For the first time in modern history, the Chinese navy is deploying a task force on an active maritime mission beyond the Pacific Ocean that could involve combat operations. Beijing’s unprecedented decision to join the anti-piracy fleet off Somalia’s coast resulted from a pragmatic assessment of the likely net security benefits to China from the deployment. The international community, including the United States, should likewise approach the issue from a hardheaded perspective. On Dec. 26, 2008, two destroyers and a supply ship of the South China Sea Fleet departed from the Yalong Bay naval base at Sanya, on Hainan Island, […]

GLOBAL EFFORT ON BEHALF OF DETAINED CHINESE DISSIDENT — Over 160 Nobel laureates, writers and academics sent an open letter to Chinese President Hu Jintao via the internet last week urging him to release intellectual Liu Xiaobo, who was taken from his home by security officers Dec. 8 and has not been heard from since. Liu, a literary critic and head of the Independent Chinese PEN Center that advocates for free speech, was a leading signatory and mover behind the document, “Charter 08.” The charter was a public call for greater reform and accountability of the Chinese Communist Party, including […]

China’s Aircraft Carrier Envy

A spokesman for the Chinese defense ministry repeated China’s decade-long interest in building or acquiring an aircraft carrier, according to DefenseNews. Of course, the rule of thumb with carriers is that if you have one, you don’t have any, as the recently completed fifteen-month dry dock of France’s only carrier, the Charles de Gaulle, demonstrated. I’m not enough of an economist to know whether the current global economic downturn argues for such a costly project (economic stimulus) or against it. The spokesman’s remarks came at a press conference announcing the participation of three Chinese vessels in the anti-piracy patrols off […]

Global Hegemon-elect

I held off on mentioning the historic commercial passenger flight between China and Taiwan yesterday, because I had trouble finding the right image for what I wanted to say. This morning I found it, in part thanks to this clip of the CFR’s Richard Haass on the Colbert Reportexplaining in terms even the Colbert character can understand why the U.S. and China have a mutual interestin maintaining the stability of the global order, and in part thanks tothis post by Malcolm Cook over at the Interpreter: Like John Howard, I thought the Bush Administration had got the balancebetween engaging with […]

SOLEMN REMEMBRANCES, HOPE MARK DECLARATION ANNIVERSARY — The world community marked the 60th anniversary of the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on Dec. 10, with calls for stronger international institutions and remembrances of those around the world currently deprived of their rights. The U.N. General Assembly awarded the 2008 U.N. Prizes in the Field of Human Rights to several individuals, including slain Pakistani leader Benazir Bhutto and former U.N. Human Rights Commissioner Louise Arbour, as well as to the group Human Rights Watch. Meanwhile, critics slammed the U.N. and the world community for their failures to address […]

Gates on Strategic Balance

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 […]

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 […]

China Pressures Pakistan over Mumbai Attacks

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 […]

The Asia Triangle

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 […]

With the security situation in Iraq improved to the point that analysts no longer shrink from using the word “endgame,” Washington has increasingly turned its attention to the alarming situation in Afghanistan, where the insurgency has taken full advantage of safe havens on the Pakistani side of a border that exists largely in name only. Attempts to address the problem of how to intervene militarily without in turn destabilizing an already fragile Pakistan have led to an emerging consensus regarding a “regional approach,” one that includes the India-Pakistan rivalry as a key to stabilizing the South Asian subcontinent. But lurking […]

Pakistan’s Perpetual Precariousness On Nov. 26, 2008, terrorists laid siege to Mumbai, making the poshest area of India’s commercial capital a war zone for several days. The attacks once again raised the specter of an Indo-Pak war. Yet, earlier in the day, Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi had arrived in New Delhi to continue recently renewed peace talks with his Indian counterpart. The two South Asian states, playing to a script performed before, had in a short period of time taken two steps forward toward peace and 10 steps back. Relations between India and Pakistan are clearly fragile and […]