionally with chairman Kim Jong-un. Based on the Pyongyang Declaration between Japan and North Korea I aim at a comprehensive resolution of the abduction, nuclear, and missile problems, settling the unfortunate past, and normalizing relations with North Korea.”

“South Korea is an extremely important neighbour country. Good relations must be restored with it. I will be firmly seeking appropriate responses based on the positions Japan has long advanced.”

However, on this occasion Prime Minister Suga emphasized a “free and open Indo-Pacific.” He said, “I have just completed visits to Vietnam and Indonesia. I will aim at realization of a ‘free and open Indo-Pacific,’ based on the rule of law and in cooperation with like-minded countries including ASEAN, Australia, India, the European Union.” Later, Prime Minister Suga visited the United States and offered in principle support for US China policy and cooperation in implementing the QUAD [Japan-US-Australia-India] security cooperation agreement. It meant distancing from Northeast Asia, shifting orientation southwards, and joining with the US in applying pressure on China.

Under pressure from popular mistrust over his handling of the COVID-19 health crisis, Prime Minister Suga resigned after just over a year and Kishida Fumio took over on October 3, 2021. Since it was he who, as Foreign Minister, had announced the 2015 Comfort Women agreement, one might think that he would strive to improve Japan-South Korean relations, making the most of the agreement, but such expectations were quickly dashed because, no sooner did Kishida take over as Prime Minister than, in response to a written Diet question from the Democratic Party’s Nataniya Masayoshi, on 19 October 2021 he repudiated the apology of 2015. Nataniya, referring to the following part of the Kishida statement in the 2015 agreement,

“The issue of comfort women, with an involvement of the Japanese military authorities at that time, was a grave affront to the honor and dignity of large numbers of women, and the Government of Japan is painfully aware of responsibilities from this perspective. As Prime Minister of Japan, Prime Minister Abe expresses anew his most sincere apologies and remorse to all the women who underwent immeasurable and painful experiences and suffered incurable physical and psychological wounds as comfort women,”5

asked whether, now as Prime Minister, Kishida intended to confirm and maintain such stance. Kishida replied evasively:

“On the matter of the comfort women, following discussions we secured the pledge of the government of South Korea to the agreement. Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byong-se declared in front of the people of Japan and South Korea and addressing international society… that the Comfort Women agreement was ‘resolved finally and irreversibly.’”

He hid the fact that Japan has apologised and said only that the Comfort Women issue has been finally settled. If that is the way Kishida runs away from the Korea issue, it is no surprise that his policy speech on 8 October was all about a “free and open Indo-Pacific.” He said Japan would “cooperate with allied and like-minded countries such as the US, Australia, India, ASEAN, the EU, engaging actively in the Japan-US-Australia-India group to promote a ‘free and open Indo-Pacific.’” The words he used in referring to the abductions were not the slightest bit different from those that Suga had used. Kishida met the Association of Abductee Families for talks, and on 13 November participated in a National Assembly to Demand Immediate and Total Return of all Abductees, where he referred to the abduction problem as “the most important problem facing the Kishida government” and said, “I strongly believe that I am going to be the one to settle the Comfort Women problem.” Most likely nobody among his audience believed that Kishida had any willingness to act or he thought he could act.

5. Is There a Way Forward for Japan?

Though negotiations began 30 years ago on normalization of Japan-North Korea relations, normalization has still not been accomplished and North Korea has become a nuclear armed country. That is the core of today’s crisis for Japan. If Kishida, a Prime Minister elected from a constituency that includes Hiroshima, victim of atomic bomb attack, is to speak of his ambition for a “world free from nuclear weapons” he should surely devote his every effort to deal with the nuclear weapons of a neighbour country. On 6 March 2017 North Korea launched four intermediate range ballistic missiles, three of which landed at a point 300 kilometres offshore from Akita City. On the following day, Korean Central News Agency announced that the missiles had been launched by [North Korean] artillery units that “were responsible for attacking enemy US imperialist bases in Japan in the case of unanticipated events.” It made clear that in the event of war between US and North Korea, North Korea would launch missile attacks on US bases in Japan. Nuclear-tipped missiles might be included. However great the nuclear defences, it is impossible to completely block such an attack. If North Korea contemplated how nuclear weapons might be used, the US would too far, and South Korea would be too near. We cannot be complacent and just think that Japan is protected by the US nuclear umbrella, will be OK because of the US-Japan Security Treaty. One of the most urgent tasks for Japan is to take active measures to eliminate such catastrophic possibility.

What the Japan that (in its constitution) has abandoned “the threat or use of force as means of solving international disputes” has available to it is peace diplomacy. If it really wants to block North Korean missiles it must aim to normalize the Japan-North Korea relationship and establish non-antagonistic, normal, and if possible, friendly and cooperative relations. It is clear that from such a viewpoint, the antagonistic Abe North Korean policy is the worst policy, exposing peace and security in Japan to crisis.

The Abe policies must be reversed. To solve the abduction problem the government of Japan will have to revert to diplomatic negotiations with North Korea. In the present circumstances, following the precedent of President Obama’s unconditional resumption of US relations with Cuba, normalization based on the Pyongyang Declaration could be implemented and ambassadors exchanged immediately. Germany, Canada, Australia,6 the Philippines all have diplomatic relations with North Korea. If Japan too were to open diplomatic relations negotiations could begin in Tokyo and Pyongyang on nuclear weapons and missiles and on economic cooperation and abductions. For the nuclear and missile problems especially prudent and honest negotiations would be required. On the abductions, the demand for all abduction victims to be returned alive should be dropped and replaced by the demand for the return of survivors and compensation for all victims. The issues that require protracted negotiation should be given time. Once diplomatic relations are opened, cultural exchange and humanitarian aid could be undertaken forthwith. Under cultural exchange probably an exhibition on the victims of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at Major cities in North Korea should be included. As for economic cooperation, negotiations would proceed on amounts and categories to be included and, if agreed, the outcome synchronized with agreement on nuclear and missile matters. Things would just have to proceed through gaining the understanding and support of stakeholder countries.

It is clear that the support and cooperation of South Korea is going to be necessary whether for normalizing Japan-North Korea relations or for reducing to zero the possibility of war between the US and North Korea. For that reason, the policy of “ignoring South Korea” is a fatal error. Currently the government of Japan, through its Ministry of Foreign Affairs, takes the view that matters to do with Japan-Korea relations were all resolved by the 1965 normalization treaties. However, the Japanese government, who at the time of signing of the 1965 treaties had an understanding that there was no need for Japan to regret or apologize, since the annexation [of Korea by Japan in 1910] was in accord with a treaty and therefore legal, did listen to the criticisms by South Korea after the democratisation of 1987, and from the Kono Statement to the Murayama Statement, adopted an attitude of reflecting on and apologizing for the harm and pain caused by the colonial rule. This was the basis of the 2010 Prime Minister Kan Naoto Statement and the 2015 Comfort Women agreement. It is a counter-historical outrage for things to have reached the current point where the slate is wiped clean of such developments and the Japanese government revert to the attitudes of the 1965 Japan-South Korea normalization treaty time.

The aggressiveness of the 35 years of Japanese colonial rule of Korea is an un-deniable historical fact when considering Japan’s relations with both Koreas, and the need for the Japanese people to repent and apologize knows no end. It is precisely through repentance and apology for colonial rule that we will be able to live in a normal, human cooperative relationship with people of South Korea and North Korea. Unless we build a situation in which the six countries – South Korea, North Korea, Russia, China, the US, and Japan can live together at peace, in a “common house,”7 it will not be possible to realize peace between Japan and North Korea, the US and North Korea, Japan and China, the US and China, and China and Taiwan. It is unlikely that the good ship Japan is going to be able to sail in free and open Indo-Pacific waters so long as Japan adopts a hostile attitude, or ignores, the people of the Korean peninsula.

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Gavan McCormack is emeritus professor of the Australian National University in Canberra, a fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, and a founding editor of The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus. 

Wada Haruki is Emeritus Professor of Tokyo University and author of Kin Nissei to Manshu Konichi Senso (Kim Il Sung and the Manchurian Anti-Japanese War, 1993), Chosen Senso zenshi (A Complete History of the Korean War, 2002), Kita Chosen – Yugekitai kokka no genzai (North Korea–Partisan State Today, 1998), Chosen yuji o nozomu no ka (Do we Want a Korean Emergency? 2002), Dojidai hihan – Nitcho kankei to rachi mondai (Critique of Our Own Times – Japan-North Korea Relations and the Abduction Problem, 2005) and Kaikoku:Nichi-Ro kokkyo kosho (Opening the Country: Japan-Russia Border Relations, 2008). He is Secretary-General of the National Association for Normalization of Japan-North Korea Relations. 

Notes

Translator note: Reference is to the blue badge, discussed also below, symbol of the “National Association for the Rescue of Japanese Kidnapped by North Korea” (Sukuukai) and its demand that North Korea “immediately return all Japanese abductees.”

Translator Note: On 9 June 1945 the Japanese Diet adopted a resolution expressing “deep remorse for the “pain and suffering” Japan had inflicted on the region by its wartime actions, and on 15 August Prime Minister Murayama Tomiichi, addressing the Diet, spoke of “the not too distant past,” in which “Japan, following a mistaken national policy, advanced along the road to war and, through its colonial rule and aggression, caused tremendous damage and suffering to the people of many countries, particularly to those of Asian nations.” Statement by Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama, “On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the war’s end,” Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, 15 August 1995.

Translator Note: The South Korean Supreme Court ruled in two cases in October and November 2018 that workers mobilized by Japan as forced labour during the war were entitled to financial compensation from Nippon Steel Corporation and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd, respectively. The Japanese government’s view was that all such property and compensation matters had been settled “completely and finally” in 1965 by the Agreement on the Settlement of Problems concerning Property and Claims and on Economic Co-operation between Japan and the Republic of Korea.

Translator Note: In December 2015, South Korea under the Park Geun-hye government and Japan under the Abe government jointly announced agreement to settle the ongoing “comfort women” issue. Japanese Foreign Minister Kishida Fumio’s announcement expressed “most sincere apologies and remorse to all the women who underwent immeasurable and painful experiences and suffered incurable physical and psychological wounds as comfort women.” Japan was to provide a ten billion won (ca $8.8 million) fund to establish a foundation to help restore the women’s “honor and dignity.” The Agreement was to resolve the issue “finally and irreversibly.” (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, “Announcement by Foreign Ministers at the Joint Press Conference,” 28 December 2015. However, the agreement met much criticism from the victims and their supporters in Korea and internationally, for many reasons of which the primary one was that the neither of the two governments had had any consultation with the victims (see “The Flawed Japan-ROK Attempt to Resolve the Controversy Over Wartime Sexual Slavery and the Case of Park Yuha,” APJJF, 26 January 2016). The Agreement gradually broke down and the South Korean government under the Moon Jae-in government formally dissolved the Foundation in 2018.

Translator Note: Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, “Japan-Republic of Korea Foreign Ministers Meeting,” 28 December 2015.

Translator note: Diplomatic relations between Australia and North Korea were opened in 1974, but have followed a checkered path, broken off in 1975, reopened between 2002 and 2008, but not restored since then. Relations are currently only conducted indirectly through the good offices of third countries.

Translator Note: Reference is to Wada’s concept of a North-East Asian “Common House” elaborated in his book, Tohoku Ajia – kyodo no ie (Northeast Asia – Common House), Heibonsha, 2003.

Featured image is from APJJF

Bongbong Marcos in Legal Clear to Take Philippine Presidency

January 25th, 2022 by Jason Castaneda

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The arrest of an octogenarian Filipino over the alleged theft of 10 kilograms of mangos provoked national outrage throughout the week, further highlighting the Philippines’ broken justice system. Mug shots of Leonardo “Narding” Flores, an 80-year-old man from the northern province of Pangasinan, who was detained for almost a week, went viral online.

Flores insisted that the mangoes were picked from a tree he planted himself, yet he still offered to pay the complainant, a neighbor, for the mangoes in order to avoid arrest. Nevertheless, police officers still dragged him to the precinct, insisting that he should first pay the 6,000 pesos (US$120) bail money if he wants to avoid detention.

The episode, which saw police officers subjecting an octogenarian to humiliating conditions, drew widespread sympathy from across the country, as netizens offered to cover the bail money and sue the law enforcers for what is perceived as a disproportionate response to a seemingly trivial dispute.

More significantly, the incident also rekindled simmering public outrage over the impunity of convicted plunders, chief among them the Marcoses, who have been accused of embezzling up to US$10 billion during the dark days of dictatorship in the Philippines.

Former First Lady Imelda Marcos began to trend online, as netizens pointed out her freedom despite a 2018 conviction on corruption charges.

“Imelda Marcos was convicted guilty of 7 counts of graft in 2018 but has never seen a day in jail. She was sentenced to a minimum of 42 years in prison but was deemed ‘too old’ to keep behind bars. Get lost with your selective justice. This is not fair at all,” a netizen lamented online.

Former Philippine Police Chief Oscar Albayalde tried to justify the non-arrest of Imelda Marcos by arguing, “In any arrest or anybody for that matter, that has to be taken into consideration, the health, the age…” Years earlier, Juan Ponce Enrile, a former senator and Marcos crony accused of widespread corruption, was also released from jail due to his old age.

But many fear that the crisis of impunity is about to get far worse in the Philippines. On Monday, the Commission on Elections (Comelec) handed the scion of the Marcos family, Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jra major victory after striking down a petition to cancel his certificate of candidacy (CoC). The ex-dictator’s son has thus cleared a major hurdle in his bid to reclaim the presidency for his family.

Ferdinand Marcos and his family at his second inauguration as Philippine president. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Ferdinand Marcos and his family including Bongbong Jr (right) at his second inauguration as Philippine president. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

In July 1995, a regional trial court convicted Marcos Jr. of failure to file and pay income tax returns between the years 1982 to 1985, when he was a government official during his father’s dictatorship.

The former strongman’s son was sentenced to seven years in prison and ordered to pay fines for several counts of violation of the  National Internal Revenue Code. But when the Marcos’ camp appealed the decision, the Philippine Court of Appeals (CA) upheld the conviction but inexplicably modified the penalty, thus removing any prison terms and merely seeking fines.

So far, however, there is no evidence that Marcos Jr even bothered to pay the fines, yet he managed to run for and occupy multiple government positions, including governor of the northern province of Ilocos as well as Senator of the republic, throughout the subsequent decades.

Having narrowly lost the vice-presidential race in 2016, Marcos Jr is now the clear frontrunner to replace current president Rodrigo Duterte.

Since he expressed his bid for the presidency last year, various civic groups, including several human rights victims of the Marcos dictatorship period, have filed as many as five petitions to prevent the return of the notorious family to the Malacañang presidential palace.

In general, the petitions have been divided into two categories. A majority call for disqualification of Marcos Jr’s presidential bid based on his prior conviction.

A disqualification, however, still provides the opportunity for Marcos to be replaced by a family member, either his sister, Imee, or mother, Imelda, both of whom also meet the basic requirements for a presidential candidate. It also leaves room for Marcos Jr to run for other offices in other election cycles.

But one of the petitions called for the full cancellation of Marcos’ COC based on charges of “moral turpitude” and his alleged intention to deceive election authorities in the filing of his candidacy.

A cancellation of COC leaves no room for replacement by any family member. But on Monday (January 17), the 2nd Division of Comelec released a lengthy 32-page decision, which heavily favored the Marcoses.

“Respondent cannot be said to have deliberately attempted to mislead, misinform, or hide a fact which would otherwise render him ineligible,” said the ruling.

The Comelec 2nd Division, which is packed with Duterte appointees, effectively regurgitated the Marcos’ camp’s argument in its ruling by stating that the Court of Appeals’ (CA) amended decision in 1997 “did not categorically hold that respondent is convicted of a crime involving moral turpitude nor did it positively pronounce that respondent is meted with the penalty of imprisonment of more than 18 months.”

The petitioners, however, argued that the CA did not have to spell out the implication of its conviction against Marcos Jr. But the Comelec 2nd Division insisted that “there is likewise no definitive declaration by the said decision that herein respondent is perpetually disqualified from holding public office.”

One of the commissioners, a Duterte appointee and the incumbent’s former fraternity comrade, even released a separate seven-page opinion to further flesh out the favorable ruling for the Marcos camp.

“Since the decision dated October 31 [1997] of the Court of Appeals did not expressly impose the penalty of perpetual disqualification to hold public office in convicting respondent Marcos Jr, such penalty is not deemed written into or considered part of the final judgment of conviction of respondent Marcos Jr,” commissioner Antonio Kho argued.

To some critics, the election body was now effectively lawyering for the Marcoses. The triumphant Marcos camp thanked the Comelec for “upholding the law and the right of every bona fide candidate like Bongbong Marcos to run for public office free from any form of harassment and discrimination.”

Image on the right: Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte and his daughter Sara Duterte. Image: Twitter

Meanwhile, the Comelec’s 1st Division, which counts more independent-minded commissioners among its ranks and was widely expected to release its decision that day on the more palatable disqualification petitions, was mysteriously silent.

Yet few are holding their breath. Next month, three of the senior Comelec officials, including Aquino-era commissioner appointees Sheriff Abas (current chair) and Rowena Guanzon, are set to retire.

This means the election body will be entirely packed with Duterte-appointees for the bulk of the formal election campaign, which kicks off next month. The presidential election will be held on May 9.

And even if Comelec rules in favor of any of the disqualification petitions, the Philippine Supreme Court, which has rarely opposed the populist incumbent and is similarly packed with Duterte appointees, will have the final say on the fate of Marcos’ presidential bid.

In a country where the rich and powerful enjoy rampant impunity, it’s doubtful that either the Comelec or the courts will dare to go against the Marcoses.

That’s especially true when the ex-dictator’s son is so dominant in opinion surveys and enjoys the support of powerful blocs, including former presidents Gloria Arroyo and Joseph Estrada as well as presidential daughter Sara Duterte, who is running for the vice-presidency.

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Nostalgia at the AUKMIN Talks: Britain’s Forces Eye Australia

January 24th, 2022 by Dr. Binoy Kampmark

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Give the man credit where it’s due.  Few could possibly be congratulated for selling the sovereignty of a country in full view of its citizenry, but Peter Dutton, former Queensland copper turned sadistic Home Affairs minister turned Defence Minister, is very capable of it.  Australia promises to become a throbbing bordello for the strategic affairs of other states (to a large extent, it already is), awaiting submarine insertions, naval manoeuvres, and more troop rotations.

With the AUKUS arrangements being firmed up, US and UK sailors, personnel and miscellaneous staff are being readied for more time Down Under, ensuring that Australia becomes a staging ground for future forward military operations.  Canberra has relinquished much say in this; the song sheets and blueprints are coming from elsewhere.

The UK, reprising its long history of using Australia for its own military adventurism, is keen to massage the recently minted AUKUS agreement.  Last week, the UK Secretary of Defence Ben Wallace and Foreign Secretary Liz Truss met Dutton and Australian Foreign Affairs Minister Marise Payne in Sydney for annual AUKMIN talks.  The meeting had a distinctly nostalgic note to it: maternal Britannia, dropping in to see its rather (territorially) large offspring.

The joint media release prior to the meeting was prosaic but had all the signs of greater UK military involvement in the region, though much of it is likely to be modest.  Discussions promised to “focus on strategic challenges and identify areas in which Australia and the United Kingdom can work to support an open, inclusive and resilient Indo-Pacific region where the sovereignty of all nations is respected.”  Pity that Australian sovereignty is being whittled away in this transaction.

While plans to place British “defence assets” in Australia were not inked at the meeting, the idea has received much interest. After ministerial discussions Dutton told reporters that he was not averse to the idea. “In terms of basing [assets in Australia], there’s no proposal on the table to provide additional basing [but] it could be something that we discuss at the appropriate time if it’s suitable to both parties.”

Payne got into the spirit of “shared values” between the countries, noting “an interest in maintaining the international rule-based order underpinning stability and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific region and globally.”

The most commonly used word used in that regard, notably in Australian strategic lingo, is “complex”.  The world has become more complex, as if it was somehow simpler before.  The region has also evolved into components of complexity, necessitating more defence expenditure for the next war.  And if there was conflict, the countries of the Anglosphere would not be aggressors, nor endorsers of it.

Payne’s wittering kept the theme alive.  “The international environment is becoming more complex and challenging.  AUKMIN 2022 will consider ways to strengthen our partnership in order to meet new and emerging threats and seize the many opportunities that this era presents.”

Dutton similarly looked “forward to discussing how we can work together in support of a safe and secure Indo-Pacific region.”  This promises greater militarisation.   In the words of the statement, the meeting “will consider ways to strengthen collaboration in defence capability, cyber security, critical technology, deterrence and sustainable investment in infrastructure.”

What could be expected, stated Dutton was “a greater regularity of visits [of UK ships and submarines], in training, in people being embedded in both services, and certainly a greater cooperation in exercises.”

Showing his usual wooden spoon understanding of history, the defence minister saw parallels in current strategic developments in the Indo-Pacific to the dangerous world of the 1930s and 1940s.  “We know as a world today that we would be in a very different situation if […] the United Kingdom had not stood up to malign forces and had not represented the values that they adhere to even to this day.”

Were these the values of predatory colonisation and understanding of international rules that received such excoriation from Indian Justice Radhabinod Pal?  Pal, as a member of the International Military Tribunal of the Far East established by the Allied powers to try Japan’s leaders for war crimes in 1946, acquitted the high-ranking parties of all charges.  In doing so, he trained his judicial mind on Western imperialism, claiming that Japan had been subject to a “sham employment of legal process for the satisfaction of a thirst for revenge.”  The United Kingdom, he noted, had seized Burma and India; the Netherlands, Indonesia; the United States, the Philippines.

You do not have to agree with the entire stretch of Pal’s dissenting judgment of 1,235 pages to appreciate his puncturing of the canard that has come to be known as the rule-based international order.  Behind such neat declarations are not so much legal briefs as guns and gunboats.

After the meeting, Wallace promised that the countries would “lay foundations for training” between Australian and British forces, stressing that “nothing was off the table”.  The defence secretary had an eye towards the submarine element of the security arrangement.  Britain would “certainly make sure that submarines, when we have availability or we wish to deploy in conjunction with Australia” would do so.

The Australian defence minister was more forthcoming with the details.  “In terms of additional visits we will see greater rotation, as we’ve already seen from the strike carrier group and from the nuclear sub visit out of the UK.”

As for Australia’s promised nuclear-powered submarines, which will only see the light of day, if at all, in two decades, Wallace was ceremonial in promise and encouraging to swollen heads in Canberra.  “What is absolutely clear is that the United States, Britain and Australia are joined at the hip on delivering this program, that the strategic capability that Australia wishes is a step change that will absolutely set them apart as a leader in their field in this part of the world.”

This statement is accurate on one level.  Australia will certainly be set apart as a leader in the field of poor defence acquisitions of suspect military value and in permitting countries such as the US and UK to treat it as both client state and butler.  How richly jarring to then hear that the countries of AUKUS are all very keen to defend the sovereign sanctity of such states as Ukraine.

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Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.  He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. He is a regular contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research. Email: [email protected]

Featured image: Defence Minister Peter Dutton. Image: Viv Miley/Green Left

Rapidly Growing Economic Inequalities in India

January 21st, 2022 by Dr. Gian Singh

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On January 16, 2022, Oxfam, a non-profit organization, released a report on the rapidly growing economic inequalities in the world ahead of the 50th Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF). The findings of the report on the rapidly growing economic inequalities in India show that the country’s wealth is being rapidly grabbed by billionaires and  the common man is suffering from the problems arising out of the rapidly growing economic inequalities. The Covid pandemic has sharply widened economic inequalities in the country. While the number of billionaires has increased from 102 to 142 in 2021, the income of 84 per cent households has declined in India. The expenditure on healthcare  has been reduced by 10 per cent from the revised estimates(2020-21). In addition, there has been a reduction of 6 per cent for education and 1.5 per cent for social security.

Between March 2020 and November 30, 2021, the wealth of the country’s billionaires increased from Rs 23.14 lakh crore to Rs 53.16 lakh crore. The 98 richest Indians in the country have the same wealth as much shared by 552 million bottom people. In 2020, 46 million Indians are projected to be pushed into abject poverty, which is close to half of the world’s new poor, according to the United Nations. Economic inequalities are on the rise even when the country’s urban unemployment rate rises to 15 per cent and the healthcare infrastructure is on the verge of collapse.

According to the Oxfam report, the one-fifth increase in the wealth of the country’s 100 richest people is the result of an increase in the wealth of the Adani business family alone. The family ranks second in India and 24th in the world in terms of wealth. The family’s wealth increased from USD 8.89 billion in 2020 to USD 50.5 billion in 2021. During the same period, Mukesh Ambani’s wealth has increased from USD 36.8 billion to USD 85.5 billion.

As many as 13 million women lost their jobs in 2020 due to the Covid pandemic. This figure highlights the fact that growing economic inequalities have plagued women workers during the Covid pandemic. Whenever employment declines, the first blow falls on women workers.

One of the saddest aspects of the Oxfam report is that in the last four years, the share of Central government revenue from indirect taxes has exceeded direct taxes. In this regard, it is important to know that indirect taxes are levied by the government at the time of purchase of goods or services like Goods and Services Tax (GST) and these taxes are levied on the rich and the poor at the same rate, whereas the ability to pay taxes by the poor is much lower than that of the rich. Reducing corporate taxes from 30 per cent to 22 per cent has cost the Central government Rs 1.5 lakh crore. In 2016, the wealth tax imposed on the extremely rich was abolished. These figures highlight the fact that while the wealth of the affluent has skyrocketed during the Covid pandemic, the tax burden on the common man has increased. The report suggests that a  4 per cent tax on the wealth of the 98 richest people would be sufficient  to meet the expenditure of the Mid-Day Meal programme for school children that could be run for 17 years. With just 1 per cent wealth tax revenue, the cost of school education and literacy can be met or the Central government’s Health Insurance Scheme Ayushman Bharat can be financed for more than 7 years.

The Oxfam report found that even when in the federal structure of the country, the reins of government revenue are left in the hands of the Central government, the states are left to deal with the Covid pandemic, with their insufficient financial and manpower resources.

After the independence of the country, the Planning Commission was set up in 1950 and Five Year Plans were introduced from 1951. The period from 1951-80 is considered the planning period. During the planning period, there was  establishment and expansion of the public sector, as well as  monitoring and regulating the functioning of the private sector. Various research studies, and government data show that economic inequalities in the country decreased during this period. After 1980, planning was put in  reverse gear and the NDA government replaced the Planning Commission with the pro-capitalist/pro-corporate NITI Aayog. The ‘New Economic Policies’ of liberalization, privatization, and globalization adopted in the country since 1991 have weakened the public sector enterprises and it has severely curtailed monitoring  and regulation of the private sector. Due to these reasons, not only the economic inequalities in the country are increasing rapidly, but also the income of a large section of the workers is also declining, a fact which has been brought to the fore in this Oxfam report.

About half of the country’s population depends on agriculture for their livelihood. According to official figures, this half  population of the country was given about 16 per cent of the national income in 2018-19. With the exception of large farmers, the rest of the peasantry is economically very poor. According to the latest official data, 71 per cent of the farmers in the country own less than 2.5 acres of land and 17 per cent of the farmers own less than 2.5 acres to less than 5 acres of land. The economic condition of these peasant classes is very poor. The economic condition of the two pillars of the agrarian economy — agricultural labourers, and rural artisans is very miserable as they have no other means of production except to sell their labour. The use of machinery, and herbicides in the package of ‘New Agricultural Technology-NAT’ adopted in the agricultural sector has drastically reduced employment in the agricultural sector, with the greatest impact being on agricultural labourers, and rural artisans. Research studies conducted in different parts of the country have revealed the fact that except the large farmers, the rest of the peasantry, agricultural labourers, and rural artisans have so much debt on their heads that they are not in a position to even pay the interest on the debt as these sections have to borrow only to keep the stove burning for two times meal, which takes the form of debt due to non-repayment of loan on time. Debt and extreme poverty are like twins,  when one  grows the other follows. Debt on the part of these peasants, agricultral labourers, and rural artisans, and extreme poverty among them, manifests itself in the form of increasing suicides.

The percentage of informal employment in the total employment is increasing rapidly after the adoption of ‘New Economic Policies’ in the country. About 95 per cent of employment is informal. The uncertainty of finding even such employment, very low wage rates, and  lack of other facilities are making the lives of informally employed workers miserable . In different parts of the country, mechanization, automated machines, and the use of artificial intelligence are reducing employment at a large scale. Rising unemployment reduces the income of the working class as well as increases economic inequalities.

For making the lives of people livable and the progress of the country, along with the taxes suggested by Oxfam the economic development model should be pro-people and nature-friendly. We will have to establish again a mixed economy consisting of a strong public sector and monitoring and regulating  of the private sector.

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Dr. Gian Singh is Former Professor, Department of Economics, Punjabi University, Patiala.

Featured image is from Countercurrents

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On 15 January, the Sanyukt Kisan Morcha (SKM) met at Delhi’s Singhu border, to review the progress made by the government on its promises made at the time of the repealing of the three agri laws. Following Parliamentary and written assurances, the farmers had suspended their movement and lifted their occupation of the Delhi borders.

At the review meeting, it may not have needed too much effort and discussion for SKM to conclude that the government had not only not fulfilled any of its assurances, but hadn’t even started working towards them. Actually, that the government may not willingly and readily honour its word, should have been suspected from the outset itself – just weigh the words the Prime Minister used while announcing the repeal of the three laws to realize that his apology lacked sincerity and that he was largely buying time for the elections in the five states.

That apart, judging from the scarce reports in the media on the review meeting, the SKM has stayed the course, resolute in its stand and approach, and ready to broaden the Movement’s base. This is heartening.

However, it is possible the discussions at the meeting  may not have been exactly smooth, but that would not have been unexpected or surprising. At the same time, the meeting may have felt all but hampered by the forthcoming State elections. The decision of 22 farmers’ organizations jumping into the political fray and consequently their dismissal from SKM too may have hung over this review meeting – enough for the Morcha to decide that it would further evaluate the situation and its relationship with those organizations in April, which would be well after new governments would have taken over in the election bound five states. This is appropriate for right now and may, in fact, prove to be better in the due course. It would, on the one hand, help SKM take a long view on the farmers’ unity and, on the other, while wishing Rajewal and Chaduni well,  the elections may help them realize, possibly to their sorrow, that the “event” that elections are (or have become), is an entirely different ball-game. Already there are fissures in the Rajewal collective; so it may be only better for SKM to not become too rigid in the larger interests of farmers’ unity and allow itself to evolve without comprising on its principles.

One can also presume that some of the acrimony may also have been around the quantum of ultimatum and the time frame given to the government. This is apparent in the further two weeks leeway given to the government, which actually is neither here nor there.  With the BJP all but consumed by its election campaign not exactly going smoothly, one cannot hope for the government to even think of and, far less, do anything on the farmers’ concerns in two weeks. If it does, it would only be in acute desperation.

Possibly the most significant and emphatic decision from the review meeting was regarding Ajay Mishra Teni, and with the Movement now deciding to base part of itself around Lakhimpur-Khiri. This one question symbolizes the decay that has consumed our polity and social character, and challenges our collective sanity. It cannot be left to fester.

SKM may certainly have also pondered over the larger organizational issues and future questions, as is apparent from its decision to support and join through rural strikes, the protests called by the Labour unions in the country next month. This was a definite step forward and would open more doors in the future, to give voice to all other struggles that the marginalized and the larger society – whether rural or urban – across  the country are forced to undertake. SKM has a unique opportunity to make history count.

Only one SKM decision begs a question – Mission UP and Mission Uttarakhand. Currently these may be short-term, election related targets. And we can say that Mission Punjab has always been there! But then, why not include Mission Goa and Mission Manipur?  If nothing, it will help the Farmers’ Movement spread its wings, which will be needed for later struggles.

There are many other questions as well, which SKM and the Farmers’ Movement need to raise and respond to. But there will be time for that. Will there be?

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Biju Negi, Beej Bachao Andolan & Hind Swaraj Movement. [email protected]

Featured image is from Countercurrents

In Kathmandu, a Struggle for Water Amid Worsening Floods

January 18th, 2022 by Johan Augustin

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Stuffed garbage bags float gently down the Bisnumati River in the western part of Kathmandu. The river, sacred to Nepal’s Hindu and Buddhist populations, is one of the main waterways running through the Kathmandu Valley. Brownish water empties from pipes directly into the river: unfiltered sewage from households and factories.

Tour guide Badri Nepal, who grew up in the area, says he remembers swimming in the river as a child. No one would do that now. “The river is filthy. It has no life,” he says.

The Kathmandu Valley is home to about 4 million of Nepal’s 30 million inhabitants, with the dream of making a decent living in the capital drawing many more from rural areas. The resulting urbanization has seen Kathmandu’s population grow by about 7% a year, putting pressure on the city’s already overwhelmed water system.

That pressure is being felt acutely in the supply of clean water to homes. The Kathmandu Valley is often described as an immense sponge, soaking in and retaining water, much of which falls as rain during the annual monsoon. For millennia this water drained into the soil and seeped into the aquifers deep beneath the valley. But with Kathmandu’s urbanization, as the vegetation has been cleared and the ground paved over, less water is making its way into the ground and more is simply washing away, particularly in the form of floods during the monsoon. And with more wells being dug to siphon water out of the ground, the aquifers are fast being depleted.

Local children are playing next to the Bisnumati River in the western part of Kathmandu. The river banks are covered by plastics and other garbage. Image by Jonas Gratzer for Mongabay

Demand outstripping supply

Kathmandu Upatyeka Khanepani Limited (KUKL), the public utility that manages the city’s water supply, says water demand reached 377 million liters (100 million gallons) per day in 2017. But daily supply is only 120 million liters (32 million gallons) per day in the wet season, and 73 million liters (19 million gallons) in the dry season. The net result has been a draining of the aquifers that has caused the water table to fall on average 80 centimeters (31 inches) a year, exposing the groundwater to contamination such as concentrated nitrates and arsenic. This feeds a vicious cycle that sees Kathmandu’s inhabitants drilling even deeper for fresh water.

The scarcity has even affected the ancient dhunge dhara stone fountains. There are fewer than 300 of these medieval springs left in the valley, and more than half have run dry. These fountains were the first comprehensive water supply system here, meant to alleviate the dry spells and lessen the water pressure during the monsoons. But while the dhunge dhara lost their importance with the introduction of piped water, many people without a connection to the network still rely on this fading system.

The dhunge dharas have lost their importance with the introduction of piped water, but many people still rely on this old system since freshwater becomes more scarce by the day. Image by Jonas Gratzer for Mongabay.

At one of the few functioning dhunge dhara, located in Dhobighat in southern Kathmandu, locals wash under the steadily running taps and collect water in plastic tanks.

Tek Karki has maintained the dhunge dhara with its “clean mineral-rich water” for more than two decades. He says he’s witnessed a huge difference in water patterns over that time. “There are fewer taps now. People have drilled their own wells and as they do so, the groundwater is falling,” he says.

Even the annual summer monsoon, which historically ran from June to September, is has been thrown off-kilter by a changing climate. “The monsoon shifts every year nowadays,” Tek Karki says. “It has become irregular. Sometimes it comes early and sometimes late.”

‘People overconsume water’

Shekhar Sijapati was born in the house next door to Tek Karki’s dhunge dhara, and at age 68 still lives here. Like the dhunge dhara, the house had a tap that he remembers as “running 24/7.” Today, however, Shekhar Sijapati and other residents have to abide by water restrictions — cut to a mere 30 minutes every four days.

The well in his back yard is replenished only during the monsoon, so for the rest of the year Shekhar Sijapati and his wife have to buy water in tanks, for which they’re paying ever higher prices. He recalls paying the equivalent of about $5 for 5,000 liters (1,320 gallons), but now pays about $17 for the same amount.

Shekhar Sijapati attributes Kathmandu’s water shortage to the rapid population growth in the valley, along with a modernizing lifestyle.

“When I was a kid, 800,000 people were living here. Now there are over 4 million,” he says. “People overconsume. We take long showers and wash [more] clothes.” Like Tek Karki, Shekhar Sijapati has also noticed a shift in weather patterns. During his childhood, he says, it rained more. The rainy period now is shorter, but more intense. During the torrential rains, the ground can’t absorb the water fast enough, and it ends up in gutters and rivers, leading to floods. “We need to store that water before it’s lost!” he says.

But Shekhar Sijapati and many other Kathmandu residents have little choice but to rely on buying water in tanks from private companies that pump it from the ground. These affiliated groups should compete for consumers but are characterized by unscrupulous pricing and corrupt practices. About 70% of the valley’s households depend on the pipe network as their primary water source, but on average receive water for just 90 minutes every five days from the public utility. About 15% of households depend on privately tanked water. Many of these consumers live in the city’s slum areas, where few households are connected to the piped water grid. Already among Kathmandu’s poorest, they also pay the highest price for water: an average of 40 times what it costs from the utility.

Tanked water, pumped up from wells and springs by private companies, is often overpriced for the consumers. Image by Jonas Gratzer for Mongabay.

In Balkhu, one of the city’s many slums, fruit seller Lal Pariyar says he spends one-fifth of his earnings on buying fresh water. He used to pay the equivalent of 20 cents for a 25-liter (6.6-gallon) container, but now pays double that. “We have no pipes, no wells. And we are next to a dirty river. So now we have to buy tanked water,” he says.

The water isn’t filtered, and he sometimes finds it’s dirty and contains sediment; residents have fallen sick from drinking it. “But I cannot afford to buy water at the supermarket,” Lal Pariyar says.

Water project derailed by floods

Nepal isn’t short of water, thanks to the monsoon rains and the rivers that bring meltwater down from the Himalayan glaciers and snowpack. One of those rivers is the Melamchi, about 25 kilometers (15 miles) northeast of Kathmandu. The Melamchi Water Supply Project (MWSP) is an ambitious, much-delayed effort to pipe water from the river to the city, with the initial phase of the project expected to supply 170 million liters (45 million gallons) per day, or about half of Kathmandu’s demand; later expansions, drawing from the Yangri and Larke rivers, should triple that amount.

There are also plans to build reservoirs to hedge against the rivers running low in the face of climate change, says Ritesh Kumar Shakya, spokesperson for Nepal’s Ministry of Water Supply.

Urbanization is transforming Kathmandu into a concrete jungle with few green areas left. Image by Jonas Gratzer for Mongabay.

“Source protection of the existing [water] sources are also initiated, and climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction have been mainstreamed in water supply projects as a national policy,” Shakya tells Mongabay.

That’s the idea, at least. The initial phase of the MWSP was supposed to go online in July 2020, but delays meant the pipeline only began operating in March 2021. Within months it was shut down, a victim of the increasingly unpredictable monsoon: flash floods in June on the Melamchi and Yangri rivers destroyed MWSP infrastructure, including a dam and water treatment plant. Authorities have scheduled the MWSP to resume supplying water again in April 2022, but even this is in question as no contractor has been appointed yet to finish the work.

Drinking rainwater

For some in Kathmandu, the solution to the city’s water woes may lie in the problem: the rains. Specifically, harvesting rainwater and reusing it. Kathmandu-based organization Smart Paani designs rainwater capture systems for households, schools and businesses. (Paani means water in Nepali.) These systems filter the water and recycle it, with Smart Paani touting water savings of up to 50%. For the typical household, a 5,000-liter tank installed on the roof could collect more than 50% of annual rainfall, providing sufficient water during the monsoon.

Smart Paani co-founder Tyler McMahon says drinking filtered rainwater that’s been harvested from rooftops is a solution that could be scaled up significantly — but people must first overcome their reluctance to drink rainwater. “We need to break the myth that you can’t drink rainwater,” he says.

Even then, rainwater harvesting is only part of the wider solution of green infrastructure, McMahon says. In Kathmandu, green infrastructure calls for restoring the remaining ponds and dhunge dhara, as well as the adjacent forests and other green areas, and limiting the drawing of water from aquifers.

Smart Paani runs one of its water harvesting projects at the Mahalaxmi public school, which, until 2018, had to buy its water from tanker trucks. Now, the school’s 400 students get their fresh water from the rain, collected in a well and filtered before being piped back into the school building.

The school sells surplus water to the local community at a third of the price that the private operators charge for their tanked water. “We now have clean drinking water for ourselves, and at the same time improve the status in society,” says teacher Rashmi Baral.

Another benefit, she says, is that the students bring this green thinking back home.

Among them is Kamala Waiba, 14, who says she’s been persuading her parents to live more sustainably. “I said to them that we must harvest the rainwater,” she says, “so now we collect it from our roof.”

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Featured image: Even though Nepal’s capital has major water issues the construction of bigger and more equipped treatment plants is undergoing, which will assist in cleaning up the city’s waterways. Image by Jonas Gratzer for Mongabay.

South Korea Fires Up Its ‘Artificial Sun’

January 13th, 2022 by Andrew Salmon

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The “holy grail” of energy – clean, safe and virtually limitless – is being generated in a six-story building in a science park on the outskirts of a city south of the capital Seoul.

Nestled among buildings marked Korea Institute of Advanced Science and Technology and the Korean Institute of Nuclear Safety in Daejeon, one hour from central Seoul by KTX bullet train, lies a superconducting fusion power plant – or, if you prefer, “artificial sun.”

It is this facility that set a record that generated excited headlines across global scientific media at the end of last year.

On November 24, the KSTAR project of the Korea Institute of Fusion Energy (KFE) announced it had continuously operated plasma for 30 seconds with an ion temperature higher than 100 million degrees Celsius – more than double its previous time record.

To the uninitiated, this is gobbledegook. To the initiated, it is an encouraging milestone on the path to workable nuclear fusion – the power source that ignites the sun and the stars.

“We successfully sustained [fusion] for 30 seconds last year,” Yoo Suk-jae, the president of the KFE, told reporters visiting the KSTAR facility this week. “We usually say that fusion energy is a dream energy source – it is almost limitless, with low emission of greenhouse gases and no high-level radioactive waste – [but] this means fusion is not a dream.”

And in a world racked by distrust, hatred and conflict, KSTAR is part of a different dream.

It is a key player in one of mankind’s most ambitious scientific programs, albeit one that is little known outside its own sector: ITER. The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, which is rising in southern France, could feasibly overcome what many see as humanity’s greatest challenge – the energy and climate change crisis.

Remarkably – unlike other paradigm-smashing scientific mega-programs, such as the Manhattan Project and the Apollo Program – it is truly international in scope, crossing the world’s most hostile ideological and political frontiers.

ITER’s 35 member states include China, the EU (including the UK), India, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States.

A model of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor under construction in the south of France, with an expected completion date of 2027. Photo: WikiCommons

KSTAR turns up the heat

The KFE was founded in 1995, employs 437 staff and has an annual budget of US$200 million. Its flagship project is the KSTAR, or Korea Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research, in Daejon.

Despite its acronym, the KSTAR facility has nothing to do with K-pop, but everything to do with nuclear fusion.

Most energy sources consume a non-renewable resource: Biological sources such as wood or biomass, or fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas.

Renewable energies, such as solar, wind and hydro are clean and unlimited, but, lacking consistent generation, are unable to sustain the level of operations required for industry.

And nuclear fission, the process used in atomic power plants, creates dangerous waste.

Nuclear fusion suffers none of these drawbacks. In the heart of a star, hydrogen nuclei collide, fuse into heavier helium atoms and release tremendous amounts of energy. A star generates this fusion organically through its extreme gravitational densities and temperatures.

On Earth, the most promising “fuel” for nuclear fusion to occur has been found to be two hydrogen isotopes – deuterium and lithium. These can be sourced from the oceans’ virtually unlimited supply of seawater.

But while the fuels may be easy to source, their fusion is a fiendishly complex process. It requires huge, specialized devices that fuse the lithium and deuterium, turning them into a hydrogen state, where electrons separate from ions and gas becomes plasma.

Stars are aided by densities that the Earth’s atmosphere does not possess. So, for fusion to occur here, temperatures must be raised and maintained at extraordinary heat.

It is this maintenance, or “confinement,” of super-heated plasma that KSTAR does. Its tokamak – an experimental fusion reaction – is a mansion-sized device that would make a perfect set location for a science-fiction film.

Inside the KSTAR reactor room. Photo: Andrew Salmon

The tokamak uses powerful magnetic fields to confine the plasma in a donut-shaped vacuum ring. The plasma within reaches such ludicrous heat that thermal devices cannot measure it: Instead, scientists analyze its temperature by dissecting its light waves.

“We can generate tritium on-site from seawater,” KSTAR Director Yoon Si-woo told reporters as he showed them around the machinery. “We have to heat up the plasma up to 100 million degrees otherwise this [fusion] concept will not happen.”

November’s 30-second operation at 100-million degrees – a huge advance over KSTAR’s first experiment in 2008, which lasted only one second – was a critical milestone, Yoon said. But that length of time needs to be far exceeded for fusion to become viable as a power source.

Next steps

“This is not the end of the story, we must move on to 300 seconds – 300 is the minimum time frame to demonstrate steady-state operations, then this plasma can work forever. If we can’t achieve that – we have to do something else,” he said.

Things will be heating up at KSTAR in the next coming years. KSTAR’s deadline to hit the 300-second mark is 2026. Multiple hurdles lie ahead.

“To increase the fusion rate, you have to increase the temperature and the density,” Yoon said. “Now we are focused on temperature, but we must also focus on density.”

Another issue is cooling, which is now done by chilling the superconducting magnets with liquid helium. “We have to think about how to remove the exhaust from this high-temperature plasma,” he added.

Even so, the South Korean team is now the toast of the fusion world. Given that there are multiple tokamaks in operation around the world, what has made KSTAR so successful of late?

Its superconducting magnets suffer no heat loss, Yoon said, while KSTAR also boasts excellence in its ion-heating systems, and offers world-class diagnostics to monitor the plasma.

Unlike the fears surrounding nuclear fission, Yoon says fusion offers no such risks. “When it comes to safety, nothing can beat fusion,” Yoon said. “The issue is sustainability.”

