In Asian Media this week: Pyongyang using Pacific as firing range. Plus: opposing views on Asian security; democracy-vs-autocracy a false division; China’s population to plummet; Thailand’s global standing at low point; man-made threat to sea life. North east Asia became even more perilous this week, with North Korea launching three ballistic missiles, including an ICBM Continue reading »
Asia
Richard Cullen’s article, ‘Why Japan is not an acceptable military ally’, published in Pearls and Irritations (5 Jan. 2023) is an unfortunate piece of historical muck-raking. The core of his argument is that Japan’s record as a brutal imperialist power in the years 1895 to 1945 disqualifies it now, and presumably until further notice, from Continue reading »
Indonesia is chair of ASEAN this year and using its position to try and end the two-year crisis in Myanmar that’s already cost more than 3,000 lives. President Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo has told Reuters he wants to send an envoy to Myanmar ‘in the hope of demonstrating to military rulers how Indonesia successfully transitioned to Continue reading »
In Asian media this week – Taiwan key to first island chain control. Plus: US fosters belief war is inevitable; why the West thinks it speaks for the world; independence anniversary but nothing to celebrate; balloon saga shows why US must act tough; nothing can live in Manila Bay. The first island chain of the Continue reading »
The year of the Rabbit has arrived, and Hong Kong is bouncing back with a vengeance. Recently, we’ve seen dramatic changes in the Covid situation both here and across the border. And it’s been a long wait, as Hong Kong has been having a tough time since mid-2019 when the infamous anti-extradition protests started and Continue reading »
We live in an integrated and connected world, not well understood by political leaders or military moguls. Nowhere is this more important than in East Asia. Destructive action towards important neighbours who are central to our trade with the world is of course contrary to our national strategic interests. We should not sit silent. For Continue reading »
Australia has been persuaded, enticed and strongarmed into taking gravely dangerous decisions. But Australia is a sovereign state and its fingerprints are, ultimately, all over the formation of its terrible abdication of national independence. We need to pay particular attention to a definitive insight advanced by Paul Keating: Taiwan is not a vital Australian interest. Continue reading »
"What is the common vision to guide the Global South out of this crisis?" asked the Progressive International. "What is the plan to win it?"
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The Timor-Leste March 2022 Presidential elections gave a resounding win in the second round to Nobel Laureate Jose Ramos Horta, and this provided leverage for Xanana Gusmão in his efforts to wrest back the executive power he apologetically relinquished in February 2015. But Gusmão and his National Congress for Timorese Reconstruction (CNRT) must still win Continue reading »
A little over 75 years ago, a Japan-designed Asia-Pacific community collapsed, leaving not only Japan itself but much of the region in chaos, millions dead, cities in ruins. The lesson the world – and the Japanese people – took from the catastrophe was incorporated in the constitution of Japan agreed one year later: under Article Continue reading »