GEOPOLITICA DEL MONDO MODERNO

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Moscow and Tokyo are preparing President Putin’s visit to Japan

BreakingNews @en/Politics di

On Sunday, Russian President’s press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, affirmed that Moscow and Tokyo are thoroughly preparing the visit of Russian President Vladimir Putin to Japan and the meeting between Russian President and Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was largely dedicated to that. Peskov said that Japan’s Foreign Minister, who will also hold talks on preparation of the visit, is expected to come to Moscow shortly. He also added that many issues still have to be discussed, so that the President and the Prime Minister moved on “ready ground” during the visit. Specific cooperation projects were also discussed during talks, he added.

New cooperation projects with Japan seen by Gazprom company

BreakingNews @en/Energy di

Gazprom’s CEO, Alexei Miller, affirmed that the company sees new projects and directions for cooperation with Japan. Gazprom’s delegation led by CEO Alexei Miller participates in the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Lima (Peru). During the summit, Miller participated in meetings of Russia’s President Vladimir Putin with Vietnam’s President Tran Dai Quang, China’s President Xi Jinping, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, where the parties discussed, among other issues, cooperation in the energy sector.

President Putin will meet leaders of Japan, Vietnam, Philippines, China and Peru on November 19

BreakingNews @en/Politics di

On Friday, Dmitry Peskov, Kremlin’s spokesman, affirmed that the Russian President Vladimir Putin is expected to hold talks with the leaders of China, Japan, Vietnam, the Philippines and Peru on November 19 on the sidelines of the APEC summit due to open in Peru’s capital of Lima, which Putin will attend. Peskov went on saying that the administrations of the Russian and US presidents did not arrange a separate meeting of Vladimir Putin and Barack Obama. However, the two leaders will be able to talk with each other in Peru. The Kremlin spokesman declined to specify the possible topics of the conversation, adding that the two leaders may discuss about “the most pressing issues.”

Civil pact on nuclear power signed by India and Japan

BreakingNews @en/Tech & Cyber di

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Friday signed a civilian nuclear cooperation pact with visiting Indian leader Narendra Modi as he pushed to promote exports of Japanese nuclear technology to keep the teetering economy afloat. The basis of the treaty was agreed on last December, before his three-day visit to Japan. The treaty will allow Japan to transfer nuclear technology-related components and help build reactors in India, where countries like China and France are eyeing opportunities for similar investments.

Joint action against protectionism beetwen Japan, China and South Korea

Asia @en/BreakingNews @en di

The trade ministers of South Korea, Japan and China held an annual trilateral meeting in Tokyo on Saturday during which they agreed to jointly deal with protectionism amid the global economic downturn, officials said. South Korea’s Trade Minister Joo Hyung-hwan and his Japanese and Chinese counterparts – Hiroshige Seko and Gao Hucheng – also expressed worries about a rise in protectionism.

Chinese missiles on a disputed island

Asia @en/BreakingNews @en di

 

On 14 February, the images captured by a satellite, showed the presence of new military installations on a small island in the Paracels archipelago in the South China Sea, occupied by China and claimed by its neighbors, particularly Taiwan and Vietnam. The island, once known as Woody on nautical charts, was annexed by Beijing in 1956 under the name of Yongxing.

It is probably two HQ-9 batteries, able to arm eight surface-to-air missiles each, with a range which experts estimate at about 200 kilometers, capable of hitting aircraft, cruise missiles and ballistic. Their deployment further exacerbates the tension along the already troubled waters of the South China Sea, the theater for several years of a territorial dispute on a large scale, with major political, strategic and economic implications, in which all the powers of the region are involved, including Japan, and the United States, determined to defend its freedom of military and commercial shipping in the area and to limit the expansionist ambitions of Beijing.

The revelation, released yesterday by the Taiwanese authorities, has angered the Chinese who, at first, have thundered against the lies of the pro-Western propaganda, and subsequently reaffirmed their right to install weapons of “self-defense” on islands inhabited by Chinese civil and military personnel, “according to international law”.

The major concern for the Americans and their allies in the area, is that Beijing brings forward a unilateral project of militarization in the region, strengthening, officially for defensive purposes, a growing number of islands and neo-artificial islands, made ex- novo by Chinese engineers through massive drainage of the sandy ocean floor, there where once there were only semi-submerged sections of the reef.

