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News Roundup: SE Asia Edition
And to keep with my habit of posting commentary on news about violence roundup of weird, potentially destructive news from the past [arbitrary number] of weeks. This time though, in keeping with the media's habit of ignoring serious topics in favor of celebrities, I'm ignoring serious wars all over the world to give the roundup from Southeast Asia.
China v. Everyone: The big story of the week has to do with the boiling inferno that is the South China Sea, that oil-rich trade route that runs from southern China through some of the most disputed territory in the world. The traditional key to this problem is China's unilateral declaration of sovereignty over the Paracel and Spratly islands, two huge collection of relatively small and worthless islands. The Paracel claim is disputed by Vietnam, who is geographically close to the islands, and also Taiwan (who disputes everything with China), but China's had control of them for some time. The Spratly islands are more southernly, and are disputed by China (and Taiwan), Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Brunei.
China's claim seems to be mostly historical in nature. The PRC claims that the Paracel and Spratly islands have been an integral part of China (discovered and explored by Chinese) for thousands of years. After all, they claim, back in the day, these were ours. Oh sure, there were Vietnamese there from time to time, but Vietnam is just a tributary state of China. And there were Filipinos and Malays too (or their ancestors), but you can't really call what they had a civilization, can you?
Surprisingly, these arguments have gone over like a lead balloon in Vietnam and the Philippines, leading to a lot of bad feeling. The islands themselves aren't what's valuable, what's valuable is the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) around them. By international law (from the UN Convention on the Laws of the Sea), each country gets a 200 nm EEZ around any land they control in which they have exclusive access to any economic benefits, although everyone else has the right of passage. Whoever owns those islands then gets a massive EEZ, which is especially important to countries like the Philippines, for whom some of those islands are inside their EEZ (and thus would be a pain in the ass if someone else owned them).
But China's been pushing around this U-shaped map, which shows what they're claiming as "territorial" (i.e., "Hands off, it's mine") waters:
Which is basically a giant "Fuck you" to everyone in the area. Not only does it take all of the disputed islands, but it also claims as "territorial" (normally only 12 nmi from shore) almost all of the sea. Vietnam's "accessible waters" shrink basically down to what they can see from land, as do the Philippines, and Malaysian ships can't even leave port without Chinese permission. EEZ be damned, China's going to take the whole South China Sea, and everyone else is getting only the waters shallow enough to walk in.
Needless to say, there's no legal basis for this. China is pulling what in international parlance is called "An America" and making a unilateral declaration that "All this is ours" in defiance of international law. I don't need to tell you how this makes everyone else in the region feel.
That being said, here's the news from the region:
Vietnam: China actually looks like they're enforcing the U-shaped map too, or trying to. Vietnam is upset that China executed a ramming attack on a survey vessel not near any of the disputed islands, but well within Vietnam's EEZ, and has called for military drills as a warning to China. As usual, Vietnam protested with references by invoking legal references to UNCLOS. China responded by citing none, and basically claiming all of Vietnamese waters for China. Vietnam, who gets along with China like Palestine gets along with Israel, is having none of it.
Of course, there isn't much of a recourse for Vietnam, but maybe it'll get them to get together with the Philippines (who also suffered one of these ramming attacks some weeks ago) and come up with some plan for dealing with their intrusive northern neighbor. Or maybe even more ironically it will force Vietnam to forge some international alliances, and put a US military base in Vietnam (there are too many layers of irony there, on both sides, for that not to cause an explosion).
Singapore: The small city-state of Singapore has long been pretty goddamn neutral in the whole Southeast Asian arena, too busy chasing down rogue litterers to worry about Thailand and Cambodia bashing it out, or genocides in Burma, or China, but it may have finally stepped off the fence. US Defense Secretary Robert Gates was in Singapore for the Shangri-La dialogue this week, and made the claim that the US will 'upgrade' its defense posture in Singapore from a port of call to the forward-deployed base for "one or two" Littoral Combat Ships, the US Navy's new $500 million undergunned, over-priced toy boat. What this is supposed to do besides give China something else to shoot at is unclear to me, but I'm always for influence operations.