One reason why South Korea is so advanced in this field is the specializations offered of local industry, which can produce the kind of super-high stress metals and machinery a tokamak requires

“We have a well-developed industry for this,” Yoon said. “Based on that, we have a lot of advantages.”

Indeed, Korea leads the world in shipbuilding technologies, and is also a key player in steel, construction and engineering.

He noted that while KSTAR is a government project – and as an experimental reactor, is not focusing on commercialization – major companies have worked on the reactor and its components.

Nameplates on the wall in the KSTAR building include the world’s leading shipyard, Hyundai Heavy Industries, as well as Samsung Engineering and Construction and Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology.

Looking EAST

Still, KSTAR is hardly alone: A nearby competitor is also winning kudos.

Since the South Korean team’s success, a Chinese fusion program, EAST – the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak, in Hefei Province – accelerated past what looks like an even more impressive landmark.

On December 30, it confined plasma for 1,056 seconds – more than 11 minutes – at 70 million degrees Celsius.

“The recent process of EAST is quite amazing,” Yoon said. “But there are two routes here.”

He explained that with plasma being a combination of ion and electrons, KSTAR works on heating ions, EAST on electrons – the dynamics of which are different.

“These are different routes to get to high-performance, steady-state operations,” Yoon said. “We are working together with EAST … this is a competition, but it’s a good thing.”

This element of complementary competition is clear; Chinese personnel are working at the KSTAR site, said Yoon.

Both the Chinese and South Korean projects are components in the larger global project that will be the make or break of fusion energy generation.

“This is not secret,” Yoon said. “We are all sharing the ITER project.”

In part two of this story, Asia Times will examine how KSTAR contributes to the ITER project, the spin-off and commercial potential of fusion energy technologies and the overall feasibility of this massively ambitious sector.

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Featured image: KSTAR Director Yoon Si-woo in front of the tokamak that is the heart of the nuclear fusion project. Photo: Andrew Salmon

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The Pacific may well be the part of the world most likely to see “strategic surprise,” the U.S. Indo-Pacific coordinator Kurt Campbell said on Monday, in comments apparently referring to possible Chinese ambitions to establish Pacific-island bases.

Enormous Strategic Interests

On January 11, 2022, a Washington datelined Reuters report said:

Campbell told Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) the U.S. has “enormous moral, strategic, historical interests” in the Pacific, but had not done enough to assist the region, unlike countries such as Australia and New Zealand.

“If you look and if you ask me, where are the places where we are most likely to see certain kinds of strategic surprise – basing or certain kinds of agreements or arrangements, it may well be in the Pacific,” he told an Australia-focused panel.

Very Short Time

Campbell called it the issue he was “most concerned about over the next year or two,” adding: “And we have a very short amount of time, working with partners like Australia, like New Zealand, like Japan, like France, who have an interest in the Pacific, to step up our game across the board.”

An Airstrip

Campbell did not elaborate on his basing reference, but lawmakers from the Pacific island republic of Kiribati told Reuters last year China has drawn up plans to upgrade an airstrip and bridge on one its remote islands about 3,000km southwest of the U.S. state of Hawaii.

Construction on the tiny island of Kanton would offer China a foothold deep in territory that had been firmly aligned to the U.S. and its allies since World War Two.

Kiribati said in May the China-backed plans were a non-military project designed to improve transport links and bolster tourism.

Campbell said ways the U.S. and its allies needed to do more in the Pacific.

Step Up Game

Campbell followed up on remarks he made last week that Washington needed to “step up its game” on economic engagement in Asia.

He said Australia had privately urged the U.S. to understand that as part of its strategic approach, it needed “a comprehensive, engaged, optimistic, commercial and trade role.”

Campbell has touted the so-called AUKUS pact, under which the U.S. and Britain have agreed to help Australia acquire nuclear submarines – as well as summits between the U.S., Australia, India and Japan – as evidence that U.S. partnerships are causing China “heartburn.”

But some Indo-Pacific countries, many of which count China as their largest trading partner, have lamented what they consider insufficient U.S. economic engagement after former U.S. President Donald Trump quit a trade deal now called the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Biden told Asian leaders in October Washington would launch talks on creating an Indo-Pacific economic framework, but few details have emerged and his administration has avoided moves towards rejoining trade deals critics say threaten U.S. jobs.

Australia’s Hope

Australia’s Washington ambassador, Arthur Sinodinos, told the CSIS panel Australia continued to raise the issue with the U.S. Congress and “we have not given up hope” of a reconsideration of U.S. trade policy.

Australia’s Key Role

An Axios report said:

Australia is forging new security partnerships in the Indo-Pacific and playing a more important role than ever in U.S. foreign policy — in large part because of China’s rise.

“Australia has leapt to the front of the queue in terms of importance and relevance,” Charles Edel, Australia chair at the CSIS, told Axios.

“There is broad recognition in Washington that Australia is oftentimes the first country to be on the receiving end of China’s coercion efforts and malign influence, and often the first to respond,” Edel said.

“There is a very well-developed think tank scene in Washington that focuses on all things Indo-Pacific,” Edel told Axios. “What is underdeveloped is a conversation about Australia and its role in the region. There are Japan experts, Korea experts, a plethora of people on China, but very few voices on Australia and the greater Pacific region.”

Edel served on the U.S. secretary of state’s policy planning staff from 2015 to 2017.

Last year, the U.S., U.K., and Australia announced a new security pact, known as AUKUS.

As part of the agreement, the U.S. said it would help Australia acquire nuclear submarines — “only the second time ever in our history we have ever decided to share the crown jewels” of nuclear propulsion technology, Edel said.

The agreement represents more than just technology transfer, however. The larger goal is to persuade more allies and partners to collaborate more often and more closely in the Indo-Pacific.

“The more states get involved and take action, the more convincing becomes the argument that China is no longer operating in a permissive environment,” Edel said.

It is not all about China. The U.S. is the top investor in Australia in foreign direct investment and is also a huge job creator there, Edel said, and there is a lot of interest in further strengthening bilateral economic ties.

“I’m watching for new U.S. forces and capabilities, and new U.K. forces in and around Australia,” Edel said. “I’m also watching how quickly Australia can get its infrastructure and industry up and running to support these efforts.”

Taiwan, Canada to start talks on investment agreement

On January 10, 2022, a Taipei datelined Reuters report said:

Taiwan and Canada have agreed to start talks on an investment protection agreement, both governments said on Monday, part of the Chinese-claimed island’s efforts to boost ties with fellow democracies in the face of growing pressure from Beijing.

Taiwan has been angling for trade deals with what it views as like-minded partners such as the United States and the European Union.

While a member of the World Trade Organization, Taiwan only has free trade agreements with two major economies, Singapore and New Zealand, and China has pressured countries not to engage directly with the government in Taipei.

Taiwan’s cabinet said chief trade negotiator John Deng had met virtually with Canada’s International Trade Minister, Mary Ng, and the two agreed to start “exploratory discussions” on a Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Arrangement, or FIPA.

The cabinet statement said the move was “an important milestone” in strengthening economic and trade relations.

The Canadian government, which like most countries has no formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan, said in its statement that Ng “highlighted Taiwan is a key trade and investment partner as Canada broadens its trade links and deepens its economic partnerships in the Indo-Pacific region”.

The direct meeting between the two government ministers could anger China, which has stepped up efforts to isolate Taiwan as Beijing asserts its sovereignty claims.

China views democratically-governed Taiwan as part of its territory with no right to state-to-state ties, a view Taiwan’s government strongly rejects.

Canada is also a member of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, or CPTPP, which both Taiwan and China have applied to join.

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Anachronistic Frivolity: Australia’s Recent Tank Purchase

January 12th, 2022 by Dr. Binoy Kampmark

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The operating doctrine of many a defence ministry is premised on fatuity.  There is the industry prerogative and need for employment.  There are the hectoring think tanks writing in oracular tones of warning that the next “strategic” change is peeking around the corner.  Purchases of weapons are then made to fight devils foreign and invisible, with the occasional lethal deployment against the local citizenry who misbehave.  This often leads to purchases that should put the decision maker in therapy.

Australia’s war-wishing Defence Minister Peter Dutton may be in urgent need of such treatment, but he is unlikely to take up the suggestion, preferring to pursue an arms program of delusional proportions.  His mental soundness was not helped by last year’s establishment of AUKUS and the signals of enthusiastic militarism from Washington.  Having cut ties with the French defence establishment over what was a trouble-plagued submarine contract, Dutton has been an important figure in ensuring that Australia will continue its naval problems with a future nuclear-powered submarine.

Submarines are seaborne phallic reassurances for the naval arm of defence.  Stubbornly expensive and always stressing celebrated potential over proven reality, they stimulate the defence establishment.  The land-based forces, however, will also have their toys and stimulants, their own slice of make believe.  And Dutton is promising them a few, including tanks.

This month, the minister announced that Australia will be spending A$3.5 billion on 120 tanks and an assortment of other armoured vehicles, including 29 assault breacher vehicles and 17 joint assault bridge vehicles.  All will be purchased from the US military machine.  This will also include 75 M1A2 main battle tanks, which will replace the 59 Abrams M1A1s, purchased in 2007 and kept in blissful quarantine, untouched by actual combat.

Reading from the script of presumed military relevance, Dutton declared that,

“[t]eamed with the Infantry Fighting Vehicle, Combat Engineering Vehicles, and self-propelled howitzers, the new Abrams will give our soldiers the best possibility of success and protection from harm.”

Chief of Army Lieutenant General Rick Burr was also of the view that,

“The main battle tank is at the core of the ADF’s Combined Arms Fighting System, which includes infantry, artillery, communications, engineers, attack helicopters and logistics.”  Tanks were versatile creatures, able to be “used in a wide range of scenarios, environments and levels of conflict in the region.”

To dispel any notion that this purchase simply confirmed Australian deference and obedience to US military power, the defence minister also claimed that the new Abrams “will incorporate the latest development in Australian sovereign capabilities, including command, control, communications, computers and intelligence systems, and benefit from the intended manufacture of tank ammunition in Australia.”

In other words, once Australia finishes with these cherished, dear imports, adjusted as they are bound to be for the ADF, they are more likely to be extortionately priced museum pieces rather than operable weapons of flexible deployment.

This latest tank infatuation is yet another example of how parts of the ADF and the Australian public service can never be accused of being historically informed, at least in any meaningfully accurate way. The same goes for the current defence minister, hardly a bookworm of the history muse Cleo.

The last time Australia deployed tanks in combat was during the Vietnam War, that other grand failure of military adventurism.  They were never used in Australia’s engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan, despite being lauded as being a necessary vehicle in beating down insurgency movements.

The 2016 Defence White Paper left room for a range of scenarios that make little mention of tanks. It labours over the US-China relationship, “the enduring threat of terrorism” emanating from “ungoverned parts of Africa, the Middle East and Asia”, notes the threats posed by “state fragility” and the “emergence of new complex, non-geographic threats, including cyber threats to the security of information and communications systems.” At best, it throws away a line without elaboration: that the ADF will need “tank upgrades and new combat engineering equipment”.

Critics of the purchase have included otherwise hawkish pundits such as Greg Sheridan of The Australian, who spent some of last year shaking his head at the proposed acquisition after it was announced by the US Defence Cooperation Agency.  The decision, he opined unleashing his talons, was one of “sheer idiocy”, an “anachronistic frivolity”.  Tanks and other heavy, tracked vehicles would “never be of the slightest military use to us.”

Sheridan poses a range of questions.  In any confrontation with China, could a tank defend shipping in the South China Sea?  Or “take out enemy submarines?”  Or “deliver attack missiles over hundreds of kilometres?”  His solutions: buy more jets, manufacture more drones, and address naval capabilities.

Others also argue that Dutton, were he to be genuinely interested in Australia’s security and safety, would be spending more time on reducing greenhouse gas emissions and coping with the threats posed by climate change, or investing in pandemic responses.  Now that would be a big ask.

The tank fraternity, a gathering of near cultic loyalty, are swooning in triumph.  As Peter J. Dean, director of the Defence and Security Institute at the University of Western Australia remarked last year, their membership has never proven shy.  Cults tend to show that utility is secondary to the importance of steadfast faith.

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Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.  He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne.  He is a regular contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research. Email: [email protected]

Featured image: Defence Minister Peter Dutton. Image: Viv Miley/Green Left

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Just as India had in the past aided US foreign policy objectives against China through hosting violent militant groups targeting Tibet, India is once again hosting militants, this time targeting China’s BRI partner, Myanmar in Southeast Asia. 

Reuters admits that armed militants and their weapons are staged inside India, crossing over the border to fight Myanmar’s troops and then seeking safety back in Indian territory.

Reuters also hints at the so-called “National Unity Government” likely being based in India – putting at risk youths it has told to “fight” Myanmar’s military while hiding in safety abroad.

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Sources

Reuters – In Myanmar’s Chin state, a grassroots rebellion grows (2021)

CHRO – ARCHIVE FOR CHRO IN THE NEWS (page 13)

Al Jazeera – Myanmar’s stateless Chin endure refugee life in India (2017)

US Congress – The Worldwide Persecution of Christians (2014, page 94 of the PDF, 90 of the printed document – admission that CHRO is worked with closely by the US government)

US State Department, Office of the Historian – Review of Tibetan Operations (1964)

National Endowment for Democracy (NED) – Zin Mar Aung

NED – Ko Bo Kyi

NED – Burma (2020)

Harvard University’s Atlas of Economic Complexity – Myanmar Imports/Exports by Partner 2019

Tennis Player Novak Djokovic Versus the Australian Commonwealth

January 11th, 2022 by Dr. Binoy Kampmark

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January 10, 2022 will be remembered as one of the odder days in the annals of sport.  For one, it had little to do with physical exertion.  Tennis proved secondary to the claims of one Novak Djokovic, currently the world’s number one ranked player.  Instead of finding himself training on court in preparation for the Australian Open, he found himself with a legal team in the recently created Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia.  His purpose: to challenge the decision to cancel his Temporary Activity visa (subclass 408 in bureaucratic lingo), after his arrival in Australia just prior to midnight on January 5.

The visa was granted on November 18 last year and, according to his court submission, “was subject to no condition having the effect that his right to enter and remain in Australia was qualified in any way in regard his vaccination status.”  On December 30, 2021 the player received a letter from the Chief Medical Officer of Tennis Australia noting that he had been granted a “Medical exemption from COVID vaccination” on the grounds that he had recently recovered from COVID-19.

The letter also noted a range of salient points.  Djokovic, for instance, recorded the first positive COVID PCR test on December 16, 2021.  Fourteen days had expired; the player had shown no relevant symptoms of a fever or respiratory symptoms in the last 72 hours. The exemption certificate had been provided by an Independent Medical Review panel commissioned by Tennis Australia and duly reviewed and approved by an independent Medical Exemptions Review Panel of the Victorian State Government.  These exemption conditions were also deemed consistent with the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (ATAGI).

On January 1, 2021, the Department of Home Affairs informed Djokovic that his Australia Travel Declaration had been assessed and approved.  His “responses [i]ndicated that [he met] the requirements for a quarantine-free travel into Australia where permitted by the jurisdiction of your travel.”

It then came as quite a shock that his visa was cancelled after arriving in Melbourne International airport by a delegate of the Australian Border Force. He had been held, incommunicado, for eight hours (till approximately 8 am, January 6).  After being notified of the decision, Djokovic was hurried off to the infamous Park Hotel in Melbourne where he, in his defence team’s words, was detained “notwithstanding his requests to be moved to a more suitable place of detention that would enable him to train and condition for the Australian Tennis Open should this present challenge to the Purported Decision be successful.”

Judge Anthony Kelly had to confront a veritable blizzard of legal grounds, eight in all.  Among other things, these focused on the purported invalidity of the notice given to Djokovic in cancelling the visa.  The immigration minister could only exercise a discretion to cancel the visa after considering that notice.  There were also time constraints in making that decision, and considerations of natural justice.

The cardinal point remained the differing readings by Djokovic and the Commonwealth government on the nature of the medical exemption.  For the tennis player, testing positive on December 16 exempted him from the vaccination requirement for six months, a reading based on ATAGI’s statement to that effect.

The Commonwealth rejected this interpretation, claiming that having a previous infection did not dispense with the need to be vaccinated before entering Australia.  A deferral of vaccination should not have been read as an excuse not to get vaccinated.  Placing such heavy reliance on the Tennis Australia exemption letter did not constitute sufficient information for the purpose of entering the country unvaccinated.  The government also disputed whether Djokovic had an “acute major medical illness” last month.  “All he said is that he tested positive for COVID-19.  This is not the same.”  (Djokovic did himself few favours in that regard, having been photographed at public events following the positive test.)

In terms of the constitutional pecking order, the government lawyers were eager to pull rank.  It did not ultimately matter what Tennis Australia had concluded, or, for that matter, what the Victorian government had done.  In submissions to the court, the government asserted that there was “no such thing as an assurance of entry by a non-citizen into Australia”.  The Commonwealth had the final say.

Remarkably, and disturbingly, it is also clear that the same thing applies to Australian citizens, who have no formal constitutional guarantee of a right to return or re-enter their country despite such a position being protected at international law.

At points, the denseness of the legal argument struck a nerve.  The number of acronyms used stirred the judicial bench.  “You’re going to have to drag yourself back to the last century,” stated the judge pointedly to Djokovic’s lawyer, Nick Wood.  “I hate acronyms.”

But the government lawyers fared worse, being told witheringly that, “Here, a professor and a physician have produced and provided to (Djokovic) a medical exemption.  Further to that, that medical exemption and the basis on which it was given was separately given by a further independent expert specialist panel established by the Victorian state government […] The point I am agitated about is, what more could this man have done?”

Both sides eventually agreed that the notice requirement for Djokovic had not been adequately satisfied.  In the words of the court order, the “decision to proceed with the interview and make a decision to cancel the applicant’s visa pursuant to s.116 of the Migration Act 1958 (Cth) was unreasonable”.  This was because Djokovic had been told at 5.20am on January 6 that he would have until 8.30am to “provide comments in response to a notice of intention to consider cancellation” under that same provision.  Impatiently, the authorities had sought comments at 6.14am, with the decision to cancel the visa being made at 7.42am.

Despite quashing the cancellation decision and mandating that Djokovic be released from immigration detention “without limitation thereto […] by no later than 30 minutes after them making of this Order”, counsel representing the Commonwealth made an ominous promise.  The Minister for Immigration “may consider whether to exercise a personal power of cancellation” under the Migration Act.

In response, Judge Kelly insisted that he be “fully informed in advance” of such developments, warning that “the stakes had risen rather than receded.”  Any cancellation will promise further litigation and the prospect that Djokovic be barred from entering the country for three years, though this requirement can be waived.

In this episode of pandemic bureaucracy has seen a number of inglorious achievements.  The Commonwealth has done its bit to conjure up a monster of its own making. It failed to follow its own notice requirements of visa cancellation in shabby fashion.  It created an exemption system lacking in clarity and liable to be interpreted, at points freely, by state and sporting bodies.  It aided the tarnishing of tennis and an international tournament whilst almost causing a diplomatic incident with Serbia.

Even as the threat of cancellation for Djokovic hovers, the one thing that will not be cancelled will be the indefinite detention regime for refugees of which the tennis star sampled, if only briefly.  That the prominent Serbian was ever asked to be an impromptu spokesman for those detained for years in Australia’s very own minted concentration camp system suggested, in Behrouz Boochani’s words, “that politics is broken there.”  His advice: that true power lay within the borders of a country with its citizens, rather than that of a celebrity.

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Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.  He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. He is a regular contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research.  Email: [email protected]

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The Mauling of Tennis Player Novak Djokovic

January 10th, 2022 by Dr. Binoy Kampmark

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Rarely can the treatment of a grand sporting figure by officialdom have caused such consternation.  Novak Djokovic, the tennis World Number One, has always had a tendency to get under skin and constitution, creating a large following of admirers and detractors.  But his current treatment by Australian authorities, and his subsequent detention as an unlawful arrival despite being granted a visa to participate in the Australian Open, had the hallmarks of oppression and incompetent vulgarity.  In time, it may well also prove to have been another example of provincial opportunism and crass stupidity.

It all began with the thick cloud of doubt over whether the Serbian tennis star needed to show proof of vaccination or otherwise in entering Australia.  The Australian Open had become the first grand slam tennis tournament to require mandatory vaccination for all athletes subject to exemptions.  This was a position also taken by the Victorian government.  What remained unclear was whether dispensations could be granted, and under what conditions.

Djokovic was always unwilling to reveal his vaccination status.  His response to the pandemic has also been patchy, even cavalier.  The Adria Tour in June 2020, created as a response to the cancellation of various sporting events, proved disastrous.  Organised by the Novak Djokovic Foundation as a “charity tour to help the coronavirus victims”, it saw players, spectators and officials contract COVID-19, including Djokovic himself, resulting in the abandonment of the tournament.

Along with other tennis players, his application to participate in the Australian tournament, assessed anonymously, was accepted, leading him to confirm his departure for Melbourne earlier this month.  Two bodies were involved in conducting the review: Tennis Australia and an independent medical exemption review panel.  The Victorian Department of Health confirmed that the exemptions had been granted to those with a “genuine medical condition”.

The next part of the story is revealing about Australian officialdom.  On arriving in Melbourne, Djokovic encountered the nastiness that has made the Australian Border Force famous in celluloid, social media and print.  It was all good to have received an exemption from two bodies; but the ABF retained the discretion to ask for further particulars and revoke any visa at their discretion.  The Commonwealth, after all, is the final arbiter as to who crosses the border.

A statement by the ABF, never paragons of thoroughness or justice, claimed that “Mr Djokovic failed to provide appropriate evidence to meet the entry requirements to Australia, and his visa has been subsequently cancelled.”  In the cobwebbed mind of bureaucratic reasoning, this could mean, and be, anything.

In the right royal mess that ensued, the Victorian government, on being asked by the federal government to supply evidence of Djokovic’s exemption, declined to sponsor him.  Prime Minister Scott Morrison, showing that exemptions are viewed differently depending on which authority in Australia provides them, was satisfied that the right decision had been made.  In his particular reasoning,

“Rules are rules, especially when it comes to our borders.  No one is above these rules.  Our strong border policies have been critical to Australia having one of the lowest death rates in the world from COVID, we are continuing to be vigilant.”

Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews also stated that all arrivals in Australia had to “provide acceptable proof that they cannot be vaccinated for medical reasons”.  Absent that, Djokovic “won’t be treated any different to anyone else and he’ll be on the next plane home.”  Such words are rich coming from a government addicted to subverting the rule of law, convention and due process.

The view also went some way in making a mockery of the assessments by both Tennis Australia and the medical review board.  As Australia Open director Paul McNamee explained to the ABC,

“every player and support member fills in a form, visa 408, and everyone does that, you are guided through it by Tennis Australia, every step of the way, and then you get approval, that is the process.”

McNamee stressed that Djokovic

“was following the rules.  You might be angry that he was given an exemption, but players need to have confidence that the rules they abide by are going to be enforced, so if this is something to [do] with the vaccination in the exemption, for me that’s not fair.”

The legal challenge by Djokovic makes various assertions.  The player received, the defence argues, a temporary activity class visa on November 18.  Djokovic had tested positive to a PCR test on December 16 and was subsequently granted the exemption.  It was then claimed that the Home Affairs Department had sent a note on January 1 informing him that he had met “the requirements for a quarantine-free arrival into Australia”.

The submission is in stark contrast to correspondence from the Health Department and the Commonwealth.  The former’s First Assistant Secretary Lisa Schofield had informed Tennis Australia Chief Executive Craig Tilley that, “People who have previously had COVID-19 and not received a vaccine does are not considered fully vaccinated.”  Health Minister Greg Hunt, on following up Schofield’s observations, also confirmed that those who had contracted COVID-19 “within six months and seek to enter Australia from overseas, and have not received two doses of a Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA)-approved or TGA-recognised vaccine … are not considered fully vaccinated.”

Most tellingly, the Morrison government, and a good number of Fortress Australia types, have made it clear that the very concept of any right of entry, notably during times of emergency such as a pandemic, is irrelevant and has no bearing in a court of law or before any tribunal of justice.

While it will be of little comfort to Novak, he should not be surprised that Australian government officials are equally contemptuous of any right of return for Australian citizens, who remain at the mercy of a spray of weak High Court judgments and a total absence of constitutional protection.  Tens of thousands have been stranded in other countries since 2020, left at the mercy of menacing poverty, lack of safety, reviled and mocked as disease ridden and undeserving of sanctuary.  The Commonwealth and State governments have all done their bit to prevent such returns, imposing onerous requirements and even, in some cases, threatening punitive fines.  The Australian passport has become a form of debased coinage.

The cancellation of Djovokic’s visa also led to another brush with institutional savagery.  The tennis player is being detained at Carlton’s Park Hotel, a facility that has been used for refugees more than acquainted with the concentration camp system reserved for “unlawful” naval arrivals.  He can at least count himself fortunate not to be rendered to the tropical torture centres of Nauru or Manus Island, two favourite destinations for Canberra’s undesirables.

When it comes to Australia’s refugee concentration camp system, celebrity or standing provides little by way of salvation.  As former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull explained to his counterpart President Donald Trump in discussing a refugee transfer between the countries, Australia would be more than happy to jail Nobel Prize laureates if they did not have the requisite paperwork.  “So, we would rather take a not-very-attractive guy that helps you out than to take a Nobel Peace Prize winner that comes by boat.”

Irate detainees, some having been in captivity for almost a decade, have also noted the sudden spike of interest, if only because of the celebrity calibre attention being paid to Djokovic.  Protests in Serbia, Montenegro and Australia have taken place.  Carlton’s Park Hotel has been the site of a hearty gathering of supporters.  Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić has urged that the tennis player not be held “in that infamous hotel”.

This could but induce sadness on the part of Mehdi Ali, an Iranian immigrant who was fifteen when he sought sanctuary in Australia and is also being held at the Park Hotel.

“I’ve been in a cage for 9 years, I turn 24 today, and all you want to talk to me about is [Djokovic],” he tweeted on January 7.  “Pretending to care by asking me how I am and then straight away asking questions about Djokovic.”

To the hosts of an Australian television program The Project, Mehdi did take some heart that attention was finally being showered upon the grim conditions in the detention hotel.  Those who “came here for Djokovic … found out about our circumstances and they were shocked.”

The appeal hearing against the decision by the ABF is taking place today (January 10) where some sense of the brutish nonsense that has transpired may be made.  But for the likes of Mehdi, the Djokovic storm, whether it results in him playing or not in Melbourne, will pass.  A country filled with the descendants of convicts and their gaolers will continue working to form.

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Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.  He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. He is a regular contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research. Email: [email protected]

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Abstract: On July 28, 2021, Okinawa Prefecture’s governor authorised coral transplantation at the construction site of the controversial Futenma Replacement Facility (FRF) in Henoko. Two days later, he revoked this authorisation. The coral have become a contested political issue, linked to the larger conflict between the Japanese government and Okinawa Prefecture. Diving into the waters of Ōura Bay and the history of the base issue, this article explores how Japanese authorities have ignored Okinawan protest, science, and the life of other species during the construction. This political strategy of ignorance aims at frustrating opposition and framing the FRF as inevitable.

“As humans reshape the landscape, we forget what was there before … Our newly shaped and ruined landscapes become the new reality (Gan et al. 2017: G6).”

The Coral of Ōura Bay

It is hard to describe the feelings one has when first seeing the coral of Ōura Bay. Looking down from the railing of a boat, they are covered by a turquoise veil of shimmering waves, blurring the different species into one. It is beautiful, but it makes it difficult to envision what it really looks like down there. To get a real understanding you need to jump into those turquoise waters. So let’s jump in and dive down!

Coral of Ōura Bay close to the construction site. Seen from above, their diversity is hard to grasp, © Palz 2021.

Beneath the surface, a new colour spectrum discloses itself in front of your eyes. Different shades of blue remain the dominant colour, but the coral also form a mix of greens, yellows and even reds stretching their arms in all directions or forming cloud-like structures, some larger than a small car. Others form round tables, big enough for sea turtles to take refuge beneath. Different species of Achropora, Poritidae and Montipora form the dominant coral in this part of Ōura Bay, but there are places where much rarer species such as blue coral (Heliopora coerulea) grow as well. Fish in shimmering silver, orange and purple chase each other, others barely move, hiding in this forest of colours. Blue parrotfish are crunching on the coral beneath you. A black and white striped sea snake winds itself to the surface and goes down again, disappearing in one of the many cracks and holes. Where coral thrive, other species do too. Jumping into Ōura Bay is like jumping onto a painter’s palette, one in which the colours are filled with life.

It is not just the richness of coral that makes Ōura Bay ecologically significant. It also brings together many other environmental features, such as mangrove forests, tidal flats, sandy beaches, and waters up to thirty meters deep. With over 5,300 different species, including 263 endangered ones, the Bay is a hotspot of biodiversity (Okinawa Prefectural Government Washington D.C. Office). Some of these species have only been confirmed in the bay, such as small crabs (Paralbunea takedai) and shrimp (Rayllianassa rudisculcus) (Daibingu chīmu snakku snafukin 2015: 113). Also, the critically endangered Okinawan dugong, a charismatic marine mammal, used to visit the bay in the past although recently there have been no confirmed sightings.

Lively coral in the northern part of Ōura Bay, © Palz 2021. Diving down makes one realise the richness of Okinawan waters.

I had come to Okinawa as an anthropologist researching the changing relationship between the Okinawan dugong and the human inhabitants of the Ryūkyū Islands. Living in Ōura Village, I not only swam in the waters of the bay, but I also interviewed many of its (human) inhabitants and scholars regarding questions of environmental change. In the last decade, the largest of these changes has been the construction of a new military base known as the Futenma Replacement Facility (FRF) in the waters of Henoko Village. The new base is supposed to replace the dangerous Marine Corps Air Station Futenma, situated in the densely populated city of Ginowan, where noisy helicopters and accident prone MV-22 Osprey aircraft fly over apartment blocks, universities and elementary schools on a daily basis, often ignoring night flight curfews or even causing accidents.1 The Government of Japan insists that adjoining the FRF to existing Camp Schwab in Henoko is the only solution for closing the base in Futenma. However, for many Okinawans — including the current Prefectural Government — the construction of the FRF at Henoko is intolerable, not just because it destroys the precious and unique marine life of Ōura Bay but also because the new base would imprint the American military presence onto Okinawa for decades to come. A finished base in Henoko would also mean that large military vessels could enter the deep waters of the bay. This would be an upgrade to the current air station in Futenma, which is lacking access to the sea.

To make all this happen the waters around Henoko have to be land filled. Waters similar to those we explored in the opening section. Enclosed by a floating line of orange buoys, the construction site itself is off limits. Nobody except personnel authorized by the Okinawan Defense Bureau (ODB) is allowed to dive where landfill is being planned. Although much soil has been dumped into the ocean already, there is still a lot of work to be done. According to the Okinawa Times, only around 5% of landfill work has been completed by April 2021 (Okinawa taimusu 2021). On the northern side of the construction site, where the sea floor has been found to be as soft as “mayonnaise” (see Lummis 2018), it remains to be seen whether the project is even possible. What is certain is that construction would be lengthy, costly and destructive. Here, where construction has not yet commenced, that colourful coral is still alive.

Although my academic focus is not coral per se, as a fundamental part of the ecosystem of Ōura Bay, coral was ever-present during my research. In 1962 and 1969 the coral reef of Ōura Bay was blasted, to enable military drills (Ryūkyū Asahi Broadcasting & Norimatsu 2010: 4). At that time, the U.S. military already was planning to build a base with a military port and runways at the tip of Cape Henoko. However, the war in Vietnam consumed too much of the defence budget. The project was thus shelved, but it was not forgotten (McCormack & Norimatsu 2012: 93). Today, soil for landfill is brought through this opened up reef by ship all the way from the Motobu Peninsula on the other side of Okinawa Main Island. Older generations in particular also reported how in other parts of the island coral reefs and their inner shallow waters (referred to as Inō in the native language of Uchināguchi) were filled in to create infrastructure and housing projects, or to construct seawalls. As a result, according to Giovanni Diego Masucci and James D. Reimer, both marine researchers at the University of the Ryūkyūs, already 63% of Okinawa’s coastline has been altered by humans, cutting the remaining 37% into fragments (2019: 8). Not all of these developments have destroyed coral, but many have. The Henoko project will continue the pattern.

Much has been written about the protest movement against American military presence in Okinawa and the new base in Henoko (see for example Tanji 2006; McCormack & Norimatsu 2012; Inoue 2017) and some of it will be mentioned on the following pages. However, in this article I would like to explore how the Government of Japan reshapes imagined possible futures of Ōura Bay’s residents through what I call a political strategy of ignorance. Thinking with the coral of Ōura Bay in this context not only helps to understand how the central government employs ignorance to exercise power over the opposition, but also how the construction of official knowledge by the state is used to justify questionable environmental harm mitigation methods.

 Lively coral in the northern part of Ōura Bay, © Palz 2021.

Coral Politics

To mitigate the adverse effects of the landfill project in Ōura Bay the Japanese government proposes to move roughly 40,000 coral colonies, replanting them in areas outside of the construction site. When transplanting coral, smaller fragments are taken from the colony and moved to a different place, where they are attached to rocks with cages, wires and hooks. If the conditions are right, the relocated coral can thrive again. Many privately and publicly funded coral restoration programs in the Okinawan islands and beyond do exist (see Claus 2020: 183).

The current Okinawan Prefectural Government, which opposes the base construction, withheld its authorisation for replanting the coral colonies until it was forced through by the Japanese Supreme Court in July, 2021 in compliance with orders from the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries. The Supreme Court’s decision was based on the grounds that governor Tamaki Denny is abusing his power if he does not give his authorisation. It is important to mention, however, that the court’s decision was a close one as two of five justices sided with Tamaki (Abe 2021) in the protracted legal confrontation between Okinawa Prefecture and the central government. The Okinawa Prefectural Government was left with little choice but to comply, asserting certain conditions, such as the promise to avoid moving the coral during the hot summer months. Hot water temperatures during summer make coral prone to bleaching a widely known issue in coral science (Okubo et al. 2005: 340). Coral get their colour from microscopic algae with which they live in symbiosis. If water temperatures get too high or other stress factors occur, coral expel the algae and turn white. In case of hot water temperatures over a long period of time, the coral eventually die. Another factor that has to be taken into account is that coral reproduction is much higher for coral transplanted in February then for those transplanted in July (Okubo et al. 2009: 444f). Also, a manual published by Okinawa Prefecture as early as 2008 explicitly states that the summer month are not suitable for coral transplantation not only because of high water temperatures, but also because typhoons during this time of year are likely to damage the fragile replanted coral (Okinawaken bunka kankyōbu shizen hogoka 2008: 12). Examples of these effects already exist in Okinawa. During maintenance work on the Taketomi southern sea route (taketomi minami kōro) coral were transplanted in August and September 2014. Due to hot water temperatures during these months over 30% of the transplanted coral colonies died of bleaching, while only 4% of untouched coral were affected (Tamaki et al. 2021: 4).

In spite of the Prefectural Government’s asserted conditions, after gaining authorisation from the governor on July 28, the ODB immediately started the replanting process on July 29, whereupon Tamaki immediately revoked his authorisation the following day. Ignoring the will of the Okinawan Prefectural Government as well as the tenets of basic science accurately reflects a long history of ignoring the voice of a majority of Okinawa’s citizens and is consistent with the flawed Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) conducted in preparation of the base construction.

At the construction site in Ōura Bay, © Palz 2021. Every weekday ships and trucks bring soil for landfill.

A Political Strategy of Ignorance

In his work on forest fires and the state in Mexico, anthropologist Andrew S. Mathews explains that “state power may depend upon a management of ignorance and of knowledge by officials and their clients (Matthews 2005: 796).” In his study Matthews examines different forms of ignorance by mid-level and field-level forest service officials in dealing with forest fires to be able to navigate conservationist state policies and strengthen local networks among communities that conduct swidden agriculture. By concealing local forest fires used in a controlled way from their superiors and the state, these officials manage to balance state policies and realities on the ground. It is important to notice, however, that this navigation is only necessary because the federal government condemns the use of fire by rural groups in the first place. Focusing their argument on the damage from forest fires, the government and high-ranking forest service officials ignore the interest of local farmers and cater to urban Mexicans who make up the most influential political constituency. In so doing they exercise power by ignoring alternative worldviews, such as traditional and controlled use of fire in swidden agriculture. Several levels of officials on local and state level have employed similar strategies of ignorance towards alternating worldviews in the Henoko context to frustrate the coral preservationist and anti-base sentiments of local inhabitants.

In 1997, then mayor of Nago City Higa Tetsuya (Liberal Democratic Party, LDP) originally opposed the base construction in Henoko. However, after pressure was applied by the central government (Hashimoto cabinet) to accept the base he ignored the outcome of a municipal referendum opposing it by 52%, making way for the construction. In 2019, the central government again ignored a prefectural referendum in which 72% of participating Okinawan citizens opposed the construction. Now, in its attempts to replant coral amidst high water temperatures of the summer months and with typhoons approaching, the ODB has again violated basic science.As an outsider looking at these practices of ignoring, I am not surprised that some of the inhabitants of Ōura Bay who are not active in the anti-base movement but opposed construction in the referendums, convey a deep feeling of powerlessness against a decision that was made over their heads between the governments of Japan and the United States. Some have even started to question Japan’s constitutional democracy. Talking to one of my interviewees (a regular citizen of the Ōura Bay region who is not involved in the protest movement) about the potential threat of Chinese aggression2and therefore on the legitimation of U.S. bases in Okinawa, he concluded that the Chinese and Japanese governments are not so different from each other. Reflecting on the Henoko construction, he said: “The government is ignoring the voice of the local people, so in this there is no difference from China (chūgoku to kawaranai).” It has long been Japanese government strategy to confront Okinawa prefecture and local residents of Ōura Bay with a rhetoric of inevitability: no other solutions are on the table, so live with it. This is the message that has been arriving in the villages of Ōura Bay for several decades. It seems to some people who oppose the base but do not protest openly, that all they can do is to make the best out of it by adapting to this “inevitable situation”.

It is not only that opposing voices of the Okinawan people have been ignored, the production of official knowledge by the state has also played an important role in presenting the base construction as justifiable. An EIA published in 2011 concluded that the construction would have no adverse effects on the endangered Okinawa dugong, a species that was confirmed to visit the bay proper and surrounding waters frequently to graze on the sea grass growing close to its shores (see also Yoshikawa 2020). Despite this conclusion, no dugongs were spotted in the bay since construction began in 2017. According to surveys conducted by the ODB, no feeding trails, which are indirect signs of dugong presence, were found around the construction site either (Okinawa bōeikyoku 2020a:12). In spring 2020, sounds that were potential dugong calls were recorded by the ODB (Okinawa bōeikyoku 2020b: 12), but the Ministry of Defense refuses to release the data or to get a second opinion on the matter from neutral researchers. As an observer, this leaves me with two possible conclusions: Either the sound sensitive dugongs refrain from entering the bay where heavy construction work is progressing and sound waves of ship engines prevent their peaceful grazing, or dugongs were able to visit the site despite construction noise, but the ODB is ignoring their presence as a release of data could cause construction to stop. It seems clear that the EIA was conducted to enable the base construction in the first place, rather than to protect the environment.

A similar question arises when looking at the Environmental Monitoring Committee, purportedly an independent scientific entity created by the ODB to monitor and advise on the impact of base construction on the environment. Considering the scientifically unjustifiable timing of coral transplantation, it seems clear that the committee is facilitating the Japanese government’s standpoint by not advising against coral transplantation in summer in the face of scientific evidence. Furthermore, some members of the committee submitted a scientific article to the platform Research Square declaring the critically endangered dugong to be extinct around Okinawa (Kayanne et al. 2021). Although the article has not yet undergone peer review and is therefore categorized as a preliminary report, declaring the dugong extinct could have political consequences for environmental mitigation measures at the base construction site. The article’s conclusion is therefore highly political and even as the ODB insists that the authors wrote the article as independent researchers and not as committee members, questions arise of official knowledge production.

Protesters at the gate of Camp Schwab, Henoko, © Palz 2021.

Like the EIA, the replanting of coral seems to be a cosmetic, rather than a mitigative intervention. If the ODB were really concerned about coral survival, it would not have replanted in the hot summer months immediately after gaining authorisation from governor Tamaki. Furthermore, a final decision on whether successful construction of the FRF will actually be possible in the untouched areas of Ōura Bay has still yet to be made. If construction is not possible, coral transplantation itself will become meaningless.

Bringing all these threats together, it becomes clear that the Japanese government is practicing a political strategy of ignorance with grave consequences. Ignoring its own citizens (a majority of the inhabitants of Ōura Bay and Okinawa Prefecture), ignoring natural obstacles (the “mayonnaise” sea floor), ignoring the habitat of fellow inhabitants of Ōura Bay (such as the dugong and other marine life) and ignoring basic scientific advice on coral transplantation and requests by the Okinawa Prefectural Government. I would like to connect this thought on a political strategy of ignorance with the quote that began this article: “As humans reshape the landscape, we forget what was there before … Our newly shaped and ruined landscapes become the new reality (Gan et al. 2017: G6).” For residents of Ōura Bay this connection is relevant in two ways. Firstly, with its political strategy of ignorance the Japanese government is reshaping the landscape of Ōura Bay in very physical ways (filling up water with land and transplanting coral for example). By doing that it is creating a new reality for future generations, a reality in which a sea filled with concrete and the sound of V-22 Osprey are normalized. Secondly, the political strategy of ignorance is reshaping mental landscapes of local citizens into one in which the new base is inevitable. In other words, imagined possible future landscapes are reduced to one option: a bay with a base and a base one must live with.

This does not mean that the knowledge constructed by the state and its political strategy of ignorance are unchallenged. The protest movement against the base is continuing both on a very local level in front of the gates of Camp Schwab and the waters of Ōura Bay, and at the level of official politics as shown by governor Tamaki’s opposition to coral transplantation. However, it is worth looking at how the central government’s strategies of normalizing the base construction by exercising both ignorance and power over knowledge production arrive in local contexts and how they impinge on those who are most affected by the construction: human and non-human inhabitants of Ōura Bay.

It has yet to be seen how the revocation of Governor Tamaki’s authorisation will play out, but at the time of writing, transplantation of coral is continuing without his permission. After the revocation of approval, the ODB filed a complaint to the Ministry of the Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, which decided to continue the transplantation. If the issue ends up in court again, the judges will likely side with the Japanese government rather than Okinawa, as they have done so many times in the past. If this comes to pass, the political strategy of ignorance will have proven, once again, to result in further damage to physical and imagined landscapes.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the inhabitants of Ōura Bay who shared their stories and thoughts with me. This article was enriched by comments from Aike P. Rots, C. Anne Claus, Florence Durney and Daniel Iwama. I am also very thankful to the editors and the anonymous reviewer for their encouragement and valuable comments.

Research for this article was conducted in the context of the project “Whales of Power: Aquatic Mammals, Devotional Practices, and Environmental Change in Maritime East Asia.” This project is funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement no. 803211 (ERC Starting Grant 2018).

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Marius Palz is a member of the ERC-funded “Whales of Power” research project and a PhD candidate at the Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages (IKOS) at the University of Oslo.

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Claus, C. Anne. 2020. Drawing the Sea Near: Satoumi and Coral Reef Conservation in Okinawa. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Daibingu chīmu snakku snafukin. 2015. Ōurawan no ikimono tachi: ryūkyūko – seibutsu tayōsei no jūyō jiten, okinawajima ōurawan. Kagoshima: Nanpō Shinsya.

Gan, Elaine; Tsing, Anna; Swanson, Heather & Bubandt, Nils. 2017. “Introduction: Haunted Landscapes of the Anthropocene.” In Elaine Gan, Anna Tsing, Heather Swanson & Nils Bubandt (ed.), Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet: Ghosts of the Anthropocene. pp. G1-G14. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Inoue, Masamichi S.. 2017. Okinawa and the U.S. Military: Identity Making in the Age of Globalization. Paperback Edition. New York: Columbia University Press.

Lummis, Douglas C. 2018. On A Firm Foundation of Mayonnaise: Human and Natural Threats to the Construction of a New U.S. Base at Henoko, Okinawa. The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Volume 16 | Issue 10 | Number 4 | Article ID 5146 | May 15, 2018. Accessed December 05, 2021

Masucci, Giovanni Diego & Reimer, James D. 2019. Expanding walls and shrinking beaches: loss of natural coastline in Okinawa Island, Japan. PeerJ (San Francisco, CA), 7, e7520–e7520.

Mathews, Andrew S.. 2005. Power/Knowledge, Power/Ignorance: Forest Fires and the State in Mexico. Human ecology: an interdisciplinary journal, 33(6), pp.795-820.

McCormack, Gavan & Norimatsu, Satoko Oka. 2012. Resistant Islands: Okinawa Confronts Japan and the United States. Second Edition. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.

Okinawa bōeikyoku. February 2020. Kōji no jisshi jōkyō nado ni tsuite shiryō 4. Accessed September 18, 2021

Okinawa bōeikyoku. May 2020. Kōji no jisshi jōkyō nado ni tsuite shiryō 5. Accessed September 18, 2021

Okinawaken bunka kankyōbu shizen hogoka. 2008. Okinawaken sango ishoku manyuaru. Naha. Accessed December 02, 2021

Okinawan Prefectural Government Washington D.C. Office. 2017. Why Do We Oppose the Relocation to Henoko?. Accessed September 15, 2021

Okinawa taimusu. 2021. Henoko shinkichi, gogan chakkō kara 4 nen umetate shinchoku wa yaku 5%.Asahi Shimbun, April 26, 2021. Accessed November 29, 2021

Okubo, Nami; Taniguchi, Hiroki & Motokawa, Tatsuo. 2005. Successful methods for transplanting fragments of Acropora formosa and Acropora hyacinthus. Coral Reefs, 24(2), 333–342.

