Is China Trying to Split ASEAN?

By Trefor Moss May 30, 2012

Defense leaders from around Southeast Asia are meeting in Phnom Penh this week for the 6^th ASEAN Defense Ministers’ Meeting (ADMM). The theme of the get together – “Enhancing ASEAN Unity for a Harmonized and Secure Community” – smacks of doublespeak: unity and harmony within ASEAN are sorely lacking at the moment, and no-one really thinks the ministerial meeting is going to rediscover them.

In the anarchy of the international arena, a club like the Association of Southeast Asian Nations ought to be a reassuring place to be. The organization gives its ten members – small or medium-sized players in geopolitical terms – the opportunity to close ranks when dealing with the greater powers, and to speak with one voice loud enough to be heard in Beijing, Washington and any other place that needs to listen.

Unfortunately, ASEAN doesn’t work like that: individualism swiftly trumps collectivism whenever contentious issues arise.

In particular, ASEAN has a China problem. Ask the ten members about China, and you’ll get a kaleidoscope of opinions about what that country represents. Some ASEAN countries are very much pro-China: their own economic development is tied closely to Beijing’s, and they are comfortable with the political implications of their China connections. Others are cooler on relations with Beijing: they balance a wariness of Chinese influence with the obvious benefits of a healthy trading relationship. And finally, there are those that feel threatened by China and regard themselves as targets (or at least potential targets) of Chinese assertiveness.

Unity on the question of how to handle China has therefore eluded ASEAN. And given the association’s nature, this is unsurprising: neutrality and non-intervention, not unity and collectivism, are ASEAN’s most cherished principles.

Failure in Chicago: No U.S.-Pakistan Deal on NATO Supply Lines

By Reza Jan May 22, 2012

President Obama speaks with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari during the NATO summit in Chicago, May 21, 2012 (White House)

As the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) summit in Chicago concluded, the much hoped-for deal between the United States and Pakistan to reopen NATO supply routes through Pakistan did not materialize. In fact, hardened stances on display in Chicago on both sides chipped away at optimism that a deal may be in the offing anytime soon.

The elusive deal to open the Pakistani Ground Lines of Communication (GLOCs) appears in the end to have stumbled on a pricing issue, but it was likely a misreading by both parties of the other’s negotiating red lines and competing external and internal pressures that led to the showdown becoming the spectacle that took center stage in Chicago. Both sides will likely now re-gauge and approach the negotiating table afresh. Securing an agreement on the GLOCs is important enough to both Pakistan and the U.S. that the setback is unlikely to kill negotiating efforts altogether.  It is possible that negotiations can now be conducted in a more level-headed manner free of the artificial deadline and inflated international expectations that the Chicago summit imposed on them. The advantages to both sides of reopening the GLOCs are so great that a deal is likely at some point.  The experience of the closure and the negotiations, however, has laid bare the changed relationship between the U.S. and Pakistan. The idea that the two states are real partners in a common struggle has been replaced by a naked process of horse-trading. The shift to an openly transactional relationship between Islamabad and Washington may be the most important outcome of this process.

The Last Minute Deal That Wasn’t

While a GLOCs deal between the U.S. and Pakistan started to flounder before the summit even began, in the days leading up to Chicago both sides broadcast optimism that a deal would be reached by, and even announced during, the NATO conference.

On May 15, following months of prevarication, haggling, and domestic politicking, Pakistan’s government announced that it had approved, in principle, the reopening of the NATO supply route.[1] Pakistan had shut the route nearly six months ago following a border clash on November 26, 2011 in which 24 Pakistani soldiers were killed by NATO aircraft after Pakistani and NATO soldiers ended up trading fire. The very same day as that announcement was made, Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari received an invitation to attend the NATO summit in Chicago—an invitation that NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen had earlier hinted might have been withheld altogether if Pakistan did not agree to open the NATO GLOCs.[2] According to U.S. officials, the invitation was extended because the U.S. and Pakistanis had more or less reached a deal on the GLOCs.[3] The Pakistanis, however, stated that receiving the invitation to the NATO summit was the key step in reaching an agreement.[4]

The Caspian’s Naval Arms Race

Satellite image of the Caspian Sea

A rise in the naval buildup of powers on the Caspian Sea highlights the deepening of unresolved regional tensions.

By John CK Daly for ISN Security Watch

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Why has Russia built a new stealth equipped artillery ship, the Mahachkala, as Kazakhstan prepares to launch the Kazakhstan missile boat, its first domestically built warship, from its Zenit shipyard in Uralsk?

