News Report: Russia-China Relations Based on Mutual Interests, Not Ideology - Ambassador

Russian Ambassador in China Andrey Denisov talks about the relations between Russia and China.

BEIJING (Sputnik) — The relations between Russia and China are based on mutual interests, not on an ideology, and are on the highest level in history, Russian Ambassador in China Andrey Denisov said.

"Our current alliance is not based on an ideology. It means that it is completely based on the mutual interests," Denisov told Russian reporters ahead of Diplomatic Worker's Day celebrated in Russia on Friday.

Denisov noted that the two countries shared a common vision on a number of international issues, adding that "the level of relations that is achieved between China and Russia is characterized as the highest in the history."

The ambassador added that nowadays there is nothing that can dramatically influence the bilateral relations.

Russia increased cooperation with China after the West imposed sanctions against Russia for its alleged meddling in the Ukrainian conflict and "annexation" of Crimea. The Russian-Chinese relations are developing in various spheres, including aviation, space, atomic energy, transport, insurance, education.

This story first appeared on Sputnik & is reposted here with permission.

News Story: Fear China Most, ‘Flip’ Russia, Beware Iran - CSBA

By SYDNEY J. FREEDBERG JR.

WASHINGTON: Wealth, population and thin-skinned nationalism make China the number one threat to the US-led world order, not Russia or Islamic terrorism, writes leading military strategist Andrew Krepinevich. That means the US must build up forward-deployed forces in the Western Pacific, he writes, if necessary at the expense of defending Europe. Russia’s oil-dependent economy and withering demographics relegate it to the second-place threat in the near term, he argues, and in the long term — say, by the 2030s — Russia may become less dangerous than Iran, which Krepinevich’s forthcoming study from the Center for Strategic & Budgetary Assessments ranks currently at No. 3.

That analysis puts Krepinevich starkly at odds with defense officials like Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Joseph Dunford, Army Chief of Staff Mark Milley, and Defense Secretary-designate James Mattis, who all put Russia first. (Mattis is also a hardliner on Iran). By contrast, Krepinevich argues that, if Russia really understood its own strategic interests, it would make common cause with the US against Islamic extremists — who have fought Moscow in the Caucasus for decades — and a rising China — whose emigres and industries are starting to take over mineral-rich but underpopulated Siberia. Don’t ask Krepinevich to endorse Donald Trump‘s outreach to the “very smart” Vladimir Putin, however. “We might be able to flip Russia to our side, because we’re not the problem they have,” Krepinevich told reporters, but not until the reflexively anti-American ex-KGB agent is out of power.

Unfortunately, Krepinevich emphasized, we can’t postpone a West Pacific buildup until Europe is safe. That may mean we can only afford a “tripwire” defense in the Baltic States, he said, just enough to “ensure some Americans get killed and we go to war if some ally or partner is attacked.”

President Obama had the right idea with the much-derived “pivot” or “rebalance” to the Pacific, Krepinevich said. He just failed to follow through, in part because new eruptions in the Mideast and Europe drew off US attention. “The pivot hasn’t kept up with reality, the actions haven’t matched the words,” Krepinevich said. “The balance of power in the Far East has shifted further and further in China’s favor.”

Read the full story at Breaking Defense

News Story: "A to Z" of China's diplomacy under Xi's leadership

BEIJING, June 28 (Xinhua) -- A "major-country diplomacy with Chinese characteristics" has taken shape since Xi Jinping became the top leader in late 2012.

Following are 26 key words or phrases that relate to this new style of diplomacy.

AIIB

The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), a new development bank proposed by China, started operation on Jan. 16, 2016.

The new global multilateral financial institution, to support infrastructure projects in Asia, was formally established in Beijing on Dec. 25, 2015. Headquartered in Beijing, it now has 57 founding members.

AIIB also means a great deal to the global economic governance system. It is a product of the evolving economic landscape, and will help make the global economic governance system more just, equitable and effective.

Belt and Road Initiative

The Belt and Road initiative, which comprises the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, was first promulgated by Xi in 2013, who envisioned a trade and infrastructure network that connects Asia with Europe and Africa along the ancient Silk Road routes. Over 70 countries and organizations have voiced support for and willingness to join the initiative.