Okubo, Nami; Taniguchi, Hiroki & Omori, Makoto. 2009. Sexual Reproduction in Transplanted Coral Fragments of Acropora nasuta. Zoological Studies, 48(4).

Ryūkyū Asahi Broadcasting & Norimatsu, Satoko. 2010. Assault on the Sea: A 50-Year U.S. Plan to Build a Military Port on Ōura Bay, Okinawa. The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Volume 8 | Issue 27 | Number 8 | Article ID 3381 | July 05, 2010. Accessed December 02, 2021

Tamaki, Yasuhiro; Katō, Yū; Nakanishi, Takahiro; Matsunaga, Kazuhiro & Miyaguni, Hideo. 2021. Ikenshō. August 15, 2021. Accessed December 02, 2021

Tanji, Miyume. 2006. Myth, protest and struggle in Okinawa. London: Routledge.

Yoshikawa, Hideki & Okinawa Environmental Justice Project. 2020. The Plight of the Okinawa Dugong. The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Volume 18 | Issue 16 | Number 2 | Article ID 5451 | Aug 15, 2020. Accessed December 9, 2021

Notes

Accidents include the crash of a helicopter into a building of Okinawa International University in 2004 and the drop of a helicopter window in 2017 on the sports field of Daini Futenma Elementary School while kids were playing outside.

The topic of a “Chinese threat” has been employed frequently by the Japanese government to justify further militarization, not just at Henoko and Okinawa Main Island, but also other islands of the Ryūkyū Archipelago, such as Yonaguni and Miyako Island and in policies toward Taiwan and other areas of US-China conflict.

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Indonesia Export Ban Puts China in a Coal Bind

January 6th, 2022 by Jeff Pao

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China may need to loosen its punitive restrictions on Australian coal imports to maintain reliable power supplies due to an Indonesian ban on exports of the fuel, according to several articles widely circulated on Chinese news websites.

Indonesia announced on December 31, 2021, that it would suspend coal exports in January or until its coal suppliers could fulfill the requirement of selling at least 25% of their output to domestic buyers at US$70 per ton.

Indonesian officials said the measure was aimed at helping local power plants secure enough coal to generate affordable electricity. The Southeast Asian nation is China’s largest coal supplier.

China, which suffered a nationwide power crunch due to a surge in global coal prices last September, stabilized its coal supply by boosting coal production in Shanxi province and importing more from Russia over the past few months. Domestic coal prices also started to ease last month.

However, Indonesia’s suspension of coal exports could create another coal shortage in China by March if no action is taken to alleviate the situation, according to a Golden Sun Securities research report.

In late September, three northeastern provinces – Liaoning, Jilin and Heilongjiang – that are home to nearly 100 million people announced power cut plans, which resulted in major disruptions to the daily lives of people and business operations.

Many people were stuck in elevators, traffic lights were turned off and candles sold out. Water supplies were also affected by the power crunch in some districts.

Power plants in Guangdong province also announced new measures to limit electricity consumption. After the central government intervened and urged Shanxi province and Inner Mongolia to boost coal output, the power crunch eased in the fourth quarter.

On Tuesday, China’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said prices of 34 coal products including mixed coal declined in late December from mid-December, while the prices of 12 other coal products including coking coal increased.

Liu Xiangdong, a researcher at the China Center for International Economic Exchanges, a Beijing-based think tank, said coal prices were declining, showing that the undersupply situation had improved.

Liu said Indonesia’s temporary coal export ban would bump up international coal prices in the short run but would not have a big impact on China, which could boost internal coal output to meet its demand.

Su Jia, a researcher at Chem365.net, an industrial website, told Securities Daily that as China self-supplied most of its coal consumption, the impact of Indonesia’s coal export ban on China would be manageable.

Su also said electricity demand at Chinese factories would decline between mid-January and mid-February due to the Chinese New Year holiday, reducing the short-term impact of Indonesia’s ban.

In the first 11 months of 2021, China’s coal production hit 3.67 billion tons while the country imported 290 million tons of coal, the NBS said on December 15.

During the same period, China imported 178 million tons of coal, mainly steam or thermal coal, from Indonesia, representing 61% of China’s total coal imports, according to the General Administration of Customs.

Since November 6, 2020, China banned coal imports from Australia amid a downturn in relations that has spiraled into a bilateral trade war. After China was hit by a power crunch last September, it imported 2.79 million tons of Australian coal stored at China’s seaports pending customs clearance.

On Tuesday, an article titled “Indonesia stabs a knife in China’s back by suddenly banning coal export” was widely circulated by Chinese news websites. The article said the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), a free-trade agreement signed by 15 Asia-Pacific nations including China and Indonesia, took effect on January 1, 2022, but Indonesia immediately backtracked.

The article also said China had recently signed a new agreement to boost thermal coal imports from Indonesia, which exported more than 400 million tons of the fuel globally in 2020.

“After temporarily losing Indonesia’s coal supply, we may have to buy coal from Australia. But this should only be our last resort,” it said, adding that China could wait for Indonesia’s coal export ban to end while importing more from Russia, Mongolia and other countries, or boost domestic production.

Other commentators tried to explain the situation from a geopolitical perspective as the coal export ban was announced soon after China warned Indonesia against drilling for oil and natural gas in maritime territory in the North Natuna Sea that both countries regard as their own, and after a months-long stand-off in the South China Sea earlier last year.

An unnamed Chinese columnist, who claimed to be a law professor at Zhejiang Gonshang University, speculated in an article that United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken could have played a role in Indonesia’s coal export ban during his visit to Jakarta on December 13, 2021, without providing evidence to back the claim.

He said even if the US was playing tricks, the ban would not hurt China, which could boost coal imports from Russia.

He noted Russia exported 52.9 million tons of coal to China between January and November 2021 and had become China’s third-largest supplier. He said Indonesia’s ban might push up international coal prices in the short run but China’s energy security would not be affected in the long run.

Indonesia’s Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources will hold a meeting on January 6 to review its coal export ban, according to media reports. Originally the meeting was scheduled for Wednesday but it was postponed by a day.

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Featured image: View of Suralaya coal power plant in Cilegon city, Banten Province, Indonesia. Image by Kasan Kurdi / Greenpeace.

New US Embargo on Cambodia over Friendship with China

January 5th, 2022 by Brian Berletic

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The United States continues a process of targeting and isolating nations around the globe increasingly choosing to do business with Beijing rather than Washington. The most recent of these is the Southeast Asia nation of Cambodia.

For years Cambodia has incrementally pivoted from once serving US foreign policy objectives in the region, to striking a balance between East and West, to now doubling down on its ties with China in response to increasing levels of coercion not only from the US, but also from America’s European allies.

In early December 2021 the US announced an arms embargo on Cambodia, following sanctions against Cambodian leaders, for what the US claims is China’s “deepening military influence” in the country, CNBC reported.

In their article, “US orders arms embargo on Cambodia, cites Chinese influence,” CNBC would claim:

The US has ordered an arms embargo on Cambodia, citing deepening Chinese military influence, corruption and human rights abuses by the government and armed forces in the Southeast Asian country.

The article would also note:

A notice in the Federal Register said developments in Cambodia were “contrary to US national security and foreign policy interests.”

Regarding previous US sanctions against Cambodian politicians, CNBC would report:

The latest restrictions follow the Treasury Department’s ordering in November of sanctions against two senior Cambodian military officials for corruption and come amid increasing concern about Beijing’s sway.

CNBC would also point out that the US has imposed similar “controls” on other nations around the globe including Myanmar, China, Russia, and Venezuela.

Indeed, the list of nations the US is attempting to isolate for either not subordinating themselves sufficiently to Washington’s “national security and foreign policy interests” or who have chosen to do business instead with Washington’s large and growing list of adversaries continues to expand – reflecting a global shift of power from West to East and exposing the overused nature of US sanctions, embargoes, and other threats that are clearly proving unconvincing even for smaller nations like Cambodia.

Cambodia’s relationship with the United States for decades could easily be described as a “hostage” situation. In addition to the constant threat of sanctions and embargoes, Cambodia also faced a US-sponsored political opposition Washington sought to eventually install into power.

The now banned Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) is currently based in Washington DC with several of its senior leaders either openly residing in the United States, in other Western countries, or who have admitted to receiving extensive US government backing in their bid to take power in Cambodia.

In a Phnom Penh Post article titled, “Sokha video producer closes Phnom Penh office in fear,” one of these senior CNRP leaders – Kem Sokha – would be quoted as saying:

“…the USA that has assisted me, they asked me to take the model from Yugoslavia, Serbia, where they can change the dictator [Slobodan] Milosevic,” he continues, referring to the former Serbian and Yugoslavian leader who resigned amid popular protests following disputed elections, and died while on trial for war crimes.

He would also claim:

“I do not do anything at my own will. There experts, professors at universities in Washington, DC, Montreal, Canada, hired by the Americans in order to advise me on the strategy to change the dictator leader in Cambodia.”

The US – as it does in nations around the globe it is targeting for political and economic coercion or even regime change – had also been funding a network of organizations engaged in political interference within Cambodia.

This included US State Department-funded media platforms operating inside Cambodia ranging from Radio Free Asia and Voice of America, to fronts posing as rights groups including LICADHO and the Cambodian Center for Independent Media (CCIM).

These US-sponsored organizations together with the CNRP sought to execute the  “Yugoslavia model,” to overthrow the Cambodian government and install into power the CNRP.

The “Yugoslavia model” itself is, according to the New York Times, based on US interference in Serbia during the late 1990’s regarding the overthrow of Slobodan Milosevic. Opposition groups including Otpor were admittedly funded to the tune of several million dollars a year by the US government toward this end.

What the US claims is Cambodia carrying out “human rights abuses” and being mired in “corruption” is simply Cambodia uprooting US interference within its internal political affairs and opting instead to do business with nations like China who respect Cambodia’s national sovereignty and are content with simply doing business.

Free of US interference, Cambodia is able to decide on geopolitical matters in terms of what is in the best interests of itself and the region in which it resides.

CNBC and other Western publications reporting on Cambodia decry the nation’s support for China over claims in the South China Sea vis-a-vis Washington’s attempts to undermine them.

Cambodia has also been accused by Washington of preparing to invite China’s navy in to use its ports. It is interesting that the United States – a nation with a global military presence including several ongoing illegal military occupations – is decrying what would be a mutually agreed upon deal between Cambodia and China inside Cambodia’s sovereign territory.

Decades ago the US was able to maintain its global primacy in a way that made it look effortless. Today, these efforts appear clumsy and even desperate – used with growing ineffectiveness against an ever increasing number of “disobedient” nations.

Cambodia, with a population of only 16.7 million people, counts the United States as its largest export market, with over 20% of Cambodian exports headed to the US versus 6% to China. Almost two-thirds of Cambodia’s exports go to either the US or Europe. And despite this – Cambodia has still found it either necessary or preferable to ignore US and European coercion and embrace China along with the rest of Asia.

Cambodia joins a growing list of nations doing so, aware of what the world will look like in not only the intermediate future – but also in the very near future. And while that future would appear bright for those subscribing to a multipolar world free of Western hegemony, the US is determined to make nations pay a heavy price through sanctions, embargoes, and other forms of coercion for preparing its way.

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Brian Berletic is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

Featured image is from NEO

US Plays Tibet Card as India Seeks Modus Vivendi with China

January 5th, 2022 by M. K. Bhadrakumar

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The cracking sound of ice breaking on the frozen lake of India-China relations will trigger a new wave of US-backed media campaign to instigate the hawks. Armed with satellite imageries made available from the US and peppered with random, free-wheeling remarks by garrulous Indian ex-generals and academics, the Washington Post has drawn attention to the Ladakh region.  

A feature article in WaPo on Wednesday, ostensibly reporting from the construction site of the $600 million Zoji La tunnels in Kargil, Ladakh,  is backed by imageries from Maxar, known to be “the indispensable mission partner” of the US Government, providing satellite imagery and expert intelligence. 

The Americans know from experience that it takes just 3 minutes to raise dust in Delhi, as the well-known diplomat Robin Raphel once boasted a quarter century ago. At the high noon of the standoff in Ladakh last year, Indian experts were freely provided with satellite imageries from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI). 

But ASPI is taking a back seat now. Its hands are full with “research topics” assigned by its sponsors regarding China. The ASPI is funded by the Australian Department of Defence and intelligence agencies and defence industries and by the US Department of State — and, incidentally, its mandate includes “talent recruitment.”

The US interference in the Sino-Indian relationship is as old as the hills. In the period ahead, there is going to be much activity on this front. Inciting the hawkish public opinion in India is the best means to forestall any modus vivendi in India-China relations. 

The disclosure on December 15 by a top Kremlin official that Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed with Chinese President Xi Jinping the topic of a Russia-India-China summit meeting must have set alarm bells ringing in American circles. 

Meanwhile, there have been other signs too of an incipient rethink in Delhi on the wisdom of hitching the Indian wagons to the QUAD at a juncture when US politics is becoming highly unstable and the efficacy of the Biden Administration’s Indo-Pacific strategy is in serious doubt. 

Biden’s own political future is being discussed animatedly in the US. The Indo-Pacific strategy is being reduced to the stuff of rhetoric by the state department. Of course, Secretary of State Blinken is good at hyperbolic rhetoric, but what’s there in it for India? 

Even the fate of the QUAD’s vaccine manufacturing plans remains unclear until the true characteristics of Omicron, the new coronavirus variant ravaging the western world, are better understood.  

With compelling signs that the US is once again shacking up with the Pakistani generals and the Taliban over Afghanistan and Central Asia, what option does India have but to work on creating a peaceful external environment that enables it to sustain its development strategy? Contrary to earlier indications, the S-400 missile defence system from Russia is going to be deployed in Punjab. 

The heart of the matter is that peace has prevailed in Ladakh for close to a year and a half. Doomsday predictions have withered away. It’s clear by now that China is keen to keep things this way and is not seeking to create new facts on the ground so that with tensions steadily lowering and emotions calming down, the diplomats and political leaderships can start working on the root causes of the standoff ensuing from what Beijing calls India’s “forward policy.” 

The Chinese commentators have instantly warmed up to the appointment of PK Rawat as India’s next envoy to Beijing. A top Chinese think tanker Liu Zongyi, Secretary General of China and South Asia Cooperation Research Center at the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies, who knew Rawat apparently, has written in Global Times: 

“Rawat understands China much better than some dilettantish, so-called China hands… An important reason for Rawat’s appointment is his understanding of China and the potential of promoting effective communication in the face of the current stalemate… Modi administration has made the decision to appoint a “China hand” as its ambassador to China, which is itself a signal. India may want to seek a breakthrough.” 

I don’t know Rawat personally, but, frankly, Liu’s caustic remark about India’s “dilettantish, so-called China hands” seems convincing. The best part about the Chinese expert opinion on Indian diplomacy, in general, must be their insightful grasp of the sub-soil of what passes for “China watching” in our country. 

Indeed, the signs are that there are stirrings in the Sino-Indian discourse. The stakes couldn’t be higher for the Biden Administration’s Indo-Pacific strategies if India careers away at the present juncture in regional politics to pursue independent non-aligned foreign policies toward China. The signs are there alright.

India stayed away from the recent G7+Five Eyes+ EU conclave in Liverpool with an express agenda to badmouth on Russia and China. It was the only QUAD country to be absent. 

Again, at the UN Security Council, Russia, China and India introduced a draft resolution on Sahel security after the bloody western intervention in the region backfired (as in Afghanistan.) Indeed, the deployment of the S-400 missile system in the teeth of US opposition speaks for itself.  

Can it be coincidence that against the above complex backdrop, on Monday, Blinken designated one of his deputy under-secretaries of state Uzra Zeya to serve concurrently as the US Special Coordinator for Tibetan Issues? 

The state department readout claims that Zeya will “will promote substantive dialogue, without preconditions” between Beijing and the Dalai Lama, “his representatives, or democratically elected Tibetan leaders in support of a negotiated agreement on Tibet.” 

And her charge includes attending to “the humanitarian needs of Tibetan refugees and diaspora communities” and ensuring that US diplomats get access to the Tibet region. 

By the way, Zeya, who once served in the American embassy in Delhi,  was suspected to have been involved in the famous incident of the arrest of Indian diplomat Devyani Khobragade in 2013 on concocted charges and deportation. Succinctly put, Zeya, a plucky Indian-American diplomat, will be Blinken’s eyes and ears in Delhi and Dharamshala. 

After Hong Kong and Xinjiang, Tibet has also entered the spotlight for the US’ Indo-Pacific strategy. A group of US lawmakers has called on President Biden to receive the Dalai Lama in the White House. Washington is signalling to Delhi that it can rely on American support in any great game vis-à-vis China. Delhi shouldn’t fall into the trap. 

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Featured image: Undersecretary of State Uzra Zeya has been designated as US Special Coordinator for Tibetan Issues, Washington, Dec. 20, 2021 (Source: Indian Punchline)

Japan’s New Right Flexes, Snubs US, at Yasukuni Shrine

December 15th, 2021 by Jake Adelstein

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Asia’s history wars are heating up again after 99 Japanese lawmakers visited the controversial Yasukuni Shrine on December 7 the 80th anniversary of the day Japan attacked Pearl Harbor as well as American, British and Dutch forces across the Pacific, an assault that massively expanded World War II.

The visitors included not only lawmakers from the ruling conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), but also two right-wing parties – the Japan Innovation Party and Japan’s National Democratic Party – that are newly empowered after the election for the Lower House of the Diet in November.

The mass visit – Asia Times has been unable to discover a larger recent visit to the shrine by politicians – makes clear how closely these two “opposition” parties are aligned with the LDP. That alignment goes far beyond an attachment to a revisionist, “Lost Cause” narrative about Japan’s Pacific War.

As Asia Times previously reported, the two parties are also bullish on beefing up Japan’s armed forces and revising Japan’s pacifist constitution. This gives the ruling party added impetus in these areas, both of which are contentious among their neighbors – who, predictably, complained about the visit.

The rising nationalism may well be homegrown. But there are also external factors in play. The expanded strength of conservatives in the Diet indicates that increasing numbers of ordinary Japanese – cautious of China’s increasing assertiveness, fearful of North Korean missiles and irked by South Korea’s continued stridency about Japan’s historical misdeeds – support these trends.

All this suggests that deeper tensions are likely in the near future between Tokyo, on the one hand, and Beijing and Seoul on the other. These tensions could become explosive: Northeast Asia is engaged in an under-reported arms race, with all players adding such weapons as missiles, stealth fighters and aircraft carriers.

Those tensions are likely to further bog down Washington’s efforts to get Seoul and Tokyo to operate together against Beijing in areas like the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait. Indeed, unconfirmed Korean media reports say Tokyo is preparing economic retaliation against Seoul.

Moreover, the apparent snub aimed at the US suggests that Japanese nationalists are not as closely aligned with Washington – Tokyo’s wartime nemesis but post-war ally – as the latter might hope. This explains the gleeful jeering in Chinese media and social media over the date of the visit.

Pearl Harbor day at Yasukuni Shrine

Yasukuni Shrine is seen by some simply as a Shinto site memorializing Japan’s millions of war dead – who include not just soldiers and sailors but also civilians killed in fire and atomic bombings.

But others point to the Class-A war criminals who are also enshrined among them, and the shrine’s museum, which promotes an imperialistic view of Japanese war-making.

The right-wing organization that organized the visit, “Diet Members’ Group Who Say Let’s Visit Yasukuni Shrine Together” is chaired by former deputy speaker of the House of Councilors, Hidehisa Otsuji.

It is the first time the parliamentary group has visited the shrine since the autumn festival in October 2019. The group usually visits the shrine in spring and autumn, and on August 15, the anniversary of the end of the Pacific War.

However, for the last two years, the group decided not to visit due to Covid-19. The purpose of this visit was ostensibly, “to ask the spirits of the war dead for protection from coronavirus.”

The visit sparked complaints from China, which was invaded by Japan in 1937, and from Korea, which had been colonized by Japan from 1910 to 1945.

Referring to the Yasukuni visit, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said, “Rather than learning historical lessons, they only seek to revive the specter of militarism. The Japanese side should adopt a right attitude, deeply reflect upon the Japanese militarism’s fascist atrocities and crimes against humanity and win trust from people around the world with concrete actions.”

South Korean Foreign Ministry spokesperson Choi Young-sam expressed “deep concern and regret” over the facilities that “glorify” Japan’s colonial past and invasions. Earlier, on October 17, the ministry made similar statements after Prime Minister Fumio Kishida sent an offering to the shrine.

What was surprising about the visit was not just the size of the lawmakers’ delegation, and its multi-party makeup, but also the date: December 7. The date is the 80thanniversary of the Japanese naval air strike on Pearl Harbor naval base that bought the United States into World War II.

While that attack was only one element in a superbly coordinated, mass Japanese offensive that near-simultaneously also hit British forces in then-Malaya, Dutch forces in the then-East Indies, and US forces in the Philippines, it is Pearl Harbor that has become enshrined in public memory.

US ships burn amid the 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Image: Wikimedia Commons

Due to the time difference across such vast geographies, the attack on Pearl Harbor actually took place on December 8, Japan-time, but in the US it was December 7. The latter date has become enshrined in most histories.

The big question is whether the timing was a deliberate snub to the US, orchestrated by the growing radical revisionist right-wing elements in the Diet – or just (insensitive) business as usual.

Though the Barack Obama administration was critical of Japanese prime ministerial visits to the site, Washington has this time remained silent. There was no response on the US State Department’s website, nor did the US Embassy in Japan – called by Asia Times – offer any comment.

Chinese media and social media had no such restraint. Outspoken state-owned media Global Times said the visit “spits on the US victory” in World War II.

Da Zhigang, director and research fellow of the Institute of Northeast Asian Studies at the Heilongjiang Provincial Academy of Social Sciences, told the Chinese newspaper that it was a “challenge” to the US.

Chinese social media users piled on, tagging the account of the US Embassy in China, asking, “You seen this? Global Times reported.

“Oh no, now the one who tags along stands up and slaps the US in the face?” wrote another Chinese netizen. “What are you gonna do big boss?”

Resurgent right wing

The LDP is a broad conservative church, and Prime Minister Fumio Kishida is widely considered a more middle-of-the-road figure than his two predecessors at the premiership, Yoshihide Suga and Shinzo Abe.

However, there are doubtless pressures pushing him further toward the right – pressures manifest on December 7.

Post-visit, Otsuji breezily told a press conference, “I am glad that I was able to visit the shrine for the first time in a long time.” But he also referred to Kishida, who has not been to Yasukuni since he took the national helm.

“I know he has a desire to visit the shrine,” Otsuji said. “I hope he will visit the shrine at the earliest opportunity.”

If he does, that will be a turnaround by a premier.

After the opprobrium that Abe caused by visiting the shrine in 2013, he did not go again for the rest of his term. That practice was followed by Suga. However, Abe made his personal feelings clear to all when he visited the shrine after resigning the premiership.

More broadly, over the last 20 years, a range of Japanese politicians and opinion leaders have steadily walked back early admissions of guilt and responsibility for World War II.

In July 2006, in a session of the Diet, Abe implied that the Class A War Criminals at Yasukuni weren’t really criminals at all and that a visit to Yasukuni was fine. In 2016, Suga made clear just before Abe’s visit to Pearl Harbor that the aim was “to pay respects to the war dead, not to offer an apology.”

Central in this attitude is the nationwide conservative lobby group Nippon Kagi (“Japan Conference”), which brings together influential members of society, such as media, business and politics. Otsuji is not just a member of the group; he has served on its board.

Among the aims of the group is gutting Article 9 of the constitution, which prohibits Japan from waging war, and allowing Japan to build a military capable of, and free to conduct, offensive operations.

While many in the United States would also like to see a more capable and less restrained Japanese military, they might be surprised to learn the animosity some members of Nippon Kaigi have toward the US-authored constitution, as well as its promotion of conservative, traditionalist gender and family values.

Since 2006, when Abe first became prime minister, “throwing off the shackles of the US,” has long been a goal of hard-right factions in the LDP. In 2012, the LDP created their own draft of a constitution to replace the current post-war version, which the majority of Japanese still holds sacrosanct.

Nippon Kaigi also wants an educational system that will promote a distinctly Japanese identity. That aim has raised accusations of blatant revisionism regarding historical touchpoints including the Nanjing Massacre and “comfort women.”

For such conservatives, Pearl Harbor was not a sneak attack but a defensive action necessitated by the US and Europe denying Japan strategic resources. And at a time when much of Asia was colonized by Western imperialists, Tokyo painted its strike into Southeast Asia as a war of liberation.

Seen through a historical prism, there is no question that Japanese actions did, indeed, hasten the end of Western imperialism in Southeast Asia and India. However, this narrative overlooks Japanese prior colonization of Korea, and its awesomely destructive war in China.

Constitution in the cross hairs

Constitutional revision is not simply about defense. The LDP’s proposed new constitution, which includes an emergency powers act, would enable the prime minister to suspend civil rights and make laws during a state of emergency.

Legal scholar Lawrence Repeta wrote in his 2013 essay, “Japan’s Democracy at Risk – The LDP’s Ten Most Dangerous Proposals for Constitutional Change” that it would “reject the universality of human rights” and possibly end Japan’s post-war liberal democracy.

From 2009, Abe, who remains an LDP kingmaker as he heads the largest faction of the LDP, was head of an extremist think tank and lobby group, Sosei Nippon (“Create Japan”), comprised of LDP lawmakers and other conservatives. There is considerable overlap between Nihon Sosei and Diet Members’ “Group Who Say Let’s Visit Yasukuni Shrine Together.”

Former minister of justice Nagase Jinenm at a grand convention on constitutional revision, held by Sosei Nippon in 2012, declared, “The people’s sovereignty, basic human rights and pacifism ― these three things date to the postwar regime imposed by MacArthur on Japan, therefore we have to get rid of them to make the constitution our own.”

At the same meeting, Tomomi Inada, a former minister of defense, proclaimed, “To protect the country, the people must shed their blood. Only Japan, which has dedicated itself to the imperial family for 2,600 years, is qualified to become a moral superpower.”

These kinds of comments, and the visit to Yasukuni, raise the eyebrows of scholars.

“One hopes that they went there to pray for the three million Japanese and some 15 million Asians sacrificed on the altar of ultra-nationalism in a reckless war initiated in 1931 by Japan’s ruling militarist and civilian leaders – not genuflecting at ground zero of the revisionist exculpatory and vindicating narrative of Japan’s wartime aggression,” said Jeff Kingston, an author and professor of Japanese studies.

Another scholar suggested that the visit was not out of context with those visits to war graves by Western politicians, whose forces have also fought colonial and expeditionary wars.

“They are signaling to conservative constituencies their respect for what in other countries would be regarded as a War Memorial site,” said Shaun O’Dwyer, an associate professor in the Faculty of Languages and Cultures at Kyushu University. “That does not mean they are genuflecting to any State Shinto ideology.”

But, he added, “It may be that a higher number of such conservative politicians embrace a ‘Lost Cause’ ideology of Japan’s war of 1937-45.”

Koichi Nakano, an expert on Japanese politics at Sophia University, was uncertain about the motive and date of the visit. It was hard to tell if it was a deliberate snub to the US, he said, noting that the Diet session had just opened the day before, meaning all parliamentarians were in Tokyo.

“I would say that there are not enough reasons to assume that it was a deliberate snub,” he continued. “They would easily do something like that against the Chinese or the Koreans, but they generally avoid antagonizing the Americans.”

As an example, he noted that the Yasukuni Museum’s display about Pearl Harbor was modified due to complaints from the US. But he also suggested that the December 7 visit was making up for the lack of a visit during the customary autumn festival that was made impossible due to Covid-19.

The latter point is germane. While there are high-profile visits every August 15, Yasukuni authorities prefer visits during the spring and autumn festivals, as they are not related to a single conflict. Yasukuni is a shrine for all Japanese war dead – not just those from the Pacific War.

The controversial Yasukuni Shrine – where war criminals are enshrined, but which conservative politicians feel compelled to visit – is an emotive touchstone for both the Japanese right and the country’s neighbors. Photo: Tom Coyner

Apology fatigue

Another scholar noted that even within Japan, Yasukuni polarizes opinion but external criticisms are driving a nationalist backlash.

“Yasukuni is divisive in Japan but there is a legitimate view that regardless of whether or not it is wholly representative, there is this question of, ‘Why can’t we go?’ – it should be the national leader’s choice to visit,” said Haruko Satoh, who teaches Japan’s relations with Asia at the Osaka School of International Public Policy.

Satoh is critical of Abe and points out that Kishida’s cabinet is not hard right with members from across a broad political spectrum. But she frets that Beijing and Seoul are – ironically – empowering Japanese nationalists.

“People like Abe and elements of the right-wing are more to do with restoring the imperial state and all that nationalism,” she said. “But there is also a reaction to Chinese and Koreans harping on these issues. There is apology fatigue.”

Korean vernacular media KBS reported this week that the LDP had chaired a committee to respond economically to South Korea’s actions, which include seizing the assets of Japanese firms to compensate those forced to labor during World War II. Asia Times has been unable to confirm this report.

Japan’s position is that hundreds of millions of dollars were paid in compensation to settle this and other issues in 1965 and that the Korean courts’ actions breach that agreement.

But beyond Korean-Japan economic squabbles, and beyond the domestic actions and aspirations of Japan’s hard right, real, region-relevant, political power dynamics are in play.

High-profile politicians have opened a national debate on what Japan’s stance should be toward the defense of Taiwan, which is fast becoming a regional flashpoint.

Regardless of the lack so far of constitutional revision, Japan is beefing up its self-defense forces with expeditionary assets, including marines and aircraft carriers – assets it has not held since 1945. Having given up on an Aegis-ashore missile defense system, Tokyo is mulling a first-strike capability against North Korea.

And this week, as Tokyo invited media to watch military drills in Hokkaido, Prime Minister Kishida addressed the Diet on the issue of raising the national defense budget. That followed the passage last month of a record supplementary defense budget.

In October, Kishida raised the possibility of doubling defense spending, customarily kept within 1% of GDP, to the NATO standard of 2%. With Japan the world’s third-largest economy and already a global Top-10 defense spender, that would be huge sum.

Amid these developments, Japanese nationalism and Tokyo’s increased defense spending “are being coalesced by China and Korea,” Satoh said. “If they keep doing this, they will make it happen, as they are inciting this unnecessary level of Japanese drive.”

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Featured image: The Yasukuni Shrine is a symbol of nationalism to many Japanese and one of aggression and abuse among its former and current adversaries. Image: Facebook

India-Bangladesh Ties at Inflection Point

December 14th, 2021 by M. K. Bhadrakumar

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In the life of a nation, perhaps, the first fifty years ought to be regarded as marking the rites of passage through adolescence. India can congratulate itself for helping navigate Bangladesh through a difficult childhood. Parentage of a precocious child isn’t easy and Bangladesh can be opinionated, while figuring out its own pathway. India hasn’t always been an indulgent guardian, either. It has been a complex relationship fraught with loaded history and intense cultural and ethnic identities. 

In the recent decades, India adopted a novel experiment — tacit acquiescence with the rise of authoritarianism in Bangladesh. Fundamentally, not to be prescriptive towards others about “values” is the  correct norm to maintain in inter-state relationships. The ploy worked. 

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s domestic politics gained decisively out of Delhi’s tacit encouragement for her authoritarian rule. Hasina reciprocated in areas that constituted some of India’s core interests. This tactical arrangement suited both sides. Admittedly, the volatility in India’s far-flung northeastern region would have aggravated without Hasina’s helping hand. India showed its gratitude in the generous land deal settling the border dispute. 

A critical mass is available today to build a superstructure in the bilateral relationship, with eye on the future. Now, this is also where a huge challenge lies. India has self-interests in keeping things just the way it is, but life is dynamic. 

For a start, the matrix of peace, regional stability and stability is inextricably linked with connectivity. Bangladesh is, therefore, an indispensable partner. With its cooperation, India gets better connectivity to integrate the restive northeastern regions. 

To be sure, India’s own future lies in enhancing its connectivity with the adjacent Asian countries with booming economies. It can be potentially a game changer if and when India jettisons its autarchic mindset and decides to join the new supply chains emerging out of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), the single biggest free trade zone on the planet. But geopolitics takes precedence over geoeconomics in the Indian policies.  

The RCEP is coming into effect on 1st January 2022 and India is not part of it. Hopefully, this may change in future, since, as history shows, it is usually the case that it is those countries that are in the money business, finance, and international trade who are the really rich. Whereas, nationalism makes nations poor ultimately because its Siamese twin, protectionism, will destroy the internal market and disrupt international trade. 

Barack Obama’s truism that post-Brexit Britain, in respect of international trade, would have to get to the back of the queue applies to India’s predicament as well. Late Angus Maddison, the distinguished British economist specialising in quantitative macro economic history, has calculated that in the pre-colonial 18th century setting, China and India together accounted for 50% of global trade. Suffice to say, Bangladesh’s potential to be a “bridge” to the world’s most dynamic market is yet to surge on the Indian consciousness, and may have to wait until India’s autarchic mindset itself transforms in a paradigm shift. Like it or not, the world’s future is tied to China and India — not China or India. 

If India is no longer Bangladesh’s goal keeper and the relationship is approaching an inflection point, it is precisely because this much smaller South Asian neighbour, endowed with enviable intellectual resources, is thinking through its condition rationally, and its scramble for trade and investment has taken it to an array of economic partners. Evidently, the zero-sum thought experiment that Indians are wedded to holds hardly any relevance for the Bangladeshi calculus. 

In a rare piece of advice for India, during an interaction with a visiting team of Indian journalists in Dhaka, Hasina once said, “India has nothing to be worried about it (China-Bangladesh ties). I will (rather) suggest India should have good relations with its neighbours, including Bangladesh, so this region could be developed further and we can show the world that we all work together.”   

Unsurprisingly, India’s shrill campaign against China’s Belt and Road and its apocalyptic warnings of an impending “debt trap”, et al, fail to impress Bangladesh. In fact, the mega multipurpose road-rail bridge dubbed the Dream Padma Bridge, built by China Railway Major Engineering Group Co, connecting Dhaka with several southern districts of the country, is nearing completion. To be inaugurated by Hasina next June, it is the largest and most challenging project in Bangladesh’s history. 

China has promised around US$ 30 billion worth of financial assistance to Bangladesh. China has also declared zero-duty for 97 percent of the Bangladeshi imports. Bangladesh has no qualms about partnering in China’s flagship Belt and Road Initiative in South Asia. China has also occupied the seat of the top investor in Bangladesh.

Bangladesh’s astute diplomacy has maximised its strategic autonomy. Its independent foreign policy enables it to preserve the verve of its ties with all major powers as its “all-weather friends” — Japan and China, Russia and the US. The result is plain to see: Bangladesh is all set to become a middle-income country by 2024.

By conflating Beijing’s economic interests in Bangladesh with Delhi’s obsessive geo-strategy, India has lost the plot. Besides, although the history of colonialism and non-alignment are shared experiences for both India and Bangladesh, India is no longer wedded to a principled worldview. As External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar puts it, India today pursues its “national interests by identifying and exploiting opportunities created by global contradictions… to extract as much gains from as many ties as possible”. But Bangladesh takes a contrarian perspective, focusing instead on its resilience to create the space to adapt and give ballast to development, which is the topmost priority in its national agenda. 

An ellipsis is developing as Bangladesh charters its own course and is poised to move forward as the most progressive regional state in South Asia with markedly improving indices of development. Looking ahead, other countries in the South Asian region are bound to get increasingly attracted to the “Bangladesh model”. 

This is a proud occasion for that country’s 165 million people. The nation has rallied to its founder Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s poignant call to his followers a few hours before his arrest on the fateful night of 25th  March, 1971: “I have given you independence, now go and preserve it.” 

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***

A national weekend of action against AUKUS was organised over December 10-12 with protests in Canberra, Perth, Sydney, Wollongong, Hobart, Brisbane and Adelaide.

Around 40 people attended an action by the newly-founded campaign group Stop AUKUS – WA action in Boorloo/Perth on December 10 as part of a national weekend of action. The group’s three objectives are: No nuclear subs; No US bases; and No war with China. In his speech Greens Senator Jordon Steele-John emphasised the need to end the presence of US bases on Australian soil.

Other speakers included: Christopher Crouch from the Independent and Peaceful Australia Network; anti-nuclear campaigner Jo Vallentine; Socialist Alliance WA convenor Sam Wainwright; Elizabeth Hulm from the Communist Party of Australia; Peter Shannon from the Medical Association for Prevention of War and Nick Everett from Socialist Alternative..

Around 200 people protested in Sydney on December 11. Speakers included Wongkangurru man Raymond Finn, an anti-nuclear campaigner, who acknowledged country; Greens Senator Mehreen Faruqi; a speaker from School Strike 4 Climate; Lachlan Good from Young Labor Left and Warren Smith, Assistant National Secretary of the Maritime Union of Australia.

The lively protest, which marched through the CBD to Belmore Park, was endorsed by the Retail and Fast Food Workers Union, Maritime Union of Australia – MUA, United Workers Union, NTEU-NSW, as well as many anti-war and peace organisations and environment groups.

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Featured image: Sydney anti-AUKUS protest. Photo: Peter Boyle

How to Chill Free Speech: Defamation Down Under

December 13th, 2021 by Dr. Binoy Kampmark

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The free speech argument in Australia has always been skewed.  Lacking the confidence, courage and maturity to have a bill of rights that might protect it, Australia’s body politic has stammered its way to the frailest of protections.  The Australian High Court has done its small bit to read an implied right into one of the world’s dreariest constitutions, though the judges have been at pains to point out that it can never be personally exercised.  The wordy “implied right to protect freedom of communication on political subjects” can only ever act as a restraint on excessive legislative or executive actions.

The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Australia is a signatory, enumerates a right to hold opinions without interference and the right to freedom of expression (Article 19).  As uplifting as this is, the article also permits restrictions upon that right for reasons of protecting the rights or reputations of others, national security, public order, public health or morals.  With such exceptions, authorities have vast latitude to clip, curtail and restrain.  But even then, Australia expressly implemented the machinery that would enable anyone in the country to enforce it.

The great stifling brake on free expression in the country comes in the form of draconian defamation laws that can be used by the powerful, the petty and the privileged.  The political classes, for one, regularly resort to that mechanism to silence critics, claiming that their tattered reputations would somehow be impugned by a comedy sketch, an angry social media post, or a hurtful remark.

One particularly nasty example of this has come from current Defence Minister Peter Dutton, described by the late Bob Ellis as a “simian sadist”, a pious detainer of refugees.  Since then, we can also add war enthusiast, given his regular remarks about a willingness to send Australians over to die on that piece of land formerly known as Formosa.

Despite being in a government proclaiming the importance of free speech, Dutton has, like other politicians, availed himself of the tools that undermine it.  That tool – namely, the defamation action – was used recently, with partial and regrettable success, against refugee advocate Shane Bazzi.  It is worth reflecting that the action took place over a six-word tweet posted on February 25 this year.  The tweet was flavour-fuelled with accusation: “Peter Dutton is a rape apologist.”

It had been typed – as things often are – in the heat of anger: some hours after Dutton had told a press conference that he had not been furnished with the “she said, he said” details of a rape allegation made by Britney Higgins, a former Coalition staffer who has spurred a movement to redress Parliament’s sexual violence problem.

That comment, while seemingly rash, had rich context in terms of opinion, taking issue with Dutton’s characterisation of refugee women detained on Nauru as being the sort who were “trying it on” to ensure entry to the Australian mainland.  Those were Dutton’s own words, noted in a 2019 Guardian Australia article mentioned in the tweet.

This legal action was merely one measure of the Morrison government’s general enthusiasm for trying to regulate the Internet and, more specifically, the effusive, often mad hat chatter on social media.  Prime Minister Scott Morrison, no less, has called it “a coward’s place” filled with anonymous abusers and vilifiers, and has been on a crusade to make publishers of defamatory comments, and the platforms hosting them, liable.

Dutton had also promised in March with menace that he would start to “pick out some” individuals who were “trending on Twitter or have the anonymity of different Twitter accounts” posting “all these statements and tweets that are frankly defamatory.”

His government is also drafting laws which will require social media companies to gather the details of all users and permit courts to force companies to divulge their identities to aid defamation cases.  These regulations stink of advantating the powerful and political whose tendency to be offended is easy to provoke.  They also point to an obvious purpose: reining in criticism, however sound, of the government.

In instigating proceedings against Bazzi, Dutton claimed in the trial that he was “deeply offended” by the contents of the tweet.  He claimed to be a paragon of veracity and accuracy severely misunderstood.  “As a minister for immigration or home affairs … people make comments that are false or untrue, offensive, profane, but that’s part of the rough and tumble.”

Bazzi, however, had crossed the line; his comments were made by a person verified by Twitter.  “It was somebody that held himself out as an authority or a journalist.”  His remarks “went beyond” the acceptably rough and tumbling nature of politics. “And it went against who I am, my beliefs … I thought it was hurtful.”

In court, Dutton outlined a series of measures he had taken as a minister to deal with allegations of abuse.   He created the Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation.  He dispatched Australian Federal Police officers to Nauru to investigate sexual assault allegations.  It never once occurred to him that these initiatives took place on a problem of his own government’s making.  If you set up concentration camps on Pacific islands to allow asylum seekers and refugees to sunder, subsidizing client states to so, denigration and depravity follow.

Bazzi, through his lawyer, Richard Potter SC, claimed that the defences of honest opinion or fair comment applied.  According to Potter, the honest opinion defence was “a fundamental protection in our society”, “a bulwark of freedom of speech”.  In Australia, such assertions would be going too far, given how difficult they are to apply.

The law firm representing Bazzi, O’Brien Criminal and Civil Solicitors, also made the understandable claim in April that the whole proceedings should worry us all.  “For a politician to use defamation law to stifle expression of a public opinion is a cause for real concern.”

In the public domain, individuals who had known a thing or two about the spiritual and physical torment of rape expressed their puzzlement over Dutton’s response.  Higgins, who is seeking redress for her own suffering in this matter, found the minister’s legal response to Bazzi “baffling”.  “I’ve been offended plenty.”  Despite that, it still afforded “people … the right to engage in public debate and assert their opinion.”  The whole case was a “shocking indictment on free speech.”

From the outset, the Federal Court seemed, as much of Australia’s legal system is, inclined to the complainant.  The Anglo-Australian culture puts much stock in the artificial contrivance of reputation, which is often a social illusion that says little about the conduct of the defamed individual.  Reputations are often false veneers fiercely protected.

And so it came as no surprise that Justice Richard White was critical of the legal firm defending Barazzi.  The justice asked those representing the firm whether they were appearing as solicitors with obligations to be objective and independent, or as “supporters and barrackers” of their client. He preferred the parties to seek a settlement.  “It does seem to me that this should be a matter of capable resolution.  There are risks on both sides.”

In finding for Dutton in November, Justice White ruled that the tweet had been defamatory, and that Bazzi could not resort to the defence of honest opinion.  With classic, skewering casuistry, the judge found that “Bazzi may have used the word ‘apologist’ without an understanding of the meaning he was, in fact conveying.”  If this had been the case, “it would follow that he did not hold the opinion actually conveyed by the words.”  Let it be known: if you do no not understand the meaning of certain words, you can have no opinions about them.

Despite his eagerness to seek damages for all grounds, Dutton was only successful on one of the four pleaded imputations.  Claims for aggravated damages and an injunction targeting Bazzi’s comments, were rejected.  The Defence Minister’s appetite for pursuing Bazzi for his full legal bill also troubled Justice White, who had repeatedly urged the parties to reach a settlement.  Why had Dutton not sued in a lower court, he asked?  The reason, claimed Dutton’s barrister Hamish Clift this month, was because his client was a prominent figure requiring a prominent stage to protect his prominent reputation.  “It would not be appropriate for the court,” retorted White, “to exercise their discretion more favourably to Dutton simply because of the important public and national office of which he holds.”

In stating that all were equal before the law irrespective of their position, White made a sound point that those schooled in aspirational justice would appreciate but hardly believe.  When it comes to Australia’s defamation laws, such a statement is a matter of form and formality, not substance and reality.

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Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.  He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research. Email: [email protected]

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***

The China-Laos railway, connecting the landlocked Southeast Asian nation of Laos with China, has finally begun operations. This historic moment marked a new chapter for Laos which remains one of the poorest nations in the region.

Besides the devastation wrought by US war with neighboring Vietnam last century which saw the US drop more bombs on Laos than any other nation on Earth in human history – the Laotian economy has also long suffered from isolation owed to its difficult geography. Not only is Laos landlocked, it features terrain marked with mountains, valleys, and rivers that have hampered even the most basic movement of people and goods within the country’s borders and beyond them.

This has recently changed through a series of modern highways also built by China bringing the 3 day trip from Kunming, China to Laos’ capital Vientiane down to under a day. With the high speed railway now in operation, goods and people will move even faster with the trip from Vientiane near the Thai-Laos border to Laos’ border with China taking only 3 hours.

In order to build the 422 kilometer China-Laos railway 75 tunnels and over 60 km of bridges were built, just to gain an idea of how daunting Laos’ geography is and what Chinese engineers accomplished in building the new railway.

The railway is part of a much larger regional project which will eventually connect China and Laos to Thailand and perhaps even Malaysia and Singapore. The Thai leg of the network – featuring high-speed rail – is already under construction and regular rail already exists connecting Thailand’s cities and ports to the Thai-Laos border via the Thai city of Nong Khai.

With very little effort Laos’ new railway can be connected with existing Thai rail networks before the China-Thailand high-speed railway is even completed.

Ending Laos’ Chronic Poverty 

Chinese-built infrastructure has enabled Laos’ economy to rapidly grow annually. Chinese-built highways coupled with the new railway, and future projects both along the China-Laos railway and connecting to Thailand will continue expanding Laos’ economy in ways it otherwise could not.

A Bangkok Post article titled, “Calls to speed up link to Laos-China line,” would note:

The cost of shipments from Vientiane to Kunming in the southern Chinese province of Yunnan will be cut by 40-50% or US$30 per tonne, along with a 20-40% cost reduction on domestic routes, according to a World Bank report “From landlocked to land-linked: unlocking the potential of Lao-China rail connectivity”.