Because both nations are concerned about the security of their burgeoning Caspian energy assets, with Iran, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan also developing Caspian flotillas. While the global media focuses on rising US-Chinese naval tensions in the western Pacific, in isolated Central Asia a maritime arms race has been triggered by the resources of the Caspian, a cultural and political fault line where Christian Europe intersects the Muslim world. The sea, previously peacefully divided between the USSR and Iran, now has new players.

The 143,244 square-mile Caspian is the world’s largest enclosed body of water and is an endorheic sea: rivers only flow into it, with no egress to the open ocean.

What assets are the five nations scrambling to protect? Reserves, offshore production fields, undersea pipelines and tankers. In 2009 the US Energy Information Administration estimated that the Caspian could contain up to 250 billion barrels of recoverable oil along with an additional 200 billion barrels of potential reserves and 9.2 trillion cubic meters of recoverable natural gas.

Before 1991 the Soviet Union and Iran divided the inland sea amongst themselves. Under the 1921 Soviet-Iranian Treaty of Friendship, each had an “exclusive fishing rights in its coastal waters up to a limit of 10 nautical miles,” while the 1940 Soviet-Iranian treaty which supplemented the agreement further declared that the “parties hold the Caspian to belong to Iran and to the Soviet Union.” Needless to say, both treaties became invalid with the breakup of the USSR.

Ripples of discontent

Since the December 1991 implosion of the USSR, three new nations arose in the Caspian region and contested the bilateral arrangements: Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan. ever since, the five nations have wrangled about how equitably to divide the Caspian’s waters and seabed, but little has been achieved. Adding to the confusion, the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) did not definitively declare whether the international law of the sea or the law of inland lakes applied to the Caspian, labeling it instead as “a special inner sea.”

Kosovo & Pristina doesn’t really want negotiations on the north

Map of Kosovo UNMIK Mission (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Posted on May 22nd, 2012

The May 17 arrest of a young Serb employee of UNMIK’s north Mitrovica office suggests that the Kosovo Albanians have no intention of accepting a negotiated outcome for the region north of the Ibar River.

By Gerard M. Gallucci

The May 17 arrest of a young Serb employee of UNMIK’s north Mitrovica office removes any good reason for resisting the judgement that the Kosovo Albanians have no intention of accepting a negotiated outcome for the region north of the Ibar River. They do not want negotiations on the north, they just want the north. So, to head off any possibility of having to accept compromise, they will provoke the Serbs there into refusing to deal with them.

The young man arrested frequently travelled to visit family in the mixed north Mitrovica village of Suvi Do. To get there, he’d have to pass through an Albanian area. At that point, he would also have to pass by a unit of the so-called “regional” Kosovo police that EULEX allows free reign in this sensitive area. His routines were known. He could have been stopped at any time, as any of the Serbs living there can be. The decision to arrest him at this point on “suspicion” that he was involved in a demonstration in April to prevent the Kosovo Albanian police from setting up another provocative checkpoint – where there had just been a deadly explosion – was clearly political. (EULEX has still not managed to release any information on who might have been responsible for the explosion.) Many, many Serbs turned out for this. The targeting of a local UNMIK employee also allowed Pristina to take another shot at the UN office in north Mitrovica.

A cynic might say that the arrest was Pristina’s way of “recruiting” Serbs to take part in its “dialogue” over the north that it plans to unilaterally launch in September. The truth, however, is more basic than that. The Kosovo Albanians do not want to negotiate over the north, they want to have their “rule of law” imposed there so that they can use it to enforce more “returns” and eventually push the Serbs out entirely. They expected the internationals to do this for them; first UNMIK, then the ICO and EULEX. Having failed in that, they have mounted steady provocations since July 2011. Now they see the internationals pushing them to talk with the northern Serbs. So they provoke the Serbs, either to set off violence that they can use to justify new repression or to simply strengthen the hands of those Serbs opposed to talks.

Asia-3 Key to Syria Crisis

By Javad Heydarian  May 10, 2012

There are many reasons why Syria isn’t another Libya and so requires an alternative model of resolution, perhaps, similar to Yemen and Egypt where a political arrangement paved the way for leadership transition. This is precisely where the role of Syria’s main Asian allies is crucial to any kind of lasting progress.

Clearly, Syria is in the midst of a protracted humanitarian crisis. With thousands killed and ongoing deadly clashes between security forces and armed opposition – including a bombing attack Thursday in Damascus that killed dozens and shaved the facade off a military intelligence building – the international community  is still struggling to effectively implement a roadmap to peace.