Read the full story at Xinhua

Editorial: Young South Koreans' Realpolitik Attitude Towards the North

By Steven Denney

Young South Koreans are more likely to be hawkish toward North Korea — particularly in the face of provocations.

For many young South Koreans, North Korea’s latest nuclear test is “barely a blip.” Of course, there are those who take notice, like males currently serving their mandatory two years in the military and those yet to serve. But it is true that far greater immediate impact is perceived outside of the peninsula than within. The latest provocative step taken by North Korea is nothing new, and it isn’t exactly a pressing issue. But lurking beneath the ambivalence and hidden in the shoulder shrugs is an increasingly hawkish attitude toward a country whose members were once considered by many, if not most, to be part of the same nation.

Those coming of age today (the 20s age cohort: university students and college-age people) are doing so under political conditions very different from their barely older compatriots (those in their 30s and 40s). There are many ways to describe these conditions, but the simplest explanation might read as such: political conditions today have been shaped by post-Sunshine Policy politics and the armed provocations of 2010. The result, for young South Koreans, is a relatively more hawkish political attitude towards North Korea.

Read the full story at The Diplomat

Editorial: The New Politics of War and Peace in Afghanistan

Image: Flickr User - ResoluteSupportMedia

By Tamim Asey

It is time to end “Great Game” politics in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan and the region are witnessing a fundamental shift in the variables and dynamics of war and peace. The stakes are higher this time and any miscalculations will have far more dire consequences for the region than ever before.

There are new players, new variables, and higher stakes in the war and peace calculus of Afghanistan. The rise of Daesh (or ISIS), the power struggle within the Taliban, increased criminalization, and the regionalization of war have changed the rules of war within the country and beyond.

Until recently – the war in Afghanistan had three main components: a sponsor, a safe haven, and a proxy group with a specific political agenda of overthrowing the Afghan government and establishing an Islamic regime based on Sharia. This is no longer the case. Today, the Taliban movement is divided and entangled in a leadership power struggle, Daesh is increasing its footprint in Taliban strongholds and recruiting from among Taliban dissidents, and criminal networks are shifting their loyalty to Daesh as a reliable partner to ensure the smooth operation of their criminal enterprises along the borders of Pakistan and Iran.

Left unchecked, these new fast-paced geopolitical and security realities have the potential to alter the rules of the game and the geopolitical security architecture of the region. But they also present opportunities and challenges for the region to work closely together to tackle a brutal and clever criminal enterprise and terrorist network.

What Afghanistan, Pakistan and the entire region requires is hard headed realpolitik to clearly define their common friends and foes. This must be followed by the construction of a common framework of action on their interests and differences. The first step must be a commitment to stop the use of terrorism as an instrument of foreign policy. A regional anti-terror alliance could then follow. The policy of containment, dual games, and “Great Game” politics is over – this time the entire region is exposed to the danger.

Read the full story at The Diplomat

Editorial: Putin’s Perennial Pivot Problem

By Richard Weitz

Why Russia’s Asia-Pacific diplomatic outreach struggles to gain traction.

The Diplomat has helpfully published several articles on the neglected topic of how Moscow has sought to use its Far Eastern Federal District, a traditional backwater, as a foundation for building more comprehensive relations between the Russian Federation and the Asia-Pacific region. These pieces (which can be read here, here and here) are well-written, well-researched, and convincingly argue that, along with many other non-Asian countries, Russia has been pursuing a Pacific pivot. However, like many other articles and statements by Russian leaders themselves, they catalog the large number of Russian initiatives and inputs into Asian processes but obscure the small number of positive results and enduring outputs that they have so far achieved. On balance, Moscow is still very far from realizing Russia’s desired place in Asia.

The Russian government has sought to increase Russia’s integration with Asia for both offensive and defensive reasons. These goals include achieving mutually advantageous economic ties in general, developing eastern Siberia in particular, attracting considerably more investment and high technology into Russia, bolstering Moscow’s diplomatic influence on critical Asian issues, raising Russia’s profile in Asian regional organizations, and promoting multipolarity by constraining U.S. influence in Asia without excessively enhancing that of China. Moscow’s main tools to realize this strategy has been to reaffirm Russia’s often overlooked Asian identity, leveraging Russian arms exports and energy riches, adopting a low-key neutral position on Asian territorial disputes except for its own with Japan, and pursuing flexible diplomatic and economic ties with a realpolitik indifference towards countries’ domestic political practices.

