Asia-Pacific Archive

Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s bid for a second term has received an enormous boost after initial counting from last week’s legislative elections gave his Democratic Party a decisive edge over its rivals. His party was aided by its well-regarded handling of the economy in the face of the world economic crunch and collapsing oil prices, both of which have punished government coffers and will underpin the presidential campaign over the next three months. The country needs billions of dollars to create jobs, build infrastructure, overcome endemic graft and boost the pace of growth beyond the 3-4 percent forecast for […]

As the world economy stares down the most severe crisis it has seen in nearly a century, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) finds itself positioned somewhere between danger and opportunity: Danger lurks in emergent alternatives to the fund; opportunity lies in reform. Yet, reform requires change, and change does not come easily in the realm of international politics. Invariably, it creates winners and losers. The United States and Europe have long been the beneficiaries of the international financial institutions crafted during the waning hours of World War II. But the world of today is a far cry from that of […]

NEW DELHI, India — One of India’s biggest ever defense deals with Israel, worth $2 billion, hovered on the brink of collapse earlier this month after allegations of graft to the tune of $120 million surfaced. Indian Defense Minister A. K. Anthony was quick to deny the claims, while asserting that the government would take strict action against the Israeli company and the Indian middlemen involved should the charges be true. This was, however, the second blow to Indo-Israeli relations in a matter of days — the first being a controversial video produced by Israeli defense firm Rafael and shown […]

Following up on the discussion of regional strategic balance in Asia, this article on Indian-Chinese maritime rivalry in the Indian Defense Review is essential reading. The IDR is often an outlet for the Indian military’s extreme nationalist wing, but this particular article takes an objective analytic approach to the subject that’s well worth a close read. Significantly, the U.S. is trying to wrap up wars in the Middle East andSouth Asia that have increasingly transformed our operational capacityinto a ground-based force of occupation, at the very moment when theemerging strategic focus of just about all of the world’s majormilitary braintrusts […]

More smart stuff from Sam Roggeveen, who points out that alert is not the same thing as alarmed, but nevertheless admits to a case of nerves: The thing to remember is that China does not have to match the U.S.in global capability terms for U.S. allies in the Pacific to startgetting nervous about the strategic balance. All China has to do is bea credible competitor in the region, and that is already the case. Roggeveen goes on to argue that “. . . we have already passed the point at which the U.S. could militarily intervene in a Taiwan conflict […]

A fight is brewing in the U.S. military between manpower and technology. With the economy cratering and defense budgets flattening, we can no longer afford both large armies meant to pacify hostile populations, and legions of high-end air and naval platforms that fulfill our technological dreams. Because of the powerful political backing those high-end platforms enjoy, this budget conflict might spark a broad backlash to our recent fascination with wars of occupation. Our fetish for counterinsurgency campaigns has now made us a land power. We reacted to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq by expanding the ground services, even as […]

I think Michael Cohen and I probably agree on more than he realizes, or at least more than what this post suggests. He identifies the militarization of foreign policy as the greatest danger of “embedding counterinsurgency doctrine in military planning.” I’m not sure about the causation there, since I don’t think the militarization of foreign policy depends exclusively on the trend towards COIN. But regular readers of the blog know that I consider the militarization of foreign policy not just a future danger but an alarming reality. And I agree with Cohen that the seductive “war-lite” aspects of COIN will […]

I took a bit of a drubbing around the web for my post about President Barack Obama’s Prague speech yesterday. Matt Stone pointed out that our NPT commitment to “methodically disarm” (his words) is the flip side of the deterrence coin, while John Boonstra suggested that “bad timing” is a weak reason to foreswear the goal of no nukes, because “it will never be a good time to pursue nuclear disarmament.” I don’t disagree with either. In fact, having gone through Obama’s speech again, I find myself in agreement with all of the actual policy initiatives he identifies, ably summarized […]

Sam Rogevveen and Rory Medcalf offer some thoughts over at the Interpreter on what the recently announced U.S. defense budget looks like from an Australian perpsective. Here’s Roggeveen: . . . [T]o the extent that Gates has decided to cap America’s ‘big war’ capabilities — by cuttingprograms like the F-22 and the Zumwalt-class destroyers and slowlyreducing the number of aircraft carriers — he is signaling that the U.S.is not intending to increase America’s margin of superiority againstChina. Indeed, given the leaps China is making, he is effectivelychoosing to reduce that margin. It’s really not that surprising or radical — the […]

World Politics Review contributor Arif Rafiq appeared on Worldfocus yesterday to discuss the visit of Richard Holbrooke and Adm. Mike Mullen to Pakistan. The video can be found here. Rafiq’s WPR feature article, “Pakistan’s Search for Security” (sub. req.) can be found here, and his recent WPR Briefing on the role of civil law in combatting the Talibanization of Pakistan can be found here. (If you’re not yet a WPR subscriber, you can take a four-month free trial with no obligation.)