Exports from Laos to China were worth $1.7 billion in 2019 and could expand by about 20% per year, a report by UN Comtrade has said.

China is also Laos’ largest source of tourism with a direct link between China’s high-speed railway and the new China-Laos railway making it even easier for larger numbers of tourists to visit Laos, further enhancing Laos’ economic prospects.

Laos is being transformed from an isolated and impoverished state to an integral hub connecting East Asia to Southeast Asia. In the process, Laos itself will leave behind decades of chronic poverty and begin enjoying the prosperity of its ASEAN neighbors.

The West Mourns China and Laos’ Success

The China-Laos railway stands to move Laos from chronic poverty to potential prosperity, thanks to an infrastructure drive that is itself a marvel of modern engineering. One would think that alone should attract praise from around the globe and from the West first and foremost, a region and political bloc that poses as the globe’s patron of development and progress.

Yet in reality the West has enjoyed primacy worldwide precisely because its rhetoric regarding development and progress is deliberately empty with all efforts made to in fact delay, arrest, or even reverse progress made beyond Western borders. The West represents a fraction of the global population and in order to maintain primacy over the rest of the globe, arresting or reversing development is an absolute necessity.

China through its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has disrupted Western primacy by creating the infrastructure nations need to be prosperous individually and regions of the planet to be prosperous collectively.

While for most people Laos’ new railway is an exciting achievement and a sign of promise, for the West it is yet another sign of its waning power over the world and the shifting of its once uncontested power eastward.

Articles like The Diplomat’s “Laos-China Railway Inaugurated Amid Mounting Debt Concerns,” penned by Sebastian Strangio illustrate the West’s frustration and dismay as once “third world” nations obtain first world infrastructure.

Strangio’s article collects a variety of vague and unconvincing concerns expressed by Western pundits over Laos’ debt to China – as if they’ve “discovered” that building the new railway costs money and created debt. A cart before the horse argument is formulated claiming that because Laos is impoverished it will be unable to pay off the railway – failing to note that Laos is poor in the first place because it lacks basic infrastructure.

Strangio’s argument is not unique. Western headlines were full of similar narratives – apparently confident that Western audiences do not understand the long-term and indirect benefits massive infrastructure investment represents.

Sidestepping these otherwise irrelevant arguments is the heart of the West’s real issue with Laos’ new railway, that Laos is moving out from under the shadow of the West’s imperial legacy in the region and away from its various manifestations today.

Laos’ growing relationship with China also drives Western hand-wringing over the new railway, with claims suggesting China is all but taking over its small neighbor to the south. At one point an Associated Press article would quote Scott Morris of the Center for Global Development in Washington who claimed, “this is essentially a Chinese public infrastructure project that happens to exist in another country,” suggesting the project provides little if any benefit beyond China itself.

For ASEAN as a whole, the tangible benefits of doing business with China are obvious. Connectivity increases these benefits and as China rises the region rises with it. Together Asia is surpassing not only the United States but the West in general.

The railways China is building across the region travel both ways. They move Chinese-made goods into the region, but also Chinese tourists who spend money in Southeast Asia. When the trains return to China they will be taking with them exports from Southeast Asia. In regards to Laos, its economy is only achieving growth specifically because of Chinese-built infrastructure. There is no reason to believe, and the West has made no convincing argument to suggest otherwise – that the new railway wouldn’t simply enhance this trend further.

The West Has Only Itself to Blame

Strangio laments in his article that most of Laos’ debt is owed to China. But that isn’t because China is somehow preying on Laos. It’s because China is the only large global power that is able and willing to build the infrastructure Laos requires – be it rail or road.

The West had a multi-decade headstart over China but instead of building infrastructure across Southeast Asia during the “American century,” it bombed the region instead.

There are still an estimated 80 million submunitions scattered across Laos after America’s destructive war on Vietnam and its neighbors. That works out to about 11 for each man, woman, and child who lives in Laos. 20,000 people have been killed by unexploded US munitions and many more maimed which includes losing limbs.

According to the Lao National Unexploded Ordnance Programme (UXO LAO), 444,711 submunitions (about 0.55%) have been destroyed between 1996 and 2010.  Despite the dangerous and exhausting work, eliminating 0.55% of the 80 million submunitions still littering the country amounts to virtually nothing.

The Diplomat, in a 2016 article titled, “Obama in Laos: Cleaning up After the Secret War,” would claim:

In recent years, US support for UXO clearance and victim assistance in Laos has dramatically increased. In response to steady pressure from NGOs like Legacies of War and their allies in Congress, US funding for this work increased from $5 million in 2010 to a record $19.5 million this year. These resources, disbursed by the State Department’s Office of Weapons Removal and Abatement, are used to support clearance efforts that destroy up to 100,000 pieces of lethal ordnance in Laos annually, employing 3,000 workers in the commercial and humanitarian sectors.

At 100,000 submunitions per year, Laos should be safe from unexploded munitions in just under 1,000 years which for all intents and purposes means “never.”

In other words, the US and its allies have an insurmountable task ahead of them just to clean up the mess they’ve made in Laos nearly half a century ago. They also lack the ability or even the will to assist Laos in meaningful development including the building of essential infrastructure like roads and railways.

The West – as it stands currently – is organized solely around the pursuit of global hegemony in a world that has begun moving beyond the sort of socioeconomic and technological disparity that made the pursuit of hegemony viable in the first place. As the window continues to close on the effectiveness of the tools the West uses to pursue its brand of foreign policy, the resentment and resistance in the West to China’s rise and the rise of nations partnered with it will grow.

The Western media suggests Laos would be better off without China’s “influence,” but imagine where Laos would be without China. A trip from its capital Vientiane to the Laotian border with China would take 3 days over dusty, narrow, winding mountainous roads barely accommodating 2-way traffic in a nation that’s been mired in poverty for decades, and a nation that would otherwise be facing a bleak future with decades more of poverty awaiting.

Laos as a prosperous crossroads between East Asia and Southeast Asia is not something you need to imagine. It is a reality – thanks to China. It is a reality that you can experience today, by buying a ticket on Laos’ new railway.

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Brian Berletic is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

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Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has stated that the country will not be placed back into lockdown in response to the Omicron variant of Covid-19.

Morrison met with state and territory leaders on Tuesday afternoon to discuss the national response to the new variant of concern.

Prior to the meeting, Morrison stated that the federal, state, and territory governments would be cautious about Omicron, but ruled out a return to strict stay-at-home restrictions, according to the Xinhua news agency.

He said he would use the national cabinet meeting to implore state and territory leaders to keep domestic borders open in the run-up to Christmas.

“We’re not going back to lockdowns. None of us want that,” he told reporters in Canberra on Tuesday.

“What we did last night was protecting against that by having a sensible pause and to keep proceeding with where we are now and to further assess that information so we can move forward with confidence.”

Earlier on Tuesday, Health Minister Greg Hunt said that the federal government’s “overwhelming view” is that the Omicron variant is “manageable.”

Six cases of the new variant had been confirmed in Australia as of Tuesday.

Australia reported more than 1,100 new Covid-19 cases and nine deaths on Tuesday morning, as the country battles the third wave of infections.

The majority of new cases were reported in Victoria, the country’s second-most populous state with Melbourne as its capital city, which reported 918 cases and six deaths.

According to the Health Department, as of Monday, 92.4 percent of Australians aged 16 and up had received one vaccine dose and 87% had received their second dose.

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Brendan Taylor was a TV news producer for 5 and a half years. He is an experienced writer. Brandon covers Breaking News at Insider Paper.

Featured image is from Insider Paper

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Mount Apo, a protected area on the southern Philippine island of Mindanao, is threatened by small-scale illegal mining, which remains a lingering problem elsewhere in the resource-rich Southeast Asian nation.

Famous for being the tallest peak in the Philippines, at 3,143 meters (10,312 feet), Mt. Apo was declared a protected area about two decades ago. It spans 64,000 hectares (15,8147 acres), including the ancestral lands of Indigenous peoples, and is one of the most popular nature-based tourism sites in the country.

At a remote village home to the Obo Monuvu Indigenous people, called Manobo by lowlanders, illegal small-scale gold mining has left its mark, nearly a year after the mine was shut down by the authorities.

Mongabay tracked the mining tunnel deep in the forest of Magpet township in the province of North Cotabato with the help of tribal guides. Sacks of ore were piled up at the mouth of the tunnel, just beside a river and boarded up with wood.

“The operator did not seek permission from the tribal council to mine the area. They conducted their operations during the nighttime,” tribal chieftain Joel Buntal told Mongabay.

The illegal operation reached the attention of the Philippine environment secretary, Roy Cimatu, who in December 2020 ordered its closure following a raid in the area as a result of a tipoff.

“Whether big or small, any illegal mining activity will have to stop,” Cimatu said in a statement at the time.

The raiding team, led by officials from the Mines and Geosciences Bureau (MGB), an agency under Cimatu’s Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), discovered a tunnel running 5 meters (16 feet), indicating that the mining operation was still in its early stage.

Inside the tunnel were around 25 sacks, each containing approximately 90 kilograms (200 pounds) of ore, the MGB reported, adding that the illegal mining operation used manual tools and not heavy mining equipment.

There was no ongoing mining activity at the time of the raid, but signs of recent extraction were observed, it noted.

The mining activity was not within a declared Minahang Bayan or “people’s mining site,” hence the operation was illegal, the MGB said. There are around 40 such sitesthroughout the Philippines, where small-scale miners are legally allowed to operate within DENR guidelines.

In March this year, three months after the tunnel in Magpet was locked off, the MGB issued a cease-and-desist order against the illegal miners, who will face charges for violating mining laws.

Mt. Apo’s distinctive peaks, viewed from a campsite at Lake Venado. The Mt. Apo protected area is a major ecotourism site. Image by Long Hudson via Wikimedia (CC BY-SA 4.0).

The illegal mining site was within the ancestral domain of the Manobo and within the Mt. Apo protected area. It’s also part of a declared Indigenous Community Conserved Area (ICCA), Buntal said.

Buntal’s tribe declared part of their ancestral domain as an ICCA to assert their land rights and protect the important cultural and biological sites in their dominion, which houses not only their sacred grounds, such as their ancestors’ graves, but also serves as a habitat of diverse wildlife, including the rare and critically endangered Philippine eagle (Pithecophaga jefferyi).

An estimated 85% of the country’s key biodiversity areas (KBAs), or sites of high global biodiversity conservation importance, fall within the ancestral lands of Indigenous peoples, including the Manobo.

Manobo tribal leaders formed an association to push biodiversity protection. Out of the tribe’s 28,220 hectares (69,733 acres) of ancestral land within and near Mt. Apo, they set aside at least 5,000 hectares (12,400 acres) of richly forested land as an ICCA, or what they call a biodiversity corridor.

A bill has been filed in the Philippine Congress seeking the recognition of Indigenous people-led ICCA sites. At least 10 areas across the country have been identified as focus areas due to their rich biodiversity.

Although the Manobo’s ICCA declaration is not yet formally recognized by the government, they, like all Indigenous groups in the country, are legally entitled to the final say about the entry of development projects in their ancestral domain, through the process of free, prior and informed consent (FPIC).

In Magpet, there was a formal attempt in the 1990s to prospect for minerals, including gold, silver and copper, which was denied due to noncompliance with requirements, according to data from the MGB.

Government estimates place the value of the country’s untapped mineral deposits, including gold, to be at least $1 trillion.

Buntal said he recalled a mining company approaching his tribe for a potential open-pit mining operation on their ancestral land decades ago. But the tribe refused, saying the forest and its watershed are the community’s lifeline and livelihood. “We will not allow open-pit mining method in our ancestral domain. It will destroy our environment. The watershed will be devastated,” Buntal said.

Children at play near Mt. Apo in the southern Philippine island of Mindanao. The mountain is sacred to local Indigenous people and a haven for biodiversity. Image by Bong Sarmiento for Mongabay.

The artisanal small-scale gold mining industry employs some 300,000 to 500,000 miners in at least 30 provinces across the Philippines, according to an industry report. This includes children, as in the case of the illegal mine on the Manobo ancestral land.

Mongabay spoke to one of the child laborers, who said he typically carried four sacks of ore per day from the tunnel to a waiting truck, passing through a river several times and navigating steep and slippery slopes.

Each sack transported by foot weighs about 10 kg (22 lb), and at 5 pesos per kilo in pay, each child could earn 200 pesos (about $4) per day.

But they weren’t paid for their labor, which led them to complain to authorities, which in turn prompted the exposure of the illegal operation, said Benjamin Bugcal, a tribal council member. He added that ore was transported by truck to another part of Mindanao for processing.

Era España, another Manobo leader and former commissioner of the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP), said there have been other illegal small-scale mining operations in the past that encroached on ancestral lands at the foot of Mt. Apo.

These operations existed “because the tribe allowed them,” she said, even without going through the legal process.

España said that all investments within ancestral lands in the Mt. Apo protected area and its buffer zones should undergo the FPIC process, in which the tribe is given the opportunity to consent to development projects on tribal domains. Businesses that obtain an FPIC from the tribe can then get a certificate of precondition from the NCIP.

España said these development projects on ancestral lands can provide benefits such as jobs and revenue for the community, but can also cause divisions among the tribe, affecting community relations and Indigenous governance systems.

In addition to illegal mining, the ancestral lands of the Manobo around Mt. Apo is threatened by banana plantation cultivated by non-tribal members, España said.

In these cases,  Buntal, the tribal chieftain, said the plantations are allowed to operate because tribal members give their consent through agreements with individual businesspeople, for payments of at least 100,000 pesos (about $2,000) per hectare for five years.

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Featured image: The entrance to an illegal gold mine, by Bong S. Sarmiento for Mongabay.

Political Dynasties Fight to Run the Philippines

December 1st, 2021 by Jason Castaneda

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Over the past month, the “UniTeam” of ex-dictator’s son Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr and presidential daughter and former Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte has rapidly emerged as a formidable tandem ahead of next year’s Philippine elections.

Having convinced Sara Duterte, a top potential rival, to instead become his vice-presidential running mate, Marcos Jr has emerged as the clear frontrunner to succeed President Rodrigo Duterte next year.

The latest surveys show that Marcos Jr is the preferred candidate of almost half of the total prospective voters (47%), with Vice-President Leni Robredo a distant second (18%).

Having lost the vice-presidential race by razor-thin margins in 2016 to Robredo, de facto liberal opposition leader Marcos Jr has wasted no time in consolidating a nationwide network of support.

Among his backers are former presidents Joseph “Erap” Estrada and Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. A growing number of local government leaders and warlords across the country are also throwing their support behind Marcos Jr’s presidential bid.

But the only son of the former Filipino dictator could soon face a major hurdle in his plans to return the Marcos name to Malacanang. The incumbent, who preferred his own daughter to run for the presidency instead, is widely expected to rally behind the charismatic Mayor of Manila Francisco “Isko” Moreno, who is now third in most recent surveys.

Adding to Marcos Jr’s electoral headaches are multiple petitions calling for his disqualification based on an old conviction for tax evasion. The Commission on Elections (COMELEC), which is packed with Duterte appointees, has yet to decide on the fate of Marcos Jr’s candidacy, which has the shadow of potential disqualification hanging over it.

For several quarters, Sara Duterte was the leading candidate in multiple presidential surveys. But the Marcoses, in tandem with Arroyo, managed to convince her to abandon the race and join forces with them instead.

The upshot is a Marcos-Duterte-Arroyo-Estrada “grand coalition,” which extends from the “Solid North” base of the Marcoses in the Ilocos region on Luzon island to the “Solid South” base of the Dutertes on Mindanao island.

The emerging coalition is now composed of major national and regional parties, including Marcos Jr’s Partido Federal ng Pilipinas (PFP), Duterte’s Hugpong ng Pagbabago (HNP), Arroyo’s Lakas-Christian Muslim Democrats (Lakas-CMD) and the Partido ng Masang Pilipino (PMP) of former President Estrada.

With practically all of them facing charges of corruption and abuses of power, the Marcos-led coalition has been decried as a menacing “cartel,” which is intent on dominating Philippine state institutions.

Analysts believe that should the ‘grand coalition’ emerge victorious in next year’s elections, they will likely overhaul the country’s constitution in favor of a federal-parliamentary system, making it much easier for dominant political dynasties to perpetuate themselves in power.

What stands in the way of the cartel’s plan, however, is the outgoing Filipino president, who has lambasted the Marcoses for allegedly bullying his daughter to drop out of the presidential race.

Over the past few weeks, Duterte has openly attacked Marcos Jr, a supposed ally, as “pro-communist” and a “weak leader.” On multiple occasions, the Filipino president raised the stakes by implying that Marcos Jr is a cocaine addict who should be disqualified from running for the presidency.

In order to thwart a Marcos presidency, Duterte instead pushed for his long-time aide, Senator Christopher “Bong” Go, to succeed him next year. Lacking charisma and his own independent base, Go has struggled to make an impression on voters. A laggard in various surveys, Go has indicated he would withdraw from the race.

President Rodrigo Duterte, left, with personal assistant Christopher Lawrence ‘Bong’ Go. Photo: Philippine Government

“My love for him is more than the love for a father. He is old and he has given a lot to the country. So I don’t want to add to his problems. I remain loyal to him and I promised to be with him for life,” Go told the media on the sidelines of a public event this week, spinning his expected withdrawal as a “supreme sacrifice” with due consideration for his aging patron.

Seeking “forgiveness” from his own supporters, Go admitted: “I was not ready for this … Perhaps it’s not yet my time to be president.”

With Go out of the race, the focus has rapidly shifted to Manila Mayor Isko Moreno, who has long been rumored to be Duterte’s “Manchurian candidate.”

Back in October, Isko flatly dismissed as “fake news” reports that he was the real candidate of the administration, with Go simply serving as a decoy. Yet the Manila mayor began to rely on a growing number of Duterte administration stalwarts, including Lito Banayo (campaign manager) and Vince Dizon (deputy campaign manager), who began to tweak Isko Moreno’s earlier more progressive language on major issues.

In recent weeks, Moreno has largely refrained from criticizing the incumbent, despite presenting himself as a potential opposition candidate earlier this year.

Having opposed extrajudicial killings in the past, the Manila mayor began to curry favor with Duterte, who faces potential charges by the International Criminal Court (ICC) over his deadly drug war, which has claimed tens of thousands of lives in the past five years.

When asked about the ICC investigations, Isko Moreno parroted the Duterte administration’s line by arguing “we have existing, effective, at gumaganang (working) justice system.”

Like Duterte, he also began criticizing the international body, which recently decided to defer any further probe after a request by the Philippine government to investigate matters through domestic courts.

The Manila mayor also promised to continue Duterte’s drug war, albeit promising to uphold human rights.

In the past week, Moreno also started attracting support from other top Duterte allies, who are opposed to the Marcoses. Among them was Taguig City Mayor Lino Cayetano, the brother of former Speaker of the House and Duterte’s vice-presidential mate Alan Peter Cayetano, who has praised Moreno as the next potential Duterte.

I love our president. I supported our president, but I saw in mayor Isko Moreno what I saw in mayor Duterte – fearlessness,” Cayetano said, indicating growing support for the Manila mayor among key Duterte allies.

“Just on the first day, the way he cleaned up Manila’s streets, how he caught criminals, how he helped businessmen, vendors. You see how fast he took action?” he added, raising the prospect of a well-oiled Cayetano-Duterte alliance behind the presidential candidate.

Following Go’s announcement of his withdrawal from the presidential race, which is yet to be formalized, Moreno was quick to present himself as the potential candidate of the administration.

“If they endorse me, thank you. Thank you in advance, but I will not preempt them until they say so. For the meantime, I am always hopeful,” a gleeful Moreno said, now anticipating massive backing from the incumbent, who seems determined to either prevent the Marcoses from succeeding him or to drive a hard bargain with his dynastic rival.

“I will wait for them to choose me. For the meantime, while I am expecting help, I will keep reaching out. While reaching out, I am learning a lot,” the Manila mayor added.

For progressive statesmen, however, this is all part of a cynical ploy and set of ongoing negotiations between the Duterte and Marcos dynasties in anticipation of major changes next year.

Progressive senatorial candidate Neri Colmenares lambasted the Go withdrawal maneuver as “a desperate Machiavellian attempt to salvage the crumbling Duterte-Marcos alliance.”

“May this serve as a warning to all politicians who will seek anointment from the president and his family in 2022,” he said.

House Deputy Minority Leader Representative Carlos Isagani Zarate dismissed the latest developments as part of Duerte’s “political playbook,” whereby Moreno is “just a pawn used as leverage to gain concessions” from the Marcos camp.

“[Duterte is seeking] protection when [his] term ends … especially now that he is already considered a lame-duck president,” Zarate said, arguing Go’s “withdrawal will possibly benefit and consolidate further the Marcos and Duterte alliance” following behind-the-scenes negotiations over the spoils of war next year.

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Featured image: Frontrunner Ferdinand ‘Bongbong’ Marcos Jr with his sister Maria Josefa Imelda ‘Imee’ Marcos in a file photo. Photo: WikiCommons

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During the past week, Honiara, the capital of the South Pacific country of the Solomon Islands, has been rocked by thousands of people rioting. For days, crowds of protesters flocked to the National Assembly and demanded the resignation of Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare. They also failed to burn the Parliament building but succeeded in setting the Prime Minister’s residence on fire. Simultaneously, riots began to unfold in the capital and other cities as disgruntled people smashed grocery stores and houses in Honiara’s Chinatown in violence partially motivated by anti-China sentiment.

Sogavare appealed to neighbouring countries for help, with small teams of military personnel and police from Australia, Papua New Guinea and Fiji being immediately dispatched. The total number of peacekeepers is about 200 personnel. Although this may appear to be a small number, it is remembered that the Solomon Islands has a population of only about 690,000 people who are scattered across 300 inhabited islands.

During the riots, three people were killed and more than 100 were arrested. The country’s economy suffered a loss of $227 million, a huge blow when considering their 2020 GDP was only $1.5 billion.

Although the unrest in Honiara has subsided, in parliament, the opposition is preparing to vote against Sogavare’s leadership and force his resignation through no-confidence.

Sogavare’s decision two years ago to establish diplomatic ties with Beijing, and thus sever ties with Taipei, has been a focal point of criticism against his leadership. During the rioting, a delegation from the most populous island of Malaita arrived in Honiara, which is located on the island of Guadalcanal, and expressed displeasure with the diplomatic decision.

For a long time, there were problems between Malaita Island and the central government, particularly over issues in the mining and logging sectors as they have created problems for local businesses. Malaita islanders felt that their interests were not fully accounted for by policymakers in Honiara. These issues also emerged more strongly in the context of the economic crisis that arose in the country due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The archipelago has been closed for nearly two years, meaning that foreign tourists and businesspeople do not visit, contributing to economic stagnation.

At the start of the riots, Sogavare blamed foreign interference over his government’s decision to switch alliances from Taiwan to Beijing for the anti-government protests, arson and looting. However, it is difficult to believe that the mostly subsistence agricultural people of Malaita are so politically savvy that they would rather maintain diplomatic relations with Taipei instead of Beijing. This is especially the case when the whole world, with the exception of 14 small United Nation member states, all adhere to the “One China” principle and maintain diplomatic relations with Beijing and not Taipei.

It could be suggested that the political and economic elite of Malaita were coerced to protest against China. With this in mind, it is certainly possible that Australia, receiving instructions from Washington, is trying to weaken the Beijing-friendly government in Honiara to wane China’s positions in the South Pacific Ocean. When considering anti-China alliances like QUAD (US, Australia, India and Japan) and AUKUS (US, Australia and the United Kingdom), the emergence of anti-China riots in Honiara is unsurprising, especially as these two Washington-led blocs were established for the sole purpose of opposing and challenging Beijing across the Indo-Pacific region.

As the Solomon Islands falls under Australia’s so-called area of responsibility in Washington’s world vision, Australian military personnel and police were the first to arrive to restore order. Despite Malaitan’s leading the protest against the government and Beijing, Malaita’s Premier, Daniel Suidani, accused the Australian government of “holding up a corrupt leadership” by sending in reinforcements to help the Royal Solomon Islands Police Force respond to the riots.

China has officially expressed concern about rioting in the Solomon Islands and reminded that the “One China” principle cannot be violated. However, the confrontation between the opposition and the Sogavare administration will continue. Although Australia is maintaining the status quo in the Solomon Islands, it has demonstrated how easily it can land troops in the country with impunity, a likely message towards Beijing. It is also likely that Australia, on orders from Washington, will use its resources to ensure that an anti-Beijing government returns to power. In this context, the internal political turmoil in the Solomon Islands will continue until at least 2023 when the next general election will be held.

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Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.

Off to the Solomon Islands: Australia’s Civilizers Get Busy

November 26th, 2021 by Dr. Binoy Kampmark

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A small riot.  Unrest.  Risk of collapse.  All given a ballooning effect and inflated for policy makers across the ocean.  Before much time elapses, Australian security forces are skirting off to restore order in their vast watery neighbourhood.  It is a reminder that such relations in the Pacific region are a mixture of intervention, forcible charitable guidance and, at times, plain scolding. 

In the Solomon Islands, Australian interventionism was originally cloaked in shining dress, justified as humanitarian and utterly noble.  By the time some 2,000 troops, police officers and support personnel, mostly Australian, were deployed in 2003, the country had already mounted regional interventions in Bougainville in Papua New Guinea (1997) and East Timor, the latter as part of a UN-mandated mission.

The Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI) was given a rhetorical flourish of preventing a “failed state” while easing Australian anxieties in a region marked by a supposed “arc of instability”.  In a conscious nod to making sure the mission would be seen benevolently, the PR pen pushers came up with the pidgin named Operation Helpem Fren.

At the time, Prime Minister Allan Kemakeza had to address certain concerns: Would his country simply become yet another staging post for other powers, or, worse, slide into the role of Australian puppet state?  “This country belongs to all of us,” he promised.  “It’s our country.”  This was only after a fashion.  The RAMSI mission only concluded in 2017 but it came with a new security treaty signed between Canberra and Honiara permitting the easy deployment of Australian force, defence and civilian personnel in the event of a national emergency.

In an environment psychically shaped by the collapse of the Twin Towers in New York on September 11, 2001 and the grotesquely named “Global War on Terror”, Australian policy makers came to see terrorism everywhere and unstable, indigent states as incubators for the next enterprising bomb maker.  This was the kind of torturous, and quite frankly criminal reasoning, that had justified the fictional links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda.

The new breed of Pacific Islander terrorists were reasoned like the Reds of Old, only these might be lurking behind coconut trees with heavy weaponry or found laundering money.  In the case of the Solomons Islands, such outfits as the Guadalcanal Liberation Army and the Malaita Eagle Force fit the bill, even if that fit was forced and awkward.    “We know that a failed state in our region, on our doorstep,” warned Australian Prime Minister John Howard in an address to the Sydney Institute in July 2003, “will jeopardise our own security.  The best thing we can do is to take remedial action and take it now”.

But it was not always so.  In January 2003, the Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, at a rare lucid moment, stated that, “Sending in Australian troops to occupy the Solomon Islands would be folly in the extreme.”  The Australian taxpayer would be unconvinced by such need; the exit strategy would be unclear and problematic and, perhaps most tellingly, foreigners did “not have the answers for the deep-seated problems affecting the Solomon Islands.”

Within a matter of months, Australia found itself in an illegal assault led by the United States on Iraqi sovereignty and jauntily committing troops to the islands.  Howard flew into Honiara to boast that Australian forces had secured the surrender of Harold Keke, who had been given the elevated historical standing of a warlord, and the netting of 3,000 weapons as part of an amnesty.  He stressed all those characteristics all architects of empire should keep in mind: rebuilding the local police forces; “attack” corruption; improve living standards; and prosecute criminal, destabilising elements – according to the rule of law, naturally.

This month, the political classes in Canberra were again wondering what to do with the Solomon Islands.  Protests calling for the resignation of Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare had led to civil unrest in the nation’s capital. A police station and building within the parliamentary compound were set ablaze; instances of looting and property damage were reported.  Schools were closed.  Again, the divide between poorer Malaita and wealthier Guadalcanal, was spoken of.  Again, the politics of the provinces were being stirred by the politics of the central government in Honiara.

In this case, there was an added dimension.  The Solomon Islands had made a decision in 2019 to cease recognising Taiwan and switch its allegiance to Beijing.  The Premier of Malaita Province, Daniel Suidani, had been unimpressed with the decision taken by the national government.  An unsettled Sogavare, wishing to shore up his own sinking position, put in the call for Australian assistance.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison was not wasting any time in citing the security treaty to deploy Australian Defence Force and Australian Federal Police personnel. “We have been watching the ongoing protests in Honiara with concern,” he stated in a press release. “We continue to call for calm, for an end to further violence and emphasise the importance of resolving tensions peacefully.” At a press conference on November 25, Morrison rather unpersuasively declared that it was “not the Australian Government’s intention in any way to intervene in the internal affairs of the Solomon Islands”.  The Australian presence did “not indicate any position on the internal issues” of the country.

In such interventions, complex local factors behind agitation and unrest tend to be ignored as too complex for the briefing rooms in Pacific capitals and Canberra.  The obsession with security rather than dealing with specifically local issues, such as lack of opportunity, inequality and various local grievances, encourage the use of the police baton or the military rifle.  Generalisations become the norm, and, as Aiden Craney points out, propel narratives about the area being an “arc of instability”.

Some digging is required before coming to a franker overview of such instances of meddling.  Joanne Wallis, writing in 2015, simply takes it as fact that Australia, “the resident superpower in the South Pacific”, and also allied to the United States (its “closest ally”) has been given the role of responsibility “for the South Pacific.”

In such attitudes civilization’s burdens are borne with Kiplingesque gravity, even if given the gilding of security.  Rudyard Kipling’s “The White Man’s Burden: The United States and The Philippine Islands” (1899) was yet another urging in the imperial argot, this time to the United States, to assume burdens and responsibilities in the Pacific.  Theodore Roosevelt, ever supping from the cup of imperial sentiment, was unimpressed by the language but entirely convinced by the purpose.  In copying the poem to his friend Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, he remarked that it was all “rather poor poetry, but good sense from the expansion point of view.”

Responsibility has often meant sticking your nose in the affairs of those swarthy barbarians whose understanding of civic institutions might be a bit sketchy.  It’s all done because they hardly know any better, and you have the self-interested answers in making sure such people are sorted.  “Australia,” writes Wallis, “has been expected to maintain regional political, social and economic order, and ensure that no hostile power establishes a strategic foothold in the region from which to attack Australia and threaten allied access to air and sea lines of communication.”  That’s more like it: an honest statement of vulgar realpolitik.

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Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.  He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne.  He is a frequent contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research. Email: [email protected]

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***

 

 

 

Reuters has been caught publishing photos depicting Thai protests that are confirmed to have been staged.

On Sunday November 14, 2021 after a pivotal Thai Constitutional Court ruling found US-backed protest leaders were pursuing a campaign of sedition rather than reform, a “large” protest was called.

The protest failed to attract even 1,000 people in the Thai capital of Bangkok – a city of over 10 million people. In order to attract attention and make headlines internationally protesters engaged in violence with the police, throwing deadly explosives at retreating officers who responded with rubber bullets.

Several protesters were injured in the short exchange before police officers disappeared behind the gates of a police hospital compound. It was then that Reuters and other media organizations surrounded a group of protest “guards” who were laying on the ground pretending to take cover from “gunfire” that was not taking place.

Among those publishing images of this staged scene later in the week was “Pulitzer Prize winner” Reuters photographer Soe Zeya Tun.

In the published Reuters photo it is clear that others – who would clearly be in the line-of-fire were police still shooting – are standing casually. Video footage of the scene makes it even clearer the scene was completely staged.

Soe Zeya Tun and Reuters have refused to respond to widespread criticism for using images of a staged event to depict actual events unfolding in Thailand. As of the time of publishing, the pictures have not been retracted.

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The Taiwan Foreign Policy Fetish

November 25th, 2021 by Dr. Binoy Kampmark

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Australian foreign policy towards Taiwan, as things stand, is a distant fantasy in floating mist.  There is little to connect them, but Australia’s political classes have a habit of fabricating relations with those it cares little for, nor understands, all in the name of forced obedience.  For decades, a puppy loyal Australia has committed forces without condition or qualification, refusing to understand the circumstances of their deployment, or the people who they will either kill or die for.  The result is an astonishing global deployment of personnel with admirable ignorance to theatres most of its citizens would fail to name.

The recent Taiwan fetish risks continuing this trend.  Australia’s Defence Minister, Peter Dutton, is a figure who has fallen head over heels with the latest, potential casus belli. Known by the late and very mischievous Bob Ellis as the simian sadist, Dutton is adamant that Australia will find itself at war over a bit of real estate whose history he has no knowledge of.  “It would be inconceivable that we wouldn’t support the US in an action if the US chose to take that action,” Dutton recently told The Australian.  “And again, I think we should be very frank and honest about that, look at all the facts and circumstances without pre-committing, and maybe there are circumstances where we wouldn’t take up that option, (but) I can’t conceive of those circumstances.”

In saying that it would be “inconceivable” that Australia would not find itself at war with the United States over Taiwan, the unimaginative, already pre-committed Dutton received the attention of China’s Foreign Affairs spokesman Zhao Lijian, who called his comments “extremely absurd and irresponsible”, the mark of someone “obsessed with the Cold War mentality and ideological prejudices.”

Dutton’s execrable chest thumping was inspired by typically vague remarks from Australia’s paternal ally, who had recently promised, along with the United Kingdom, submarines with nuclear propulsion as part of the new AUKUS security agreement.  US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, speaking at a New York Times forum earlier this month, was pressed, as previous occupants of his office have, on whether Washington would defend Taiwan in the event of a conflict.

Blinken’s response had a bit of everything: dovish caution, chicken hawk pretence, hypocritical babble.  The Taiwan Relations Act of 1979, which obligates the US to supply Taipei military equipment for reasons of self-defence but leaves the issue of a firm security commitment open, shaped his initial remarks.  Making sure Taiwan had “the means to defend itself” was “the best deterrent against any very, very, very unfortunate action that might be contemplated by China.”

This did not prevent the United States from lending a hand to “sure that we preserve peace and stability in that part of the world”.  A “unilateral action to use force” by any power would constitute a threat to that peace and security and, in that event, “many countries, both in the region and beyond … would take action in the event that happens.”  US intervention would take place to defend that “international rules-based order” developed by Washington against those who dared challenge it, “whether it’s China or anyone else”.

In her November 23 speech to the National Security College at the Australian National University outlining the purpose of Australia’s foreign policy, Opposition front bencher Senator Penny Wong gave few surprises.  As is often the case with the Australian Labor Party when suffering in opposition, painful, even constipated caution, is preferred over clarity and conviction.  “We must expand the choices and options available to us, to enable management of differences without escalation of conflict.”

But Wong did, at the very least, venture towards some sane ground in taking issue with Dutton’s assertion that Australia would “join” a war over Taiwan with Washington with no conditions.  This was “wildly out of step with the strategy long adopted by Australia and our principle ally.”  While Prime Minister Scott Morrison had avoided “the same febrile language” as his defence minister, Dutton was “amping up war, rather than working to maintain longstanding policy to preserve the status quo – as advocated by the Taiwanese leader, Tsai-Ing Wen.”

Dutton, simmering and seething such observations, sallied with a rebuttal, encouraging all who cared to hear him that China-the-regional-monster was the problem, rather than his own particular lust for war. “The Chinese Communist Party has a presence in 20 different locations in the South China Sea,” he stated.  There were “butting up against the Japanese shipping vessels in the East China Sea”.  The international rule of law, Dutton proclaimed, “should prevail and people, including our country and every other country, should adhere to that law.”

Wong had been, according to Dutton, “irresponsible” and suggested that the Labor Party was “walking away” from the AUKUS security arrangement.  The glue binding the three states, madly made and foolishly sought, has certainly increased the likelihood of Australian participation in any conflict with Chinese forces in the event the US are involved.  The submarine promise is merely a sentimental, spectral hook.

Officials in Beijing have every reason to scoff at invocations of international law and its sacred bonds, especially when they come from a minister who shows no evidence of reading, let alone awareness, in the field.  Australia has had, over the years, a rich history of reading international law the way any enterprising gangster and rule-breaker might wish to do.  Bugging diplomats and representatives of a friendly, impoverished nation under false pretences for economic gain (East Timor); invading a country (Iraq) without any security justification in a crime against peace; and indefinitely locking up asylum seekers and refugees who arrive by boat, are all proud instances of how Australia, and the likes of Dutton, observe and disparage the ius gentium.

In this, the Taiwan fetish becomes a Cold War iteration in the haunted, twisted imagination of certain policy makers, from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute to the war drummers in the Morrison government.  Nonsense flows easily when abstractions and hypotheticals can be passed around with such ease.  Sweetly and pathetically, Australian politicians are again reminding us that blood lust, especially from those who have the least reason to fight, remains unquenchable.

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Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.  He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne.  He is a frequent contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research. Email: [email protected]

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***

For a few weeks now, hundreds of people in the Maldives have participated  in rallies calling for the expulsion of the Indian military personnel from their tiny island state spread over hundreds of atolls. 

The peaceful demonstrations, which are mostly concentrated in Male, the capital, have been organised by a coalition of opposition parties led by former President Abdulla Yameen, who was jailed in 2019.

Neighbouring India is a close ally of the Maldives, an archipelago of a thousand islands in the Indian Ocean that face an immediate threat from climate change.

“The government has invited this trouble to our shores. We are not against the people of India. Our people just want the Indian military to leave,” says Mohamed Saeed, the deputy leader of the opposition People’s National Congress (PNC).

“We are a very fragile country. We cannot afford to have any military presence of another country here,” he tells TRT World.

The Maldives is one of those key South Asian countries where regional rivals China and India are competing for influence — something that will bear consequences for the wider region, experts say.

The opposition accuses the government of President Ibrahim Solih of signing secret deals with New Delhi that will allow Indian troops to be permanently stationed in the Maldives.

The Maldivian government denies compromising on sovereignty and says security arrangements with India are mostly to carry out search and rescue operations.

“India has always been the Maldives’ closest ally and trusted neighbour, extending constant and consistent support to the people of Maldives on all fronts,” the government said in a recent statement.

“Support provided by India on areas such as search and rescue capabilities, casualty evacuation, coastal surveillance, and maritime reconnaissance, directly benefit the Maldivian people,” it added.

Maldivian Foreign Minister Abdulla Shahid has called the “Indian Military Out” campaign a desperate attempt by the opposition to fulfil a political agenda.

At the centre of the debate is the matter of an India-funded dockyard for the Maldivian coast guard, which is being constructed on the Uthuru Thila Falhu (UTF) atoll, near Male.

A copy of the UTF agreement leaked earlier this year said Indian military personnel will be stationed there and Indian navy vessels will be allowed to use the dockyard for years to come.

Saeed says an important agreement like this, which can impact a country’s forieign relations, should have been debated in the parliament and the details shared with lawmakers.

A Maldives government spokesperson wasn’t immediately available for comment.

What are Indian troops doing in Maldives? 

The presence of Indian military personnel in the Maldives, an issue that the opposition has seized upon to criticise the government, resonates with Maldivians wary of outside interference.

New Delhi had donated two helicopters and a Donier aircraft to Maldives to help with medical evacuations and sea surveillance. Most of the 75 Indian personnel stationed in Maldives at the moment are there to maintain and operate the aircraft.

“The Indian military has been in the Maldives for a long time. There’s nothing new about it. They use the aircraft to airlift sick or injured people from isolated islands,” says David Brewster, an expert on Indo-Pacific maritime affairs at the Australian National University.

“I am sort of surprised that Yameen and his supporters think that this is a bad thing.”

Nevertheless, the persistent pressure mounted by the opposition has put the government in a tight corner. Last week, Defence Minister Mariya Didi had to publicly disclose that Indian troops in the country were unarmed and insist that they posed no danger to its sovereignty.

A tussle of two powers

Former President Yameen, who governed between 2013 and 2018, had fostered close ties with China. He oversaw the inauguration of a 2.1 km-long, four-lane bridge connecting Male with the island of Hulhumale.

That’s the only bridge which connects islands in the archipelago where people otherwise travel on boats between different atolls. Beijing funded the $200 million project.

For years, China had little interest in the small nation of under 500,000 people — Beijing didn’t even have an embassy in Maldives until 2012.

But that changed under Yameen’s government when the two countries signed a free trade agreement (FTA), eliminating tariffs on Maldivian exports of mostly fish, and opened the archipelago to Chinese goods and services.

Maldives, which derives a substantial chunk of its revenue from tourists — many of them Chinese — also became a recipient of Beijing’s investment.

China loaned just over a billion dollars to build the bridge and an airport, among other projects in the Maldives.

But after Solih’s government took charge, it accused Yameen of leaving the country vulnerable to a Chinese debt trap.

A long way to go for India

PNC’s Mohamed Saeed, who was Yameen’s Minister for Economic Development, says concerns around high Chinese debt were unfounded.

“The amount we borrowed from China was more or less the amount of money we borrowed from the Middle East in syndicated loans. We made a policy of tapping every source of affordable financing.”

The scenic Maldives depends on tourism for most of its foreign revenue. But tourism sites are spread across different atolls and a lack of connectivity hampers job creation in the hospitality industry.

Saeed says China’s investment in building the Sinamale bridge — also known as the China-Maldives Friendship Bridge — was meant to address that problem.

While India has tried to take China’s place as the Maldives main financial benefactor, it still has a long way to go.

Protests against Indian military presence in Maldives have spread to other cities.

Protests against Indian military presence in Maldives have spread to other cities. (TRTWorld)

Last year, New Delhi pledged to extend $500 million to Maldives in loans and grants. But only $17 million of that amount has so far been invested, says Saeed, citing government budget documents.

“When we were in power, the opposition MDP was accusing Yameen and our administration of selling 17 islands to China. Today, can they show even a single island that we sold to China?”

The increasing reliance on China for financial support under Yameen happened to the chagrin of India, which had historically played a role in Maldives’ internal affairs.

In 1988 India sent its paratroopers and naval ships to Maldives to aid former President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, who faced a coup attempt by Sri Lankan Tamil mercenaries.

It’s unlikely that India will risk damaging relations with Male by keeping armed troops in the country for any other purpose than assisting in training and rescue operations.

“Politically, diplomatically and economically — India sees Maldives as a strategic partner,” says Bharath Gopalaswamy, a senior fellow at the New Delhi-based Observer Research Foundation.

“But India is very careful and circumspect when it comes to stationing troops outside its border. At this stage it’s all speculation.”

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Agroecology, Nepal’s Answer to Climate Change

November 24th, 2021 by Zachary Barton

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As a farmer and educator living in Nepal, I was not part of the dialogue at the UN climate summit (COP26) that just concluded in Glasgow. None of us here were.

And as world leaders, climate scientists, and corporate lobbyists return to their respective countries from Glasgow, here in the mountains of eastern Nepal I myself wonder what, if anything, they have accomplished in terms of real change. And what the implications will be for ‘the rest of us’.

I wonder if these state bureaucrats and business representatives are the right people to look to for guidance and innovation to address the climate catastrophe. Which voices are clearly represented at the table? And which are conspicuously absent?

The Nepali delegation has already returned home setting itself ambitious targets and timebound pledges to achieve them. Nepalis have to cope with the impact of climate change, for which farmers here were not responsible. Yet, we are asked to implement solutions that, similarly, come from afar.

Agriculture is part of the Himalayan landscape. How we manage land will determine how resilient we can be to climate change.

This is not to say reforestationnet-zero carbon emissions, and providing some level of protection and support for vulnerable populations are not important. In fact, they are precisely what Nepal (and all other countries) should be working towards to minimise the impact of climate change. The real questions are: How? Who should get it done? And on what scale?

Solutions at conferences such as COP26 invariably tend to lean towards high-tech possibilities, international policy agreements, and large-scale restructuring. There is, however, another approach: small-scale, local, and grassroots agriculture.

While local regenerative agriculture is rarely discussed at the high table, such an approach may prove to be much more in line with Nepali culture and economy. A home-grown solution that returns political agency and innovation to local people on the ground.

Almost Heaven Farms permaculture research and development centre.

Healthy soil grows healthy plants which leads to healthy humans and communities. It is the basis of all civilization and life on earth.

Agriculture has become something of a dirty word for climate activists, and with some justification. It is estimated that agriculture accounts for roughly 23% of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide. That makes it comparable to big industry, transportation and electricity production, which means it significantly contributes to climate change.

But not all ‘agriculture’ is equal. Regenerative agriculture has the potential to sequester carbon from the atmosphere and redistribute it to soils where it could have various positive impacts. Unlike many other industries, agriculture has the potential to transition from being a Big Problem to a Big Solution.

How we relate to land today is our most egregious lapse in judgement. Whether it is razing jungles for timber, draining precious wetlands, overfishing sacred waters, or converting grasslands to large-scale, chemical-based agriculture, we seem to have forgotten the most basic natural law: reciprocity. We cannot extract and drill and harvest and mine with no thought of giving back.

Fortunately, there is a way to approach agriculture that maintains a reciprocal relationship with the local ecosystem. Agroecology, to put it simply, is a farming that incorporates the principles of ecology so that agriculture becomes a means of giving back.

A local jungle is a source of natural foods, medicines, fibres and energy sources, but instead of automatically clearing and putting it to the plough, we must recognise that it also cleans and conserves water, soils, regulates temperature, and provides a habitat for other living beings. And, to circle back to climate concerns, importantly, that jungles capture carbon.

Managing land, under the auspices of agroecology, entails revitalising a different kind of relationship with the soil. It starts with understanding the principles of ecology and how nature works. Diversity, recycling, systems thinking, interconnectivity, and that the sun is the ultimate source of energy are just a few.

Almost Heaven Farms is a full-fledged permaculture training and design firm focusing on developing agroecology across Nepal.

An integrated growing system including tea gardens, vegetable production and forest.