Russia has tried not only to tighten ties with China but also to sustain relations with longstanding partners like India, Vietnam, and North Korea, while cultivating new partnerships with Japan, South Korea, and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to bolster Moscow’s leverage and options. In recent years, Russia has hosted the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit and joined the East Asian Summit. Like their peers elsewhere, Russian analysts see demographic, economic, and other trends making the Asia-Pacific the most important economic region in the coming decades. A rising share of Russia’s arms and energy exports are already going to Asian customers.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has led this campaign. In his presidential state-of-the-nation address in early December, Putin confirmed that Sochi would host a Russian-ASEAN summit in 2016. He also proposed studying whether to pursue a massive economic integration project that would encompass the members of ASEAN, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, and the Moscow-led Eurasian Economic Union (EEU).

Read the full story at The Diplomat

Editorial: India and Russia - A Course Correction

INS Vikramaditya (formerly the Russian Admiral Gorshkov)

By Kabir Taneja

An upcoming visit by Indian PM Narendra Modi may lend some needed momentum to ties.

Over the past six months, Russia has made its presence felt in the global realpolitik scene with gusto. With the Kremlin militarily intervening in Syria, reportedly bombing ISIS and in effect protecting Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Damascus, while juggling a yet unresolved Ukraine crisis and dealing with Western sanctions… Moscow has its hands full.

Most aspects of India-Russia bilateral ties are quite institutionalized, and work in an automated manner irrespective of who is in power in New Delhi or Moscow. Russia could perhaps be seen as India’s only definitive “strategic” partner in its truest form, and this unique relationship has developed over decades.

However, over the past year the Moscow-Delhi dynamic seems to have lost some of its previous momentum. This may now be about to change, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi preparing to make his first visit to Moscow early next month.

Read the full story at The Diplomat

Editorial: US China Policy Under a Republican President

By Greg Austin

Can we expect a better China policy from the U.S. if a Republican takes office in the White House in January 2017?

There is a popular view that Republican presidents have always done much better in managing the realpolitik of China policy than their Democratic Party peers. As noted in aForeign Policy article in 2013 by Daniel Drezner, exit polls in presidential voting between 1976 and 2012 have shown consistently higher trust by voters in Republican candidates for president for the conduct of foreign policy than in Democratic candidates.

Can we expect a better-performing China policy from the United States (whatever that might mean) if a Republican takes office in the White House in January 2017, almost mid-way through the 10-year, unelected term of China’s Xi Jinping?

Whatever one’s political inclinations, it may be useful — one year out from the election — to contemplate the long term trend of presidential China policy and how partisan politics may re-shape that if a Republican wins 2016.

One issue about the long term trend worthy of some contemplation now is the relationship between elite opinion (business and security specialists) in the Republican Party and party factions tied to special ideological interests or biased understandings of China. My assessment would be that until now, in Republican administrations going back to Nixon, the elites and their pragmatism, supported by a rather clear-eyed intelligence community, have always dominated in China policy. The grassroots have had little influence on this area of policy. This has been deeply reassuring to those of us who live in the Pacific.

At the same time, I would also caution that perhaps under George W. Bush, the dominance of the pragmatists was much less secure. His administration did a workmanlike job in managing some very sticky China crises (such as the P3C crew detention by China in 2001) as well as shifting power relativities (China rising). Most impressive was Bush’s management of the Taiwan situation under its pro-independence President Chen Shui-bian.

So how was this possible when the strategic policy of the Bush presidency was marked by the strong influence of neo-conservatives, whose main reason for living seemed to have been the belief that China was little better than the devil incarnate? They seemed to hope for a reversal of U.S. China policy under Bill Clinton so that Washington would more explicitly recognize the Communist government in Beijing as fundamentally antagonistic to U.S. interests, and not as a “partner” of some kind.

Read the full story at The Diplomat

Editorial: Russia’s Pacific Paradise

Image: Flickr User - Bryce Edwards

By Casey Michel

In 1815, a German, on behalf of the Russian-American Company, tried to conquer Hawaii in the name of the Tsar.