What Singapore is doing is unclear to me, because the mechanisms of Singapore's foreign policy seem to be hidden behind PAP machinations from this distance, but the basing of significant US military forces in the region seems to put them a little bit farther off the fence. US interest is pretty clear, getting not only a base but perhaps a commitment of support from Singapore's pricey and over-powered military, but given that the US is now allying with a country that indulges in extensive gerrymandering to aid the primary political party, maybe we want to have a light touch on this one.
Fiji: Frank Bainimarama's one-man racially-motivated military dictatorship has managed to stagger on for several years now, propped up in the face of international pressure largely by the profits from Fiji Water and...
Wait, you didn't know all this? Well, that's okay. Neither does anybody else. In fact, the Fiji regime is pretty much proof positive that nobody gives a damn about what you do behind the scenes as long as you can keep the beaches open, and that people will buy water if it comes with a picture of greenery on it regardless of how it got there. But that's neither here nor there.
Anyway, Fiji's been having some problems. They've been in a dispute with Fiji Water (their lifeline) culminating in the ejection of one of Fiji Water's top executives (which is sort of like kicking the goose that lays the golden eggs - possibly counterproductive). But that was small potatoes compared to the problems that Bainimarama has been having within his own military, including the recent high profile defection of Lieutenant Colonel Ratu Tevita Mara, who escaped to Tonga. Fiji's up in high dudgeon mode, claiming that the fact that Australia and New Zealand are willing to grant a visa to a man without a proper Fijian passport shows flagrant disrespect for the law and proper extradition, to which ANZ can reply with snide comments about not overthrowing constitutional governments. Either way it points to increasing dissatisfaction in the military, which means that the military coup may face a military coup, and all those holiday vacationers may find their day disrupted by soldiers running around shooting at each other.
The best thing that's come out of all of this was the forced sale of the Fiji Times, a local newspaper which got bought out by News Corporation, that excellent provider of choice bits of information owned by media giant Rupert Murdoch, and flagshipped by Fox News. Apparently Murdoch was too much for even Bainimarama to stomach, and the Fiji Times was sold under the understanding that if it wasn't sold, it would be confiscated. Watching Murdoch get in a shit flinging competition with Bainimarama would be sort of like watching a slapfight between reality TV stars, but it would be amusing just because it would force Fox News to choose between its love of money and its love for authoritarian military coups if this wasn't just so damn pathetic to start with.
In the meantime, all you tourists stay classy.
Thailand: Of course Thailand's approaching a divisive, dangerous election where a man who took power as part of a coup will face off against the sister of the coup-ousted Prime Minister, how is currently wanted for corruption charges that are probably both politically motivated and true. This civil conflict waiting to happen is being driven in part by political instability of an ailing king (I'm not in Thailand so I can stay that), and a military that wants in even more weight in the political process, and is willing to start a war with Cambodia to get it.
But if that wasn't enough, Thailand has gone and picked a fight with the world's premiere nuclear power, the strongest, happiest, richest, wisest, most technological adept, most spirited, and altogether most wonderful nation on Earth. That's right, Thailand may find itself at odds with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, also known as Kim Jong-Il's Mandatorily Happy Happy Fun Land. So far the might nation of North Korea hasn't moved against Thailand, but those days can't last.
It seems that, geographically speaking, Thailand is the closest South Korea-friendly nation to North Korea. South Korea has a longstanding policy of repatriating North Korean refugees, mostly because new Koreans make new money, but in order to take advantage of that offer, North Koreans have to get somewhere with a large South Korean presence. China doesn't play this game, so apparently the easiest way to do this is to smuggle Nork refugees across the Middle Kingdom and all the way to Thailand, from where they can be picked up by the South Korean refugees.
So far Thailand had allowed this process to continue, but it's unclear if they'll keep going in the face of Dear Leader's wrath. After all, even a batshit insane military who is picking fights with weaker Cambodia doesn't want a war with North Korea, do they? I mean, they might win, and then they'd have North Korea, and nobody would want that.
The Philippines: Vietnam's not the only country spooked by China. The Philippines are just as close to disputed islands, and just as vulnerable to a Chinese decision to "annex" the South China Sea. This has pressured the Philippines into a promise of rapid naval expansion, culminating in reports that the Philippine Navy might even be looking to purchase submarines, having unfortunately forgotten a very important fact: the Philippines has no money.
