Asia-Pacific Archive

Leaders from Egypt, Iran, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, and Turkey attended a Developing 8 summit in Abuja, Nigeria in July. In an e-mail interview, Gareth Jenkins, Istanbul-based analyst and author of “Political Islam in Turkey: Running West, Heading East?“, explains the background and current state of the D-8. WPR: What is the historic background and focus of the Developing 8, and how is it evolving? Gareth Jenkins: The Developing 8 (D-8) was founded on June 15, 1997, in Istanbul. It was the brainchild of Necmettin Erbakan, modern Turkey’s first Islamist prime minister, who wanted to create a Muslim alternative […]

Bad day for the French defense industry: Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said that the final decision on a fighter jet purchase will be made after the upcoming Brazilian presidential elections on Oct. 3, but before he leaves office on Jan. 1, 2011. The contract, expected to be worth upwards of $3 billion, was all but awarded to the French Rafale earlier this year, before the Brazilian Defense Ministry objected to a decision being made before its tender and performance evaluation had been completed. Meanwhile, Russia opened its search for amphibious command vessels to an international tender, after […]

The Iraqi insurgents moved fast. Piling into the back of a civilian pick-up truck, they weaved through the western Iraqi city of Ramadi until they were within a few miles of the local American base. The truck halted, and the insurgents spilled out. In just seconds, they set up a mortar and fired at least one shell toward the base. Seconds later they were speeding to safety, their vehicle hidden in the city’s traffic. The round arced over the earthen wall surrounding the U.S. base and struck Capt. Eric Allton, a 34-year-old from Idaho. Allton died instantly. Hundreds of Americans […]

Earlier this summer, as U.S. Army helicopters began evacuating stranded people from Pakistan’s flood-ravaged northwest, one Pakistani newspaper chose to focus on a more sinister dimension of American military activity in the country. According to sources cited in an article in the Pakistani daily, the Nation, Washington is constructing a “huge base” in Islamabad to “control” South Asia. American soldiers and “personnel of Blackwater” will soon arrive, with a Guantanamo Bay-style detention camp to follow. The article noted that the base lies near Pakistani nuclear sites, offering “all kinds of opportunities” for Washington. While many Pakistanis reject such talk, many […]

Indian Defense Minister A.K. Anthony visited South Korea last week at the invitation of his South Korean counterpart to boost defense cooperation between the two states. His visit came just two months after the Indian external affairs minister visited Seoul and at a time of great turbulence in the strategic environment of the Asia-Pacific region. After having long ignored each other, India and South Korea are now beginning to recognize the importance of tighter ties. The resulting courtship was highlighted by South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak’s state visit to New Delhi in January, when he was the chief guest at […]

Strategic encirclement is a term that haunts Indian analysts quite a bit these days. So when noted Subcontinent watcher Selig S. Harrison reported in late August that 7,000-11,000 Chinese troops had poured into the northern part of Pakistani-administered Kashmir known as the Gilgit-Baltistan region, the feeling that India was being systematically “surrounded” by Beijing was loudly echoed in the Indian media. The revelations follow a recent controversy triggered by China’s refusal to issue a visa to an Indian general on the grounds that his area of responsibility falls in the disputed Kashmir region; Beijing will only issue “stapled visas” to […]

Over the weekend, the Washington Post published a report that noted strong divisions between British and American military advisers over how best to prosecute the coalition’s counterinsurgency campaign in the northern part of Afghanistan’s Helmand province. The dispute highlights continuing disagreements on Afghan War strategy even among the closest NATO allies. Helmand province is the heartland of the Taliban insurgency (.pdf) in southern Afghanistan. Bordering Pakistan, where the Taliban has its base of operations, it has a population of over 1.4 million extremely poor Pashtuns, most of whom live in small towns and villages along the Helmand River. The economy […]

America has entered a new phase in its Iraq operations, one that represents the end of the “lost war” to many, the non-combat continuation of nation-building to others, and a vague sense of a never-ending global security commitment to just about everyone. Americans, who crave clear definitions of success or failure, aren’t sure what to make of this turning point, especially since for many, their attention has already shifted to the Afghanistan-Pakistan region. Meanwhile, some pundits sound the alarm with cries of “permanent war,” even though we haven’t officially declared war on anybody since 1943. As for the rest of […]