In mid-October 1815, two hundred years ago this month, a German doctor set sail from one of Russia’s fledgling American outposts. Georg Anton Schäffer, an employee of the Russian-American Company (RAC) boarded the Isabella with the ostensible purpose of earning the favor of the Hawaii’s King Kamehameha. But when he landed on Hawaii, Schäffer set the wheels in motion for a chapter of failed Pacific conquest since smothered in archives, forgotten by all but a handful of scholars.

The tale of Russia’s abortive attempt to claim the Hawaiian archipelago – then called the Sandwich Islands, sighted by Europeans for the first time only 37 years prior – includes as much autocratic realpolitik as it does imperial fumbling. It may not even be correct to call the affair a wholesale “Russian” attempt to conquer the islands; there’s no evidence that either the emperor or the foreign minister ever supported a formal annexation of the archipelago and eventually they “categorically rejected” the opportunity, as historian N. Bolkhovitinov wrote.

Rather, it was the RAC, Russia’s foremost vehicle for North American expansion, which set its gaze on the Pacific islands. The islands’ sandalwood and tobacco was too good to pass up. The strategic placement in the Pacific would link Russia into prime shipping lanes, and the opportunities for grain and other harvests could help prop the empire’s impoverished Pacific Rim outposts in Okhotsk, Kamchatka, and Sitka. It seemed a lucrative target for expansion.

Read the full story at The Diplomat

Editorial: The Significance of Xi Jinping’s US Visit

By Qi Hao

“Addressing the distrust and fear should be a key mission for both leaders.”

China’s President Xi Jinping is in the U.S. on his first state visit, which within China is being widely seen as a historical event comparable to that undertaken by then vice premier Deng Xiaoping in 1979. Xi’s visit is being given an unusually high profile, which seems to signify a new chapter in the bilateral relationship. It is worth exploring the possible justification for this.

It is widely acknowledged that Deng’s visit to the U.S. in 1979 showed that China was ready to be embedded into the institutional network initiated and dominated by the U.S. In other words, China was following America’s lead with the aims of both achieving domestic economic prosperity and balancing against the external threat from the former Soviet Union, which turned China into a de facto ally of the U.S. In this way, Deng’s visit to the U.S. can be interpreted as a dramatic change in Chinese foreign policy, which ultimately brought a seismic shift in the global balance of power.

More than 35 years later, the factors shaping the U.S.-China dynamic have changed beyond all recognition, and both countries face considerable uncertainty over how to reorient their relationship. Although both Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Barack Obama have emphasized the significance of keeping bilateral ties on track, critical infrastructure to support that objective has eroded. Given their common security disagreements with Washington, Russia and China are being pushed together again and they seemingly share more security interests than do the U.S. and China. The role of trade and economic ties, meanwhile, long regarded as the ballast for U.S.-China relations, is becoming increasingly negative due to the widening discord over exchange rates and China’s ambition in expanding its influence within regional economic and financial systems, a move perceived by the U.S. as a challenge to its dominance.

Read the full story at The Diplomat

Editorial: India and the Syrian Civil War

Image: Flickr User - Freedom House

By Kabir Taneja

How a potential permanent UNSC member approached the crisis in Syria.

After four years of neglect, Syria is once again getting mainstream attention in India. Pictures of Aylan Kurdi, the refugee crisis in Europe, and the rise of ISIS have given Syria considerable prominence in Indian public discourse in recent weeks,

India’s stance on the Syrian crisis has been subtle yet expected. New Delhi under the previous government of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) maintained its opposition to external military intervention in Syria, and asked for all parties involved to engage in dialogue for a political solution.

“There can be no military solution to this conflict,” said an Indian Ministry of External Affairs statement in 2013.

India and Syria have historically maintained cordial relations, formed during India’s post-independence outreach to the Arab world and beyond as part of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) that then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru championed along with then Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser.

Read the full story at The Diplomat

Editorial: Cambodia’s Montagnard Problem

The Montagnards are based in Vietnam's Central
Highland provinces (Image: RFA)

By Brent Crane

The country has long struggled to deal humanely with the refugees from Vietnam’s Central Highlands.

In May, while much of the international media focused on Cambodia’s preparation for the arrival of refugees coming to Cambodia from Nauru as part of a controversial $35 million aid deal with Australia, Phnom Penh took efforts to block the arrival of a less welcome group of asylum seekers.