As a country with a nominal GDP per capita of $2000 (PPP may be more accurate, but arms dealers don't take chickens), and a long-simmering war going on in the south, the Philippines don't seem to have an extra billion or two in the budget to buy a few submarines. Not to mention that submarines, being ships (which are always in danger of sinking) which travel underwater (which is basically pre-sunk) require a lot of maintenance beforehand, or a really large crane afterwards, and that's always expensive. For reference, the flagship of the Philippine Navy will be the Gregorio del Pilar, a ship that, since 1967, has been serving as the United States Coast Guard Cutter Hamilton, a ship that eventually got so old and decrepit that even the Coast Guard (notorious cash strapped) had to give up on it. If that's the most modern vessel in the Philippine Navy there's no way the Philippines will be able to pay for a submarine, unless they can raise one of those sunken Japanese ones in the area.
All in all, the Philippines are looking a bit ineffectual this year. That probably only emboldens China, which might come back to bite the bigger nation once the Philippines gets back on track.
Australia: Normally Australians have a reputation as a laid-back people, and certainly not as a bunch of bloodthirsty killers. No, in the Land Down Under that role is reserved for nature. But Australians may soon be pitting their abilities against the myriad forces of nature, under a new plan to fight greenhouse gases (and earn a chunk of carbon credits) by whacking a whole bunch of wildlife.
The target? Camels. You see, not content with their experiments with rabbits, Australians also decided to introduce camels to the continent back in the 19th century in another one of those "decisions that seemed like a good idea after three bottles of whiskey". Unfortunately, when Australia started sobering up somewhere in the 20th century the idea no longer looked so good. By then it was too late, and today they have more then a million of the buggers roaming around the landscape, destroying the vegetation, and producing about a ton of methane a year.
Experiments were made involving training rabbits to eat camels, but that would create carnivorous rabbits, and nobody is drunk enough to want something like that. So it looks like killing camels for carbon credits is the new thing. Which is amusing as hell, inasmuch as it promises a day when environmentalists will go after those other methane factories, cows, sneaking into feed lots to massacre thousands of beef cattle, while PETA commandos parachute in to try and stop them. I'd watch that.
China v. Everyone: The big story of the week has to do with the boiling inferno that is the South China Sea, that oil-rich trade route that runs from southern China through some of the most disputed territory in the world. The traditional key to this problem is China's unilateral declaration of sovereignty over the Paracel and Spratly islands, two huge collection of relatively small and worthless islands. The Paracel claim is disputed by Vietnam, who is geographically close to the islands, and also Taiwan (who disputes everything with China), but China's had control of them for some time. The Spratly islands are more southernly, and are disputed by China (and Taiwan), Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Brunei.
China's claim seems to be mostly historical in nature. The PRC claims that the Paracel and Spratly islands have been an integral part of China (discovered and explored by Chinese) for thousands of years. After all, they claim, back in the day, these were ours. Oh sure, there were Vietnamese there from time to time, but Vietnam is just a tributary state of China. And there were Filipinos and Malays too (or their ancestors), but you can't really call what they had a civilization, can you?
Surprisingly, these arguments have gone over like a lead balloon in Vietnam and the Philippines, leading to a lot of bad feeling. The islands themselves aren't what's valuable, what's valuable is the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) around them. By international law (from the UN Convention on the Laws of the Sea), each country gets a 200 nm EEZ around any land they control in which they have exclusive access to any economic benefits, although everyone else has the right of passage. Whoever owns those islands then gets a massive EEZ, which is especially important to countries like the Philippines, for whom some of those islands are inside their EEZ (and thus would be a pain in the ass if someone else owned them).
But China's been pushing around this U-shaped map, which shows what they're claiming as "territorial" (i.e., "Hands off, it's mine") waters:
Which is basically a giant "Fuck you" to everyone in the area. Not only does it take all of the disputed islands, but it also claims as "territorial" (normally only 12 nmi from shore) almost all of the sea. Vietnam's "accessible waters" shrink basically down to what they can see from land, as do the Philippines, and Malaysian ships can't even leave port without Chinese permission. EEZ be damned, China's going to take the whole South China Sea, and everyone else is getting only the waters shallow enough to walk in.