What does that look like on a farm? A diversity of plants being grown together in what is known as a polyculture, animals moving across the landscape as happens in nature.

Let’s start with the soil. We put a man on the moon 62 years ago, but we still know nothing about the world below our feet, the soil in which all life comes from. Through over ploughing, mono-cropping and the use of chemical fertilisers we have effectively killed all the life in the soil, from beneficial microbes to worms and all other life which presides there.

In killing the soil, we released massive amounts of carbon into the atmosphere and compromised its ability to capture the carbon back. And in this dead soil, we grow plants which are chronically sick and are not able to ward off pests and disease. Plants are completely dependent on chemicals for their survival. We then eat these sick plants which give us little nutrition, and we become sick ourselves.

So, while others look to the sky for solutions, let us take a glance down at the most important ecosystem of all, the soil below our feet.  If farmers in Nepal can step up and lead the change, the politicians will come stumbling after.

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Zachary Barton is a permaculture designer, activist and teacher who has been living in Nepal since 2003. He established Almost Heaven Farm in 2013, where he researches, demonstrates and trains local farmers and international visitors in permaculture design, earth-based building and ecological restoration.

Featured image: Agriculture is one of the largest contributors to climate change but can also be one of the most significant solutions. All photos: ZACHARY BARTON

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Abstract

This article discusses Japan’s colonization of Korea in the context of world time. Korea was a unique colony as it was one of the last to be colonized in the world. Japanese colonizers pushed a heavy-handed “military policy”, mainly because of the sharp resistance at their accession to power in the period 1905-1910. In 1919 when mass movements swept colonial and semi-colonial countries, including Egypt and Ireland, Koreans too rose up against Japan’s rule. Stung by wide resistance by Koreans in March and April 1919 as well as general foreign reproach, Japanese leaders adopted a “modern” practice by starting the imperial “cultural policy” in mid-1919. The most important consequence of the cultural policy was the integral role Korean industry soon had in linking the metropole with hinterland economies, and it is from this point that we can date Japan’s specific brand of architectonic capitalism that has influenced Northeast Asia down to the present.

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Several characteristics of Korea’s imperial experience distinguish it from other colonies.1 First, it was “late” in world time. King Leopold of Belgium said in 1866 that “the world is pretty well pillaged already,” marking the violent spread of European colonialism across the globe. Japan’s annexation of Korea was almost half a century later. By that time anti-colonial ideas and movements had spread, particularly in England and the United States; Japan had barely got going with its colonial project when Woodrow Wilson issued his 14 points, calling for self-determination of all nations.

A second characteristic explains why Japan and Korea have a shared modern history so daunting and unnerving, like fingernails being scraped across a blackboard. It is because their relationship is more akin to Germany and France or England and Ireland, than it is to Belgium and Zaire or Portugal and Mozambique. Global colonialism is often thought to have created new nations where none existed before, to draw new boundaries and bring diverse tribes and peoples together, out of a welter of geographic units divided along ethnic, racial, religious or tribal lines. But all of this existed in Korea for centuries before l9l0. Korea had ethnic and linguistic unity and long-recognized national boundaries well before the peoples of Europe attained them. Furthermore, by virtue of their relative proximity to China, Koreans had always felt superior to Japan at best, or equal at worst.

Instead of creation the Japanese engaged in substitution after l9l0: exchanging a Japanese ruling elite for the Korean yangban scholar-officials, most of whom were either co-opted or dismissed; instituting colonial imperative coordination for the old central state administration; exchanging Japanese modern education for the Confucian classics; building Japanese capital and expertise in place of the incipient Korean versions, Japanese talent for Korean talent; eventually even replacing the Korean language with Japanese.

Koreans never thanked the Japanese for these substitutions, did not credit Japan with creations, and instead saw Japan as snatching away the ancien regime, Korea’s sovereignty and independence, its indigenous if incipient modernization, and above all its national dignity. Unlike some other colonial peoples, therefore, most Koreans never saw Japanese rule as anything but illegitimate and humiliating. Furthermore, the very closeness of the two nations–in geography, in common Chinese cultural influences, indeed in levels of development until the late l9th century–made Japanese dominance all the more galling to Koreans, and gave a peculiar intensity to the relationship, a hate/respect dynamic that suggested to Koreans, “there but for accidents of history go we.”

Third, quite apart from the anachronism of colonizing Korea, Japan had crucial great power support, particularly from Pres. Theodore Roosevelt. Japan got the empire the British and Americans wanted it to have, and only sought to organize an exclusive regional sphere when the other powers did the same, after the collapse of the world economy in the 1930s (and even then their attempt was half-hearted, and even then the development program was “orthodoxly western”);2

In the first decade of their rule Japanese colonizers pushed a heavy-handed “military policy” (budan seiji), mainly because of the sharp resistance at their accession to power in the period 1905-1910; even classroom teachers wore uniforms and carried swords. The Government-General stood above Korean society, exercising authoritative and coercive control. Its connections were only to the remnant upper class and colonial parvenus and even these were tenuous, designed to co-opt and thwart dissent, not to give Koreans a meaningful role in the state apparatus. The Japanese unquestionably strengthened central bureaucratic power in Korea, demolishing the old balance and tension with the landed aristocracy; operating from the top down, they effectively penetrated below the county level and into the villages for the first time, and in some ways neither post-colonial Korean state has ever gotten over it: Korea today is still a country with remarkably little local autonomy. Added to the old county-level pivot of central magistrate, local clerks and landed families, was a centrally-controlled, highly mobile national police force, responsive to the center and possessing its own communications and transportation facilities. For decades black-coated policemen kept order and helped “bring in the harvest,” manning the ramparts of the rice production circuit from paddyfield to middleman to storehouse to export platform, and thence to Japan.

In 1919 mass movements swept colonial and semi-colonial countries, including Egypt and Ireland, and Korea was no exception. What made Korea special was the nonviolent nature of the March First Movement, anticipating Gandhi’s tactics in India. Drawing upon Woodrow Wilson’s promises of self-determination, a group of thirty-three intellectuals petitioned for independence from Japan on March 1 and touched off nation-wide mass protests that continued for months. Japanese national and military police could not contain this revolt, and had to call in the army and even the navy. At least half a million Koreans took part in demonstrations in March and April, with disturbances in more than 600 different places. In one of the most notorious episodes, Japanese gendarmes locked protesters inside a church and burned it to the ground. In the end, Japanese officials counted 553 killed and over 12,000 arrested, but Korean nationalist sources put the totals at 7,500 killed and 45,000 arrested.

It is also interesting that Koreans had provided a stark contrast with Japan’s other colony in Taiwan. Even after the rebellion in Korea and the watershed May Fourth Movement in China, an observant American traveler noted that quite a few Taiwanese wore Japanese clothes, whereas “I cannot recall ever having seen a Korean in getas and kimono.” There was a big “independence question” in Korea, he wrote, but “Independence, if it is ever considered at all in Taiwan, is evidently regarded as hopeless, not even worth thinking about.”3 Perhaps the most revealing remark ever made about the differences between colonial Taiwan and colonial Korea was one official’s statement that “what can be done with incentives in Taiwan must be done with coercion in Korea.”4

Stung by Korean resistance, Wilson and Lenin, and general foreign reproach, Japanese leaders suddenly understood that they were colonizers in the wrong century: wanting always to be “modern,” they found their repressive rule condemned as out of date. So mid-1919 marked the start of the imperial “cultural policy” (bunka seiji), of tutoring Koreans toward a distant day of independence. The new policy inaugurated a period of “gradualist” resistance to colonialism, in which Koreans took advantage of relaxed restrictions on their freedom of speech and assembly to organize a variety of nationalist, socialist and communist groups, some openly and some clandestinely. Now Korean newspapers could be bought once again, and many other Korean-language publications appeared in the early 1920s. Writers like Yi Kwang-su became famous for novels in a nationalist vernacular, and others like Chông In-bo and Ch’oe Nam-sôn deepened studies of Korean history, examining the Tan’gun legend and the historical “soul” of Korea.5

American missionaries were divided in their judgement of the March First Movement. All of them were appalled at the violence of the colonial authorities, but many also blamed radicals and agitators for provoking the violence. Most applauded the new “cultural policies” after 1919, and echoed Japanese justifications for the new course. The Resident Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, Herbert Welch, wrote in May 1920 that while many Koreans still demand immediate independence, “some of the most intelligent and far-seeing” Koreans

…are persuaded that there is no hope of speedy independence, and that they must settle down for a long period to build up the Korean people, in physical conditions, in knowledge, in morality, and in the ability to handle government concerns….6

This, of course, was Japanese Premier Hara Kei’s justification for the new “cultural policy,” to prepare Koreans “in due course” (Hara’s words) for a distant day of independence. A colonial administrator, Nitobe Inazö, explained the rationale this way in 1919:

I count myself among the best and truest friends of Koreans. I like them…. I think they are a capable people who can be trained to a large measure of self-government, for which the present is a period of tutelage. Let them study what we are doing in Korea, and this I say not to justify the many mistakes committed by our militaristic administration, nor to boast of some of our achievements. In all humility, but with a firm conviction that Japan is a steward on whom devolves the gigantic task of the uplifting of the Far East, I cannot think that the young Korea is yet capable of governing itself.7

Christian opposition to the Japanese is both a fact and a legend. The churches were sanctuaries in times of violence, like the 1919 independence movement, and many Western missionaries encouraged underdog and egalitarian impulses. But the post-1945 image of Syngman Rhee and other pro-American politicians as great Christian leaders and resistors to colonialism is false:

Men like Syngman Rhee and Kim Kyu-sik went to missionary schools like Pai Chai less for their Christianity than to look for political position through English. Enrollment at Pai Chai decline when English was de-emphasized; in 1905, within a day or two of enrollment, ‘half the school had gone elsewhere in search of English.’

It is the humble among Koreans who have truly been drawn to Christianity: at the turn of the century, “conversions among the 30,000 of Seoul’s outcast butcher class soon became ‘one of the most remarkable features of evangelical efforts.'”8 The hierarchy of Korean society pushed commoners toward the egalitarian ideal of everyone the same before God.

The largest split, however, brought Korea into the mainstream of world history after World War I: it was between liberal idealism and socialism, between Wilson and Lenin. Liberals had the advantage of association with Wilson’s ideals of self-determination, and the disadvantage that the U.S. was not interested in supporting Korean independence; furthermore their social base within Korea was very slim. The socialists had the disadvantage of Japanese police action, which targeted and walked off to jail anyone espousing “Bolshevik” ideas, and the advantage of a potentially large mass base and a spirit of sacrifice on behalf of Korea, so that by the end of the 1920s they were leading the Korean resistance movement. As the leading scholar of Korean communism, Dae-sook Suh, put it, leftists and communists

…succeeded in wresting control of the Korean revolution from the Nationalists; they planted a deep core of Communist influence among the Korean people, particularly the students, youth groups, laborers and peasants. Their fortitude and, at times, obstinate determination to succeed had a profound influence on Korean intellectuals and writers. To the older Koreans, who had groveled so long before seemingly endless foreign suppression, communism seemed a new hope and a magic touch…. For Koreans in general, the sacrifices of the Communists, if not the idea of communism, made strong appeal, far stronger than any occasional bomb- throwing exercise of the Nationalists. The haggard appearance of the Communists suffering from torture, their stern and disciplined attitude toward the common enemy of all Koreans, had a far-reaching effect on people.9

By the same token, the 1930s were much more polarized than the previous decade; Japanese put immense pressure on prominent Koreans to collaborate; the tragedy of Korean collaboration can be seen in a person like Ch’oe Rin, a key leader of the March First Movement, who by 1938 was giving speeches lauding “the Yamato people” and “the eternal, single-family lineage of the [Japanese] Imperial Household,”10 or a great modernizer and nationalist like Yun Ch’i-ho accepting a position in the House of Peers, or the alacrity with which the leaders of business like Kim Sông-su threw their lot in with the big Japanese zaibatsu and profited from the war.

These were people who would have been natural leaders of an independent and self-confident Korea, harbingers of a middle-class revolution. But because of their collaboration (under tremendous Japanese pressure to be sure, but then others continued to resist in spite of that) the Japanese succeeded in compromising the emergence of a modern, liberal elite.

One of the longest-running influences of the March 1 Movement is also the least appreciated. It convinced Japanese leaders to try and co-opt moderate Korean leaders and isolate radical ones. Under the new “cultural policy,” Korean commerce began to grow. One source argued for “a tremendous increase in the number of Korean entrepreneurs,” but by the end of the decade Koreans still held only about three per cent of total paid-up capital. Most Korean capitalists were still wholesalers, brokers and merchants dealing in grain or grain-based liquor transactions, with this activity mushrooming in the new ports.

The most important fruit of the cultural policy for Korean industry was the integral role it soon had in Japan’s “administrative guidance” of the entire Northeast Asian regional economy. Now Korea was to play a part in plans linking the metropole with hinterland economies, and it is from this point that we can date Japan’s specific brand of architectonic capitalism that has influenced Northeast Asia down to the present.11 Stefan Tanaka has argued that as Japan embarked on imperial conquests on the mainland, in the discourse of tōyōshi (Oriental or East Asian history, a kind of nativism) Korea and Manchuria became mere “regions”, often lumped together as as mansen (Manshu and Chosen). If this had primarily a political-economic aspect until the Sino-Japanese War began, this concept soon changed into a “metanational greater regionalism:” for scholars like Hirano Yoshitarō, tōyō could extend beyond the East Asian nation states, but was still to be distinguished from imperialism, where “the mother country is pitted against the colony.”12

Japan is among the very few imperial powers to have located modern heavy industry in its colonies: steel, chemicals, hydroelectric facilities in Korea and Manchuria, and automobile production for a time in the latter. According to Samuel Ho, by the end of the colonial period Taiwan “had an industrial superstructure to provide a strong foundation for future industrialization”: the main industries were hydroelectric, metallurgy (especially aluminum), chemicals, and an advanced transport system. By 1941, factory employment, including mining, stood at 181,000 in Taiwan. Manufacturing grew at an annual average rate of about 8 percent during the 1930s.13

Industrial development was much greater in Korea, perhaps because of the relative failure of agrarian growth compared to Taiwan but certainly because of Korea’s closeness both to Japan and to the Chinese hinterland (see tables 2 and 3). By 1940, 213,000 Koreans were working in industry, excluding miners, and not counting the hundreds of thousands of Koreans who migrated to factory or mine work in Japan proper and in Manchuria. Net value of mining and manufacturing grew by 266 percent between 1929 and 1941.14By 1945 Korea had an industrial infrastructure that, although sharply skewed toward metropolitan interests, was among the best developed in the Third World. Furthermore, both Korea and Taiwan had begun to take on semiperipheral characteristics. Korea’s developing periphery was Manchuria, where it sent workers, merchants, soldiers, and bureaucrats who occupied a middle position between Japanese overlords and Chinese peasants; as Korean rice was shipped to Japan, millet was imported from Manchuria to feed Korean peasants in a classic core-semiperiphery-periphery relationship. As for Taiwan, its geographic proximity to Southeast Asia and South China made it “a natural location for processing certain raw materials brought in from, and for producing some manufactured goods for export to, these areas.”15

We see the kernel of this logic in the Government-General’s Industrial Commission of 1921, which for the first time called for supports to Korea’s fledgling textile industry and for it to produce not just for the domestic market, but especially for exports to the Asian continent, where Korean goods would have a price advantage. This was by no means a purely “top-down” exercise, either, for Koreans were part of the Commission and quickly called for state subsidies and hothouse “protection” for Korean companies. The nurturing of a Korean business class was a necessity if Japan’s new policy of “gradualism” was to have any meaning, and this was in effect its birthday party–although a controversial one (three days before the Commission opened, two bombs were thrown into the Government-General building).16 That Japan had much larger ideas in mind, however, is obvious in the proposal for “General Industrial Policy” put before the 1921 conference:

Since Korea is a part of the imperial domain, industrial plans for Korea should be in conformity with imperial industrial policy. Such a policy must provide for economic conditions in adjacent areas, based on [Korea’s] geographical position amid Japan, China, and the Russian Far East.

One of the Japanese delegates explained that Korean industry would be integral to overall planning going on in Tokyo, and would require some protection if it were to accept its proper place in “a single, coexistent, co prosperous Japanese-Korean unit.”

In conclusion let me ask a question that rarely gets voiced: when all is said and done what did Japan get out its takeover of Korea? With the benefit of more than a century of hindsight, was it worth it? Eleven decades later, Japan’s relationship with the Republic of Korea is still fraught with issues left over from the colonial period, particularly the ultimate fate of the sexual slaves or “comfort women.” But what Japanese colonizer could have imagined another half of Korea, formed in 1948 as an anti-Japanese state, led by the colonial resistance, with which Japan still has no formal relations in 2019 and this country is now armed with nuclear weapons and missiles. This is how colonialism produces utterly unanticipated nightmares.

In Japan, a unitary and free country, the unwillingness of most historians honestly to assess their imperial history is a constant insinuation that the imperial impulse may still not be dead. With Japan’s record in China, perhaps there is some sincere reflection. There is almost none in regard to Japan’s activities in Korea. The twentieth century began with Japan’s defeat of Russia and its slow rise toward global stature, that, as it drew nearer, also drew Japan toward disaster like a moth toward a flame. England and America were the Pacific powers of the first half of this century, and they welcomed Japan as a junior partner but not as a hegemon. Japan still has to deal with lingering apprehensions about its ability to live comfortably with the rest of the world, and those apprehensions are nowhere greater than among its near neighbors. Japan is Icarus, running toward the sun.

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This article is a part of The Special Issue: A Longue Durée Revolution in Korea: March 1st, 1919 to the Candlelight Revolution in 2018. Please see the Table of Contents.

Bruce Cumings is Gustavus F. and Ann M. Swift Distinguished Service Professor of History and the College at the University of Chicago. He is an Asia-Pacific Journal associate and his publications include The Origins of the Korean War and North Korea: Another Country as well as Dominion from Sea to Sea: Pacific Ascendancy and American Power. He has also written for the New York Review of Books, theNew Left Review, the London Review of Books, and the Nation.

Notes

*For the symposium on the March 1st Movement held in Seoul March 28-29, 2019, I was asked to give a PowerPoint speech. Since I came to certain firm conclusions about March 1st many years ago, I asked myself if I still thought these generalizations were true. I did. So what follows is mostly drawn from my 2005 book, Korea’s Place in the Sun. Had they asked for a paper, I would have been obligated to say something new. 

Akira Iriye, Power and Culture: The Japanese-American War, 1941-1945, pp. 3-4, 15, 20, 25-27. Iriye dates Japanese plans for an exclusive Northeast Asian regional hegemony from 1936, but according to him it still did not have a blueprint in 1939, and was still dependent on the core powers in system until the middle of 1941.

Franck, Harry A., Glimpses of Japan and Formosa (New York: The Century Co., 1924),pp. 183-84.

Ramon H. Myers, and Mark R. Peattie, eds., The Japanese Colonial Empire, 1895-1945 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), p. 42.

The best account of the post-1919 changes is in Robinson, Michael. Cultural Nationalism in Colonial Korea, 1920-25. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1988.

Quoted in Alleyne Ireland, The New Korea (New York: E. P. Dutton & Company, 1926), p. 70.

Quoted in Stefan Tanaka, Japan’s Orient: Rendering Pasts into History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), p. 248.

Gregory Henderson, Korea: The Politics of the Vortex (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968), p. 207.

Suh, Dae-sook, The Korean Communist Movement, 1918-48. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967), p. 132.

10 Carter J. Eckert, Offspring of Empire: The Koch’ang Kims and the Origins of Korean Capitalism. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1991,p. 231.

11 Bruce Cumings, “The Origins and Development of the Northeast Asian Political Economy,” International Organization, winter 1984

12 Stefan Tanaka, Japan’s Orient, pp. 247-57.

13 Samuel P. Ho, The Economic Development of Taiwan, 1860-1970 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978),pp. 70-90; Lin Ching-yuan, Industrialization in Taiwan, 1946-7: Trade and Import-Substitution Policies for Developing Countries (New York: Praeger, 1973), pp. 19-22.

14 Edward S. Mason, The Economic and Social Modernization of the Republic of Korea (Harvard University East Asian Monographs, 1981), pp. 76,78.

15 Lin, Industrialization in Taiwan, p. 19.

16 Eckert, Offspring of Empire, pp. 44, 82-84.

Featured image: The Japanese occupation of Korea (Source: APJJF)

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South Korean Seongnamgate: Will There be a Sequel?

November 19th, 2021 by Dr. Konstantin Asmolov

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The author continues to follow a serious scandal in South Korea that could affect the outcome of the March 2022 presidential election, as one of the potential figures in the case is Lee Jae-myung, the ruling Democratic presidential candidate.

The fact is that a previously unknown firm, Hwacheon Daeyu, and its seven affiliates made more than 1,000 times their investment as part of a project to develop and build up the Daejang-dong residential area in Seongnam City. Lee Jae-myung was the mayor of Seongnam at the time. Yoo Dong-gyu, former acting president of Seongnam Development Corp, was arrested on October 21 on charges of breach of trust for the project and receiving 350 million won ($298,000) in kickbacks. The loss estimate of the city made by the subsequent corporation management says 179.3 billion won ($151.5 million). This amount far exceeds the 65.1 billion won in damages that the prosecution charges against Yoo.

The firm also hired and paid astronomical sums to individuals associated with Lee. For example, Former Supreme Court Justice Kwon Soon-il, who acquitted Lee in July 2020 for violating the Election Law, was paid 15 million won ($12,600) monthly.

There is no direct evidence against Lee yet, but conservatives claim he was the actual owner of the company. In addition, in their opinion, the investigation is being let down, and they argue as follows.

First, lawyer Nam Wook, who returned from the US after the Foreign Ministry threatened to revoke his passport, was not arrested. Upon his return, he was questioned and stated that he was removed from the project in the early stages. He shifted the blame to other key figures, including Yoo and Kim Man-bae, the owner of Hwacheon Daeyu. Nam also claimed to have heard his partners discussing raising 35 billion won to pay seven influential people 5 billion won each in bribes. However, only two people were given the money, and he prepared the money at Kim’s request. But after two days of questioning, Nam was released, defying widespread expectations that prosecutors would seek a formal warrant for his arrest. Meanwhile, it is believed that it was Nam who removed a clause from the contract that would have ensured an equitable distribution of additional profits between the city firm and the private developers and allowed Kim’s firm to get so rich. The court only issued arrest warrants for Nam Wook and Kim Man-bae on November 4, charging them with breach of trust and bribery.

Second, the search of the Seongnam Mayor office did not take place until October 21, more than 20 days after the investigation began. Prior to that, searches took place in less significant locations, giving the theoretical possibility of destroying evidence.  It was widely expected that cross-examinations would be conducted among suspects to verify contradictory allegations, but none have been conducted so far. Instead, investigators focused on finding details related to creating the profit-sharing system that paid significant dividends to Hwacheon Daeyu.

Third, it was revealed that Prosecutor general nominee Kim Oh-soo worked as a lawyer in Seongnam City before his appointment. And the prosecutor in charge of investigating the scandal was forced to return to his former post at another district attorney’s office after he called for an additional investigation.

On November 4, the ROK media reported that law enforcement authorities discovered that just minutes before investigators searched Yoo Dong-gyu’s home on October 29 he had been on the phone with Jeong Jin-sang, the current deputy chief of the secretariat of the Democratic Party’s election committee. Investigators suspect that the two may have shared confidential information about the scandal in the run-up to the searches.

Jeong admitted that he spoke to Yoo that day but denied any wrongdoing and criticized law enforcement for allegedly leaking details of the investigation to the media amid the presidential race.

As the scandal continues to escalate, Lee’s approval level is declining. In a Korean Public Opinion Institute poll that pitted Lee against various conservative presidential candidates, the Democratic candidate lost. In November, the gap between Lee and Yoon Seok-yeol, who was the only conservative candidate, was nearly 10 percent.

According to a different poll, 45.9% of respondents are convinced that Lee Jae-myung is directly involved in the corruption scandal. 17.2% believe he is responsible for it, even if he did not receive a direct benefit. 14.3% believe that the scandal results from a sharp rise in property prices and has nothing to do with Lee. 16.8% shift the blame for what happened to the previous administration.

A Gallup Korea poll also showed that 65% of South Koreans support an independent legal investigation into the corruption scandal. In comparison, 55% suspect that Lee Jae-myung played a role in the project.

However, 14 days after President Moon ordered a swift and thorough investigation into the scandal, Moon and Lee met. Congratulating Lee Jae-myung on his nomination as the ruling party’s presidential candidate, the head of state urged him to develop a relevant political program and run a fair campaign. Lee Jae-myung said he is a member of the “team” of the incumbent president, thus urging Moon Jae-in’s supporters to vote for him in future elections.

According to an editorial in the conservative Korea Herald, the incumbent president, a ruling party member, has no reason not to meet with a presidential candidate from the same party, even if the president and candidate are from different factions. However, the meeting has a strong symbolic meaning. None of the candidates who met with the presidents before have been under suspicion of corruption.

The Blue House and Democratic Party have warned the public not to take any notice of this informal closed-door meeting. Still, the incumbent president is obliged to remain neutral in any election, and Moon recently suspended all meetings with ruling party lawmakers.

In this context, it is suspected that the parties have struck a deal – Moon will protect Lee from the scandal in exchange for Lee guaranteeing Moon’s protection from possible litigation after he retires. In this context, the conservative media view the investigation’s position that Lee was not pursuing his private interests. The scheme in question, which provided the city only a fixed profit, allowing speculators to make huge super-profits, was a political decision. Meanwhile, “few would believe that Yoo alone designed and executed the profit distribution scheme unilaterally without prior consultation with the mayor.” In such matters, the city administration always has the last word. On the other hand, there is still no direct evidence against Lee, although if the same logic applied to Park Geun-hye is applied to him, he should go to jail because “collusion” or “silent request” need not be confirmed by facts.

The opposition is counting on the special prosecutor’s investigation, similar to the one used to gather evidence in the Park Geun-hye and Choi Soon-sil case. But such a decision has to go through the Parliament, where the Democrats still have a majority. So the author will continue to monitor how this politically-motivated case develops.

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Konstantin Asmolov, PhD in History, leading research fellow at the Center for Korean Studies of the Institute of the Far East at the Russian Academy of Sciences, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

Featured image is from NEO

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Tens of thousands of supporters of Sri Lanka’s main opposition party rallied in the capital Colombo to protest the nation’s economic woes.

This is the first major campaign against Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s government since it swept to power last August.

Defying heavy sporadic rains, tightened Covid-19 guidelines and court orders, supporters of the Samagi Jana Balawegaya — led by party head Sajith Premadasa and other leaders — marched toward the president’s office in Colombo on Tuesday, carrying placards and shouting slogans against spiraling prices and shortages worsened by a foreign exchange crisis that has led to import controls. Those converging to the capital from other provinces were turned back by police.

Key Crops Start To Fail

Participants included farmers, a key vote bank for the ruling party and opposition, who have been protesting a government decision to ban imported chemical fertilizers as key crops, including tea and paddy, start to fail.

The protests pose no immediate threat to Rajapaksa. His government commands a two-thirds majority in parliament.

Rajapaksa government last week said the opposition’s decision to call for street protests may lead to an increase in coronavirus infections and the country could “be shut down again.”

Bottom of Form

Sri Lanka this week halted crude processing at its only refinery to conserve its foreign exchange reserves, now at the lowest since 2009, for importing essential goods.

The South Asian nation faces $1.5 billion of debt maturities next year even as efforts to shore up the pile through foreign investment have not yet succeeded and earnings from sectors such as tourism and remittances have been hit by the pandemic.

In the recent months, consumers were seen queuing up for essentials, which have now escalated to forming long lines by motorists to refuel at pumping stations.

In August, Rajapaksa declared a food emergency to contain soaring prices and tackle shortages of staples as the foreign exchange crisis deepened.

A decision by the government to ban chemical fertilizer imports, combined with bad weather, has also driven up vegetable and fruit prices, with food inflation hitting 12.8% in October.

The government, which has curbed imports from milk powder, sugar and cement to conserve foreign exchange, leading to shortages, has said it is working on other measures to increase dollar inflows.

Police Mull Action against Main Opposition Party For Defying COVID-19 Guidelines

The police in Sri Lanka’s capital on Wednesday said legal action would be taken against the main Opposition party, the Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB), for defying pandemic health guidelines by holding a public anti-government protest.

SJB legislator Harsha de Silva said most of their activists were prevented from travelling by buses from the outer districts to the city by the police, who had placed roadblocks to turn back activists.

The SJB leader Sajith Premadasa vowed to take the fight to the government in his action termed as ending the ‘queue era’.

“We are in the process of taking legal action,” police spokesman Nihal Thalduwa told reporters.

He said the protest was organized in violation of the pandemic health guidelines.

The SJB charged that the government had resorted to using health guidelines for political purposes by curbing democratic dissent.

The Director General Health Services issued new health guidelines severely restricting the movements under the pandemic situation.

The SJB accused him of being politically-sided with the ruling party.

The SJB claimed that the ruling SLPP held its annual convention with a big gathering recently. They were not made to adhere to health guidelines, the SJB claimed.

The government Parliamentarians accused the SJB of organizing the protest to trigger another wave of the pandemic and thereby inconvenience the government.

Sri Lanka Shuts Only Oil Refinery To Manage Forex Crisis

Sri Lanka has temporarily shut its only oil refinery as part of efforts to manage dwindling foreign exchange reserves, the energy minister said on Tuesday, triggering long queues at petrol stations.

The 51-year old Sapugaskanda Oil Refinery, which has a capacity of 50,000 barrels per day, was closed on Monday, the minister, Udaya Gammanpila, said at the weekly Cabinet briefing.

“The refinery will be closed for about 50 days. Sri Lanka has very limited foreign exchange reserves at the moment and we need it more for essentials like food and medicine,” he said.

“The long lines at fuel stations will stop in a couple of days when the public realizes there is no need to panic.”

Gammanpila said fuel imports would resume once the government was able to raise sufficient dollars but did not give details of a timeline.

Faced with rising inflation and dwindling reserves, the government is discussing a bailout for its economy, cabinet spokesman and Media Minister Dullas Allahaperuma told reporters.

Going To IMF

“Cabinet members discussed at length the pros and cons of Sri Lanka going to the International Monetary Fund for support at Monday’s meeting but no final decision has been reached,” he said.

Negotiate With India

Sri Lanka is also attempting to negotiate a $500 million credit line with India to buy fuel and boost reserves, which dropped to $2.27 billion at the end of October. During the first nine months of 2021, Sri Lanka spent US$692 million on fuel imports, its highest import expenditure.

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COP26: India Ends Up as Fall Guy

November 17th, 2021 by M. K. Bhadrakumar

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Greta Thurnberg, the famous Swedish climate change activist, summed up that the deal reached at COP26 at Glasgow on Saturday was “very, very vague” with several loopholes. She told the media in Glasgow that the pact only “succeeded in watering down the blah, blah, blah”.

“There is still no guarantee that we will reach the Paris Agreement. The text that it is now, as a document, you can interpret it in many, many different ways. We can still expand fossil fuel infrastructure, we can still increase the global emissions. It’s very, very vague,” Thurnberg said. 

The delegates at Glasgow failed to produce more finance or even new guidelines to support developing economies’ gradual switch to renewable energy, known as the “just transition”. Among developing country delegates, many said that COP26 had failed those countries most affected by climate change today: the small island states and zones in Africa hardest hit by extreme weather such as the Sahel and the Horn.

Most striking were the shortfalls and ambiguities on climate finance. G20 country contributions to the US$100 billion fund for developing economies to adapt and mitigate the effects of climate are now set to reach the initial target by 2023. European and North American delegations resisted calls for the immediate establishment of a fund to compensate those countries suffering loss and damage caused by climate change. Instead, they proposed discussions on such a fund’s structure and mechanism. read more

At the end of the day, however, the British hosts have done a smart thing by creating the narrative that the COP26 would have been honky-dory but for China and India imposing a consensus at an eleventh hour change to “phase down” coal use, rather than “phase out”. 

What really happened was that the EU, US and UK agreed and presented the new wording to the rest of the world on the phase out of coal power as a fait accompli, which of course backed India and China into a corner, with the eyes of the world watching. This sparked fury from poor nations and climate activists, egged on from behind by the UK that a small cabal of powerful polluters — India and China — essentially held the world to ransom.

India in particular has been lambasted and made the fall guy. The game plan is to pressure India and China to come back and commit to further emissions cuts by next year’s UN meeting. Neither China nor India has 2030 targets anywhere near in line with a 1.5 degree centigrade pathway, and so will be on the target list of nations under pressure to return next year with more ambition. The UK still holds the COP presidency for another year, so Alok Sharma will remain a key diplomatic player. 

The UK prime minister Boris Johnson then took the centerstage to brag before the House of Commons that COP26 “proved the doubters and the cynics wrong,” and that, for decades, tackling the coal problem “proved as challenging as eating the proverbial elephant” (a sly metaphoric reference to India), but in Glasgow the world “took the first bite”.

Johnson was expected to tell business leaders and diplomats at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet in London Monday evening: “I have been watching politics a long time now and I know when a tipping point is reached. The language does matter but, whether you are talking about phasing down or phasing out, the day is now not far off when it will be as politically unacceptable, anywhere in the world, to open a new coal-fired power station as it now is to get on an aeroplane and light a cigar.” 

This is blackmail Johnson-style — hunting down the contender. The notorious rabble-rouser knows very well that both China and India are heavily reliant on coal power. Their leaderships are keenly aware of the role of coal industry in pulling some of the poorest citizens in the two countries out of poverty. The domestic politics of phasing out coal is highly sensitive for both countries, particularly in the midst of a global energy crisis and a pandemic. read more

The ugliest part of Johnson’s finger wagging and blackmail is that he or his ilk in the rich industrial West have done nothing by way of offering the practical and financial support that developing countries may need for the transition. 

The mother of all ironies is that both India and China went to Glasgow with good intentions. India’s 2070 net zero announcement made headlines and even more significant was Prime Minister Modi’s pledge to set the 2030 goal to ensure 50 percent of India’s energy comes from renewables.

Ahead of Glasgow, Chinese President Xi Jinping also made a sweep of important commitments: that China would reach net zero emissions by 2060, that coal production would peak by 2026, and that China would stop funding the construction of coal plants overseas.   

Despite these significant moves, India and China are being vilified and browbeaten. The BBC went to the extent of soliciting the Pakistani energy minister attending COP26 to badmouth India — with the latter of course gleefully obliging with the powerful metaphor of a cancer patient undergoing chemotherapy who still wants to smoke a packet of cigarettes. 

The poor chap didn’t know that even Europeans and North Americans are chain smokers. Bloomberg reported over the weekend quoting coal mining chief executives that the fuel they produce is far from being consigned to history, and “it will be two to three decades before there’s a dramatic change in coal’s place in the energy space.” 

The Bloomberg report said demand remains robust in Asia and has picked up in Europe and North America as well this winter, with US coal prices surging to the highest in more than 12 years on Monday. 

By the way, Japanese government and electric power industry too are relieved to see the COP26 climate pact urge countries to “phase down” instead of “phase out” the use of coal-fired thermal power to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Japan plans to continue utilizing coal-fired thermal power (which accounts for about 30 pct of its electricity source) while trying to reduce its dependence on coal and suspend or abolish low-efficiency power plants.

The good part about all this is that it is a wake-up call for the Modi government, which has been naive to fall for western flattery and start fancying Johnson’s Global Britain to be India’s key partner in the Indo-Pacific. For India, an equal relationship with Britain is never possible. The guileful British mindset surfaced at Glasgow. India should not be delusional about duplicitous characters like Johnson. 

Equally, it is crucial at the present stage of India’s development that it has a selective engagement with China at least on such profound issues of common interest like climate change. An all-of-government hostility is neither warranted nor agreeable for a mature country. read more

COP26 highlighted that when it comes to the creation / transfer of wealth, high stakes are involved and the West collectively safeguards its interests and will not hesitate to taps into the divisions among the developing countries. The fortnight-long event in Glasgow is been a stark reminder that history has not ended.

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Featured image: A coal mine in Dhanbad, India (Source: Indian Punchline)

The Economic Dimension of China-North Korea Relations

November 17th, 2021 by Dr. Konstantin Asmolov

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Much of the talk about how long the DPRK regime will last under sanctions and the country’s “self-isolation” in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic is rooted in the question of what role Beijing will play in supporting Pyongyang. In 2019, China accounted for about 95 per cent of North Korea’s total trade, according to the website North Korea in the World. According to Chinese customs data, China’s exports to the country dropped from more than US$250 million in November 2019 to just US$3,000 in February.

This is why experts react vigorously to every rumor about the possible border opening, but although they have arisen periodically during 2021, no return of cross-border trade has occurred.

In March 2021, the Presidium of the Supreme People’s Assembly of the DPRK passed a law making the disinfection of all imported goods mandatory. Following this, disinfection facilities were built in record time in Sinuiju on the border with China.

On March 16, some Japanese media reported that the two countries are preparing to open a new three-kilometer New Amnokgang Bridge connecting Sinuiju and China’s Dandong. The bridge was built in 2014 but never opened due to the inability of cash-strapped North Korea to cover the necessary costs of road and customs facilities. If opened, the bridge is expected to significantly increase trade and travel between the two countries. Radio Free Asia reported that Chinese officials were inspecting and repairing railway tracks so that trains between China and North Korea could start running from April. NHK television reported that a freight train was spotted in Dandong, apparently heading for North Korea.

In April, Yonhap News Agency said it noticed flights between Beijing and Pyongyang listed on a timetable posted on the Air Koryo website. Even though online flight trackers showed no sign of the two flights.

Russian Ambassador to North Korea Alexander Matsegora also said the border would reopen and the country’s trading companies were on standby. Still, each time the dates were postponed amid new strains of the virus and related waves of infection in China.

The Nikkei Shimbun publication citing sources of foreign economic companies working with the DPRK in Dandong reported on August 9 that trade might partially resume from the end of August. According to Japanese journalists, most cargo will consist of cereals, food, medicine, and other necessities; Pyongyang is also exploring opportunities to restore trade with Russia.

On October 8, Cha Deok-cheol, deputy spokesperson at South Korea’s unification ministry, noted that there had been no confirmation on the resumption of cargo transportation by road and rail between Dandong and Sinuiju. However, the World Health Organization said the day before that it had begun shipping medical supplies to North Korea through the Port of Dalian.

On November 4, the deputy spokesperson at South Korea’s unification ministry said North Korea was in the final stages of preparing to resume rail routes, with signs indicating preparations to continue trade, such as quarantine facilities, in regions bordering China.

A little earlier, the ROK National Intelligence Service reported that the North is in talks with China and Russia to resume rail traffic across the border and the border cities of North Korea and China, connecting Sinuiju and Dandong, respectively could resume it as early as November.

More data on maritime trade is confirmed. As reported by NKNews, at least five North Korea-linked ships took turns at Longkou Port for possible coal sales between March 29 and April 13, a level comparable to the pre-pandemic.

However, the only operational channel for Sino-North Korean trade is the Port of Nampo, but it is overloaded due to the congestion of cargoes subject to mandatory quarantine. In this regard, there are signs of possible preparations to open and receive cargo at Ryongcheon station, North Pyongan Province.

Another vital supply line is the oil pipeline.  According to NK Pro analysis of recent satellite imagery, construction work began in April both at China Petroleum Pipeline Engineering Co. facilities on the edge of the Yalu River and across the water on North Korean territory. Meanwhile, fresh construction began in late June at the new but unfinished import disinfection center located just south of the oil pipeline crossing point, presumably, an extension of the crude oil pipeline, built in 1975 next to the crude oil pipeline but was shut down and terminated in 1981. China continued to ship crude oil, as evidenced by stable fuel prices.

Specific data on trade between the two countries is somewhat scattered and shows (so far) a declining trend. According to Seoul’s Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency, North Korea’s total foreign trade fell by 73.4 percent to $863 million in 2020. Meanwhile, from January to July this year, North Korea-China trade amounted to $86 million 660,000, down 82.1 percent due to the prolonged border closure due to the coronavirus pandemic.   With other data showing it exceeded $185 million in the first nine months of 2021, it remains 1/3 less than the same period in 2020 and does not exceed 29% of the 2019 figures. Ending the first quarter of 2021, the trade volume between China and the DPRK had dropped to almost zero.

Thus, the sense of light at the end of the tunnel persists. The problem is how long is the haul.

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Konstantin Asmolov, PhD in History, leading research fellow at the Center for Korean Studies of the Institute of the Far East at the Russian Academy of Sciences, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

Featured image is from NEO

The Forgotten US Forever War in Korea

November 17th, 2021 by Prof. Jae-Jung Suh

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Abstract: The Korean War remains conspicuously absent from assertions by the US that it is done with forever wars, but the war remains a fact of life that Koreans live with every day. It continues in other ways too. 

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U.S. President Joe Biden recently declared that “for the first time in 20 years, the United States is not at war. We’ve turned the page.” “And as we close this period of relentless war,” he continued, “we’re opening a new era of relentless diplomacy.”

Was that the end-of-war declaration that South Korean President Moon Jae-in was waiting to hear?

When Biden made his solemn proclamation at the United Nations General Assembly on September 21, 2021, he was referring to the end of the US war in Afghanistan. Since the US military has withdrawn from Afghanistan, Biden reasoned, the US is no longer at war. The Biden administration had already declared it would bring an end to “forever wars” in its national security strategy. That included the 20-year war in Afghanistan, “the longest war in US history” by the administration’s count.

The Korean War, which has technically lasted for 70 years, didn’t appear on the list of forever wars. Despite Biden’s promise to end forever wars, the end of the Korean War was not mentioned anywhere in his national security strategy. For Biden, the Korean War doesn’t exist. Nor is it part of his national security strategy to end it. Considering that the war is not even referred to in his national security strategy, Biden is at least being logical that he does not need to mention the need to end it.

The day after Biden spoke at the UN, New York Times reporter Mark Mazzetti skewered the president’s speech.1 Mazzetti observed that Biden may have pulled troops out of Afghanistan, but he hasn’t ended America’s wars, not even in the Middle East. Just one day earlier, an American drone fired a missile at al-Qaeda forces in Syria. Three weeks before that, the US dropped bombs on the al-Shabab militant group in Somalia. There are still 2,500 American troops in Iraq and 900 in Syria. More than 40,000 American troops are carrying out operations in the Middle East. Biden himself has declared that the US can exercise military power whenever it deems necessary, including Afghanistan.

Mazzetti was right. The US remains at war on multiple fronts. But Mazzetti also got it wrong. He mentioned several countries where the US is waging war, but the Korean War was absent from his list as well. The US has been at war with North Korea since 1950. It continues to station troops in South Korea as part of that war, and not long ago, it carried out a joint military exercise with the South Korean military. And it continues to impose far-reaching economic and political sanctions on North Korea.2

Mazzetti’s not the only one to make that mistake. Andrew Bacevich is another, despite being critical of American military interventions in other countries. A West Point graduate and former officer in the US military, Bacevich, now the President of the Quincy Institute, spoke out against President George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq. In various books he has recounted American military interventions in numerous places since World War II, describing these as “forever wars.”3 He conceptualized what he calls the “Washington rules” that bind the US to perpetual warfare.4

But even Bacevich makes only a few passing references to the Korean War and does not pay due attention to the war that played a decisive role in establishing those “rules.” The Korean War reversed the precipitous fall of the US defense budget after World War II. The budget has never returned to the pre-war level since. The future of NATO was in doubt until the Korean War, which solidified it as a military alliance. Japan, which had been occupied since its defeat in World War II, regained its independence and formed an alliance with the U.S. during the Korean War under the US-Japan Security Treaty. Robert Jervis makes a prescient observation that “it took the Korean War to bring about the policies that we associate with the cold war” although he could not have anticipated, in 1980 when he wrote his analysis, that many of these policies including high defense budgets would remain in place long after the end of the cold war.5

While John Ikenberry describes the postwar order established by the US as the “liberal international order,” it would be more appropriate to call it a realist international order based on power, as John Mearsheimer argues.6 That defense budget, that military power, those alliances, and that international order are still in effect today with a hefty increase in the first Biden defense budget and a focus on China and the Asia-Pacific. Even if these corner stones of the postwar international order can all be traced back to the Korean War, neither liberal Ikenberry nor neorealist Mearsheimer mentions the historical origin. And none of the analysts mentioned above talks about the fact that the Korean War has never ended.

The Korean War is no longer part of American public discourse: There’s no need to declare the end of a nonexistent war. In this manner, the US is able to quietly maintain the world order. Is it possible that part of the “Washington rules” was perhaps inadvertently betrayed by US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Mark Lambert recently? When asked about an end-of-war declaration in a virtual symposium organized by the Institute for Corean-American Studies on September 23, Lambert said the US didn’t want to give North Korea a wrong impression. “Our concern is that we not give a false narrative to the North that in any way shape or form, that would jeopardize our troop presence in South Korea or the ROK-US alliance.”7

President Moon Jae-in speaking at the UN General Assembly, September 2021.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in brought up an end-of-war declaration shortly after Biden’s speech at the UN. Could that speech contribute to pressuring the US to end its silence on the Korean War? Or would it take another round of North Korea’s missile or nuclear tests, or worse, to awaken the Americans to the reality of the war that they have been waging in a distant place?

As it happened, Private (Pfc.) Kim Seok-joo returned to Korea the same day, after 71 years away.8 More precisely, Kim’s remains were repatriated that day. He had been killed during the Battle of Chosin Reservoir during the Korean War and had been left buried—or might have been just left—there until his remains were excavated and sent to Hawaii for identification. From there, his remains were carried home by Second Lieutenant Kim Hye-soo, his great-granddaughter who now serves in the South’s military as a nursing officer.

So continues the war on the Korean Peninsula, down through the generations.

