Asia-Pacific Archive

TOKYO — Last month the Indian Navy sunk what it believed to be a Somali pirate “mother ship” off the coast of Somalia. The vessel turned out to be a Thai trawler, but the intervention nevertheless highlighted an increasing willingness among Asian nations to take a lead in tackling the growing piracy problem that has garnered worldwide attention and alarm. Notwithstanding the Indian misstep, the results so far are impressive. While the number of attacks off the coast of Africa, including the Gulf of Aden, has jumped about 75 percent this year, Asia’s Malacca Straits had experienced just two attacks […]

Ten years ago, Bruce Riedel sent a memo to his boss, then-President Bill Clinton. In it, he called Pakistan the most dangerous country in the world. A ticking time bomb. Riedel’s reasons were many. Armed with nuclear weapons, Pakistan sponsored terrorists, was awash in drugs and consistently teetered on the verge of war with neighboring India, its nuclear rival. Later, he called it a “hothouse of terror.” Today, little has changed and Riedel, reportedly tapped as President-elect Barack Obama’s Pakistan adviser, continues to bristle at the problems the nation of 165 million people poses for the United States. “All of […]

In August, the Pakistani army launched a full scale military offensive in the Bajaur agency of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). Since then, fierce clashes have resulted in the deaths of hundreds of militants and the destruction of key Taliban strongholds. This forceful demonstration of Pakistani resolve is a positive change from past efforts. However, military operations will fail if they undermine the single most important principle for victory: winning the support of the local population. And currently Pakistan is not aiding the war-ravaged Pashtun tribes of the FATA. There is no doubt that significant force is required to […]

PYONGYANG, North Korea — Listless saleswomen loiter against stacked shelves at this most exclusive of department stores. An entire section is filled with sleek white washing machines, driers and flat-screen panel TVs produced by Haier, a low-cost Chinese appliance company. But the saleswomen outnumber customers in the echoing mall and there is little sign of commercial activity. Two taxis wait at the main gate, but neither their drivers nor any customers are to be seen. The iconic image of NorthKorean soldiers standing guard at the 36th Parallel, the line that has separatedNorth from South Korea for over half a century […]

BLAIR’S OPTIMISM — Thetrouble with Tony Blair is that he’s so good with words that you tendto forget the message and just sit back and enjoy the music. Thinkingback on it, though, his report on the state of play in theIsraeli-Palestinian impasse, delivered in Washington to members of theCouncil on Foreign Relations, seemed to offer little concrete evidenceof progress. The former British prime minister has spent thepast year as the Middle East Quartet’s point man in the region. Hisfour-point plan for jump-starting the peace process was clearlyaddressed to the Obama administration. (What isn’t, these days?) But toborrow a current Afghan […]

Defense Sec. Bob Gates gets the last word on yesterday’s asymmetric blog war, in a Foreign Affairs essay that should put to rest any doubts about whether or not he should have stayed on at the Pentagon. The entire piece is too well-constructed to dissect, so I recommend just clicking through and reading it all. But the operative word is balance, and as a reflection of how well the piece achieves that balance, all the concerns and criticisms that I cited yesterday are represented: the need to build capacity for the wars being fought balanced by the emphasis on conventional […]

In the aftermath of the Mumbai attacks, the very alarming scenarios of India-Pakistan conflict, as well as the question of the degree of Pakistani institutional involvement, have dominated the discussion. That’s fine and necessary. But Bruce Hoffman’s takeaway in his National Interest piece is noteworthy as well: The attacks demonstrate how a small number of armed and trainedterrorists can paralyze a city, stymie the security force, underminepublic confidence in the ability of government and the authorities torespond, and generate worldwide attention and publicity. At first glance, that seems relatively obvious. My own first reaction, in discussing the attacks with a […]

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands — Concerns over terrorism rise at moments like this, when a massacre garners intense media attention, as did the attacks in Mumbai. But terrorist plots and efforts to stop them have become a common event in many parts of the world. And in Europe, where investigations, disrupted plots, and arrests have become a regular occurrence, many of the cases show disturbing links to the events in India. In the aftermath of the terror in Mumbai, tensions between India and Pakistan continue to grow, as Delhi points a finger at its neighbor and rival as the source of the […]