Needless to say, there's no legal basis for this. China is pulling what in international parlance is called "An America" and making a unilateral declaration that "All this is ours" in defiance of international law. I don't need to tell you how this makes everyone else in the region feel.
That being said, here's the news from the region:
Vietnam: China actually looks like they're enforcing the U-shaped map too, or trying to. Vietnam is upset that China executed a ramming attack on a survey vessel not near any of the disputed islands, but well within Vietnam's EEZ, and has called for military drills as a warning to China. As usual, Vietnam protested with references by invoking legal references to UNCLOS. China responded by citing none, and basically claiming all of Vietnamese waters for China. Vietnam, who gets along with China like Palestine gets along with Israel, is having none of it.
Of course, there isn't much of a recourse for Vietnam, but maybe it'll get them to get together with the Philippines (who also suffered one of these ramming attacks some weeks ago) and come up with some plan for dealing with their intrusive northern neighbor. Or maybe even more ironically it will force Vietnam to forge some international alliances, and put a US military base in Vietnam (there are too many layers of irony there, on both sides, for that not to cause an explosion).
Singapore: The small city-state of Singapore has long been pretty goddamn neutral in the whole Southeast Asian arena, too busy chasing down rogue litterers to worry about Thailand and Cambodia bashing it out, or genocides in Burma, or China, but it may have finally stepped off the fence. US Defense Secretary Robert Gates was in Singapore for the Shangri-La dialogue this week, and made the claim that the US will 'upgrade' its defense posture in Singapore from a port of call to the forward-deployed base for "one or two" Littoral Combat Ships, the US Navy's new $500 million undergunned, over-priced toy boat. What this is supposed to do besides give China something else to shoot at is unclear to me, but I'm always for influence operations.
What Singapore is doing is unclear to me, because the mechanisms of Singapore's foreign policy seem to be hidden behind PAP machinations from this distance, but the basing of significant US military forces in the region seems to put them a little bit farther off the fence. US interest is pretty clear, getting not only a base but perhaps a commitment of support from Singapore's pricey and over-powered military, but given that the US is now allying with a country that indulges in extensive gerrymandering to aid the primary political party, maybe we want to have a light touch on this one.
Fiji: Frank Bainimarama's one-man racially-motivated military dictatorship has managed to stagger on for several years now, propped up in the face of international pressure largely by the profits from Fiji Water and...
Wait, you didn't know all this? Well, that's okay. Neither does anybody else. In fact, the Fiji regime is pretty much proof positive that nobody gives a damn about what you do behind the scenes as long as you can keep the beaches open, and that people will buy water if it comes with a picture of greenery on it regardless of how it got there. But that's neither here nor there.
Anyway, Fiji's been having some problems. They've been in a dispute with Fiji Water (their lifeline) culminating in the ejection of one of Fiji Water's top executives (which is sort of like kicking the goose that lays the golden eggs - possibly counterproductive). But that was small potatoes compared to the problems that Bainimarama has been having within his own military, including the recent high profile defection of Lieutenant Colonel Ratu Tevita Mara, who escaped to Tonga. Fiji's up in high dudgeon mode, claiming that the fact that Australia and New Zealand are willing to grant a visa to a man without a proper Fijian passport shows flagrant disrespect for the law and proper extradition, to which ANZ can reply with snide comments about not overthrowing constitutional governments. Either way it points to increasing dissatisfaction in the military, which means that the military coup may face a military coup, and all those holiday vacationers may find their day disrupted by soldiers running around shooting at each other.
The best thing that's come out of all of this was the forced sale of the Fiji Times, a local newspaper which got bought out by News Corporation, that excellent provider of choice bits of information owned by media giant Rupert Murdoch, and flagshipped by Fox News. Apparently Murdoch was too much for even Bainimarama to stomach, and the Fiji Times was sold under the understanding that if it wasn't sold, it would be confiscated. Watching Murdoch get in a shit flinging competition with Bainimarama would be sort of like watching a slapfight between reality TV stars, but it would be amusing just because it would force Fox News to choose between its love of money and its love for authoritarian military coups if this wasn't just so damn pathetic to start with.