The war continues in other ways too. The Battle of Chosin Reservoir was resurrected as the “Battle at Lake Changjin” (长津湖) on screens in China during its Golden Week, becoming an instant blockbuster with more than $670 million ticket sales within the first two weeks, according to Maoyan. The movie portrays the battle as heroic sacrifices made by Chinese volunteers to deal a humiliating defeat to American soldiers, then the world’s most invincible, and deliver an unvarnished triumph to the newly-born People’s Republic of China. The New York Times sensed “defiant and jingoistic” sentiments, characterizing it as “a lavishly choreographed call to arms at a time of global crisis and increasingly tense relations with the world, especially the United States.” The Global Times of China says as much, from a Chinese perspective. “The national feeling displayed in the film echoes the rising public sentiment in safeguarding national interests in front of provocations, which has great implications for today’s China-U. S. competition.” Thus the war repeats itself, the second time as a film—full of potential to explode into a disastrous third.

During the active phase of the war, General MacArthur kept his headquarters in Tokyo, using several bases in Japan as his staging ground from which to project American forces into the Korean peninsula. The U.S. managed to keep its unhindered access to at least some of them by creating the United Nations Command-Rear in Japan in 1957 when the headquarters moved to Yongsan. It now keeps seven bases ready for use in contingencies, apparently without the requirement to seek prior Japanese approval: (Ground component) Camp Zama; (Air component) Yokota Air Base, Marine Corps Air Station Futenma, Kadena Air Base; and (Naval component) Sasebo Naval Base, White Beach Naval Base, and Yokosuka Naval Base.9 Michael Bosack, former Deputy Chief of Government Relations at Headquarters, U.S. Forces, Japan, notes that this arrangement offers “notable opportunities for the Japanese government to advance its operational and strategic interests.”10 These opportunities include, according to him, expanding UN-designated bases in Japan, increasing Japanese participation in UNC exercises, and inviting international partners for military exercises in Japan. The war thus continues in Japan too, with opportunities to grow.

UNC and UNC-R officers pictured during a 2018 UNC-R change of command ceremony. In the background are the flags of the United States, Japan, Australia, United Nations, as well as General Brooks’ position standard.

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This article originally appeared in Korean in Hankyoreh.

Jae-Jung Suh is professor of political science and international relations at the International Christian University in Tokyo and an Asia-Pacific JournalContributing editor. His publications include Origins of North Korea’s Juche,Power, Interest and Identity in Military Alliances, “From Singapore to Hanoi and Beyond: How (Not) to Build Peace between the U.S. and North Korea,” and“Missile Defense and the Security Dilemma: THAAD, Japan’s ‘Proactive Peace,’ and the Arms Race in Northeast Asia”.

Notes

Mark Mazzetti, “Biden Declared the War Over. But Wars Go On.” The New York Times, September 22, 2021.

For a comprehensive, though somewhat outdated, overview of U.S. sanctions, see Dianne E. Rennack, North Korea: Legislative Basis for U.S. Economic Sanctions, Congressional Research Service, April 25, 2011. For an analysis of the sanctions’ impacts on human lives, see The Human Costs and Gendered Impact of Sanctions on North Korea (October 2019). 

Bacevich, Andrew J. The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War. Updated edition. ed. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2013. Bacevich, A. J., and Efraim Inbar, eds. The Gulf War of 1991 Reconsidered. London; Portland, OR: Frank Cass, 2003.

Bacevich, Andrew J. Washington Rules: America’s Path to Permanent War. 1st ed. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2010.

Robert Jervis. “The Impact of the Korean War on the Cold War.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 24, no. 4 (December 1, 1980): 563-92.

Ikenberry, G. John. “The Liberal International Order and Its Discontents.” Millennium – Journal of International Studies 38, no. 3 (May 1, 2010): 509-21; and ——. After Victory: Institutions, Strategic Restraint, and the Rebuilding of Order after Major Wars. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001. John J. Mearsheimer; Bound to Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Liberal International Order. International Security 2019; 43 (4): 7–50.

조은정, “미 고위관리 ‘북한, 제재완화 원하면 미국과 대화해야’” VOA 뉴스. 2021.9.25.

Remarks by President Moon Jae-in at Joint Repatriation Ceremony between Republic of Korea and United States of America.” September 23, 2021. 

Harrison, Selig S. Korean Endgame: A Strategy for Reunification and U.S. Disengagement. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002, p. 164.

10 Michael Bosack, “Relevance Despite Obscurity: Japan and UN Command,” Tokyo Review, February 1, 2018. 

Featured image: President Biden speaking at the United Nations General Assembly. September 21, 2021. (Source: APJJF)

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Community leader Eduardo Ananayo says he wept when heard the Philippine government had renewed its mining agreement with Australian-Canadian company OceanaGold Corporation this past July.

“We felt betrayed by the government who we thought was there to protect us. Why did they side with the foreigners instead of us Indigenous people?” asks the Tuwali elder, who leads the Didipio Earth Savers Multi-Purpose Association (DESAMA), one of several organizations protesting the gold and copper mining operation.

OceanaGold holds a “financial or technical assistance agreement” (FTAA) issued by the Philippine government, which allows a wholly foreign-owned mining company to operate in the country. Its previous permit expired in 2019. The successful renewal, which came despite persistent opposition from both residents and the local government, allows the mining firm to continue operations until 2044.

“That will not dampen our resistance,” Ananayo says. “We will not let all our years of struggle go to waste.” Around 4,000 indigenous people living in the villages of Didipio and Alimit, in Kasibu town, Nueva Vizcaya province, have mounted strong opposition to the mine: first against Arimco Mining Corporation, which obtained the initial mining rights in 1994, and then against OceanaGold, which acquired the FTAA in 2006.

OceanaGold’s mine claim spans 27,000 hectares (66,700 acres), straddling the provinces of Nueva Vizcaya and Quirino, some 270 kilometers (170 miles) northeast of the Philippine capital, Manila. The concession is believed to hold 1.41 million ounces of gold and 169,400 tons of copper, enough to keep the mine running for another two decades.

Opponents of the project say it threatens the local water system, which is critical to the community’s survival, to their agricultural livelihoods, and to the surrounding ecosystems.

Immense volumes of water are used to process mineral ores, leading to both water pollution and depletion. In addition, both open-pit and underground mining (which OceanaGold shifted to as of 2015) can disrupt the natural underground water systems that feed springs and creeks.

Protesters also decry what they say is the company’s disregard for the land rights of the Indigenous people, and the wide open-pit and abandoned untillable farmlands that they consider a permanent scarring of their natural landscape.

A history of resistance

Since the 1990s, Indigenous peoples in Didipio have resisted attempts to mine their lands.

The area was originally settled by the Indigenous Bugkalot, but was later occupied through peaceful agreements by the Tuwali and Ayangan of Ifugao province and the Kalanguya and Ibaloy of Benguet in the 1950s. This means that although they belong to recognized Indigenous communities, the residents are not regarded as ancestral domain holders. This precludes them from asserting the need for a free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) process under the Philippine Indigenous Peoples Rights Act.

With a semitemperate weather, Didipio was an ideal place for rice and vegetable agriculture because of the abundance of water coming from numerous springs and creeks from the forest, Ananayo says.

The Dinauyan and Surong rivers, which cut across the village, were not only abundant with fish but also nuggets of gold, which locals traditionally pan, Ananayo recalls. “After tending our farms, we would go pan for gold which we sell to buy other necessities.”

But in the early 2000s, OceanaGold pushed through with its operation, despite resistance from the community and the municipal and provincial government. To begin excavating its open-pit mine, OceanaGold demolished at least 187 houses in June 2008. According to a 2011 report by the Philippine Commission on Human Rights (CHR), a constitutionally mandated body, this demolition was violent and was carried out without the legally required permits or relocation and compensation agreements. The evictions, the commission said, also amounted to a violation of the Indigenous community’s right to “manifest their culture and identity.”

“Some people were still cooking breakfast while others were still sleeping when Oceana [OceanaGold] bulldozed their houses,” recalls Myrna Duyan, also a resident of Didipio. Company security officers even shot a man for trying to save his neighbor’s house, she says.

With a semitemperate weather, Didipio was an ideal place for rice and vegetable agriculture because of the abundance of water coming from numerous springs and creeks from the Kasibu forest. Image courtesy of Karlston Lapniten.

OceanaGold’s mine in Didipio, Philippines. Image courtesy of Karlston Lapniten.

Following its investigation, the CHR recommended the government “consider the probable withdrawal” of OceanaGold’s FTAA due to gross violations of human rights related to the 2008 demolition. But no official action was taken.

Instead, by 2013 OceanaGold had completely demolished Dinkidi Hill, inverting it into a vast open-pit mine. Since then, Duyan says, the water systems across Didipio started to recede significantly.

As of October 2021, Duyan says that at least a dozen water pumps and springs have dried up in the community immediately surrounding the mine, forcing residents to travel at least a mile (1.6 kilometers) to fetch water for household use.

Other residents have given up tracts of farmland, as there is not enough irrigation to sustain crops. Duyan says her own father was forced to abandon their farm in Upper Bakbakan, a district in Didipio, when water became totally scarce in 2017.

The area where the water is drying up is part of the headwaters of the Addalam River, a major tributary of the Cagayan River, the longest in the Philippines. The Addalam irrigates rice paddies in downstream Isabela and Cagayan provinces, known as the rice-producing heartland of the northern Philippines.

The proximity of the mine to the community is also worrisome, since the center of the open pit is just 1 km (0.6 mi) from the edge of the community. When OceanaGold conducts rock blasting underground, the earth trembles as if an earthquake happened, Ananayo says.

Cracks can be seen in the walls and floors of many houses, as well as the community school, which the villagers attribute to the blasting.

“With their continuing operations, this will surely worsen. Nearby communities should also expect losing their waters,” Ananayo says.

Gold panners have also been stopped from panning in their traditional spots, Duyan says. Even those far downstream of the mine have had to stop after experiencing skin irritation from the river water, a phenomenon they attribute to the chemicals seeping from OceanaGold’s tailings dam.

At one time, Ananayo says, the company hired a “military man” who destroyed the residents’ sluice boxes along the river and threatened to hurt those who planned to resume panning.

“They accuse us of stealing from them by panning, but this is our land! How can we steal something we own?” Ananayo says.

OceanaGold did not grant Mongabay’s request for an interview, and instead directed Mongabay via email to visit its website “for more information.”

Residents forming a human barricade along the road, 2019. Image courtesy of Kalikasan PNE.

People’s barricades

Following the expiration of OceanaGold’s FTAA in June 2019, residents of Didipio set up “people’s barricades” along the gravel roads leading to both of the mine site’s entrances, halting the entry of OceanaGold’s fuel tankers and service vehicles.

Ananayo says they resorted to such means after numerous petitions and letters asking government agencies and national officials to intervene resulted in nothing. (The regional office of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, which is responsible for regulating mining, did not respond to Mongabay’s request for comments.)

The opposition became even more emboldened with Nueva Vizcaya Governor Carlos Padilla’s vocal support: “[OceanaGold] no longer have the right to operate,” Padilla told local media in July 2019. “If they have no right to the land, then they have no right to continue enriching themselves from the land.”

Ananayo says the barricades have been the site of altercations between villagers and workers trying to bring in fuel and other materials for the mine’s operations. Violence escalated on April 6, 2020, when three oil tankers escorted by at least 100 policemen forced their way into the mine site from the northeast road.

Residents immediately gathered to form a human barricade along the road. Some sat down, others lay down on the gravel road, and others still tried to go under the tanker trucks. But the police, armed with riot shields and sticks, beat the protesters and shoved them to the side of the road. Witnesses said other policemen stood guard with their heavy rifles.

Duyan was struck on her foot, resulting in the loss of her toenails, while Ananayo was hit in the face. Rolando Pulido, at the time the chair of DESAMA, was stripped down to his underwear, beaten, and detained overnight at the police station.

Trauma from the event has led other residents to “lie low” for fear of an even greater impunity, Duyan says. But she says she remains undeterred. “Of course, we fear for our lives, but we will not let it conquer us. God is watching over us.”

An abandoned barricade post in Didipio. Image courtesy of Karlston Lapniten.

In April 2020, while the mine’s permit was suspended, police dispersed protesters and escorted a convoy of oil tankers to the mining site. Image courtesy of Karlston Lapniten.

Pandemic restrictions

With the rise in the number of coronavirus cases in the Philippines this year, protesters abandoned their barricade posts in compliance with local health protocols and regulations. They even avoided holding physical meetings to avoid the risk of local transmission, Duyan says.

It was during this period, when lockdowns and economic distress hampered the community’s ability to organize, that OceanaGold’s contract was renewed. “We are already suffering a lot from the effects of COVID and they included yet another burden on top,” Duyan says.

Duyan says OceanaGold has taken advantage of the restrictions imposed by the government to curb the pandemic. With no hindrance, its vehicles can now freely go in and out of the mine site, Duyan says. Hundreds of people from outside Didipio also frequently enter the community to apply for jobs after the company posted announcements for job openings. “Now we also have health security issues, since each of those people could be carriers of COVID,” Duyan says.

COVID-19 restrictions have also halted consultations and visits from NGOs and advocacy groups who are helping the community in their struggle against the mine. Ananayo says the community relies heavily on organizations like the Legal Rights and Natural Resources Center and Alyansa Tigil Mina (Alliance to Stop Mining) to provide pro bono assistance in legal actions and in understanding court and administrative processes.

“We’ve lost hope on government agencies because we have not seen them advocate our cause,” Ananayo says.

Information relayed to DESAMA by sympathetic OceanaGold employees indicates that the company will resume operations in December. This October, Duyan says, seven passenger vans loaded with blasting materials were seen entering the well-guarded mine compound.

With COVID-19 restrictions keeping the residents from going out to protest, OceanaGold’s vehicles now freely go in and out of the mine site. Image courtesy of Karlston Lapniten.

Call for help

With general elections coming up in May 2022, Duyan says the stance of politicians on large-scale mining will decide whom they will campaign and vote for.

“We will use this election to vote officials who truly champion our cause and will help us stop Oceana’s operations,” she says.

Following the inaction of the government in response to the illegal demolition of houses in 2008 and the violent dispersal of protesters in April 2020, Ananayo says protesting residents feel that even state forces and government agencies have become instruments to further oppress them. OceanaGold, Ananyo adds, has become well-versed in burnishing its image outside Didipio, with many local news outlets portraying the company as a responsible miner.

Ananayo says the community needs any help they can muster, even from outside the country.  “I hope people will notice our voices here in Didipio,” he says. “We settled here peacefully long before mining prospectors came. We will fight for our lands.”

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Featured image: OceanaGold’s mining site in Nueva Vizcaya, Philippines. Image courtesy of EJ Atlas.

Japan’s Energy Policy and Its Significance for Russia

November 10th, 2021 by Petr Konovalov

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Just as decades ago, coal remains a strategically important fuel for the world. Despite the constant talk of greenhouse gas emissions and the complete phase-out of coal, the disappearance of this fuel from the market would lead to the collapse of the global economy. It is quite natural that the world’s four major coal consumers, China, India, the USA, and Japan are among the most economically developed countries in terms of GDP.

As for Japan it once relied heavily on “atoms for peace” technologies in its energy sector. Before 2011, Japan had 54 nuclear reactors that generated about 30 percent of its electricity. However, after the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in March 2011, Japan began a mass shutdown of nuclear power plants. Some power plants have been re-commissioned after safety checks, but many are still not operational, and in 2020, nuclear power plants accounted for only about 5% of Japan’s electricity.

To make up for lost nuclear capacity, Japan has dramatically increased its use of hydrocarbon energy in the decade since 2011. Since the country is under the strongest influence of the West and has to share the latter’s “green” policy, Japan wanted to replace nuclear power plants with thermal power plants (TPP) running on natural gas, which is considered the most environmentally friendly type of hydrocarbon fuel. However, Japan has no large gas reserves of its own, and it proved to be too expensive to import gas in the quantities required to cover all the needs of the Japanese energy industry. With oil, which is not as clean a fuel as natural gas is but is still superior to coal in this respect, the same situation occurred, as it turned out too expensive to fuel all thermal power plants with imported oil only. As a result, Japan had to increase its use of coal and, since it does not possess coal reserves, had to multiply its imports. In 2020, Japan became the world’s fourth-largest consumer of coal.

It would be in Japan’s interest to buy the bulk of its coal from Russia since Russia has vast deposits of this energy carrier and can offer coal of the highest quality that gives maximum energy with minimum pollution. However, Japan’s close relations with the West, with which Russia’s relations have significantly deteriorated in the past decade, and Japan’s claims to the Kuril Islands, which were ceded to Russia as a result of World War II, have played a role. Therefore, Japan’s top coal suppliers from 2011-2020 were Australia and Indonesia, with Russia ranking third. However, given the volume of Japanese coal consumption and the fact that Japan imports Russian oil and gas in addition to coal, this is a very high figure characterizing the magnitude of Russian-Japanese hydrocarbon cooperation. For example, in 2019, Russian coal exports to Japan totaled 20 million tons, earning Russia $1.9 billion.

However, the “green” pressure of the West doesn’t go away and is only getting stronger every year. Wealthy countries and corporations do not need competitors, they must be able to restrict industry and slow down other countries’ economic development. That is why Washington and Brussels are tirelessly pushing the environmental agenda on every possible international platform, making it one of the main topics at the UN.

As a result, in the summer of 2020, Hiroshi Kajiyama, the Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry announced the government’s intention to close 110 of Japan’s 140 coal-fired power plants by 2030 to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. In the fall of 2020, Japan’s new Prime minister, Yoshihide Suga, said in his first speech to the Japanese Parliament that his country is committed to achieving zero greenhouse gas emissions. “Zero” or “carbon neutrality,” which is so much talked about, does not mean that there are no emissions at all, but that they are offset by the green spaces that absorb carbon dioxide, or by the money that a particular country or company allocates to environmental projects. However, coal, considered the dirtiest fuel, should be reduced down to, or just above, zero.

Of course, if it happens, Japan’s rejection of coal could have a significant blow to the budgets of all Japanese coal exporters, especially Australia, Indonesia, and Russia. Whether the Land of the Rising Sun will implement such an ambitious plan is a matter of lively debate.

The fact is that, according to Hiroshi Kajiyama, the Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry, Japan plans to replace hydrocarbon energy sources with renewable energy sources (RES), such as solar radiation, water, wind, etc. Also under consideration is the possibility of switching to a new fuel, hydrogen, which is considered environmentally friendly because it does not emit harmful substances when used.

All this sounds tempting, but in practice, RES cannot yet bring enough electricity to uninterruptedly supply a country with a large population and developed industry. Hydropower plants depend on the availability of sufficiently full rivers. While a country like Norway has managed to generate 95% of its electricity through hydroelectric power, Japan does not have the same natural environment. In addition, hydropower plants themselves cause significant damage to river ecology.

As for solar and wind power plants, they are, as mentioned above, too unstable. European countries may serve as an example of this, such as the UK, which proudly reported in early 2020 that it could convert most of its energy to renewables, only to face an energy crisis in the cold winter of 2020-2021, when many people were left without heating in their homes. As a result, in the fall of 2021, to prevent a repeat of the crisis, Europe began actively buying gas, which, although it gives less pollution than coal, still remains a traditional hydrocarbon fuel. The massive purchase of gas has led to skyrocketing prices for the product, and as a result, even those European countries that are at the forefront of the global coal phase-out movement have had to buy and burn coal in their power plants. As a result, both gas and coal reached record prices in autumn 2021, and Russian, Australian, and Indonesian coal companies do not feel the lack of profit.

The author has mentioned earlier Japan’s desire to switch to hydrogen. Indeed, hydrogen does not pollute the environment when used. However, the environment is polluted during hydrogen’s production: surprisingly, most of the hydrogen produced in the world comes from the same oil and coal. Other ways of producing hydrogen on an industrial scale are not cost-effective yet. Thus, to avoid processing hydrocarbon fuel on its territory, Japan will have to pay a lot of money to other countries, and only later receive the finished product. In the eyes of the United Nations, this may absolve Japan of responsibility for air pollution. Still, it will not make the number of harmful substances in the Earth’s atmosphere any less.

In general, the plans announced by the Japanese government in 2020 seem unrealistic. Currently, coal-fired power plants generate more than 30% of all Japanese electricity. Rapid abandonment of coal in such a situation, as Europe has experienced first-hand, can provoke an energy crisis, the solution of which will require even more coal purchases. However, despite the loud statements of its leaders, Japan does not seem to be going to reduce coal consumption in the near future: from June 2020 to June 2021, Japanese coal imports increased by more than 4.8%.

The only truly realistic way for Japan to tangibly reduce its coal consumption is to switch to natural gas and revive Japan’s nuclear power industry, which was nearly destroyed by the Fukushima Daiichi Accident.

Natural gas is too expensive right now. At the same time, it could remain expensive for a long time: in 2020-2021, Europe became convinced that it is too early to make renewables a strategic pillar of its energy security. However, a return to full coal consumption is also unlikely for today’s European politicians, meaning that Europe is likely to keep buying gas at high prices for years and decades to come. This will make it difficult to switch from coal to gas in Japan as well.

The future of Japan’s nuclear power industry remains unclear. On the one hand, Japanese politicians have already admitted it can’t be abandoned altogether. On the other hand, it may take many years to restore nuclear power industry to pre-Fukushima levels while simultaneously introducing modern safety systems intended to prevent a repeat of the disaster.

No matter how the Japanese energy sector develops in the future, it could be beneficial for Russia. If Japan continues to consume the same amount of coal, Russia will maintain the same volume of its Japanese coal exports.

If Japan switches to natural gas, Russia could become its largest gas supplier, considering the geographical proximity of the two countries and the fact that Russia is one of the world’s largest gas producers. Russia has long been exporting gas to Japan, and a considerable increase in those supplies will compensate Russia for its loss in coal supplies.

If Japan chooses to restore nuclear power, it will also indirectly benefit Russia. After the Fukushima Daiichi Accident, confidence in nuclear power was shaken in Japan and throughout the world. Many nuclear power plants have been closed in Europe, and many countries have given up building them. If Japan returns to building nuclear power plants with new, safer technologies, it will signal to the world that the “atoms for peace” can once again be trusted. Then the Russian Federation, which is one of the leading suppliers of peaceful nuclear technologies, will be able to export them to more countries.

In conclusion, there are many promising types of energy globally, and those countries that pay attention to each of them will gain the most. However, traditional hydrocarbon energy will long play a leading role in the world, providing revenue and influence to resource-rich countries.

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Petr Konovalov is a political observer, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

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Over a month has passed since the announcement of the defense cooperation agreement among Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States (AUKUS).

While the deal includes cooperation in a variety of areas, the most eye-catching aspect of the cooperation is the sale of nuclear-powered submarines, a crown jewel of US military technology, to Australia.

Although AUKUS does not mention China directly, it is well-understood that China motivated the formation of this partnership. Given the scope of AUKUS and its relatively long implementation timeframe, there are four ways to analyze Chinese reactions: threat assessment, nuclear nonproliferation, potential responses, and the regional arms race.

The Chinese worry about Australia obtaining nuclear-powered submarines, but do not consider the threat urgent.

They are concerned by the impact such submarines could introduce to China’s maritime domains, especially in the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait. Beijing, therefore, has focused on the deal’s geopolitical impact and attacked AUKUS, arguing that it is the product of a “Cold War mentality” among Canberra, London, and Washington and that it will undermine regional security and stability.

Some have equated AUKUS with an “Asian version of NATO,” with the potential to expand to include other like-minded countries.

Despite the severity of the challenge, there is also an impulse in Beijing to “wait and see” as to its real impact, as the details remain elusive and consultations will take time. The Chinese are not yet clear whether the submarines will be built, or whether they will come from retired US fleet.

In addition, Beijing believes that AUKUS might be scrapped by future political transitions in the Australian government, especially considering its high financial and strategic costs. The fact that three former Australian prime ministers have expressed varying reactions to AUKUS leaves China with a sense of hope that this may not be a done deal.

Impact on proliferation

The most stringent Chinese attacks on AUKUS have focused on its implications for nonproliferation. The Chinese Permanent Representative to the United Nations in Vienna made a statement on September 16 on the deal’s “undisguised nuclear proliferation activities.”

He called for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to publicly condemn AUKUS, which, he claimed, demonstrates the “double standard” the United States and United Kingdom pursue in nuclear exports.

According to a prominent Chinese arms control expert, director of the Arms Control Center at the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations (CICIR) Guo Xiaobing, AUKUS violates the mission and core obligations of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) in five different ways:

  • It contributes to the proliferation of a delivery system for weapons of mass destruction.
  • It contributes to the proliferation of fissile materials that could be used to make nuclear weapons.
  • It has the potential to lead to the proliferation of uranium enrichment technologies.
  • It undermines the NPT because it sets a bad precedent.
  • It could fuel a regional arms race.

To be sure, AUKUS does not violate the NPT. In the IAEA Safeguard Glossary (2001 Edition), section 2.14, on the use of nuclear material in a non-proscribed military activity which does not require the application of IAEA safeguards, it is stipulated that “[n]uclear material covered by a comprehensive safeguards agreement may be withdrawn from IAEA safeguards should the State decide to use it for such purposes, e.g. for the propulsion of naval vessels” (emphasis added).

This, in other words, excludes nuclear-powered submarines from IAEA safeguarding requirements. As such, then, China’s attack on AUKUS is that it violates the spirit of the NPT, but not its letter.

Potential responses

Given the impact of AUKUS is not immediate, Chinese reactions will take time to manifest. At present, China appears to prioritize understanding the scope and details of AUKUS and attacking its legitimacy for geopolitical and nonproliferation reasons. Still, in retaliation, some have proposed additional economic sanctions on Australia through trade.

Hu Xijin, chief editor at Global Times called for “no mercy” to Australia if Canberra dares to “assume it has acquired the ability to intimidate China now that it has nuclear submarines and strike missies.”

He has also proposed that China should “kill the chicken to scare the monkey” if Australia takes any aggressive military moves. In the event of perceived attacks from Australia, this could mean that China will retaliate militarily.

For Chinese strategic thinkers, the real danger and core challenge of AUKUS (and the United States’ overall coalition-building in the region) lies in the intensification of the arms race in the Indo-Pacific.

Although Beijing considers that the goal of its military buildup is to offset, or undermine US military dominance in the region, rather than targeting any regional countries, Chinese officials seem to be coming to the painful realization that their military modernization has led regional players to seek new (or more) weapons.

Plainly, Beijing is realizing that its actions have contributed to a regional arms race. What’s more troubling for China is that this arms race is between China on one side and the United States and its allies and partners on the other. Beijing, then, must counter multiple countries at the same time.

A formation of Dongfeng-17 missiles takes part in a military parade during the celebrations marking the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China at Tiananmen Square in Beijing. Photo: Xinhua/Mao Siqian

Equally upsetting for China is that this arms race is created, fueled, and supplied by the United States. Starting with nuclear-powered submarines to Australia, China believes that the United States will receive—and deliver on—rising demands from allies and partners in the region for newer and more advanced weapon systems, even if they are not nuclear-powered submarines; South Korea, for one, has made this request for a decade.

Beijing must decide if it should “fold,” “call,” or “raise.” “Calling” or to “raising” vividly reminds China of the fall of the Soviet Union, and how Moscow exhausted its resources in its arms race with the United States.

“Folding” does not appear to be an option—Beijing is unlikely to give up its regional ambitions.

Beijing could call for arms control dialogues, but that will require compromises, and it is unclear that there is an appetite for this in China at the moment. Still, AUKUS might force China to make tough decisions.

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Yun Sun ([email protected]) is a senior fellow and co-director of the East Asia Program and director of the China Program at the Stimson Center.

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From its bloody war on drugs to its fight against terrorism and the lingering communist insurgency, the Duterte administration has exhibited a steadfast resolve to address the Philippines’ security challenges. One striking observation is its heavy dependence on the armed forces to accomplish its security goals, albeit at great cost to the nation’s democracy. Unseen since the martial law era, this military role expansion now includes leading the COVID-19 response. The country is said to have the longest militarized pandemic lockdown in the world.

Favoring military officers for their apparent efficiency and obedience, by 2017, Duterte has the greatest number of retired generals in any presidential cabinet in the post-dictatorship period. Although former military officials usually lead defense and security institutions (such as the Department of National Defense) in practice, the Duterte administration distinguishes itself by also appointing them to head department portfolios dealing with the environment and social welfare; even the office in charge of the peace process.

There is little doubt that this intimate relationship between the military and their commander-in-chief comes when both are very popular with the Filipino public, despite criticisms from the country’s stalwarts of liberal democracy, such as the opposition, media, and civil society.

The imbalance in Philippine civil-military relations is another indicator of the country’s democracy’s ongoing erosion that got worse since Duterte’s rise to power. This status has been observed domestically and validated by worsening external perceptions. Just recently, a London-based think tank classified it as a “flawed democracy.” Simultaneously, a US government intelligence report has identified Duterte himself as a threat to democracy in Southeast Asia.

The country’s state of civil-military relations exposes a dangerous resurgence of the military’s undue influence in Southeast Asia’s politics. This has been seen in Thailand, Indonesia, and recently, in Myanmar’s military coup.

Given the steady pace of Philippine democracy’s erosion, there can still be a lot that could happen with the remaining 15 months of the Duterte administration. Its ironclad alliance with a military bent on achieving its first total victory against a historical enemy: the world’s longest Maoist-inspired communist insurgency, is worth watching. Regardless of the outcome, the military’s gambit might have far-reaching negative consequences to the state and society which it has sworn to protect and defend.

Facelift: The military’s improved reputation in Philippine society

At present, the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) is enjoying a much more improved reputation since re-democratization in 1986. While some may attribute this to Duterte’s exaltation and constant praise of the institution, a major factor has been its reformist and modernizing stance in the past decade. Since 2010 the Philippine government has embarked on a security sector reform (SSR) to improve the military’s effectiveness and accountability. SSR is a major principle stated in the country’s National Security Policy since the Benigno Aquino III Administration. This push for professionalism and democratic accountability by the country’s civilian leadership coupled with the military’s voluntary cooperation has increased public trust and confidence in the military. A December 2019 poll (below) revealed that the AFP enjoyed its highest trust ratings since public opinion polling began. An astounding 79% of Filipinos trust the military.

SWS

Net trust ratings of the Philippine military, 1993-2019 by Social Weather Stations (All rights reserved)

The steady improvement of the military’s image among Filipinos was a by-product of its openness to embrace reform and substantive professionalism. Among others, this included setting up human rights offices across the military establishment, the adoption of a transformation roadmap with the guidance of reputable members of the civilian bureaucracy, academe, media, and civil society, and cooperating with politicians to deal with peace and development challenges at the local level.

Due to the challenges of territorial defense and the country’s stake in the South China Sea disputes, the last decade saw the military repositioning itself to be more externally oriented through the concept of a credible “Self-Reliant Defense Posture.” As an addition to the military’s doctrine, this principle aims to fully modernize the AFP and make it a professional armed force focused on the republic’s external defense and security.

Soulmates: Duterte’s relations with the military

No president in the country’s post-martial law history has favored the military than Duterte. It is not coincidental that once the firebrand leader decided to put his unconditional trust and confidence with the armed forces, things negatively affected Philippine democracy. As more and more members of the military (active or retired) fused themselves with the administration, the more it became more difficult to balance civil-military relations democratically.

This has added to the stress that the Duterte administration has exerted over Philippine democracy. Never has there been a time in the country where the president has control over all branches of government given the administration’s “super-majority” in the legislature. Majority of the magistrates in the nation’s Supreme Court are also Duterte appointees. His consolidation of power has attracted the military to embark on a partnership that defies a model of civil-military relations where democratic principles and norms, primarily civilian oversight and accountability, have taken a back seat.

Some ex-generals in top cabinet posts even replaced left-leaning officials endorsed by the country’s communist movement, a complete reversal of the more accommodating stance of the populist leader at the beginning of his presidency. Some see the value of putting retired generals in political positions – they are more efficient, strategic, quicker to respond, and were socialized to obey their commander-in-chief. Anyone familiar with Philippine governance knows that delay, paralysis, and bureaucratic politics are the policy process’s maladies. As former military officials, now considered civilians given their retirement from active service, many see their experience as an asset to Duterte’s government.

Duterte in Marawi City

President Duterte in Military Outfit visiting Marawi City (Credit: Ace Morandante for Presidential Communications Operations Officelicence: Public Domain)

However, the “civilianization” of the generals is at best only in form. Despite all efforts to portray themselves as civilians, soldiers retain that scholars of civil-military relations call “the military mind.” Decades of socialization and practice formed a mental map with a different perspective on political affairs – one that is far less simple, limited, and categorical. This is also shaped by the country’s specific historical experience where the military has intervened in domestic politics and decided the legitimacy of civilian governments.

Generals also do not lose their networks and connections within the military world. As observed, every one of them brought other military officials (often fellow retirees who were their subordinates) in every government institution they lead. This multiplier effect not only leads to groupthink in decision-making but also exacts a toll on the development of civilian expertise in the government’s already weakened bureaucracy.

It becomes problematic when civilian leaders like to invite and encourage the military’s direct involvement in the formulation and implementation of security policies. Sources from inside the Duterte administration have observed that there is a lack of diverse perspectives in peace and security policy circles and a complete absence of contentious debate (which is critical to arriving at a satisfactory policy outcome) because military officers are trained to focus on immediate responses to perceived crises and are not used to prolonged deliberation. In a very complicated policy area such as peace and security, a government whose most dominant voice comes from the military might settle for quick fixes and lack a holistic appreciation of complex issues.

This is seen in the country’s pandemic response so far. The militarized nature of the policies imposed by Duterte’s government has failed to appreciate the critical public health and human security dimensions of the pandemic. Its heavy-handed and punitive approach are often not grounded on complex science and empirical evidence that should guide public policy.

Now or never: The military’s anti-communist purge

As Duterte assumed the military’s padrino (godfather) role, the guard rails normally maintained by the civilian government over the republic’s guardians started to corrode. The military’s top-brass, both active and retired, began to shift their attention to its historical enemy – the communist movement. An executive decree signed by the president in 2018 seeks to “end local communist armed conflict” by the end of Duterte’s term in 2022. This unconditional order aligned with the military’s enduring interest to score a final victory against their communist nemesis since it knows that future presidents might not share the same conviction.

Euphemistically called a “whole of nation” approach, this heavily-funded counter-insurgency strategy seeks to mobilize all relevant stakeholders within the government and even society through collaborative efforts. However, a closer look at its implementation reveals that this approach is dictated by elements of the military establishment. The approach has been distorted to one wherein all of society must go behind the military’s leadership. The Duterte administration’s inability to impose democratic civilian control has put the military in the driver seat of this anti-communist drive. With both retired and active generals at the helm of implementing this, the military is determined to put a violent rather than negotiated end to perhaps the longest running Maoist-inspired communist insurgency in the world.

Therefore, it is not surprising that the military went full-throttle in its McCarthy-like campaign against an insurgency that they believe has penetrated all sectors of society. Though historically seen as rebels with a cause, the communist movement is now labeled as a terrorist group, a term the government used to reserve for jihadists and other religious extremists. Amid a crippling pandemic, the government also passed a new draconian anti-terrorist law that further legally empowered the state to designate terrorists, conduct surveillance, freeze assets, and detain those they believe are terrorists in a process that jeopardized constitutionally-guaranteed rights.

The latest move of the military is to target academic institutions, notably the country’s national university: the University of the Philippines (UP), due to its allegation that it has become a hub for communist recruitment. UP has played a key role in the anti-Marcos struggle but also has produced leaders in all fields and professions in the country, the defense department has unilaterally abrogated a three-decades-old agreement on the conduct of military operations in the eight campuses of UP. This was seen as a brash move with little regard for the mutual respect and good faith built between the academic community and the military.

Despite the strong condemnation from Filipino academic institutions, there is no sign that the Department of National Defense will reinstate its accord with UP. While both parties to the revoked agreement have initiated talks, the military has entered university campuses and continued to engage in blatant “red-tagging” of members of the UP community. It is highly improbable that a new accord that will respect or enhance the academic freedom of educational institutions will be forged under the Duterte administration. In the end, the military has little regard to casting a wide net on whom they consider to be enemies of the state, even if it includes the institution whose mandate has been to produce many of the nation’s best and brightest.

Academic freedom has become the latest casualty in this “scorched earth” campaign to rid the country of communism – an ideology not banned by the 1987 Constitution – but one that the Duterte government has successfully linked with lawless violence and crime. In doing so, it has not exercised caution in labelling dissidents and critics as communists themselves or as their sympathizers. This has a chilling effect on the nation’s academic institutions’ ability to critically think, study, and analyze important matters, which inevitably includes how the Duterte administration is governing a country it promised to serve and protect.

Scorched earth: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?[1]

Without regard for Philippine democracy’s long-term welfare, the Duterte administration has embraced the armed as a political partner despite the constitutional principle of civilian supremacy over the military. This relationship has blurred the critical boundaries between civilian authority and the military establishment. Duterte has given the military everything it wants in terms of perks, resources, and political patronage. Without limited civilian control, he has allowed the military to lead, without civilian supervision, peace and security policy. Finally, the populist president has tolerated a military to generally act with impunity as it wages its wars against its people, rather than defending the state against its enemies abroad.

What will it profit the military if it defeats its enemies but forfeits the country’s soul in exchange?

The military has reciprocated Duterte’s favor by defending the authoritarian leader’s rhetoric and policies. With very few exceptions, members of the armed forces have rallied around the administration, even if its policies in the long-run can undermine military professionalism and modernization. This can also harm the credibility it presently enjoys. There must be ways to communicate to military officers – both active and retired – that their credibility and the military’s integrity are at stake when security forces are involved in politics. A politicized military can never be a professional military.

The Duterte administration has raised public expectations that it will deliver positive changes for the country by the end of its term. By fusing itself with Duterte, his administration’s failure to fulfill its promises and expectations might lead to damaging repercussions for the military’s institutional reputation.

The costs of the generals’ gambit might prove to be too high for the country. A democracy is in further danger when the military’s interests are threatened. To know how they could react once Duterte relinquishes power to an opposition leader in 2022, one can just look at what the Myanmar military did a few weeks ago.

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Aries A. Arugay is Professor of Political Science and Associate Dean for Research, Extension, and Publications in the College of Social Sciences and Philosophy from the University of the Philippines in Diliman (UP). He has conducted research on civil-military relations in the Philippines for the past 20 years. Dr. Arugay was also active in military officials’ education and training until the abrogation of the 1989 agreement between UP and the Department of National Defense.

Notes

[1] A Latin phrase found in the work of the Roman poet Juvenal from his Satires. It is literally translated as “Who will guard the guardians?”.

Featured image:  Tarmedi – adapted from Nina Silaeva licence: CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0

The Prospect of Political Change in Japan – Elections 2021

October 25th, 2021 by Prof. Gavan McCormack

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Abstract: Japan in late 2021 faces two important elections – in September for presidency of the Liberal-Democratic Party (and de facto Prime Minister) and in October for Lower House of the Diet. This paper argues that Kishida Fumio, victorious in the former and to contest the latter on 31 October, offers little prospect of change. His government includes the same key figures as the Abe and Suga governments of 2012-2021 and is likely to continue the same US-led anti-China policies, marked by substantial military expansion and multi-national military exercises drawing to the East China Sea warships of major countries including not only the United States but also Great Britain, France, Australia, even Germany. This paper considers current trends and, while suggesting that significant change is not probable, nevertheless draws attention to a citizen-led challenge that could cause upset to the long-established LDP-dominated order.

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Games, Viruses, and Politics

In late 2021, Japan follows the upheavals of the Olympic and Paralympic Games and the COVID pandemic with two elections, for president of the Liberal-Democratic party on 29 September and for Lower House of the National Diet on 31 October. Both will reflect, in one way or another, the fact that the two most recent Prime Ministers, Abe Shinzo (2012-2020) and Suga Yoshihide (2020-2021) signally failed to carry the country with them in the way they addressed the Games and the pandemic. The ruling elite assumed that the grand Olympic celebration would lead the world into an era of peace and recovery (from the 2011 Fukushima quake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown and from the 2020-21 COVID pandemic) and would clear the way to an LDP election triumph and a revamped constitution with the “peace” clause, Article 9, deleted. However, things did not work out like that.

Eight years after assuring the international community in 2013 that it had the Fukushima problem “under control” Japan offered similar assurances that the Olympic and Paralympic Games would be conducted in completely “safe and secure” mode. But as the Olympics peaked in the summer of 2021 the contradiction between the celebratory spirit of the former and the latter’s “stay at home” and “three avoidances” was palpable. Support for Suga dropped from around 70 per cent in September 2020 to below 30 per cent in August 2021. Aloof and impervious to public criticism and demand, the miasma of scandal, deception, and corruption that Suga inherited in August 2020 steadily thickened during his year in office.

With national elections looming, his position became untenable. When he announced his decision not to stand for re-election as head of the Liberal-Democratic Party (LDP) in the party election, giving as reason his wish to devote himself fully to combating COVID, nobody believed him. The government’s own pollsters reported that, in the event of an election the ruling LDP would haemorrhage seats and potentially lose government.1 In a Yokohama city mayoral election in August, an independent critic of government defeated a close associate of the Prime Minister by an extraordinary 180,000 votes (a 12 per cent margin). When Suga announced that he would not be a candidate for re-election as president of the LDP (and therefore as Prime Minister), he was bowing to democratic pressure. He had become a liability to his own party and was in effect being sacked.

But change of personnel did not signify change of policy. In the September 2021 election for successor to Suga, all four candidates were committed to continuation of the Abe-Suga government’s basic principles. There is no alternative, in such view, to clientelist service of the US. Major projects such as that for construction of a Marine Corps base on Oura Bay (at Henoko, Okinawa) have absolute priority, irrespective of local opposition or cost or geological and seismic frailty of the site. At Washington’s dictates, a military first, anti-China posture is unquestioned.

1. Election Time

In September 2020, when Suga Yoshihide succeeded Abe Shinzo as Prime Minister, along with most commentators I predicted that here would be little change, since Abe’s old regime was firmly in control of the levers of state.2 Now that Suga has bowed out the year that has passed confirms that judgement. Chosen on 29 September as party president by the one million members of the Japanese conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), Kishida Fumio replaced Suga as Prime Minister-designate. Because the LDP, with its ally, the neo-Buddhist Komeito, holds a parliamentary majority in the Japanese Diet, it means that the roughly one in 100 of the Japanese people who happen to belong to the LDP by choosing a party head were also choosing a new prime minister. He then almost immediately called a general election.

Passing the LDP Baton – Suga (with flowers) hands over to Kishida (Asahi Shimbun, 29 September 2021)

At the election, now scheduled for 31 October, the LDP can be expected to do well. It always does. It may only – according to the May Jiji poll enjoy the support of 32.2 per cent of eligible voters – far fewer than the 44.6 per cent who do not support it – but that should suffice because the party machine is a mighty force honed by more than a half century of success,3 and because close to half the population will not vote.4Though a tiny minority in the country, LDP party members by these two elections will be settling the country’s course for the next several years, perhaps longer.

Like Suga in 2020, Kishida, former Foreign Minister and Defense Minister and core figure in Abe Shinzo governments from 2012, is unlikely to chart any new course or to prove a popular choice. Opinion polls in the weeks preceding the party election showed him recording just 13 per cent and 18.5 per cent popular support, far below Kono Taro, the favorite, with 43 percent and 48.6 per cent respectively.5 Kono, an articulate figure on social media platforms, and a graduate of Georgetown University fluent in English, lacked the party old guard support, especially from the Abe camp.6 Kono’s hinting at a readiness to open formal investigation into Abe/Suga’s possibly criminal acts during office made him anathema to them and brought his bid to naught. The paradoxical, longer-term outcome, however, may well be that the anti-LDP forces will be better able to mobilize to try to overthrow the Abe-Suga, now Abe-Suga-Kishida, government at the October Lower House election than would have been the case if Kono had been successful.

Facing the September and October elections, I find myself wondering: is it possible that Japan’s more than half century of virtual one-party government might be approaching an end. The Japanese state is built on foundations laid by the San Francisco treaty in 1951 and simultaneous Ampo agreement that continued US domination in security matters and the active interventions by US agencies including especially the CIA, in setting up and managing the apparatus of long-term US control, including the Self-Defense Forces (SDF) and the Liberal-Democratic Party, since then. The SDF,” set up in 1954, has grown in the decades since then to one of the world’s most powerful militaries (probably Number Five).7 The relationship established at San Francisco of US protector and Japan demilitarized and protected, however, has been steadily transformed into a mutual alliance, in which Japan’s military might is boosted and merged in US-led treaty and alliance forces, while the interpretation of “Self Defense” has grown ever looser, especially under the Abe and Suga governments (2012-2021).

For decades Washington has been urging upon Japan a process of “normalization.” Japan under Abe responded by adopting in 2014 a new interpretation of Article 9 under which Japan could mobilize its self-defense forces when required for collective self-defense purposes (i.e. summoned by the US, as Japan’s most important ally). It amounted to emptying out the Japanese constitution, overcoming the current impediment (as Japanese and American planners have long seen it) of the pacifist Article 9 and turning Japan into an “ordinary” country, i.e. a comprehensive military and general superpower able and willing to mobilize its forces in future “Coalitions of the Willing.”

In 2015, the Abe government adopted a package of security bills in accordance with this new interpretation. Much to the embarrassment of the Abe government, in June that year three eminent specialists, summoned by government to testify to the Diet, all pronounced them unconstitutional. Despite the fact of constitutional scholars overwhelmingly declaring this legislation unconstitutional, the laws were adopted and now define how Japan’s forces might behave in future conflict situations.

One of the last initiatives of the Abe government in 2020 was to initiate moves towards acquiring weapons capable of striking missile sites in enemy territory “if an attack is imminent.”8 It would be hard to imagine any more egregious breach of the constitution’s Article 9 than such legitimation of pre-emptive attack.

Under Donald Trump and Joe Biden, the US calls on Japan to become a full US partner and linchpin in the China-containing and confronting four-sided (“Quad”) alliance – US, Japan, India, Australia. Such legislative changes as the 2015 security laws serve to advance the transformation of Japan from constitutional peace state and civil democracy to national security state. The 247,000-strong Japanese SDF constitutes an extension of the US’s own armed forces, trained, organized, and paid for by Japan but under US direction and serving primarily US purposes. That they would ever act independently is unthinkable.