Addressing the possibility that the U.S. and Europe will shy away from military interventions post-Iraq/post-Afghanistan, Richard Gowan suggests that emerging countries — Brazil, China and India, in particular — could very well step in to fill the gap in the context of U.N. state-building operations. It tracks well with what Matt Armstrong wrote in his WPR feature article, U.N. Peacekeeping as Public Diplomacy. (Gowan’s article in that issue, The Tragedy of 21st Century U.N. Peacekeeping, makes for good reading, too, as a cautionary note.) In this case, emerging countries’ interest in burnishing their global bona fides would overlap with U.S. […]

At the beginning of July, Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus signed a number of protocols establishing a customs union between the three countries. The union, scheduled to be fully operational in January 2012, will create a single common market of about 170 million people and represents the latest of several attempts by Moscow to create an effective trade bloc with its newly independent neighbors since the break-up of the Soviet Union. In addition to the economic ties maintained through the establishment of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), Russia first committed to a union with Belarus in 1994. That was followed […]

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — On a steamy afternoon in the Sri Lankan capital, if you glance across the water at Colombo’s legendary Galle Face Green seaside promenade, past the spray of the Indian Ocean, you can make out a milky line of giant cargo ships at the point where the sky blends with the sea. That ocean traffic on the horizon, those dashes of gray steel, glide along the world’s busiest sea lane, navigated by anywhere from 100 to 200 ships every day. This is the maritime pipeline that makes it possible for China to remain the world’s fastest-growing economy. […]

A propos my post of the other day, here’s more along the same lines from Carlyle Thayer writing at East Asia Forum, who frames it as China’s soft power vs. U.S. smart power. And once again, U.S. smart power seems to have made a significant comeback. Significantly, as Thayer puts it, “The timing is bad for China as the regional security architecture looks set to gain a new lease on life and expand into new areas of cooperation.” Add to that the fact that the soon-to-include-the-U.S. grouping, EAS, is apparently gaining an edge over the sans-U.S. ASEAN+3 grouping favored by […]

In the midst of a post on Turkey-India relations, and how they are limited by each seeing the other through the prism of Cyprus and Pakistan respectively, Mehmet Ozkan makes a good point about Turkey’s lack of membership in any of the emerging power forums, like BRIC or IBSA. He argues that such an involvement would help India and Turkey develop institutional ties that they currently lack. But it occurred to me that it would also be a solid credential ratifying Turkey’s status as not just just a regional power, but as a global middle power. I’m surprised that hasn’t […]

A good rundown from Ajai Shukla of India’s, and China’s, ambitious targets and mediocre results. The great Indian Ocean Panic of 2009 could still very well turn out to be a dud.

This is a good point by Galrahn at Information Dissemination, on the disconnect between trends in European military reform and trends in U.S. strategic thinking: We will have to wait and see what Germany ultimately decides to do, but in reading military reform arguments from various nations across Europe, including Russia, the 21st century army models of expeditionary forces most often include discussions regarding amphibious lift capacity and numbers of medium and heavy lift helicopters. In other words, the capabilities that most mimic the U.S. Marines are more desired by the rest of the world than the capabilities of a […]

President Barack Obama announces the end of the combat mission in Iraq, discusses the future of the United States’ commitment in the country, and further discusses U.S. engagement and ways forward in Afghanistan.

Torrential monsoon rains since late July have flooded Pakistan’s Swat Valley and portions of neighboring Afghanistan, killing nearly 2,000 people and displacing around 2 million. Relief efforts have included deployments of troops and helicopters by the Pakistan military, the NATO force in Afghanistan and, perhaps surprisingly, the nascent Afghan air corps. “Right now, the Afghan air force has four Mi-17 helicopters in Pakistan supporting that relief effort,” said U.S. Air Force Brig. Gen. Michael Boera, head of Afghan air training. The Afghan deployment underscores an encouraging trend in the nine-year-old war against the Taliban. On Aug. 11, top NATO commander […]