In the meantime, all you tourists stay classy.
Thailand: Of course Thailand's approaching a divisive, dangerous election where a man who took power as part of a coup will face off against the sister of the coup-ousted Prime Minister, how is currently wanted for corruption charges that are probably both politically motivated and true. This civil conflict waiting to happen is being driven in part by political instability of an ailing king (I'm not in Thailand so I can stay that), and a military that wants in even more weight in the political process, and is willing to start a war with Cambodia to get it.
But if that wasn't enough, Thailand has gone and picked a fight with the world's premiere nuclear power, the strongest, happiest, richest, wisest, most technological adept, most spirited, and altogether most wonderful nation on Earth. That's right, Thailand may find itself at odds with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, also known as Kim Jong-Il's Mandatorily Happy Happy Fun Land. So far the might nation of North Korea hasn't moved against Thailand, but those days can't last.
It seems that, geographically speaking, Thailand is the closest South Korea-friendly nation to North Korea. South Korea has a longstanding policy of repatriating North Korean refugees, mostly because new Koreans make new money, but in order to take advantage of that offer, North Koreans have to get somewhere with a large South Korean presence. China doesn't play this game, so apparently the easiest way to do this is to smuggle Nork refugees across the Middle Kingdom and all the way to Thailand, from where they can be picked up by the South Korean refugees.
So far Thailand had allowed this process to continue, but it's unclear if they'll keep going in the face of Dear Leader's wrath. After all, even a batshit insane military who is picking fights with weaker Cambodia doesn't want a war with North Korea, do they? I mean, they might win, and then they'd have North Korea, and nobody would want that.
The Philippines: Vietnam's not the only country spooked by China. The Philippines are just as close to disputed islands, and just as vulnerable to a Chinese decision to "annex" the South China Sea. This has pressured the Philippines into a promise of rapid naval expansion, culminating in reports that the Philippine Navy might even be looking to purchase submarines, having unfortunately forgotten a very important fact: the Philippines has no money.
As a country with a nominal GDP per capita of $2000 (PPP may be more accurate, but arms dealers don't take chickens), and a long-simmering war going on in the south, the Philippines don't seem to have an extra billion or two in the budget to buy a few submarines. Not to mention that submarines, being ships (which are always in danger of sinking) which travel underwater (which is basically pre-sunk) require a lot of maintenance beforehand, or a really large crane afterwards, and that's always expensive. For reference, the flagship of the Philippine Navy will be the Gregorio del Pilar, a ship that, since 1967, has been serving as the United States Coast Guard Cutter Hamilton, a ship that eventually got so old and decrepit that even the Coast Guard (notorious cash strapped) had to give up on it. If that's the most modern vessel in the Philippine Navy there's no way the Philippines will be able to pay for a submarine, unless they can raise one of those sunken Japanese ones in the area.
All in all, the Philippines are looking a bit ineffectual this year. That probably only emboldens China, which might come back to bite the bigger nation once the Philippines gets back on track.
Australia: Normally Australians have a reputation as a laid-back people, and certainly not as a bunch of bloodthirsty killers. No, in the Land Down Under that role is reserved for nature. But Australians may soon be pitting their abilities against the myriad forces of nature, under a new plan to fight greenhouse gases (and earn a chunk of carbon credits) by whacking a whole bunch of wildlife.
The target? Camels. You see, not content with their experiments with rabbits, Australians also decided to introduce camels to the continent back in the 19th century in another one of those "decisions that seemed like a good idea after three bottles of whiskey". Unfortunately, when Australia started sobering up somewhere in the 20th century the idea no longer looked so good. By then it was too late, and today they have more then a million of the buggers roaming around the landscape, destroying the vegetation, and producing about a ton of methane a year.
Experiments were made involving training rabbits to eat camels, but that would create carnivorous rabbits, and nobody is drunk enough to want something like that. So it looks like killing camels for carbon credits is the new thing. Which is amusing as hell, inasmuch as it promises a day when environmentalists will go after those other methane factories, cows, sneaking into feed lots to massacre thousands of beef cattle, while PETA commandos parachute in to try and stop them. I'd watch that.