For Japan, the US alliance constitutes the highest level of national policy. Under it the Abe (2012-2020) and Suga (2020-2021) governments have maximized war exercises, base construction, purchase of US aircraft, aegis destroyers, missile and anti-missile systems. Following the 2013 establishment of a National Security Council, the government adopted a series of laws concerning secrets (2013), security (2015), conspiracy (2017), drone control (2021), and land usage (2021). This last, the Tochi kiseiho land control law, adopted in June 2021, has been compared by some to the pre-war Japanese land control system. Under it, “observation areas” are to be designated in the vicinity of major installations (military bases, nuclear power plants, major communications posts) for surveillance and control. Okinawans in particular suspect that they are to be prime targets for the legislation, in the attempt to constrict and control their anti-base movement.

US criticisms – basically for not paying enough – have been muted by the huge arms purchases for which Japan can be relied on (most recently the purchase for about $23 billion of 105 F-35B aircraft, bringing Japan’s Air SDF force to 147. Increasingly, the US forces stationed in Japan work alongside their Japanese opposite numbers as part of a unified US-Japan force, under US command.

2. War Games

A global coalition of the willing currently takes shape, united under the US leadership in resolve to stop China in its tracks and to preserve US global hegemony from any challenge. The tempo of military exercises (war games) in East Asia accelerates. Just between January and May 2021, Japan’s Maritime SDF (MSDF) participated in multi-lateral, multi-national exercises on 23 occasions, nearly once-a-week.9 Over the last twelve months, major exercises included those in the following table:

Major East Asian War Games, 2020-2021

a) Operation Keen Sword 2110

26 October to 5 November 2020.

9,000 service members of US Navy/AirForce/Army/Marine Corps, together with 37,000 Japanese SDF members. In waters around Okinawa, Japan

b) La Perouse 21

April 2021.

Japan, France, US, Australia, India.

In Eastern Indian Ocean (Bay of Bengal)

Participation by the French nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, Charles de Gaulle (38,000 ton and 261-meter runway), as well as the nuclear attack submarine Emeraude, the amphibious helicopter carrier Tonnerre and the stealth frigate Surcouf; a reminder of the formidable military presence France maintains on a regular basis in the Indo-Pacific region, including 7,000 troops, 15 warships and 38 aircraft.11

c) ARC 21.

Japan, France, US, Australia.

11 to 17 May 2021, “island recovery”

In “waters off Kagoshima”

d) Operation Orient Shield 21.

7 June to 11 July 2021.

US Army, GSDF (3,000 service personnel)

Multiple bases throughout Japan “to enhance interoperability and test and refine multi-domain and cross-domain operations”

e) Operation Talisman Sabre 21

25 June to 7 August 2021,

Centred at Shoalwater Bay in Queensland, Australia, and nearby Coral Sea

US Marine Corps (8,000-strong), GSDF (8,000-strong), UK Marines, Australian Army (also smaller units from South Korea, Canada, New Zealand)

While not in the category of a multinational exercise, of impact at least as great was the Japan visit of Great Britain’s biggest and most expensive warship, the aircraft carrier Queen Elizabeth.

f) “Queen Elizabeth”

UK Aircraft Carrier Queen Elizabeth, (56,000 tons, 280 metres long).

September and October 2021, visiting Japan in September to considerable fanfare, accompanied by a US destroyer and Dutch frigate and carrying USAF F-35B Joint Strike Fighters, following joint exercises in adjacent waters with warships from US, Netherlands, Canada and Japan “as part of efforts to achieve a free and open Indo-Pacific.” Welcoming it, Japan’s Defense Minister Kishi Nobuo said, “the involvement of European nations in the Indo-Pacific region is the key to peace and stability as China’s military strength and influence grow.” Participated also on 2 and 3 October 2021 in a formidable force comprising four carriers (HM Queen Elizabeth, USS Ronald Reagan and USS Carl Vinson, and the MSDF’s JS ISE, together with 13 other warships of Canada, New Zealand, and Netherlands in multilateral exercises in waters southwest of Okinawa.12

g) Bayern (Brandenburg-class German Frigate).

Following participation by British and French naval units both advancing (or returning) to “East of Suez” in various recent exercises, Germany too has declared an “Asia-Pacific strategy” and is to send its frigate, the Bayern (a modest 3,600 tons), to join Japan’s MSDF in East China Sea exercises in November 2021.13

As warships maneuver in and out of the East China Sea, the possibility of clash, by accident or design, arises, in the most extreme scenario possibly even triggered by the rival claims of Japan and China to sovereignty over the tiny and uninhabited (uninhabitable) Senkaku/Diaoyu islands. It beggars the imagination that the world’s “great powers” (US, UK, Japan, France and, on the other side, China) should be so intent on pressing conflicting claims to Senkaku’s windswept rocks as to risk regional and global peace for them.

3. Plugging the Gaps – Militarizing the Frontier

While Japan spends lavishly on refurbishing and strengthening the existing East China Sea base structure, especially in Okinawa, it also concentrates on plugging “gaps” in its defenses, militarizing the chain of islands between Kyushu and Taiwan so as, potentially, to block access for Chinese vessels, both military and civil, to and from the Pacific.

The view of China as threat dates to Democratic Party national governments 2009-2011. The National Defence Program Outlines adopted by Cabinet in December 2010 identified the military modernization of China as part of the “security environment surrounding Japan” and outlined a “dynamic defence force” to substitute for the existing “basic defence force” concept.

In August 2011 the Democratic Party government announced the decision to deploy units of SDF to close “windows of deterrence” against China. By late 2012, defence of the South-Western islands was accorded “the highest priority.” Under Abe and Suga from December 2012 the LDP simply reinforced this posture.

This view of China as “threat” has undoubtedly gathered force in Japan, and, accompanying it, the belief in the Foreign Ministry and on the part of recent governments, that such “threat,” can only be met by confronting China with significant, preferably overwhelming, counter-force and taking every possible step to tie the US to such measures. But such thinking is far from universal in Tokyo. The extremism of the US policy resolve to oppose not just China’s military but China’s very existence and its rise as a global economic powerhouse, is probably not widely shared in Japan. Many insist that somehow an accommodation has to be found because the two countries are bound by history and geography and the alternative would be unimaginably disastrous. A Xi Jinping visit to Japan scheduled for early 2020 during the Abe government had to postponed indefinitely because of COVID. Such a visit was high on the priority list for Kishida even before he took office.

There is no doubt that Japan views China’s growth with deep concern. China’s GDP, one-quarter that of Japan in 1991 surpassed it in 2001 and trebled it in 2018.14 Prominent public intellectual Terashima Jitsuro, in calling for an injection of realism to Japan’s policy debate, points out that US-China trade as of 2020 ($559 billion) was more than three times US-Japan trade ($183 billion).15 and that the Japan that constituted 17.9 percent of global GDP as of 1994 had shrunk, relatively, to 6 per cent as of 2020, while China had passed 18 per cent already around 2016 and was headed (according to the OECD) for a probable 27 per cent during the 2030s16 The clock will not easily be turned back. Terashima sees the alliance system design to curtail this trajectory and “de-couple” China from the regional and global system as incongruous and likely either futile or disastrous. Whether such realism can penetrate policy-making circles in Tokyo remains to be seen.

The pace of change in accord with the “China threat” scenario picked up significantly over the past decade as Abe and Suga added multiple SDF missile and coastal surveillance units to the islands of Amami, Miyako, Ishigaki, and Yonaguni, while planning also a completely new comprehensive SDF base on the island of Mage, in Nishinoomote City about 110 kilometers south of Kagoshima City.

Island Bases in the East China Sea

Mage Island, 8.5 kms2, uninhabited, to be garrisoned by units of all three Japanese services (150-200 personnel), also hosting FCLP (Field Carrier Landing Practice) for US carrier-based fighter jets. However, although the national government purchased the island from its private owners in 2019 and announced plans for its military development (two runways, harbour, ammunition storage, refuelling, and maintenance facilities), local opposition is strong. Nishinoomote City elected an anti-base mayor in 2017 and re-elected him in 2021. As of late 2021 the standoff between Tokyo and Nishinoomote continued unresolved.

Amami Oshima, 306 kms2, population 73,000. 550-person GSDF surface to ship missile, anti-missile opened March 2019.

Miyako Island, 204 kms2, population 46,000. 700-800-person GSDF, surface to air/ship missile and anti-missile force, opened March 2019.

Ishigaki Island, 229 kms2, population 48,000, 500–600-person surface to air/ship missile force, under construction from 2019.

Yonaguni Island, 28 kms2, population ca 2,000. GSDF 160-person coastal surveillance unit, Camp Yonaguni, opened in March 2016.

The SDF becomes in the process not so much a national defense unit as a component of the US-led global anti-China coalition, its security and missile forces on the smaller islands complementing the existing US military concentrations on Okinawa Island, especially the US Air Force at Kadena and the Marine Corps at Futenma. If Sino-Japanese hostilities were to break out it would most likely happen in the waters of the East China Sea in the vicinity of these islands, with Japan acting to bottle Chinese forces up within the First Chinese defensive line. That of course would be an act of war.

4. Kabul Shock

The world was transfixed in August 2021 by the spectacle of the global super-power, commanding a huge multinational coalition armed with every weapon imaginable, being driven from Kabul by a ragged band of religious fanatics armed with AK-47s. If in the global system it dominated the US could be driven ignominiously from a state in which it had invested so much, then no state could be fully confident of any US security guarantee. If there is a Kabul message to the world, it might be: “Client States, Beware.”

While the shock waves continued from the American retreat from Kabul, a different kind of shock spread from the simultaneous announcement in Washington, London, and Canberra of the AUKUS agreement to transfer American or British nuclear submarine technology (and at some future if indefinite point probably between 2040 and 2060, actual submarines) to Australia.17 The announcement of this fresh Anglo-Saxon coalition must have been a bitter pill for Japan to swallow since it implied a two-level structure of clientelist order, with Australia a quasi-nuclear state one rung higher and closer to Washington. In the minds of Abe and his associates, undoubtedly, was the question: if Australia can have nuclear submarines, why not Japan?

Kishida now heads what amounts to the third phase of the Abe government that began in December 2012 and continued in 2020–21 under Suga. At its inner core sit the so-called “Triple A” of Abe and his closest associates, former Deputy Prime Minister Aso Taro and Amari Akira, the LDP’s Secretary-General, joined by Abe’s brother Kishi Nobuo as Defense Secretary and his disciple, the extreme right-winger Takaichi Sanae, as Chair of the Political Research Council.

For almost thirty years, since he first took a seat in the Japanese Diet in 1993, Abe Shinzo has had a hand on the tiller of state. Even when he was not actually the head of government, his wishes have been treated as virtual commands under the principle of sontaku (anticipatory compliance, the mentality of underlings who hasten to carry out the will of their superiors even before it has been expressed). Kishida Fumio and Suga Yoshihide have been his faithful acolytes since 1993 and 1996 respectively. Since about half of the new cabinet seats have been given to novices, the policy influence of the handful of heavyweights – the “Triple A” at its center – is expected to be especially high.

5. October Prospect

On October 4, when Kishida did as expected and called a general election for October 31, support for his government, at 49 percent, was roughly thirty points lower than it had been when Suga took office a year earlier. However, that did not necessarily translate into greater support for the LDP’s opponents. While military-fist-ism advances it does so almost imperceptibly, without the social phenomenon commonly associated with full-blown militarism. The general mood of the country is one of disaffection, not of any rush to war. According to various polls, the combined popular support for the opposition parties might be as low as 10 and no higher than 20 per cent, so they will have to attract a substantial group of the disaffected during the campaign to have any hope of forming a government.

As the Abe (now Abe-Suga-Kishida) stamp remains fixed on the face Japan shows to the world, voices attuned to the crucial and universal questions facing humanity – peace, sustainability, justice, equality – are scarcely to be heard in global fora. For decades, the state they have headed has been conspicuous for its blend of nationalist bluster about Japan’s history (including its crimes against its neighbours), obsessiveness about state rituals centered on the emperor, and servility towards Washington. The global outlook today might be even bleaker, more right-wing, more dangerous (for Japan and the world), and even less attuned to a democratic, peace-oriented, and citizen-centered agenda than at any time during their ascendancy.

However, opposition to the basic formula and priorities of the LDP-led Japanese state does of course exist and grow, fed by anxiety over the Abe government’s divergence from constitutional pacifism. There have been important bottom-up efforts by local and national governments – in the 1990s and in 2009 – to contest military-first, client state agendas, but always thwarted by the national government for whom clientelist service of the US is unshakably paramount. Contemplating the 2021 election the “Civic Alliance for Peace and Constitutionalism,” commonly known just as “Citizens’ League” or Shimin Rengo, formulated a set of principles as part of a “switch to life-affirming politics” that was adopted on 8 September 2021 by heads of the major opposition parties (Constitutional Democratic, Japan Communist, Social Democratic, and Reiwa Shinsengumi).18 This charter made no explicit reference to Japan’s client state status or relationship to the US, but its implicit message, through the call for reversion to constitutionalism and adoption of a peace-oriented regional and global role, was clear.19

The “Citizen League” currently mobilizes for a united front of opposition parties on peace and constitution matters, and for pursuit of the political and possibly criminal responsibility of recent governments on multiple issues. Analysts point out that had the opposition parties organized themselves on such a united front basis in the 2017 election they could have defeated LDP-Komeito candidates in 106, instead of 43, seats.20 In the forthcoming election a united constitutionalist slate could threaten even major front bench government members.21

Under Kishida, should he and others of the LDP old regime prevail in the October election, military spending can be expected to grow substantially. No sooner had the election been announced than the LDP issued a set of policy pledges included a doubling, or more than doubling, of defense expenditure from its current roughly 1 per cent GDP level.22 The merger with US forces in an anti-China coalition throughout East Asian and Western Pacific waters can be expected to continue. Egged on by Washington, Japan would proceed further to ready itself for war. The sort of realism advocated by Terashima would likely find it difficult to be heard in Kishida government circles.

Alternatively, in the unlikely but not inconceivable event of a Constitutional Democrat-led coalition victory at the end of October, with party leader Edano Yukio in the Prime Minister’s seat the current momentum towards war might be arrested and a window opened upon a different, truly alternative future. Such a government would face the immediate test of its seriousness, however, when formulating policy beyond high-sounding generalizations. Will it announce suspension and cancellation of the Marine Corps construction works at Henoko on Oura Bay in Okinawa? Will it stop and reverse the militarizing of the Southwest Frontier islands? Will it call on the governments of the United States and other East Asian States to reverse the present momentum towards conflict and to negotiate together a post-San Francisco regional framework of disarmament and cooperation?

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Gavan McCormack is emeritus professor of Australian National University, Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, and author of many works on modern East Asian history. He has often been translated into Japanese, Korean, and Chinese. His most recent book was The State of the Japanese State, London, Paul Norbury, 2019.

Notes

“Jiminto ni shogeki no chosa kekka! Shugiin ’60 giseki gen’ de masaka no kahansu ware,” Nikkan gendai, 25 August 2021.

“Japan’s new leader, Suga Yoshihide, will maintain the old regime,” Jacobin, September 2020

Jiji seron chosa, “Naikaku shiji 32.2%, hossoku irai saitei,” 14 May 2021

The voting rate in the October 2017 Lower House election was 53.68, and in the Upper House election in July 2019 48.8 per cent.

Mainichi shinbun poll of 19 September and Kyodo poll of 17-18 September. 

For a perceptive comment on this election see Jake Adelstein, “’Reluctant’ Kishida to become Japan’s next leader,” Asia Times, September 29, 2021.

Following US, Russia, China, and India, and surpassing France, UK, Germany etc. Global Firepower, “2021 Global Military Strength,” March 2021.

Motoko Rich, “Japan’s been proudly pacifist for 75 years. A missile proposal changes that,” New York Times, 16 August 2020.

As noted in the SDF journal Asagumo, and reported by military affairs critic Maeda Toshio, “Higashi Ajia INF joyaku to iu reariti,” Sekai, September 2021, pp. 148-157, at p. 151.

10 US Pacific Fleet, Public Affairs, “Sword 21 embraces US-Japan exchange,” 6 November 2020. 

11 Martine Bulard, “Is an Asian NATO imminent?” Le Monde Diplomatique, June 2021.

12 Alex Wilson, “Three aircraft carriers train together near Okinawa as China ramps up pressure on Taiwan,” Stars and Stripes, 4 October 2021.

13 “Doku kantei, 11 gatsu no nihon kiko to kyodo kunren,” Sankei shimbun, 5 June 2021.

14 Terashima Jitsuro, “Noryoku no ressun,” No 192, “Chugoku no kyodaika kyokenka wo seishi suru, Nihon no kakugo,” Sekai, April 2018, pp. 42-47, at p. 42.

15 Terashima Jitsuro, “Honshitsu o miayamaru to Nihon wa beichu kankei no honro’ Keizai ampo-ron otannjun na ‘Chugoku fujikome’ ni yudaneru na,” Toyo Keizai, 22 June 2021.

16 OECD, “The long view: Scenarios for the world economy to 2060.” 

17 Brian Toohey, “Australia’s nuclear submarine deal won’t make us any safer,” Pearls and Irritations, 13 October 2021.

18 Well-known civil activist scholars, including Hosei University political scientist Yamaguchi Jiro and military affairs critic Maeda Tetsuo, play important roles in this constitutionalist front.

19 Shugiin sosenkyo no okeru yato kyotsu seisaku no teigen,” 8 September 2021. 

20 Ikegami Akira and Yamaguchi Jiro, “Yato kyoho e no kabe to senkyo kyoryoku no genkai to wa,” AERA, 18 October 2021.

21 Nogami Tadaoki, “Jiko o oitsumeru gyakuten shori ’64 senkyoku’ yato 4 to wa kyoto kasoku, seisaku kyotei goi de ‘ukezara’ ni,” Nikkan gendai, 9 September 2021.

22 “Boeihi ‘GDP hi 2% ijo mo nento’ jimin ga seiken koyaku, chikara de no taiko jushi,” Asahi Shimbun, 12 October 2021.

Victoria Police Use of Anti-riot Weapons Condemned

October 21st, 2021 by Shane Pemmelaar

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Criticism of the Victorian Police’s use of non-lethal weapons against anti-vax and anti-lockdown protesters is growing.

Police first deployed non-lethal weapons in August and have more recently used them against protesters, including at the War Memorial on September 22.

The non-lethal weapons include foam baton rounds, which are foam-tipped bullets deployed from a semi-automatic rifle, and pepper balls, cylindrical balls containing an irritant powder that is dispersed on impact.

Victoria Police used a semi-automatic weapon to shoot these, as well as pellets containing dye, to be able to identify the person for arrest.

Stinger grenades are also being used. These are rolled into a crowd to explode with light and smoke, also releasing nine rubber bullets that disperse to waist height with a range of five metres.

Sue Bolton, Socialist Alliance councillor on Moreland City Council, condemned the use of these weapons, saying the party opposes police using such weapons at any protest.

“The police have a record of using extreme violence against protesters, especially those who can be portrayed as unpopular, to try to get public support for their operations, which include more lethal weapons”, she told Green Left.

“We don’t support the anti-vaccination/anti-lockdown protests, but neither do we support police violence against protests.”

While some anti-vaccination/anti-lockdown protesters were violent, instances of unprovoked police violence were also witnessed.

A video of an unprovoked take-down of a protester at Flinders Street Station on September 22 showed excessive force being used by police. The offending officer is under investigation and has been stood down pending the investigation.

Other extraordinary measures taken by police include stopping public transport to central Melbourne between 8am and 2pm on September 18.

This is not the first time. In 2016, the police stopped tram services heading to Coburg in an effort to prevent people attending an , organised by Bolton along with local residents.

On September 22, police instructed the to temporarily declare the airspace over the protesters a “restricted zone”. The reason given was that the protesters may be able to monitor aerial live-streams and compromise police operations, thereby posing a “safety risk”.

The decision was reversed after journalists questioned whether police wanted to avoid scrutiny of their interactions with protesters.

There is little public sympathy for the anti-vaccination/anti-lockdown protesters and the police are pushing to justify their use of such weapons against the public. told the Herald Sun on September 24 that police should be able to use water cannons, and more, on the anti-vaccination and anti-lockdown protesters. “Sometimes you’ve got to think outside the square … My gut feeling is to bring out the tear gas and give it to them.”

The police have other crowd dispersal weapons, such as the controversial long range acoustic device weapon, which emits a high-frequency sound that temporarily disables those in its vicinity by causing nausea and hearing impairment.

“Right now, Victoria Police is using weapons on a group of people with little public sympathy. But they have a history of using violence against peaceful protesters, such as the Blockade IMARC rally in 2019”, Bolton said.

“After lockdown and as inequality rises, it is likely that the police will deploy the same weapons against people protesting against the end of the disaster payment, for a higher rate of JobSeeker or for real action on the climate. We need to say no to the state government’s creeping militarisation of the police.”

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Featured image: Police at Northcote Plaza on September 24. Photo: Still from @therealrukshan

Melbourne: The Longest in Lockdown

October 21st, 2021 by Dr. Binoy Kampmark

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As a city, Melbourne previously prided itself with the air of a prim and proper heiress, one without peer in Australia: a gastronomic wonder, a sporting goddess, and a place of orderly public transport.  The Economist Intelligence Unit glowed with praise, designating the city the world’s “most liveable” for seven years running.  There were few law and order issues; nothing to speak of in terms of war, famine, crisis and the sorts of things that disturb the money minded business traveller.  Even after Vienna got on its high horse and knocked Melbourne off its pedestal, Melbournians were undisturbed.  The city still had the dining and eating, the sports, the “world class infrastructure”.

Then came the global COVID-19 pandemic.  Like the nuclear fallout anticipated in Nevil Shute’s On the Beach, the menace had to eventually head down under and do its bit of gathering.  But there was fierce resistance in the country.  The lockdown formula became the policy de jour and there was no greater example of this than Melbourne.

In 2021, the Herald Sun would look with envy across the pond to note that Auckland in New Zealand has taken the honours of the EIU’s essentially irrelevant assessment.  Melbourne had suffered a slump, slumming in eighth spot.  The EIU sternly noted that, “The pandemic has caused huge volatility in our biannual liveability index, which ranks 140 cities across five areas: stability, health care, education, culture, and environment, and infrastructure.”  But Melbourne’s Lord Mayor Sally Capp, despite noting the “devastating impact” of lockdowns on the city, could still brightly note that “we remain one of the 10 most liveable cities in the world”.

The lockdowns – six in total – came with overly vigilant threatened and threatening police, punitive powers of hefty magnitude, mask mandates, curfews, limits on recreation time and demarcated areas of travel.  It came with government attempts to vest what should have been purely health powers in agents who had no such credentials.  Experiments were tried and abandoned: buildings were first hived off; then suburbs.  Then, a ring of steel was introduced.

Protests, angry and bitter, were organised, featuring an assortment of self-proclaimed freedom fighters, vaccine sceptics and conspiracy devotees.  The city’s tempers were disturbed but the government of Daniel Andrews was held up as an example to all Australia: If you go hard, and go early, you will be able to run the virus into the ground.  For a time, this could even be said to be the case, so much so that it convinced the previously sceptical Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison. 

Then came the Delta variant, with virological legs of such vitality as to outrun any razor-sharp expert of public health.  Contact tracers were bamboozled by its speed, with lines of transmission fuzzy before the spread.  The shift towards vaccination took precedence over the strategy of elimination.

So, with grim perverseness, Melbourne will be opening at midnight on a day where the state has registered the second highest number of cases since the latest outbreak began: 2,232.  Mandatory vaccinations, falsely advertised as matters of choice, will mark the hospitality industry as pubs, bars and restaurants open.  Patrons will be scrutinised regarding their vaccine credentials.  Magic numbers will be discussed like acts of sorcery – the double-dosed vaccinate rate of 70% for those above 16 being one of most interest.

A stampede is anticipated in ending a period that has made Melbourne endure the greatest number of days in lockdown: a cumulative total of 262 days since March 2020.  This convincingly surpasses the record set by Buenos Aires of 234 days.  “The longest road has been journeyed in Victoria and that long road really starts to open up tonight,” Morrison declared.  Andrews, in reflecting upon a rather different sort of record from that of a city’s liveability, called the achievement “impressive.  It makes you very, very proud.”

This reopening does little to take away from the sense of utter loss. There have been cases of madness, cases of violence, cases of suicide.  Minds and lives have been lost, the spiritual world of the city rented and turned to a ghostly murmur of Banquo proportion.  Gastronomic meccas such as Lygon Street have been strafed of the living, with lockdowns applied like a large, bristling brush, capturing all in its wake.

There could be no shame in not surviving and enduring such suffering.  That other city of long, crippling lockdowns, Buenos Aires, saw such institutions as La Flor de Barracas pass into history, a century old bar that had survived Peronism, military juntas, inflation and sovereign debt default.  It took the novel coronavirus to vanquish it.

Walking down Clarendon Street in South Melbourne, the buildings resemble a row of neglected tombstones and bits and pieces of spiritual martyrdom.  There are some establishments, as if occupying fox holes of defiance, keen to keep making food, paying rent and fighting the nightmare.  The Chevapi Grill, with a hearty Serb following, remains obstinately faithful to its customers.  Several Vietnamese establishments, eagerly visited by trades people, continue in culinary defiance, their interiors spartan, quiet but resolute.

The homeless perch with opportunistic hope, anticipating some money and food.  Some occupy seats outside the Clarendon Centre with crow-like determination, exchanging morsels of gossip and reflecting about the coronavirus restrictions.

There are notes of tearful apology from restaurateurs who fought hard and long but could not survive the sixth lockdown.  There were promises that, somewhere in future, we would meet again over a coffee in some prosperous land that was not here.  We might – but till then, the experiment of life, the vision of public health policy before disease, continues.

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Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.  He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research. Email: [email protected]

Featured image: Anti-vaxxers protesting outside 111 Bourke Street, Melbourne (Source: Alpha/Flickr)

US Marines on Taiwan: Major Provocation, but Not News

October 21st, 2021 by Brian Berletic

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When the Wall Street Journal reported recently that US special forces and Marines have been secretly based in Taiwan to train their Taiwanese counterparts for over a year, it was considered breaking news. It was followed by headlines like the Guardian’s, “Secret group of US military trainers has been in Taiwan for at least a year,” claiming that the revelations were made after “provocative” moves made by Beijing.

However this is not true. It was actually reported on as soon as it happened late last year.

The Diplomat in a November 2020 article titled, “US Marine Raiders Arrive in Taiwan to Train Taiwanese Marines,” would cite Taiwanese media as revealing the US deployment. It was also noted that US forces had not stepped foot on Taiwan since 1979.

Also last year, the Pentagon would deny this deployment. The Marine Corps Times in an article titled, “Marine Raiders weren’t training in Taiwan, Department of Defense insists,” would note:

“The reports about US Marines on Taiwan are inaccurate,” Pentagon spokesman John Supple told Marine Corps Times in a Tuesday email. “The United States remains committed to our One-China Policy based on the three Joint Communiques, Taiwan Relations Act, and Six Assurances.”

Pentagon spokesman John Supple’s reference to the three Joint Communiques, the Taiwan Relations Act, and the Six Assurances relate to the US government’s recognition of the One China Policy.

US troops had fully withdrawn from Taiwan in the 1970s and until now have not returned because it was in the 1970s that the United States along with virtually every other nation on Earth broke off official recognition of the Republic of China (ROC) government based in Taipei, recognized one single China including Taiwan, and officially recognized one government of China, based in Beijing – that of the People’s Republic of China (PRC).

Despite multiple documents published by the US, British, and Australian governments recognizing this official position in regards to Taiwan’s status, the vast majority of the Western public still believe that Taiwan is an independent country that China is “bullying.”

The US State Department’s official website under its Office of the Historian has published the full text of the Shanghai Communique, the first of the three Joint Communiques mentioned by John Supple in his statement last year.

In the communique it states:

The United States acknowledges that all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China. The United States Government does not challenge that position. It reaffirms its interest in a peaceful settlement of the Taiwan question by the Chinese themselves. With this prospect in mind, it affirms the ultimate objective of the withdrawal of all US forces and military installations from Taiwan. In the meantime, it will progressively reduce its forces and military installations on Taiwan as the tension in the area diminishes.

The Australian government also officially recognizes the One China Policy.

On the Australian government’s official website on a page titled, “Australia-Taiwan relationship,” it unambiguously states:

The Australian Government continued to recognise Taipei until the establishment of diplomatic relations with the PRC in 1972. Australia’s Joint Communiqué with the PRC recognised the Government of the PRC as China’s sole legal government, and acknowledged the position of the PRC that Taiwan was a province of the PRC.

Despite these plainly stated facts, the Western media and Western governments themselves have deliberately misled the public into thinking Taiwan is an independent country and that China is “bullying” it.

In one breath, commentators will claim Taiwan is a “democratic country,” while in the next claim that Taiwan declaring its “independence” is imminent. Left unexplained is how an independent democratic country could declare independence, declare independence from whom, and why they would need to in the first place.

At face value the narrative is a contradiction, but like so much of what the West does geopolitically, its narrative regarding Taiwan is based on a multitude of conflicting lies aimed at preying on the public emotionally, diverting attention away from contradictions, and in the case of the One China Policy, simply omitting it from public discussion.

Considering the United States’ official stance on Taiwan, its placement of US forces on Taiwan is essentially a de facto invasion and occupation of Chinese territory. Beijing surely reads Taiwanese as well as Western headlines – if its intelligence apparatus was somehow unaware of last year’s US military deployment – and despite the highly provocative, unprecedented move, Beijing’s response has been infinite patience and geopolitical maturity.

Even its “invasion of Taiwanese airspace” was the product of Western propaganda rather than any genuine act of aggression. Taiwan’s own Ministry of National Defense admits that Chinese warplanes passed through what Taiwan administrators claim is Taiwan’s air defense identification zone (ADIZ). ADIZs are not recognized under international law, are unilaterally declared, and are established outside a nation’s recognized sovereign airspace, not in it.

In Taiwan’s case, it has no sovereign airspace of its own, but even if it did, Chinese warplanes were far from it even according to Taiwan’s own admissions, operating in what is internationally recognized as international airspace.

Thus the highly reserved actions and words of Beijing came after, not before revelations of America’s provocative military deployment.

US Troops on Taiwan: Checkmate?

Jacob Helberg, an “adjunct fellow” of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), who includes among its sponsors the governments of the US, Taiwan, and Japan as well as corporations including arms manufacturers, revealed online during an interview with Breaking Points the reasoning behind the positioning of US troops in Taiwan despite Washington’s obvious recognition of the One China Policy.

Helberg would claim it was to prevent China from using force without creating a more convincing pretext for the US to militarily intervene.

The presence of US troops would create less favorable conditions for China to act. Helberg also noted the prospect of the current Democratic Progressive Party-led government in Taiwan declaring “independence” despite simultaneously claiming Taiwan was already a “democratic country.” This would hardly be a decision made without US consultation and approval along with assurances of protection.

The chess pieces have certainly been put in place ahead of any potential  “declaration of independence,” but whether this happens still depends on what countermoves are made by Beijing as well as other external factors that may still enter into US calculus.

The Economic Reality of Integration vs. the Fevered Dreams of “Independence”

An argument often floated by the Western media in defense of the collective encouragement of Taiwan’s pursuit of  independence and its current posture of belligerence toward Beijing is; if the people of Taiwan choose independence, why should anyone stop them?

Omitted are all the arguments the West made when Crimea voted to rejoin Russia in 2014 involving claims of external coercion and influence.

In Taiwan’s case, the US actually is clearly involved in shaping the opinions of the Taiwanese population as well as directing the moves of the current government. The Taiwanese are not arriving at the decision to pursue independence on their own nor as a result of pursuing their own best interests. Quite the contrary.

Taiwan’s economy is dependent on and partially integrated with the Chinese mainland. Over 40% of all Taiwanese exports go to either mainland China or Hong Kong and the vast majority of its trade resides in the wider Asian region. The Chinese mainland also accounts for most of Taiwan’s imports at 21% as of 2019 with Japan in second place at 16%.

Investments across the strait are also significant. Despite the stance of Taipei regarding Beijing, Taiwan’s business community is still heavily invested in mainland China and vice versa.

A “declaration of independence” by Taiwan would at the very least cause China to constrict economic flow to and from Taiwan, strangling the economy and undermining the government responsible for provoking Beijing in ways a military assault on the island could never achieve. The United States has neither the means nor the time to create alternatives for Taiwan’s economy and markets in the quickly closing window of opportunity left before China irreversibly surpasses the US economically and militarily, rending whatever military presence the US has on the island moot, and allowing Beijing wide leeway for action to reintegrate the wayward province.

US provocations including the now unprecedented deployment of US troops in Taiwan and those within the Taiwanese administration aiding and abetting them threaten the current status quo which includes the smooth, incremental integration of Taiwan into a growing, prosperous mainland China. The current status quo represents the “peaceful settlement of the Taiwan question” as agreed to by the US government itself with Beijing in its communiques.

The issue is not that this settlement stands in contradiction of Taiwan’s best interest or Beijing’s, but rather Washington’s. And it is based on this actual pretext that the US has involved itself in China’s internal political affairs in this highly provocative and dangerous manner, threatening war where the prospect of war did not exist, and inching the entire Indo-Pacific region toward conflict and instability – the same conflict and instability the US claims it is protecting the region and the world from.

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Brian Berletic is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

Featured image is from New Eastern Outlook

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South Korea’s first domestically built space rocket has blasted off in a test launch that represents a major leap for the country’s ambitious space plans.

The three-stage KSLV-II Nuri rocket, emblazoned with the national flag, carried a dummy satellite on its launch from the Naro Space Center at 0800 GMT (5 PM local) on Thursday.

The Nuri, or “world”, rocket is designed to put 1.5-tonne payloads into orbit 600 km to 800 km (373 miles to 497 miles) above Earth, as part of a broader space effort that envisages the launch of satellites for surveillance, navigation, and communications, and even lunar probes.

But the rocket failed to put its dummy payload into orbit after its maiden launch on Thursday, President Moon Jae-in said.

The launch and all three stages of the Korea Space Launch Vehicle II worked, as did the payload separation, Moon said, but “putting a dummy satellite into orbit remains an unfinished mission”.

Overseen by the Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI), the 200-tonne rocket was moved to its launch pad on Wednesday and raised into position.

The rocket’s three stages are powered by liquid-fuel boosters built by an affiliate of South Korea’s Hanwha conglomerate, with a cluster of four 75-tonne boosters in the first stage, another 75-tonne booster in the second, and a single 7-tonne rocket engine in the final stage.

A sensitive issue

Space launches have long been a sensitive issue on the Korean peninsula, where North Korea faces sanctions over its nuclear-armed ballistic missile programme.

South Korea’s plans call for launching a range of military satellites in future, but officials deny that the NURI has any use as a weapon itself.

The country’s last such rocket, launched in 2013 after multiple delays and several failed tests, was jointly developed with Russia.

Having its own launch vehicle will give South Korea the flexibility to determine payload types and launch schedules, and benefits South Korean companies, officials said.

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Narrative Traps in India’s Decision-making

October 19th, 2021 by M. K. Bhadrakumar

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I read a stimulating essay recently co-authored by Paul Dolan, professor at the London School of Economics, and his research assistant Amanda Hedwood analysing, against the backdrop of the uncertainties of the Covid-19 pandemic, how dominant narratives powerfully influence decisions and create the ‘narrative trap’ in decision-making. 

The LSE academics wrote:

“We contend that the failure to step back and consider the impact of narratives will impede effective decision-making by leaving the decision-maker open to unspecified and unrecognised bias. Narratives are not good or bad in themselves, but their ability to make some decisions appear more appealing than others—often in ways that lie below our conscious awareness—is detrimental to effective decision-making.” 

Any Indian would know that powerful narratives envelop India’s deeply troubled relationships with Pakistan and China. The dominant narratives have become the means through which successive governments strove to assert values and identities. Yet, fundamentally, these narratives are stories about the way things ought to be. They may help make decisions easier for leaderships that lack erudition but the consequences of such decisions can be deleterious. 

The spurious reasons to act in a particular way in Doklam in 2017 are a case in point today. The ‘roadmap’ signed by Bhutan and China on Thursday towards resolving their longstanding boundary dispute has put a hole through India’s Doklam narrative through which an elephant can pass. Delhi’s muted reaction betrays bewilderment mixed with suppressed fury. 

To recap, at Doklam, the Indian Army crossed into Chinese territory across the settled Sikkim border to thwart PLA’s road building in an area that Bhutan claimed belonged to it. The Indian and Chinese troops withdrew from Doklam following a 73-day stalemate, but satellite images subsequently showed that the Chinese military infrastructure in the region has now been put on a permanent footing. 

But Delhi preferred to look away. So, what was all that narrative all about — that Bhutan requested Delhi to come to its defence and India valiantly rose to the occasion and that the denouement to the Doklam crisis was one of the finest hours of Indian diplomacy, et al? Are we to conclude that the entire narrative was actually a load of garbage?

Now comes the bombshell of the Memorandum of Understanding on the Three-Step Roadmap for Expediting the Bhutan-China Boundary Negotiations. Thimpu apparently didn’t think it necessary to take Delhi into confidence. Simply put, Bhutan is loathe to getting dragged into the geopolitical rivalry between India and China. 

And for Beijing, of course, this was too good an opportunity to be missed to thumb its nose at the powers-that-be in Delhi. A scathing commentary in CGTN concluded: “The biggest lesson of the MoU for New Delhi ought to be that initiatives such as the Quad and anti-China metrics cannot reverse India’s growing isolation in South Asia.” 

The problem with contrived narratives such as on Doklam in 2017 is that they can lead to situational blindness, whereby you are so focused on one aspect that you fail to notice the bigger picture. A similar thing happened exactly two years after Doklam, when Delhi revoked the autonomy granted to J&K and thereafter followed it up by issuing a new map of India. Hardly six month later, the Chinese and Indian troops engaged in aggressive melee, face-offs and skirmishes at locations along the Sino-Indian border, including in Ladakh. 

An impasse has appeared lately and the disengagement process in eastern Ladakh has stalled. Interestingly, the announcement of the signing of the China-Bhutan MOU comes four days after the 13th round of India-China Corps Commander Level Meeting.

To be sure, there is an imperative need for the decision-makers in Delhi to rebalance the impact of their dominant narratives that might have initially enhanced the attractiveness of their decisions. The proclivity to focus on immediate effects over delayed ones led to a situational blindness. 

The heart of the matter is that Indian narratives simply ignore the country’s numerous lethal weaknesses. Consequently, our self-serving, reassuring narratives potentially influence our behaviour. But emotional states of mind preclude rational thinking. Consider the following: India just had a precipitous fall in the Global Hunger Index, slipping to 101st position on a list of 116 countries, from the 94th position last year. Shockingly, India is now behind its neighbours Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal. 

This news appeared only yesterday. Yet, a former National Security Advisor has written today, “In the longer term, if there is one country which, in terms of its size, population, economic potential, scientific and technical capabilities, can match or even surpass China, it is India.” The problem with such bluster is almost always that in the long run we are all dead, as John Keynes, the great British economist, once famously pointed out. 

To be sure, the Indian narratives, be it on China or Pakistan, need balancing. Our narratives are far too comforting and alternative stories are needed to challenge them. The risk lies in the sort of preference for stories we feel confident about — ‘a two-front war under the nuclear shadow’; Quad (‘Indo-Pacific strategy’); ‘engagement and competition’ with China, et al. 

The disconnect between our ebullient narratives and the stark Indian reality is no longer possible to hide. Yet, at the moment, India is having a 15-day military exercise in Alaska, which US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin calls the ‘strategic hotspot’ for the US’ Indo-Pacific operations against China and the Arctic operations against Russia!  

India’s decision-makers should demand sense-making counter narratives to protect themselves from the power of one familiar narrative. Competing narratives will help them to weigh evidence and optimally reach judgments. Had that been the case, India wouldn’t have found itself in the foxhole today following the tumultuous events in Afghanistan. 

The mother of all ironies is that the success (or failure) of the current Indian initiative to host an international conference on Afghanistan in November hinges critically on the acceptance of our invite by the Pakistani national security advisor!

To my mind, Moeed Yusuf will probably come, since Prime Minister Imran Khan is an ardent advocate of dialogue with India. But then, what happens to our self-serving narrative about Pakistan if we are to collaborate with that country on vital issues of regional security and stability so as to influence the recalcitrant Taliban (read Sirajuddin Haqqani) to rein in terrorist groups? Conversely, what prevented us from responding to the Pakistani overtures in the recent years while Ashraf Ghani and his clique was ensconced in power in Kabul?

Therefore, we are currently on the job of creating a brand new narrative that India is navigating a ‘way to get a seat at the table to decide the future’ of Afghanistan. And this when our decision-makers are not even sure whether anyone of consequence would show up at our conference in November.  

Combating a dominant narrative is not easy, but history shows — be it about Hitler or George W Bush — that most such stories do not have a happy ending. On the other hand, as the LSE scholars wrote, they can potentially inflict large-scale costs when the decision-makers allow themselves to be led by their own narratives and get blindsided in ‘uncertain and high stakes environments’. 

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Featured image: Bhutan announced the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding with China on boundary negotiations, Thimpu, Oct 14, 2021

Tony Abbott Goes to Taiwan

October 19th, 2021 by Dr. Binoy Kampmark

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No one can stop him.  He can barely stop himself.  The former Australian prime minister, Tony Abbott, seems to be everywhere, fighting the poor cause.  At the very least, he is everywhere with the press cameras, the niggling concerns, the irritations that make it into the twenty-four-hour news cycle before sinking with toxic charm.  He is the perfect ingredient in a stew of conflict, the agitator, the irritant.

The range of issues that have seen his intervention have taken him to conservative, often reactionary fora, the world over.  He has given a gloss of legitimacy to the Great Replacement theory, worried that Christian Europeans have somehow forgotten how to breed, including members of the British Royal Family.  He has been praised by Hungary’s Viktor Orbán for defending Western civilisation against the dark and swarthy.  He has expressed a preference for a social Darwinian model in containing COVID-19, advising governments that the elderly are dispensable citizens.  He has sold his brutal “turn back the boats” formula to European states with, it has to be said, some success.  The United Kingdom and Denmark, for instance, are increasingly aping his stance in lifting the drawbridge and detaining those seeking asylum.

Then, it was time for the ironman pugilist to pay a visit to Taiwan, something he considered a duty to do and must have had, at least on some level, the nod of approval from Canberra.  “Taiwan’s friends are so important right now.”  He went, not as a peace envoy but as a representative flagging future conflict.

Abbott’s October 8 address to the Yushan forum began with an admission.  Two years ago, he had hesitated to attend the conference, “lest that provoke China.”  But since then – and here, Abbott keeps company with the war drummers in Canberra – China had altered the facts.  Beijing had shredded the one-country, two systems understanding on Hong Kong, placed a million Uighurs into concentration camps, increased cyber surveillance of its own citizens, embraced a its own cancel culture “in favour of a cult of the new red emperor”, attacked Indian soldiers, coerced rival claimants in its eastern seas and “flown evermore intimidatory sorties against Taiwan.”

Much of this is true enough, though Abbott minimises the aggravations.  China’s “weaponised trade” against Australia was only because Canberra had “politely” sought an “impartial inquiry into the origins of the Wuhan virus.”  It all led him to believe that “China’s belligerence is all self-generated.”

It wasn’t always like that.  Abbott told his audience of how his government “finalised China’s first free trade deal with another G20 country, in part, because we thought that would help us build trust between China and the democracies.”  His government also readied to join the Chinese-led Asia Infrastructure Investment bank as he “thought it would help to give China a stake in a rules-based global order.”

Anyone invoking the expression “rules-based global order” is bound to be hiding behind the façade of global politics, where power is exerted with lofty ambition and justified in the language of noble refrain.  But for Abbott, there is an inherent decency to such rules, even if they were, historically speaking, imposed on non-white nations of the planet in a civilising mission of some brutality.

And such rules can be broken, as evidenced by Abbott’s own remarks about Taiwan’s accepted international status, which he has ignored with near child-like determination.  “Why would they want to get caught up in the old arguments about who is the ‘real’ China?” he asks about the Taiwanese – except that the seat of government of the “real” China remains in Beijing, with the assumption that Taiwan will, eventually, join the PRC.

Australia had behaved, according to Abbott, entirely appropriately despite becoming an unquestioning satellite of US power in the Indo-Pacific with a promise of acquiring nuclear-powered submarines.  “If the ‘drums of war’ can be heard in our region, as an official of ours has noted, it’s not Australia that’s beating them.”  The only beating of drums, he insisted, were for “justice and freedom – freedom for all people, in China and Taiwan, to make their own decisions about their lives and their futures.”

Having minimised Australian provocations, it is left to Abbott to add his own paving to war’s road, pointing the accusing finger towards Beijing, whose policy makers had been so creative as to create the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue against themselves.  “Sensing that its relative power might have peaked, with its population ageing, its economy slowing, and its finances creaking, it’s quite possible that Beijing could lash out disastrously very soon.”

Such a lashing could well take place across the Taiwan Strait, though Abbott is keen on the provocation.  “I don’t think America could stand by and watch Taiwan swallowed up.  I don’t think Australia should be indifferent to the fate of a fellow democracy of almost 25 million.”

Taiwan has become the fetishized object of hostility towards Beijing, a powder keg increasingly at risk of being lit.  It’s foreign minister, Joseph Wu, could only capitalise on the addition of another member to the Taiwan fan club, suggesting that the former Australian PM had been “doing something right” in enraging China’s “wolf warriors”.    If success can be measured by offence, Wu may be correct. But if success is a measure of how peace can be preserved, he was distinctly off the mark.