The exiled spiritual and political leader of Tibet, the Dalai Lama, has managed to keep his fragmented flock united by averting a split by those in the movement seeking more autonomy for Tibet from China. Some 600 participants — who gathered in late November at Dharmasala in India, the capital of the Tibetan government-in-exile and the headquarters of the Dalai Lama — unanimously endorsed the “middle path” followed by their leader for the past 30 years in his struggle against China’s occupation of Tibet. Addressing the historical gathering, the ever-smiling spiritual and political head of the government-in-exile cautioned the delegates […]

An asymmetric blogwar just broke out regarding the Army’s latest doctrinal manual on Stability Operations (see Jack Kem’s WPR feature for background). Before diving into the fray myself, here’s the sequence so far: Jason Brownlee attacks the manual as an imperialist handbook, whereby the operational doctrine facilitates and drives the strategic urge for imperialist occupations. Andrew Exum attacks Brownlee, arguing that the army would be irresponsible if it didn’t equip its junior officers and troops with the operational tools necessary to wage the wars America is actually now fighting. Any imperialist urge would come from the subsequent civilian misuse of […]

CHIANG MAI, Thailand — Calm descended on Thailand Tuesday, following a decision by its Constitution Court to dissolve the ruling People’s Power Party (PPP) and two of its coalition partners for electoral fraud. Protesters calling themselves the People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD) had initially called for the PPP to step down, calling it a proxy party for ex-Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra and his dissolved Thai Rak Thai (TRT) party. They also called on the PPP to stop its attempts to amend the constitution to remove a clause banning 111 former TRT leaders for electoral fraud. The billionaire telecom tycoon was […]

When formulating a practical and forward looking policy towards Iran, which marks the 30th anniversary of its Islamic revolution this February, the Obama administration would do well to heed certain realities. Thirty years of muscular posturing by five successive administrations have not afforded the White House a handle on the Islamic Republic. Neither have they ushered in a new dawn of Middle Eastern stability or, for that matter, Israeli security. Instead, the United States must lead the way in establishing a strategic partnership with the Islamic Republic of Iran, in the context of a more engaged foreign policy. Iran is […]

The Times of India is reporting that China has begun to put pressure on Pakistan to come clean on whatever they know and whoever they might have tabs on in connection with the militant groups potentially behind the Mumbai attacks. What remains uncertain is whether Beijing’s efforts will be directed towards addressing the problem of these groups infiltrating into India, or into China’s own Xinjiang province, where there is also an Islamic insurgency under way. The guiding logic behind the Asia Triangle feature that WPR is running this week (which was obviously planned months ago) is that America has gradually […]

Dave Dilegge at the Small Wars Journal blog put together a useful overview of reaction to Obama’s national security team. I think Laura Rozen nailed it, too, when she described the event and the team as “sober.” Add an “m” and you’ve got the mood that will probably apply come Jan. 20, when the gang starts realizing the task they’re up against. I want to avoid getting too deep into the “rotisserie league” diplomacy game. There’s no real way to predict how all the parts will ultimately fit together once they are in motion. And to paraphrase the wartime cliche […]

Most Americans realize that President-elect Barack Obama will inherit the most disastrous economic and foreign policy legacy since FDR took charge of the Great Depression or Abraham Lincoln inherited a country on the brink of Civil War. America’s standing in the world is at a low ebb, even among our friends and allies. Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have left the U.S. military stretched to the breaking point. North Korea has tested nuclear weapons and proliferated nuclear technologies to Syria and other nations. Iran is on the verge of becoming a nuclear weapons state. Even if they were not occurring […]

For those of you who enter the site through the blog, I’d like to call your attention to our latest theme issue on the front page, the Asia Triangle. In three deep analysis pieces (M.K. Bhadrakumar on India here, Jing-dong Yuan on China here, and Arif Rafiq on Pakistan here), we examine the balance of power on the South Asian subcontinent between India, Pakistan and China, and how that might impact the emerging consensus calling for a “regional approach” to turn the tide in, and ultimately stabilize, Afghanistan. We’ve had this feature in development for a while now, and last […]

Just some quick thoughts on the Mumbai attacks before turning the subject over to our two cover stories that examine them from the Indian perspective (by M.K. Bhadrakumar) as well as from Pakistan’s (by Jayshree Bajoria). There are still a lot of unanswered questions regarding some of the moving parts. But what the attacks demonstrate more than anything else is the need to resist letting a handful of extremists set the foreign policy agendas of regional and global nuclear powers. In other words, there’s a need to formulate a better response than the Bush Doctrine to the ways in which […]