“[A]lmost 1,000 [Cambodian] troops were deployed along the Vietnamese border…Soldiers…said yesterday that the main objective was clear: to catch Montagnards,” reported the Phnom Penh Post in early May.

Fleeing Montagnards, a Christian minority tribal group from the Central Highlands of Vietnam whose persecution there is well-documented, have long been an enduring thorn in Cambodia’s side. Phnom Penh, a signatory of the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and its 1967 Protocol that mandates Cambodia allow asylum seekers to pursue protection claims, often deports them as illegal economic migrants.

“Nowhere is the discrimination of treatment accorded to refugees more stark than in the comparison of the treatment of the Montagnards versus the red carpet treatment for the refugees from Nauru,” said Phil Robertson, deputy director of Human Rights Watch’s Asia division, to The Diplomat.

But the Montagnards are not the only ethnic asylum seekers Cambodia has sent packing. In 2009, twenty Uyghurs, a persecuted Muslim minority from northwest China, who had fled to Cambodia were forcibly sent back to the People’s Republic. All of the adults were jailed, including four who received life sentences. Three days later Beijing announced $900 million in aid to Cambodia. While the deportation of the Uyghurs was widely and swiftly condemned by the West, the Montagnard expulsions, in comparison, have produced barely a peep.

Read the full story at The Diplomat

Editorial: Japan and Chinese Decision-Making

By Charles Douglas Appleton

Understanding China’s decision-making process could help Japan create a better strategy.

“Our best chance of avoiding antagonism with China is to open up the black box of Chinese domestic politics, look inside, and figure out what makes China act as it does on the world stage.” - Susan L. Shirk (China: Fragile Superpower)

Perhaps the biggest takeaway from the latest “2015 Defense of Japan” White Paper is the manner in which it explicitly identifies China as Japan’s biggest security threat (with about one third of a section dedicated to China alone), particularly over issues of maritime security. While the Chinese Foreign Ministry and media were understandably defensive, the Japanese perspective raises some salient points (even if the focus on Chinese oil platforms in the East China Sea was perhaps misguided). Not only has modern China undergone a rapid and historically unprecedented ascent to near-superpower status, but its lack of governmental transparency and soft power deficit have failed to reassure its Asian neighbors. Combine this with growing Chinese assertiveness in the South China Sea, and its ongoing military buildup (particularly naval), and it is not difficult to build a narrative in which Pacific Asia should be wary of a potential regional rival (one supported by the growth in overall Asian defense expenditure [PDF] compared to the rest of the world).

To be fair, this account fails to acknowledge China’s record of peacefully resolving territorial disputes. More worryingly, it also risks triggering the “politics of emotion” and a potential crisis. In the case of China, this becomes especially worrying given the dependence of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) on domestic Chinese nationalism as a source of political legitimacy. Only by unpacking this can one hope to better understand the thinking behind Chinese foreign policy.

Read the full story at The Diplomat

Editorial: Time to Review US Policy on Taiwan?

By Dennis V. Hickey

The world has changed. It is time for a thoughtful debate on U.S. defense ties with Taiwan.

There is big trouble brewing in “Little China” – the Republic of China (Taiwan). The time has arrived for the U.S. Department of State to spearhead a detailed interagency policy review of America’s relationship with Taiwan with a special focus on its security commitments to the island. Numerous considerations point to the need for such a study.

Every American is familiar with the rise of China. The U.S. needs China’s cooperation to cope with a wide range of pressing global problems, including worldwide economic challenges, terrorism, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, environmental degradation, health issues, dwindling energy supplies, and the sporadic crises on the Korean Peninsula to name just a few. Moreover, China is now the world’s second largest economy, one of the world’s fastest growing economies, third largest military power, and the single largest foreign holder of U.S. government debt. The changes occurring within China are astounding. But some things remain constant – including Beijing’s steadfast opposition to Washington’s military support for Taipei. U.S. decision-makers are painfully aware that, while American support for Taiwan is not the only issue that divides Washington and Beijing, it is the most contentious and longstanding problem. So lobbyists are correct when they claim that “Taiwan matters.”

Relations between Taipei and Beijing have improved enormously since 2008. However, the military buildup opposite Taiwan continues. In 2015, China’s “official” defense budget climbed 10.1 percent to approximately $141.5 billion. This marked the 24th consecutive annual increase in defense outlays. A major focus of the military modernization program appears to be improving China’s ability to conduct military operations against Taiwan and to deter, delay, and deny U.S. intervention in a cross-strait conflict. In other words, the cost of U.S. intervention in a Taiwan crisis is mounting.