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Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.  He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne.  He is a frequent contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research. Email: [email protected]

Funeral Rites for COVID Zero

October 15th, 2021 by Dr. Binoy Kampmark

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It was such a noble public health dream, even if rather hazy to begin with.  Run down SARS-CoV-2.  Suppress it.  Crush it.  Or just “flatten the curve”, which could have meant versions of all the above.  This created a climate of numerical sensitivity: a few case infections here, a few cases there, would warrant immediate, sharp lockdowns, stay-at-home orders, the closure of all non-vital service outlets.

Then came mutations and variants.  Delta became the word mentioned like a terrorist saboteur, placing bombs under the edifice of the health system.  The pro-market factions within governments receptive to using lockdown formulas could claim that harsh stay-at-home rules were not working.  It was time to open up the economy; time to live with the virus, and, consequently, a good number of deaths.  It was time for the epidemiologists to do more modelling.

A crucial factor to this was the arrival of COVID-19 vaccines and the acceleration of vaccination programs.  Studies showing how increased vaccination coverage would reduce cases of COVID-19 and precipitate a fall in hospitalisation began to catch the attention of policy makers.  One, a preprint and yet to be peer-reviewed paper from August, looked at the effects of vaccination coverage among the 112 most populous counties in the United States.  It found that a 10 percent increase in vaccination coverage could be associated with a 28.3 percent decrease in the rate of hospitalisation and a 16.6 percent decrease in COVID-19 hospitalisations per 100 cases.

In Australia, New South Wales became the first state to accept that a lockdown policy coupled with a mass vaccination push, the stress being on the latter, would be necessary to cope with the ravages of the Delta variant.  Eventually, the number of infections would fall, as they now seem to be doing.  “What we need to do is all of us have to start accepting that we need to live with COVID because COVID would be around for three or four years,” the now departed Premier Gladys Berejiklian stated in September.  But it was less a stance of wisdom than one of necessity, given the initially carefree approach of the Berejiklian government to staying open despite the dangers posed by new variants. “We have to live with the virus,” meant not having to say sorry.

Victoria followed, digesting a harsh reality that the virus, active and present, had ceased to be ineradicable.  It had not been that long ago that the same government had proclaimed that it had “run the virus” into the ground like an unwanted invader.  But Melbourne, the city lockdown for the longest period on this planet, went the way of Sydney, despite having more stringent measures in place. “We think there may be a number that is not zero but is low that we can contain,” Victoria’s Premier Daniel Andrews cryptically speculated.  A debate was taking place on “a sweet spot that is not zero, but it’s not so high”. A stumbled slaying of the COVID Zero vision, but a slaying nonetheless.

Even as this was taking place, the true believers, largely untouched by the effects of the virus in the first place, continued to believe in a certain public health heaven.  West Australian Premier Mark McGowan made clear his ambitions of keeping his state “unscathed” which prompted observations that West Australia might become a bastion of COVID-19 “secessionism”.

Recently, two countries also removed their names from one of the world’s shortest lists, reading COVID Zero its funeral rites.  There was New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, whose country had followed the elimination strategy for a year and a half, discarding it in full view of the press.  In doing so, she used the word “transitioning”.  “We’re transitioning from our current strategy to a new way of doing things,” she revealed to reporters earlier this month.  “With Delta, the return to zero is incredibly difficult, and our restrictions alone are not enough to achieve that quickly.  In fact, for this outbreak, it’s clear that long periods of heavy restrictions has not got us to zero cases.”  Some imagery was in order: “What we have called a long tail feels more like a tentacle that has been incredibly hard to shake.”

There was Singapore, a model example of strict border controls despite being a global economic hub, a nation-state dedicated to firm contact tracing, social distancing and mask mandates.  Having reached a vaccination rate in the populace of 80 percent, the government was keen to move the small country towards a “living with COVID-19” strategy.

The co-chair of the COVID multi-ministry taskforce (MTF), Lawrence Wong, went so far on October 2 as to suggest that “sooner or later, many of us will end up catching the virus, but we will have zero or mild symptoms (and) recover from home after a few days”.  While 98 percent of those catching the virus would not fall seriously ill, two percent probably would suffer severely.  Wong also thought it important to say that the government was stabilising “our protocols [to] make sure the procedures are in place and build up the necessary capacity (in the health care system)”.

It was telling that these words were coming from the finance minister, rather than a public health official of Spartan gravity and moral severity.  In New South Wales, Dominic Perrottet, the new premier, till recently the state’s Treasurer, is an open-economy hawk in the face of the lockdown lobby.  The pendulum is again swinging in pandemic health, and the citizens of the once COVID zero countries are being softened for tolerable mortality and acceptable risk.

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Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.  He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne.  He is a frequent contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research. Email: [email protected]

Featured image is from Mercola

RCEP to Boost Trade Flows and Supply Chain Network in Asia-Pacific

October 14th, 2021 by Hellenic Shipping News Worldwide

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The expected implementation of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership agreement next year will widen trade flows and consolidate the supply chain network in the Asia-Pacific region, economists and business leaders said.

Despite the adverse effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the region’s economic growth, the RCEP will help China mitigate the impact caused by an aging society and pave the way for both Chinese and global companies to export more products like fruits, aquatic goods, machinery and electric passenger vehicles to various markets within the region, said Rajiv Biswas, Asia-Pacific chief economist at global research and information provider IHS Markit.

“Innovations in trade policies, products and practices will be the cornerstones of progress for China and its partners to persevere on the path of development,” said Lawrence Loh, director of the Centre for Governance and Sustainability at the National University of Singapore’s Business School.

Specifically, China can leverage much from its leadership in global collaborations such as the Belt and Road Initiative, participation in free trade agreements like the RCEP, and sound management of the domestic economy, he said.

The RCEP is a free trade agreement concluded in November between the 10 member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations-Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam-and five of its FTA partners, namely Australia, China, Japan, New Zealand and the Republic of Korea.

Arthayudh Srisamoot, Thailand’s ambassador to China, said the RCEP will lay the foundation for more intraregional trade and GDP growth when it comes into force if the public looks at how the free trade agreement between ASEAN and China has boosted economic and trade ties between the two sides, or how a free trade deal between China and the Republic of Korea has contributed to bilateral trade.

“With the RCEP in force, it will attract more investments from outside the region, especially against the backdrop of the global pandemic, thus reducing the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the economies in the region,” he said, stressing the massive deal will not only be an economic recovery tool against the disease but also help ensure the opening of markets as well as uninterrupted supply chains.

Glenn G. Penaranda, commercial counselor of the Philippine embassy in China, said the pact will help achieve a high level of openness within the region.

“With regard to trade in goods, member countries will further open their markets to each other, as well as reinforce the collaboration of regional supply chain development to better prevent risks,” he added.

According to the common rule of origin established by the agreement, only 40 percent of regional content is required for goods to be considered of RCEP origin, much lower than the threshold of other free trade agreements.

Backed by sales and service networks and a large number of employees in Indonesia, Vietnam and Malaysia, OSell, one of China’s major cross-border e-commerce platforms, plans to build more warehouses and service centers to expand into ASEAN markets.

“The RCEP will support the growth of both regional and global trade, cross-border e-commerce and related industries, and create a more stable and open investment environment for global companies investing in the region,” said Feng Jianfeng, chairman of the Chongqing-based company.

Iris Pang, chief China economist at Dutch bank ING, said the major challenge for China’s long-term growth is (strengthening its) technological competitiveness in the international environment. This does not only mean producing top-notch technologies but also being able to export them to the rest of the world.

“The dual-circulation growth paradigm is always needed for a big economy like China. International trade offers both seller and buyer economies a better price for the same transaction than traded within their own economies,” she said, noting domestic circulation provides the backbone support for the economy when the external side is weak.

Proposed by the central leadership, the dual-circulation growth pattern has emerged as the overriding economic theme, with innovation, opening-up and the need to boost domestic demand identified as priorities during the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-25). It sees domestic circulation as the mainstay, with domestic and international circulation reinforcing each other.

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Source: China Daily

Featured image is from InfoBrics

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If opposition leader Leni Robredo were to become president in 2022, she would pursue deals with China but its recognition of the historic arbitral ruling saying the Philippines owns the West Philippine Sea is a non-negotiable.

Robredo on Thursday, October 14, gave a glimpse of the foreign policy she would be pursuing when asked to elaborate on it during the Rotary Club of Manila’s 16th Weekly Membership Meeting, where the Vice President was invited as speaker.

She first said having an “inclusive and independent” foreign policy that favors no specific countries would be beneficial for the Philippines.

Robredo then zeroed in on China, saying she would have no qualms on cooperation with Beijing in areas where there are no conflicts, like trade and investments.

But when it comes to the West Philippine Sea, China must first recognize that it truly belongs to the Philippines before deals like a possible joint exploration of resources can be pursued.

“For China, we will collaborate with them in the areas that we have no conflict, such as trade and investments, much like what Vietnam has been doing. But when it comes to the West Philippine Sea, we cannot deal with them without their recognition of the arbitral ruling,” said Robredo.

Robredo has been among the loudest voices in the Philippines opposing China’s militarization of the West Philippine Sea, a part of the South China Sea that belongs to the Philippines but China falsely claims as it owns.

The Vice President once said that China’s presence in Philippine waters is the “most serious external threat” since World War II.

In 2016, an arbitral tribunal already junked China’s expansive claim over the South China Sea, a historic win for the Philippines.

But no less than President Rodrigo Duterte has been downplaying the Philippines’ tribunal victory over China in favor of getting loans and grants from the regional giant. Duterte claims that insisting on the Philippines’ legal triumph would only spark war with China.

Critics, however, have said that the Philippines can push to forge stronger alliances with other foreign nations to put more pressure on China to leave the West Philippine Sea.

Robredo, in particular, said she would move to further strengthen relations with the United States to help protect the West Philippine Sea. The US is the Philippines’ oldest treaty ally.

“We want to create better ties, especially in the areas of protection of our citizens, embracing exports, bolstering trade, military intelligence capabilities, and of course, protecting the West Philippine Sea,” said the Vice President.

Robredo also eyes stronger diplomatic relations with the Philippines’ other allies in Southeast Asia, the European Union, the United Kingdom, Australia, and other countries where there are large concentrations of Filipino migrant workers.

“We do all we can to cement bilateral agreements with them to ensure the protection of Filipinos and to ensure satisfactory labor conditions for them. We will be open to working with everyone so long as it is, of course, to the best interests of the Filipino people,” said Robredo.

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Featured image: Vice-President Leni Robredo speaks to supporters as she announces her presidential bid in the May 2022 elections, at the Quezon City reception house on October 7, 2021. Jire Carreon/Rappler

Uyghur Tribunal: US Lawfare at Its Lowest

October 13th, 2021 by Brian Berletic

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The so-called “Uyghur Tribunal” is promoted across the Western media as an “independent” tribunal. AP claims that it seeks to lay out evidence that will “compel international action to tackle growing concerns about alleged abuses in Xinjiang.”

The tribunal – having no legal basis or enforcement mechanism – will clearly be used to help bolster calls for a boycott of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympic games and may serve to help pressure nations around the globe to roll back ties with China and aid the US in imposing additional sanctions and boycotts.

An “Independent” Tribunal Funded by the US Government

Media platforms like the US State Department’s Radio Free Asia in articles have claimed the tribunal has “no state backing.” The above mentioned AP article only claims the tribunal “does not have UK government backing.”

Yet the Uyghur Tribunal’s official website, under a section titled, “About,” admits (emphasis added):

In June 2020 Dolkun Isa, President of the World Uyghur Congress formally requested that Sir Geoffrey Nice QC establish and chair an independent people’s tribunal to investigate ‘ongoing atrocities and possible Genocide’ against the Uyghurs, Kazakhs and other Turkic Muslim Populations.

It also claims on a second page about funding that:

A crowdfunder page has raised nearly £250 000, with an initial amount of around $115 000 dollars donated by the Uyghur diaspora through the World Uyghur Congress.

What isn’t mentioned is that the World Uyghur Congress, along with many of the supposed experts and witnesses providing statements during the supposed tribunal, are funded by the United States government through the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).

This includes the president of WUC himself, Dolkun Isa, who provided a statement on June 4, 2021. Other members of US NED-funded organizations participating in the so-called tribunal included Muetter Illiqud of the NED-funded Uyghur Transitional Justice Database (UTJD), Rushan Abbas and Julie Millsap of the NED-funded Campaign for Uyghurs, Bahram Sintash and Elise Anderson of the NED-funded Uyghur Human Rights Project and Laura Harth of Safeguard Defenders, formerly known as the NED-funded China Action organization.

WUC is listed by name along with the UHRP, Campaign for Uyghurs, and the Uyghur Refugee Relief Fund on the official US NED website under “Xinjiang/East Turkestan 2020.” On another NED page titled, “Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act Builds on Work of NED Grantees,” the Uyghur Transitional Justice Database Project is also listed as receiving money from the US funding arm.

Also participating in the supposed tribunal was Adrian Zenz of the US government-funded Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation (VOC), Shohret Hosur who works for the US State Department’s Radio Free Asia, Mihrigul Tursun who was awarded the NED-affiliated “Citizen Power Award in 2018, Sayragul Sauytbay who received the 2020 US State Department’s Women of Courage Award, and IPVM which is a video surveillance information service previously commissioned by the US government in regards to Chinese government surveillance programs in Xinjiang.

There was also Sean Robert who was a senior advisor to the USAID mission to Central Asia from 1998-2006  – the very region and time period Uyghur separatism was being organized from beyond China’s borders. Robert has been active in promoting US-funded propaganda regarding Xinjiang for years alongside other mainstays like Rushan Abbas and Louisa Greve.

Nearly every other “witness” brought before the so-called tribunal has a long-established history of participating in the US government-funded propaganda campaign aimed at China and its alleged abuses in Xinjiang. This includes Omir Bekali who was previously invited to testify in front of the US Congress in 2018, Asiye Abdulahed who claims to be the alleged source of the so-called “China Files,” Zumret Dawut whose allegations were used by former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in attacks aimed at China, and Tursunay Ziyawudun who spoke in front of Congress in 2021.

There were also Westerners representing corporate-funded think tanks long engaged in a propaganda war with China including Nathan Ruser of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), Darren Byler and Jessica Batke of “ChileFile” – a subsidiary of Asia Society funded by the Australian and Japanese governments as well as Open Society, and Charles Parton of the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) funded by the US State Department, the EU, Canada, Qatar, the UK, Japan, Australia, as well as arms manufacturers like BAE, Airbus, Lockheed, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, and General Dynamics.

Only a handful of participants appeared to be relatively new faces, perhaps drawn from lesser corners of the global Uyghur diaspora being cultivated by the US as a political weapon.

Tedious, Holes-Filled Testimony

The testimony itself was tedious and lengthy with a total of nearly 80 hours recorded and uploaded to the Uyghur Tribunal’s YouTube channel. However, spot checking any of the testimony reveals massive discrepancies.

For example, on the first day of hearings, Muetter Illiqud of the abovementioned US government-funded UTJD provided conflicting total numbers of Uyghurs allegedly interned as well as conflicting accounts regarding Chinese government restrictions on the number of children permitted in cities and in rural villages. Illiqud failed to explain the discrepancies and was invited by Geoffrey Nice, chair of the tribunal, to return in September with the discrepancies fixed.

Another alleged witness, Gulzire Alwuqanqizi who spoke with an NED-affiliated “ChinaAid” banner behind her, claimed in her written statement that she was forced to work in a factory for a month and a half (approximately 45 days) where she claims she made a total of 2,000 gloves. Yet in her spoken statement she claims she was never able to meet the daily quota of 20 gloves and instead made only 10-12. If that is true, she would have only produced at most 540 gloves. She was never asked to clarify this discrepancy.

Also in her written statement, she claims she was caught sending photos of the factory to her husband. She claims:

One day, I took a picture of the factory and sent it to him. From there it became public. Following this, I was interrogated, they asked the same questions they had always asked, all night long, but eventually they let me go.

Yet in her spoken statement, she claimed:

At the factory where we were producing the gloves, I sent a photo and as punishment I was put in something like a ditch, a 20 meter deep well. They threw some electric currents at me, they poured water on me, and kept me there for 24 hours.

No comment was made by the panel interviewing her regarding this glaring inconsistency either.

Another witness, Tursunay Ziyawudun, claimed in her written statement to have been detained upon entering China after living in Kazakhstan from 2011 to 2016.

She inferred that she was being asked questions about the US NED-funded World Uyghur Congress during an interrogation, and claimed:

I didn’t even know what World Uyghur Congresses were at that time. We don’t have access to this information in China.

Yet clearly, while living in Kazakhstan for 5 years prior to returning to China, she did have access to this information. It is yet another inconsistency left unchallenged by the so-called tribunal.

Out of about 80 hours of proceedings, there is always bound to be inconsistencies, yet when the panel observed these, it took no action at all, skipping past them, excusing them, or allowing witnesses to alter their claims at a later date to iron out obvious inconsistencies. All of this further calls into question the professionalism, objectivity, and integrity of the entire “tribunal.”

Of course, no one in the public will likely watch any of the testimony first hand, let alone cross examine the spoken statements with their written statements. The general public will instead rely on the Western media’s interpretations of the so-called tribunal consisting of cherry-picked highlights designed to prey on the public’s emotions.

The “Uyghur Tribunal” – a Bad Sequel to the “China Tribunal”

The so-called “Uyghur Tribunal” unfolds as a sort of sequel to the 2019 “China Tribunal.” The China Tribunal and the Uyghur Tribunal following it were both chaired by Geoffrey Nice and included Hamid Sabi, Nicholas Vetch, and Aarif Abraham as participants. Both were initiated and funded by US government-funded organizations.

While the WUC organized the Uyghur Tribunal, the so-called International Coalition to End Transplant Abuse in China (ETAC) was the organization behind the “China Tribunal.” ETAC’s own webpage does not disclose its funding, but provides a list of names on its “international advisory committee.” They include Louisa Greve who was part of the NED’s senior leadership for 24 years before shifting over to the NED-funded Uyghur Human Rights Project. Ethan Gutmann is also listed. His book, “The Slaughter,” regarding alleged human organ harvesting in China, was launched at an NED event in Washington D.C. There is also Benedict Rogers, an advisor to the NED-funded World Uyghur Congress.

In other words, both tribunals were not tribunals at all, but instead an exhibition put on by a US government-funded troupe of activists deeply invested in maligning China and helping advance US foreign policy objectives versus Beijing.

It is merely a larger, more elaborate version of a literal exhibition funded by the US government and organized by the World Uyghur Congress in Geneva Switzerland also this year. A September 2021 Reuters article titled, “China accuses Washington of ‘low political tricks’ over Uyghur exhibit,” would note:

A US-backed Uyghur photo exhibit of dozens of people who are missing or alleged to be held in camps in Xinjiang, China, opened in Switzerland on Thursday, prompting Beijing to issue a furious statement accusing Washington of “low political tricks”.

The article also claimed:

The United States gave a financial grant for the exhibit, which will later travel to Brussels and Berlin, the World Uyghur Congress told Reuters. Earlier this week, the US mission in Geneva displayed it at a diplomatic reception, according to sources who attended.

“We are committed to placing human rights at the center of our China policy, and we will continue to highlight the grave human rights abuses we see the PRC committing across China, in Xinjiang, Tibet, Hong Kong, and elsewhere,” a US mission spokesperson said, referring to the People’s Republic of China.

The US, guilty of the very worst crimes against humanity of the 21st century, only claims to put human rights at the center of its foreign policy when politically convenient. No mention is made of the US’ decades of supporting violent separatism in China including in Tibet and Xinjiang – creating the very real terrorism China’s security measures were put in place to combat.

No mention or note is made in articles about the “Uyghur Tribunal” regarding the constant use of the term “East Turkestan” instead of Xinjiang or the fact that most of the people speaking at the tribunal are separatists and at least partly responsible for the violence and instability that seized Xinjiang before Beijing intervened.

No mention is made about the constant presence of East Turkestan separatist flags in the backgrounds as witnesses provide testimony. At one point in the proceedings, pro-separatist Arslan Hidayat was seen interpreting for at least two witnesses. Hidayat has repeatedly called for Xinjiang to be ethnically cleansed of Han Chinese.

As China reacted to the violence the US fuelled – the US used accusations of human rights abuses to hamstring and undermine Chinese efforts to restore peace and stability. The US uses the sword of state-sponsored terrorism to strike at China, and the shield of feigned rights advocacy to defend US-sponsored separatists from justice.

The “Uyghur Tribunal” is merely the latest and perhaps grandest iteration of this strategy of striking and defending. The tribunal’s final “ruling” will be read in December 2021, just ahead of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics and a concerted US-led media campaign to call for the world’s boycott of the games. Beyond that, further sanctions could be leveled against China – all in the wake of a clearly US-engineered show tribunal dishonestly presented to the public as “justice” and “human rights advocacy.”

The harsh irony is that the US seeks to blunt China’s rise specifically so it can continue acting on the global stage with impunity, and continue carrying out the verified, very real campaign of death, destruction, and genocide it has led since the turn of the century.

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Brian Berletic is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

Featured image is from New Eastern Outlook

The Biden China Initiative, a Flawed and Dysfunctional Policy

October 13th, 2021 by Prof. Mel Gurtov

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Abstract: President Biden is continuing the disengagement policy toward China that began under Donald Trump, now with strong bipartisan support. The policy has all the elements of containment of China, including restrictions on technology, trade, investment, formation of the informal Quad (US-Japan-Australia-India) alliance, sale of nuclear-powered submarines to Australia, continuation of high tariffs on Chinese exports, and increased official contacts with Taiwan in a period of growing China-Taiwan military tension.

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One element, which until recently had strong support across the US political spectrum, is educational and scientific exchanges with China. Approximately 370,000 students and scholars from China, by far the largest number of any country, are in the US, nearly a third engaged in STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) research. But now, as relations with China have deteriorated, Democrats and Republicans alike view Chinese graduate students and researchers, especially those in science and technology, with suspicion and even hostility. Biden, like Trump, has made obtaining J-1 and F-1 visas very difficult for Chinese graduate students and researchers, denying them based not on individual cases but on any possible connection they may have to any Chinese “entity” doing “military-civil” research. Sadly, many Chinese students no longer feel welcome.

Following Trump’s lead, the Biden justice department and FBI are engaged in intense oversight of universities and laboratories that have agreements with Chinese entities. This so-called China Initiative is designed to catch not only Chinese nationals but American citizens, especially those of Chinese descent, who are suspected of engaging in theft or transfer of information that benefits Beijing. The scope of the Initiative is exceptionally wide, extending beyond theft of trade and intellectual property secrets to “potential threats to academic freedom,” surveillance of Chinese registered as foreign agents, prevention of threats to supply chains, and identification of possible corruption in Chinese companies that compete with US companies.

The China Initiative is deeply flawed in two respects: its built-in bias and its failure to recognize the many benefits of exchanges with China. The bias stems from a presumption of guilt and guilt by association, hallmarks of the McCarthyism era. That much is clear from the mindless attacks on Confucius Institutes, which are typically attached to US universities and provide free language and cultural instruction to nearby communities. From personal research as well as the research of others who have interviewed university officials and community members, I can say with confidence that charges against these institutes, in particular from Congress members, of being communist party organs and seeking to undermine academic freedom are spurious. Yet the charges persist, making no distinction between education and espionage or between Confucian Institutes abroad (where there have been cases of political interference) and those in the US. And the charges have been backed not just by tighter visa requirements but also by threats to universities to either eliminate their Confucius Institute or lose federal funding. The threats have worked, reducing the number of Cis from over 100 to fewer than 40. Among the universities that have closed their CIs under US government pressure are the University of Michigan, the University of Oregon, the University of Maryland, the University of South Carolina, and my own Portland State University.

The federal government’s bias also has a racial element. A large group of Stanford University faculty, in calling for termination of the China Initiative, wrote to Attorney General Merrick Garland on September 9, 2021: “the China Initiative disproportionally targets researchers of Chinese origin. Publicly available information indicates that investigations are often triggered not by any evidence of wrongdoing, but just because of a researcher’s connections with China.” In response to complaints from Asian American and other academic groups, some Democratic congress members urged the justice department to investigate “the repeated, wrongful targeting of individuals of Asian descent for alleged espionage . . . ” Their letterreminded the department of America’s long history of anti-Asian prejudice and its contemporary consequences—the increased violence against people of Asian ethnicity on city streets. What they failed to call out was the hostility toward China stoked by the Trump and Biden administrations that had prompted the violence. Still, the letter gives voice to the view of Chinese researchers in the United States, including those with American citizenship, who believe they are being targeted for having any connection with China, however ordinary.

Scientists have also voiced their concerns. As one group put it, while the government has a legitimate need to tighten rules governing research security, “a response that chokes off legitimate scientific contacts only compounds the problem it seeks to solve.” Regarding the FBI arrests of Chinese and US researchers—the justice department report cited above contains a full listing—these scientists wrote that “many of those now accused are accomplished scientists engaged in university research in fundamental science, with close collaborations in China.” Putting Chinese science students under scrutiny, the group added, defied the facts and “could deprive our country of some of its most talented future scientists.”

Fact is, exchanges with China benefit the US as much as they benefit China. They bring language and cultural training to K-12 classrooms in small communities. Chinese graduate students staff laboratories and medical research facilities working, for example, on cancer. Their research produces patents valued in the billions of dollars. Their tuition and other costs of study are a major source of revenue for universities and colleges, measured in the billions of dollars. (“Every 1,000 Ph.D. students blocked in a year from U.S. universities costs an estimated $210 billion in the expected value of patents produced at universities over 10 years and nearly $1 billion in lost tuition over a decade, according to an analysis from the National Foundation for American Policy.” Their time spent in the US exposes Chinese to the virtues of free expression, cross-cultural awareness, independent research, and respect for human rights.

The overwhelming endorsement of these exchanges by everyone from university administrators to small-town teachers reflects a positive aspect of US engagement with China that should be honored. Failure to do so leads to reciprocal punitive action by China, as seen in crackdowns on US social media and journalists there, the closure of once-thriving joint educational programs, and refusal to cooperate on finding the origins of COVID-19.

The bottom line is that restricting scientific collaboration stifles innovation and undermines the very competitiveness that President Biden is depending on for US economic recovery. As Caroline Wagner, who specializes in exchange programs, writes:

The US government’s scrutiny of Chinese Americans and Chinese scholars runs up against the value of open scientific exchange. My research on international collaboration in science has shown that open nations have strong science. Nations that accept visitors and send researchers abroad, those that engage richly in cross-border collaborations and fund international projects produce better science and excel in innovation. Closing doors inhibits the very trait that makes the US innovation system the envy of the world.

The department of justice has prosecuted some Chinese and a few Americans who do indeed seem to have stepped over the line in their research. But some people have been released for lack of evidence and others have failed to report ties to China rather than committed economic or security espionage. Moreover, the numbers of accused are miniscule when placed beside the tens of thousands of Chinese and millions of Chinese Americans who abide by US law and have no political motive for being here. Those people should be considered an asset and treated with respect. As the Stanford faculty’s letter says, “Many of our most challenging global problems, including climate change & sustainability and current & future pandemics, require international engagement. Without an open and inclusive environment that attracts the best talents in all areas, the United States cannot retain its world leading position in science and technology.” In recent years, a substantial share of the best talent has come from China and the rest of Asia.

It is particularly disappointing that the Biden administration has taken Trump’s road, failing to distinguish China’s harmful behavior from its cooperative behavior. Our schools, our economy, and our society suffer the consequences.

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Mel Gurtov is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Portland State University and Senior Editor of Asian Perspective. His latest book is America in Retreat: Foreign Policy Under Donald Trump (Rowman & Littlefield). You can find out more about him in his blog, In the Human Interest. This is an expanded version of a text that appeared in the blog. A podcast is also available.

Featured image: Biden and Xi Jinping in more hopeful times (Source: APJJF)

Waking Up to Climate Change Dinosaurs

October 13th, 2021 by Dr. Binoy Kampmark

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Morning listening on October 13. Australia’s Radio National.  Members of the Morrison government are doing their interview rounds with the host, Fran Kelly.  We enter a time warp, speeding away into another dimension where planet Earth, and Australia, look different.   

The first interview, with Nationals Senator Bridget McKenzie, is filled with the sort of rejigged reality that is less mind expansion than contraction.   It is easy to forget that she is a member of the government.  She tells listeners that her constituents and the electorate she represented were not interested in climate change or its effects.  A bold, quixotic reading.  They were also the “most marginalised” and vulnerable in Australia.  This would be a fascinating take for those in the employ of Rio Tinto and other mining giants.

McKenzie (“Fran, Fran, Fran,” she implored with adolescent petulance) was all for those in rural areas, claiming that, “We have been able to avoid very bad outcomes for our country.”  Environmental catastrophe, imminent impoverishment of the farming sector due to climate change, are evidently palatable and digestible outcomes.  Interest, suggested McKenzie, should instead be shown for those workers who, in erecting solar panels, ended up mowing the grass underneath them.

Much of what the Senator said had already been given an airing in The Australian on October 10.  She lamented that the Business Council of Australia, National Farmers Federation and the Minerals of Council had wobbled on the issue of “net-zero emissions” and how embracing such a policy would “hit our regional export industries, and people living in the lowest socio-economic electorates in the country”.  She proudly admitted that her party had been “intransigent during this long debate”, making them unpopular as dinner-party guests.  “We have been doing our job for the people who sent us to Canberra.”

Praise was heaped upon the environmental vandal’s resume.  “We avoided a carbon tax; we have overseen record growth in mining and agricultural exports; and we have pushed for technology solutions, while remaining committed to being careful stewards of the Earth.”  With stewards like these, who needs genuine ecological criminals?

The second interview does little to steady listeners.  It is with a minister whose portfolio, at least in Australia, has been emptied of all meaning, let alone relevance.  A little time with Environment Minister Sussan Ley, and you can be reassured that the Great Barrier Reef is thriving, that the Morrison government is at the forefront of conservation efforts, and that Australia is the greenest of citizens.  Such views can be expressed alongside the fact that Australia has one of the highest extinction rates of species in the world.

These morning encounters with the climate change dinosaurs form the backdrop of whether Australia will even send its prime minister to COP26.  Going to Glasgow has become as fascinating for the press and pundits as the fact that a climate conference is taking place.  Morrison has even convinced the national broadcaster – he boastful of coal’s merits to the point of bringing in a lump to show fellow parliamentarians – that he has “signalled his own climate conversion”.  The evidence?  Remarks made in February 2020 at the National Press Club that “our goal is to reach net zero emissions as soon as possible, and preferably by 2050”.  Hardly a conversion.

A fairer portrayal of this is the fact that Morrison is finding himself being mugged by an increasingly unpleasant, even horrific reality.  He has tried to impress some of this upon his Coalition partners who function in the narrowest belt of reality but has found it mightily difficult. The Nationals remain proud of their efforts in killing off prime ministers and their plans, be it the emissions trading scheme, the National Energy Guarantee, or the carbon tax.  Environmental ideas, it has been known for a long time, go to the Nationals party room to die, along with their defenders.

To be convinced about the merits of “net zero”, party members will have to be bribed by the deep purse commonly known as the Treasury.  The price for one of them, Keith Pitt, current Minister for Resources and Northern Australia, is a AU$250 billion publicly funded “loan facility” for the mining sector.  For McKenzie, it is an undertaking that targets be suspended in the event regional areas were harmed.

Pitt’s suggestion, given a nudge along by Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce, is all the more remarkable for what it entails: a massive public subsidising of the fossil fuel sector to spite wicked banks who have withdrawn investment.  Senator Matt Canavan, has defended this version of fossil fuel socialism.  “Global banks that want to control who has a job in Australia should be locked out of our country.”  By all means, let Australians “pay higher interest rates but that would be worth it to protect our independence”.  This, despite his constant clamouring that “net zero means higher energy prices for all”.

There would also be a delicious irony to this, given that such a fund would benefit the business interests of Australia’s current bugbear of choice, the People’s Republic of China.  Even as the Australian government beds itself firmly down with the United States for any future conflict with Beijing, such a transfer of cash, as Michael West points out, would benefit gas pipelines operator Jemena and Alinta Energy, and Yancoal Australia and coalminer CITIC Australia.  And that’s just a small spread of potential beneficiaries.

As things stand, it is a wonder Prime Minister Scott Morrison is even bothering.  The Australian delegation in Glasgow is bound to be poorly briefed, confused and barely able.  The coalition government, still weighed down by fossil-fuel fantasists, will continue to be engaged in a battle of such stunning incoherence any undertakings on carbon neutrality and change can only be regarded as unreliable and disingenuous.  As McKenzie and a few of her lobotomised colleagues would have you believe, climate change is something that happens to other people.  In the meantime, fossil fuel socialists the world over, unite!

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Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.  He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne.  He is a frequent contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research. Email: [email protected]

Featured image is from www.bridgetmckenzie.com.au

COVIDSafe: The Failure of an App

October 12th, 2021 by Dr. Binoy Kampmark

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The returns have not been impressive. For an app essentially anointed as a saviour for tracing purposes in the worst pandemic in a century, COVIDSafe is a lesson in exaggerated prowess and diminished performance.

It was billed as necessitous and supremely useful.  Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison was fashionably vulgar in linking the use of the app with an important goal: getting watering holes opened.  “If that isn’t an incentive for Australians to download COVIDSafe, I don’t know what is,” Morrison claimed in May last year.  The prime minister even equated the use of the app to protecting yourself before going outdoors.  “If you want to go outside when the sun is shining, you have got to put sunscreen on.  This is the same thing.”

Numerous organisations across Australia, private and public, jumped to the call in a concerted effort to embrace surveillance in order to suppress the virus. The National Waste and Recycling Industry Council, to name one enthusiastic participant, claimed that the COVIDSafe App, “together with good hygiene, safe work practices and social distancing will help protect the health of waste and recycling staff and our committee.”  Seven million people also seemed to agree in downloading the app.

But problems began to burgeon.  Identifying close contacts did not seem to be the app’s forte. There were issues about its performance on Apple devices.  The iOs version, for instance, had a habit of trying to link with each device a user’s phone had ever been connected to.  “Every time the Bluetooth controller disconnects from a device, such as when COVIDSafe successfully exchanges data with another app user, it will attempt to reconnect 15 seconds later,” wrote Stilgherrian in July last year.

New South Wales Health Minister Brad Hazzard had to concede in October 2020 that COVIDSafe had “obviously not worked as well as we had hoped”.  To this could be added that hovering cloud of privacy concerns and trust in government.

The review by consultants Abt Associates, commissioned by the federal government and delivered in March this year, did not make for pretty reading.  It took the persistence of The Canberra Times to obtain a more complete version of the report which had initially been released in severely redacted form.  (The redacted evaluation was rather more glowing in concluding that “the COVIDSafe app was the correct tool to employ.”)

The app, it was found, had added to the workloads of state tracing teams “without optimisation of benefits.” This included, for example, the presence of false close contacts among 205 individuals flagged by the app (some 61%) with 30% already identified through standard contact tracing. A mere 2 per cent of total close contacts in NSW between March and November had been detected by the app, with none in Victoria and Queensland.

By May 2021, costing as much as $100,000 a month to continue its operation, the Digital Transformation Agency chief Randall Brugeaud explained to Senates estimates that, “COVIDSafe has moved into what we call the business-as-usual state and so we apply very small amounts of maintenance.”  With a matter of fact telling that would have proved unbearable to the thrifty types, Brugeaud suggested that the amount could change to $200,000 a month “to allow us to make future changes.”  These were additional totals to the $6.7 million the app had already cost till that point, most of which had been swallowed by development outlays.

Such costs are far from draw dropping, given the number of partners this crowded venture has involved.  The Amazon Web Services (AWS) platform may well claim to have led the pack, but then came Delv, Boston Consulting Group and the Melbourne-based outfit Shine Solutions.  In November 2020, it was reported that the latter had received $350,000 in increased payments from the federal government, bringing the then total to $2 million for work on an app that had, as yet, to identify any new close contact anywhere other than the state of New South Wales.

Despite an entrenched stubbornness, the Department of Health would have to concede in July that a mere 779 people who tested positive for COVID-19 had availed themselves of the app.  “The relatively low number of cases in Australia and effectiveness of our contact tracing processes has created an environment in which it has rarely been necessary for public officials to use the app, except to confirm cases through manual processes.”

COVIDSafe keeps company with several similar apps on tracing that have been left in their wake by renewed infection waves and the discovery of vaccines.  But that does not mean that their advocates have not stopped their fires of conviction. A co-authored contribution in the Journal of Medical Ethics insists that we should not have too many hang-ups on overly centralised data in terms of what risks it poses to privacy. Decentralised systems, argue the authors, are also inefficient and risky. “When these points are understood, it becomes clear that we must rethink our approach to digital contact racing in our fight against COVID-19.”

Any identifiable moral here must lie in the risk posed by zeal.  COVIDSafe never replaced the sleuthing efforts of industrious human contact tracers and may have even inhibited them.  “The lure of automating the painstaking process of contact tracing is apparent,” a co-authored report from the Brookings Institute asserts.  “But to date, no one has demonstrated that it’s possible to do so reliably despite numerous concurrent attempts.”  The authors even go so far as to suggest that such apps can “serve as vehicles for abuse and disinformation, while providing a false sense of security to justify reopening local and national economies well before it is safe to do so.”

Even now, on its long feted deathbed, one keeping company with a range of other feats of government misspending, you can still go to the federal Health Ministry’s website to see the following: “The COVIDSafe app is a tool that helps identify people exposed to coronavirus (COVID-19).” In not distinguishing SARS-CoV-2 as the virus, with COVID-19 being the disease, we are already off to a rollicking start.  But the belief in the role of this tool remains steadfast. “This helps us support and protect you, your friends and family.”  The eyes, in the Morrison lingo, remain on the pub prize.

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Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.  He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne.  He is a frequent contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research. Email: [email protected]

Featured image is from the Australian Government’s Twitter Account

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).

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In September 2021, the President of the ROK visited the USA once again to participate in the 76th session of the UN General Assembly, where he made a speech separately addressing the issue of peace on the Korean Peninsula. The South Korean President speaking at the UN had previously proposed to declare an end to the Korean War, In 2018 and 2020. He added specifics, indicating that the ROK, the DPRK, the USA and China should participate in the process.

In addition, Moon Jae-in suggested resuming as soon as possible the program of meetings between separated families of the South and the North, and developing inter-Korean cooperation in the fields of health care and disaster control. However, he made no mention of the North’s recent missile launches, remaining cautious about resuming dialogue with Pyongyang.

On September 22, Moon Jae-in re-emphasized the need to formally end the Korean War during a joint ceremony to hand over military remains in Hawaii.

The US Department of Defense immediately noted that “we continue to seek engagement with the DPRK to address a variety of issues, and we are open to discussing the possibility of an end of war declaration.” At the same time, the Department of Defense spokesman, John Kirby, said the goal is still the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.

The Minister of Unification, Lee In-young, also said that formally ending the Korean War could serve as a valuable and cost-effective measure to demonstrate the absence of hostility and the resumption of nuclear negotiations with North Korea.

The conservative and main opposition People Power Party has criticized Moon’s proposal, saying peace cannot be achieved through a declaration. As former North Korean diplomat and current lawmaker Tae Yong-ho has stressed, a declaration of an end to the war should only be considered after North Korea takes a meaningful step toward denuclearization. Meanwhile, the North continues to launch missiles and has reportedly begun operating its nuclear facilities in Yongbyon.  In this situation, “a declaration of cessation of war would only lead North Korea to incorrectly believe that it could see the withdrawal of US troops from the Korean Peninsula.”   Involving China in a quadrilateral declaration of cessation of war is also unlikely, given the intertwined rivalry between Washington and Beijing.

Much more interesting is the North Korean response. On September 23, Vice Foreign Minister Lee Tae-ho noted that the declaration of the war’s end is a political declaration officially proclaiming the end of the armistice on the Korean Peninsula, which has lasted for a long time so far. In this sense, it has symbolic value, but so far, the adoption of a declaration ending the war is “premature and cannot resolve existing differences.” Lee noted a range of US military preparations aimed at the DPRK, including lifting missile restrictions on the ROK or the Minuteman III ICBM launches in February and August of this year. And he concluded from this that “there is no guarantee that an end-of-war declaration, which is only a piece of paper, will lead to the abandonment of hostility toward us when the situation on the Korean Peninsula is fraught with explosion.”  In such a situation, the assurance of an end to the war “will not help stabilize the situation on the Korean Peninsula and can be used as a cover for US hostile policies”.

A few hours after that, Kim Yo-jong, vice department director of the Central Committee of Korea’s Workers’ Party, issued a slightly different press statement.  “An end-of-war declaration in the sense of physically ending the long-standing unsustainable ceasefire on the Korean Peninsula and abandoning hostility towards the vis-a-vis is an interesting proposal and a good idea.” However, now is not the time to discuss this idea – “in such an environment, when double standards, bias, hostile policies, hostile words and actions against our state continue, as it is now,” such a statement will lead to group photos at most, and all the problems will remain. “Proclaiming the end of the war requires mutual respect on both sides and, above all, biased view of the other side, brutal, hostile policies and unjust double standards must be abolished.” If South Korea breaks with past tactics, “always thinking of further words and actions and not acting in a hostile manner, we would be happy to maintain a close understanding between the North and the South again and have constructive discussions on the restoration of relations and their further development.”

As Blue House Senior Presidential Secretary for Public Affairs Park Soo-hyun said on September 24, Seoul perceives North Korea’s positive response to Moon Jae-in’s proposal as something very important and weighty. As for the two responses from the North on the same day, Park argued that he saw no inconsistency between the statements.

Against this backdrop, Kim Yo-jong again gave “good advice to South Korea” on September 25:

“We can see that the atmosphere of different stratas of South Korea to restore the frozen inter-Korean relations and achieve peaceful stability as soon as possible is strong to the extent that it cannot be obstructed, and we have no other desire either. Therefore, there is no need for the North and the South to pick on the other side, engage in rhetoric and waste valuable time.” If South Korea wants to restore and develop inter-Korean relations, it should not judge the North’s actions as “provocations” and engage in doublethink while developing its own military might as a “necessity to deter the North.” Therefore, the North is waiting for the South to take action “aimed at removing all sparks that fuel confrontation, including the unjust, hostile double-standard policy against the DPRK, as well as offensive rhetoric.” Only if “impartiality and respect for each other are maintained” can both the restoration of the North-South liaison office and the holding of an inter-Korean summit be discussed constructively. “The end of the war will also be proclaimed in due course.”

Kim noted that all of the above is her personal opinion and recalled that “we already gave advice last August that South Korea should make the right choice.”

On the other hand, the author uses the occasion to draw attention to some other issues. The Korean War of 1950-53 ended with an armistice, technically leaving the divided Koreas in a state of war to this day. At the same time, it was signed by the DPRK, UN troops, and “Chinese volunteers.”  The ROK representative refused to sign an armistice because Syngman Rhee wanted to fight until the end. As a result, the problem of finally ending the Korean War involved a series of complex legal procedures related to who should sign for whom and what.

It is clear that an agreement to end the conflict must be signed by its main parties, North Korea, South Korea, the USA, and China, but …

To begin with, formally, it was South Korea and the UN troops that came to its aid, the vast majority of whom were Americans, who fought against North Korea. However, they were not formally fighting on their own but under the UN flag. But since the North and South are now members of the UN, the UN cannot sign a truce with any of its member countries.

The second problem concerns the involvement of China, which also took part in the war, did so not officially, but in the form of the Chinese People’s Volunteers. This has helped avoid further escalation of conflicts but is now causing problems. Including setting a precedent that such an option, originally sent for unofficial participation, is nevertheless equated with official participation.

Another problem is that South Korea did not sign the ceasefire agreement.  It was then about Lee Seung-Man, but if one were to dig deeper, the declaration signed in multilateral format makes all participants equal parties and is an implicit recognition that there are two states on the Korean Peninsula after all, which is really unacceptable at least to the South, whose national security law interprets the North as an anti-state organization controlling part of the ROK territory.

The author would like to recall that when Lee Myung-bak thought of eliminating the Ministry of Unification and handing over the inter-Korean issue to the Foreign Ministry at the beginning of his administration, the project was canceled due to firm public condemnation, as such a move would recognize North Korea as an independent country rather than an illegally alienated part of the peninsula.

Again, what will be the format of the declaration? Unlike a peace treaty, which requires parliamentary approval, a declaration of cessation of war is a non-binding political statement and a more straightforward step for both Washington and Pyongyang. However, the question arises to what extent such a statement would be legally enforceable.

On the other hand, the war’s end will remove an essential status that justifies a lot. In war, many means unacceptable in peacetime are suitable, and wartime emergencies justify a lot in domestic politics.

North Korea has repeatedly put forward proposals to end the Korean War, but it seems to the author that the goal is not so much to end the conflict with the South as to end the war with America. This is why proposals to end the war were put forward by Pyongyang during the talks with the US, as a ceasefire agreement preserves the state of war, opposed to a final solution to the issue.

However, it is essential to Pyongyang that the signed document does not turn into a piece of paper with no relevance to the actual state of affairs. That’s why Kim Yo-jong’s response boiled down to the phrase, “we’ll come back to this issue when Seoul’s policy toward Pyongyang becomes less hostile and other than words you start to move towards it.” And the separation of words from deeds is an important matter because the author constantly draws attention to it: even though Moon can be taken as a supporter of dialogue according to the rhetoric, fundamental steps in this direction can be made only after the third strike of his fist on the table. But military spending and other preparations are growing in ways that conservatives have never dreamed of.

Then, even if all parties agree, it will take some time before Moon’s presidential term is up, and not every Democratic candidate will be as enthusiastic about the idea.  As the most leftist, Lee Jae-myung is likely to do so, but he needs to live to see the election.

Therefore, this proposal was considered and not rejected as a matter of principle but postponed until better times. And when those times come, judging by Kim Jong-un’s sister’s speech, it’s up to Seoul to decide.

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Konstantin Asmolov, PhD in History, leading research fellow at the Center for Korean Studies of the Institute of the Far East at the Russian Academy of Sciences, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

Featured image is from NEO