The Yongxing island in fact already have an airstrip and, in November 2015, the satellites captured the image of a Chinese military jet landed on the outpost. The missiles deployment, according to experts interviewed by the BBC, may be a warning addressed to Vietnam, which continues to advance their claims on the archipelago, and to United States, after that, in January, an American missile destroyer sailed close to the island’s shores.

For now, Beijing has avoided to deploy military installations on the disputed islands of the Spratly archipelago, far away from the Chinese territorial waters and nestled between Vietnam, Malaysia and the Philippines, who are claiming themselves its possess. If the escalation would go so far south, Chinese action would be perceived not as a simple provocation but as an explicit act of hostility, with consequences difficult to predict.

The dispute on the South China Sea was also addressed during the summit just concluded in California, between the United States and the ASEAN countries, the organization of the Southeast Asia states. Just yesterday, President Obama, concluding  the meeting, reiterated the US call to stop any further “claim, new construction and militarization”, indirectly referring to Chinese activities in the area. Obama also said the US will continue ” will continue to fly, sail and operate wherever international law allows” adding that the United States will provide their support to allies in the region so that they can do the same. A support that has been explicitly called for by the Vietnamese Prime Minister during the summit. Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung has appealed directly to Obama to ask that the US has ” has a stronger voice and more practical and more efficient” to achieve the interruption of all initiatives aimed at changing the status quo, clearly referring to China and its constructive activities on the Spratly archipelago.

The purpose of the summit was to find new common solutions to counter Beijing’s expansionism in the South China Sea and preserve the right to free navigation, a primary geopolitical interest for the United States in that part of the world. China’s choice to deploy a missile battery on the island of Yongxing in conjunction with the US-ASEAN summit is obviously not random and tends to reiterate Beijing’s intention to dispose as they please of the territories under its control.

For Americans and its allies a military escalation, although on a minor scale, has the flavor of provocation. A US official said to the microphones of CNN that the deployment of the missiles, which occurred during the summit, was a ” further demonstration of China’s attempt to unilaterally change the status quo” in the South China Sea. On the same line  is Japan, that by the mouth of Chief Cabinet Secretary Suga Yoshihide  has branded as unacceptable the initiative of Beijing.

The dispute looks set to exacerbate, especially if China decides to proceed with the creation of military infrastructure on the islands under its control, going further south. Another variable in play concerns the energy and mineral resources that could hide under coral beds. Geological surveys and drilling have not started yet, at least officially, but the discovery of oil or natural gas could further jeopardize the relations between the powers bordering on that slice of ocean.

 

Luca Marchesini

North Korea, and now?

Asia @en di

The day after the triumphant announcement of Pyongyang, which said it had successfully tested the first hydrogen bomb made in the nuclear facilities of North Korea, a demand bounces between the United Nations and the chancelleries of the major global powers: what to do now?

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For now, it must be said, skepticism prevails about the actual extent of the nuclear detonation obtained by the technicians of Pyongyang. The explosion occurred in the north of the country, near the Chinese border, was recorded by seismographs with a power between 4.8 and 5.1 on the Richter scale. According to South Korean experts, such a seismic response could correspond with a power of six kilotons, about a third of that given off by the bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945 and substantially incompatible with what would have been produced by a thermonuclear device, whose power is calculated generally in hundreds of kilotons. For comparison, the thermonuclear test conducted by the United States, in 1971, on the island of Amchitka in Alaska, produced an earthquake of magnitude 6.8, exponentially higher than that recorded yesterday.

It was an atomic bomb, therefore, and not an hydrogen one, that would require a technology that the regime of President Kim Yong-A probably still does not have. However, yesterday’s is the fourth test of North Korea, after those of 2006, 2009 and 2013; an explicit provocation against the American enemy, South Korea, Japan, Chinese ally, increasingly frustrated by the actions of the regime and, in general, of the international community. One answer seems inevitable, while studying new strategies to contain the North Korean threat in the medium term.

The Security Council of the United Nations immediately expressed its strong condemnation, saying that ” a clear threat to international peace and security continues to exist “, and announced new measures against Pyongyang for which is expected, in short, a resolution.