Ongoing shelling of opposition strongholds, especially in Homs and Idlib, has further intensified calls for some kind of international intervention, sentiments given voice at the Friends of Syria Summit at the end of March in Istanbul. Yet it’s also clear that there’s little appetite, especially among many NATO countries, for intervention, whether in the form of establishing humanitarian buffer zones or the imposition of a no-fly-zone.

On top of the mission creep associated with the Libyan intervention, Syria’s superior defensive capabilities, relatively astute and intact leadership, densely populated landscape, and lack of hydrocarbon resources has so far deterred any direct intervention. Yet what makes Syria so special is the degree to which it enjoys tremendous operational, diplomatic, and strategic support from three Asian powers: namely, Iran, China, and Russia.

This means that there only two realistic options: first, the Gulf Cooperation Council’s (GCC) plan to step up its logistical and financial support for the Free Syrian Army (FSA) in order to reverse the regime’s military edge; or an international mission followed by independent monitoring and an eventual political settlement between the government and all relevant factions in the opposition, especially the Syrian National Council (SNC).

West African bloc prepares to send troops into Mali and Guinea-Bissau

Two separate military coups in Mali and Guinea-Bissau threaten the stability of the region. But will an intervention by ECOWAS actually resolve these conflicts or just complicate them?

Military loyal to junta chief Capt. Amadou Sanogo return from the parachutists military camp, after taking control in fighting against anti-junta forces, in Bamako, Mali, Tuesday.
(Harouna Traore/AP)

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By Scott Baldauf, Staff Writer
posted May 4, 2012 at 2:39 pm EDT

As military junta leaders in Mali struggle to retain control, West Africa’s group for trade, the Economic Community for West African States, is preparing to send in troops to protect citizens and oversee a transition of power back to civilian rule.

At a leadership summit held in Dakar, Senegal on Thursday, ECOWAS announced it was also preparing to send troops to the West African country of Guinea-Bissau, where another military coup toppled the civilian government of President Raimundo Pereira and his prime minister, Carlos Domingos Gomes, Jr.

While the coup in Mali has drawn the most attention – with Tuareg separatist rebels taking advantage of the disarray to effectively take control of northern Mali – the two separate coups together threaten the security of the entire region, says Ivory Coast President Alassane Ouattara, the current chair of ECOWAS.

“We would like for all the new Malian leaders to work together for a reunified Mali,’’ said Mr. Ouattara, who himself came to power through foreign intervention. Ouattara won Ivory Coast’s Nov. 2010 elections, but the incumbent President Laurent Gbagbo refused to step down, and launched a four-month civil war that killed thousands. French peacekeepers stationed in Ivory Coast provided air support while troops loyal to Ouattara swept through the country and arrested Gbagbo in his palace.

Ouattara said that ECOWAS would soon begin negotiations with northern Mali’s rebels.

If ECOWAS does end up intervening, it will be a test of the West African organizations’ political will to solve regional problems before they spread across borders. Like the larger continent-wide body, the African Union, ECOWAS has evolved from a mainly trade talk-shop into a venue for conflict-resolution, and its member nations, led primarily by Nigeria, have increasingly shown a willingness to use military force if necessary.

Assessing the Growing PLA Air Force Foreign Relations Program

Publication: China Brief Volume: 12 Issue: 9

April 26, 2012 05:03 PM Age: 3 days

By: Kenneth Allen, Emma Kelly

PLAAF Commander Xu Qiliang with Foreign Military Students in China

The People’s Liberation Army Air Force’s (PLAAF) foreign relations program is an increasingly important component of the PLA’s overall foreign relations program. As part of China’s overall program, it gradually has expanded from merely exchanging delegations to conducting combined exercises with individual countries and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). In 2001, the PLAAF CommandCollege created a program for foreign officers that, since 2009, includes PLAAF officers. In addition, the PLAAF has begun to perform military operations other than war (MOOTW) abroad to support national goals. This article addresses how the PLA interacts with the international community and then discusses the ways in which the PLAAF implements its foreign relations program with a focus at the end on PLAAF relations with the U.S. Air Force (USAF).

How the PLA Interacts with the International Community

The PLA interacts with the international community and foreign militaries through a number of channels. Actual PLA military diplomacy includes, but is not limited to, the following activities:

· Strategic security dialogues;

· The exchange of military attaché offices and the establishment of embassy/consulate websites;

· The establishment of a Ministry of National Defense Information Office and spokesman system;

· High-level military exchanges;

· Functional and educational military exchanges;

· PLA Navy port calls;

· Combined exercises with foreign militaries;

· The opening of military exercises and operational units to foreign observers;

· Peace-keeping, anti-piracy and MOOTW;

· Humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HA/DR) [1].