Read the full story at The Diplomat

Editorial: The Myth of a US-China Grand Bargain

By Van Jackson

Accommodating China won’t produce peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific.

A number of scholars have tried to advance the well-intentioned proposal that U.S. concessions to China’s many concerns will somehow facilitate a peaceful order in Asia. While I agree with the sentiment and recognize that there are areas of international life where Sino-U.S. cooperation is essential, the idea that U.S. accommodation of China will produce a peaceful and stable order in Asia isn’t just unrealistic; it’s irresponsible.

Though it wasn’t the first, Hugh White’s China Choice was an early and pointed call for the United States to form a “G-2” with China in which the two countries would work together to set the terms of the regional order, requiring that the United States accommodate the demands of a rising China. Jim Steinberg’s and Michael O’Hanlon’s Strategic Reassurance and Resolve reiterates many of White’s points, but with better theoretical grounding. Lyle Goldstein’s Meeting China Halfway argues far more persuasively than many in this lineage, and some of his specific recommendations merit serious consideration—not least because they would incur no great cost to try. But there are equally serious reasons to doubt the transformative ambitions attached to U.S. concessions.

The latest salvo in this “America must accommodate China” literature hails from an accomplished political scientist at George Washington University, Charles Glaser, writing in the most recent issue of International Security. Glaser makes the sweeping and somewhat unhelpful claim that military competition is risky and therefore undesirable. As an alternative he suggests that if only the United States would abandon commitments to Taiwan, China would be willing to resolve its territorial disputes in the East and South China Sea, thereby sidestepping military competition.

Read the full story at The Diplomat

Editorial: Myanmar and the Future of Asia's New Great Game

By Jeremie P. Credo

Myanmar’s opening has made its growing strategic value to major powers even more evident.

After 49 years of limited interaction with the international community, Myanmar is fast becoming a valuable strategic and economic partner for various regional stakeholders as it gradually relaxes its strong military rule. While the United States previously chose to isolate and punish the military-led regime through political and economic sanctions, China has been the most engaged with Myanmar’s military junta. Meanwhile, India and the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) opted to use constructive engagement with the country.

Now that Myanmar is opening its doors, its growing significance is becoming more and more evident. With its untapped natural resources, large potential of its nascent markets and strategic geographic location connecting South and Southeast Asia (and mainland China), external powers are expected to increasingly engage with Myanmar. They are transforming their once restricted interactions with Myanmar towards more collaborative endeavors. Myanmar can be a commercial highway from South Asia to Southeast Asia and mainland China to Southeast Asia. It is also a country where other states have an interest to curtail Chinese influence and hence may be the next field for geopolitical competition among major powers.

Read the full story at The Diplomat

News Story: US wedge between China and Russia a critical issue - US expert

Russia's isolation by Western countries since the Ukraine crisis in 2013 has forced the country to form closer ties with China, a trend that should be a red flag for the United States, according to the US-based Chinese-language news outlet Duowei News.

China will be a great power in 21th century, and the United States should not try to stop this from happening, according to Buchanan during the McLaughlin Group's discussion on Russia and International Stability. In the meantime, however, the US should develop friendly relations with Russia.

The US forced Russian president Vladimir Putin's hand after imposing military sanctions and putting military pressure on Russia. Although US-Russia relations are not lost, now Putin is putting a great deal of effort into cozying up to its East Asian neighbor, said the report.

Diplomatic relations between Russia and China and Russia and the US are more critical than the 2013 Ukraine crisis, said Buchanan. If anything, the US should be trying to drive a wedge between Xi Jinping and Putin by warming up to Russia.

Read the full story at Want China Times

Think Tank: ANZUS in the Asian Century

Hugh White

The ANZUS study released this week by SDSC in conjunction with CSIS (PDF) says a lot of interesting things about the US alliance, but it seems to evade the hard issue at the heart of the strategic choices confronting both Australia and America today: what order do we wish to see in Asia in the Asian Century, and what role should America aim to play in it?