Last November, in the restive tribal region on Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan, an American Predator drone circled several thousand feet above the village of Ali Khel. Firing one of its Hellfire missiles, the drone destroyed a compound that was reportedly occupied by two senior al-Qaida officials: Abu Zubair Al Masri, an explosives expert from Egypt, and Rashid Rauf, a Pakistani linked to a 2006 plot to bomb London Heathrow airport. Both Al Masri and Rauf died in the blast, according to intelligence officials quoted by press reports. The attack was just one of scores of air strikes conducted by robotic […]

NEW DELHI, India — A series of brazen infiltration attempts by militant groups in Indian Kashmir have resulted in fierce gun battles with security forces, and threaten to exacerbate already tense relations between India and Pakistan. The skirmishes come amid fears of militant attacks on prominent political leaders as the campaign for India’s parliamentary elections gets under way. A five-day gun battle in north Kashmir’s Kupwara region left 17 militants as well as eight Indian Army commandos dead in the last week of March. The militants were part of an unusually large group of 25 Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) […]

A final thought on this weekend’s NATO summit. In his WPR Briefing on the subject, Soeren Kern had this to say: Obama put a brave face on the paltry results by saying they werea “strong down payment on the future of our mission in Afghanistan andthe future of NATO.” Butby providing only modest assistance incomparison to Obama’s 21,000-troop surge, NATO as an alliance hasessentially failed in Afghanistan. Indeed, the mission in Afghanistanis becoming increasingly Americanized: By the end of 2009, nearlytwo-thirds of the estimated 95,000 permanent foreign military personnelin Afghanistan will be American. Not only do I think that’s right, […]

One of the more prevalent military hardware stories that’s been flying just under the radar for the past few years is the shortage of helicopters for multilateral deployments. The EUFOR Chad force ultimately had to accept a Russian offer of eight copters, along with their operating teams, in order to cover the huge theater of operations under their jurisdiction. This Defense Industry Daily article describes how Coalition forces in Afghanistan have been forced to lease copters for non-military use from private contractors, in order to free up military copters for operations. This is a false shortage, to the extent that […]

Andrew Bast’s accompanying interview with Simon Johnson, former chief economist of the IMF and currently a professor atMIT and editor of the Baseline Scenario blog, can be found here. Low expectations preceded last Thursday’s G-20 summit in London, but by day’s end a curious consensus had emerged. Prior to the summit, a rift had emerged between the United States, which was pushing for more economic stimulus, and the Europeans, who urged stricter regulation reforms. French President Nicolas Sarkozy had even threatened to walk out were he not satisfied with the measures taken. (Asked about it upon landing in London, he […]

U.S. President Barack Obama’s debut NATO summit at the Franco-German border over the weekend was a triumph of style over substance. Although allies put on a public face of unity, they were unable to agree on any of the major problems facing trans-Atlantic security. As NATO marks its 60th birthday, the alliance is mired in a profound identity crisis offering little reason to celebrate. The summit was dominated by the problem of Afghanistan and what to do about it. European allies heaped praise on Obama’s new Afghan strategy, which sets benchmarks for progress in fighting al-Qaida and the Taliban in […]

STRASBOURG, France — It’s a virtual certainty that the concerto played by violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter at NATO’s 60th anniversary dinner Friday night wasn’t chosen because of its nickname. Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 5 is known as the “Turkish Concerto” because the composer used oriental themes in the final movement. But as it happened, the one discordant note in an otherwise harmonious summit was the down-to-the-wire threat by NATO member Turkey to veto the nomination of former Danish prime minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen as the alliance’s new secretary general. It took frantic, behind-the-scenes efforts, which delayed the start of the Saturday […]