The SDSC–CSIS paper certainly raises this question, in commendably clear and direct terms:

Ultimately, US and Australian grand strategy must return to first principles: what is the regional and global order we seek; what are the ways and means we have to achieve and sustain that order; and how then does our strategic approach to China fit in?

Editorial: Thailand Deports 100 Uyghurs to China

A Pro-Uyghur protest (File Photo)

By Catherine Putz

Meanwhile, Thailand buys three Chinese submarines and protesters gather outside the Thai embassy in Turkey.

On Thursday, Thailand confirmed that it had deported more than 100 Uyghurs to China. While such deportations are fairly routine, the sheer number drew international attention from human rights groups and the Turkic-speaking community, particularly in Turkey. In Istanbul, Thailand was forced to close its consulate after protesters stormed in, the BBC reports that the embassy in Ankara was also closed as of Friday. Protesters clashed with police outside the Chinese embassy as well.

In March 2014, Thailand detained over 200 Uyghurs who had reportedly been living in a jungle camp in Songkhla province. “Once Thai authorities caught them, they claimed Turkish citizenship, but China said that they are Chinese so there was something of a custody dispute,” Thomas Nelson, an independent researcher and author of Uyghur Update, told The Diplomat.

Last month the custody battle began to end. Roughly 170 of the Uyghurs were sent to Turkey after more than a year in detention. Turkey, Nelson commented, has been fairly hospitable toward the Uyghurs in the past–they share a religion, as well as ethnic and linguistic ties that stretch from Turkey across Central Asia into Xinjiang, in western China.

“Thailand has worked with China and Turkey to solve the Uyghur Muslim problem,” Colonel Weerachon Sukhondhapatipak, Thailand’s deputy government spokesman, told reporters on Thursday, “We have sent them back to China after verifying their nationality.”

Read the full story at The Diplomat

Editorial: The Koreas, Bastion of Cold War Realism

By Morgan Potts

A reluctant but pragmatic defense of neorealism in Northeast Asia.

Nuclear crises, propaganda and espionage, a clash of ideologies – the Korean peninsula is the only place in the world where the Cold War lingers. This persistence is the result of the 1953 Armistice Agreement and the apparent neorealist policies employed by North Korea. Despite the problems with neorealism and its appropriately dwindling popularity, it remains a useful lens through which to understand the conflict on the peninsula, and the defensive realist reactions on the part of China and South Korea.

Rather than asserting that realism or its offshoots are the ultimate International Relations grand theories, I suggest that neorealism remains a crucial aspect of IR security theory. The offensive realist behavior of the DPRK and the defensive realist policies of China and the South Korea serve to illustrate the unfortunate but continued significance of neorealism within international relations.

Neorealism, defined by Kenneth Waltz in 1959, holds that states are unitary rational agents acting in their perceived self-interest within a system wherein each state seeks to ensure its perpetuation and maintain a balance of power. Structure is the defining feature of the theory [PDF], with states the main actors competing within an anarchic system to maintain their power and stability. The modern East Asian regional complex has security dynamics very similar to those that prevailed in the Cold War during the second half of the 20th century. Because the Korean War concluded with an armistice agreement and not a peace treaty, the Cold War on the peninsula has effectively continued, producing a subsequent nuclear proliferation; the crisis has only escalated since the DPRK announced in May 2009 that it would no longer abide by the armistice. As during the Cold War, foreign relations in the region are based on allegedly rational cost-benefit analyses of war and executing the appropriate policies. The focus of North-East Asian states has been on classic security dilemma [PDF] proliferation and maintaining a balance of power to avoid war.

Just as during the 20th century Cold War between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., the objective of each actor is not to engage in war and suffer its costs and consequences; rather each state is more interested in preventing war and maintaining regional stability and their spheres of hegemony. This loosely follows the balance of power security model, which holds that: all states are power-seeking; states ultimately seek hegemony over their system; and that other states in the system will attempt to block those bids for hegemony. However, the regional system of East Asia is different from the Cold War bipolarity; instead, it has a multi-polar dynamic, in which China, South Korea, and the U.S. compete for regional hegemony. Actors optimally try to have good relations with the other players or minimally try to avoid hostile relations; and actors try to prevent threateningly close cooperation between the other actors. This logic is reflected in the defensive realist policies of China and South Korea, while North Korea has taken a more offensive power-seeking approach.

Read the full story at The Diplomat