Among the most determined, the Japanese ambassador to the UN, Motohide Yoshikawa, who has called for a quick and vigorous resolution. ” The authority and credibility of the Security Council – he said – will be put in question if it does not take these measures.” It is not clear yet what kind of sanctions should be adopted and in what timeframe, while Russia pulls the brake, through his ambassador, not guaranteeing Moscow’s support for the adoption of additional sanctions. Indeed Pyongyang seems determined to go forward on the path of nuclear power, despite international condemnation and sanctions triggered by previous nuclear tests. Why should it be different this time?

A question that is not so relevant for the historical opponents of the regime. US, South Korea and Japan said they are prepared for a unified response against Pyongyang. President Obama has spoken with South Korean Prime Minister Park Geun-Hye and with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and then he has declared that three leaders agreed to ” agreed to work together to forge a united and strong international response to North Korea’s latest reckless behaviour”. He was echoed by President Abe: ” We agreed that the provocative act by North Korea is unacceptable… We will deal with this situation in a firm manner through the cooperation with the United Nations Security Council “, but added that Japan intends, if it will consider it necessary, to take unilateral measures. Seoul has finally released an official statement, asking the international community to ensure that “North Korea pays the corresponding price ” for its nuclear tests. In parallel, it has restricted access to the industrial park in Kaesong, managed jointly by the North and South and announced the restoration of propaganda broadcasts across the North Korean borders, interrupted in 2015 to ease tensions with the neighbor.

After this phase of hot reactions and new sanctions organization, it will be necessary to understand how to deal with a country that has a nuclear arsenal consisting of twenty devices (atomic or hydrogen they may be) and that might be able today, or in the short term, to mount a nuclear warhead on a medium-range missile, capable of threatening the South, Japan, the US troops stationed in the area and, perhaps, even the western coasts of the United States.

UN sanctions never had appreciable effects and the strategy of “strategic patience”, adopted by the US, could be tinged with excessive optimism. The idea that the sanctions could oblige the North Korean regime to yield and accept nuclear disarmament looks less and less convincing. To date, the US has refused to negotiate, if not on their terms, with North Korea, then choosing a different strategy from the one adopted for Iran, which has led to the recent negotiations and the subsequent agreement with Tehran.

As argued recently by Stephen W. Bosworth, the first Obama’s special envoy for North Korea, ” Whatever risks might be associated with new talks, they are less than those that come with doing nothing.” Since no power seems really willing to challenge militarily a dangerous enemy as North Korea, the game will have to be played on the field of diplomacy, before Pyongyang’s arsenal will be strengthened further and its missiles pointing technology taken to an higher level.

The strategy of Kim Yong-A is clear: the nuclear arsenal is a life insurance for the country and its enemies have only to lose, in front of the prospect of a dramatic conflict. Whether they like it or not, they will have to accept to sit at the negotiating table and recognize to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea the status of nuclear power. It is too early to say whether the facts will give him reason but the wind caused by the explosion, for now, seems to blow in his favor.

 

Luca Marchesini

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South China Sea: big dispute for its control

Asia @en di

The main players in this story are four: China, the Philippines, the US and Japan. The stakes are enormous: the control of the waters of the South China Sea, at the crossroads of the interests of the powers involved.

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For months now, the US is engaged in a verbal escalation with China. Beijing, in fact, does not hide his expansionist aims on the portion of ocean that flow through its southern coasts and it is building artificial islands to move forward to a few tens of kilometers the limits of its territorial waters. A forced widening of the borders that is putting in turmoil Vietnam, the Philippines and Malaysia as well, since they advance their own claims on that same sea segment.

China has repeatedly asked the US not to exacerbate the mood flying over the artificial islands with its aircrafts and bringing the ships of its fleet to sail near their coasts. The United States has responded sharply, appealing to international maritime law, and securing to its regional allies the cooperation of the US Navy for the control of Chinese positions.

It should be borne in mind that, in this area of ​​the world, water control and the ability to put a national flag on even very small portions of landmass is not just a symbolic goal. In fact, the patrolling of certain maritime communications, through the construction of military bases, gives the direct control of shipping trade and access roads to economic and strategic fundamental resources. The control of an isolated rock or a stretch of reef may have serious repercussions in terms of economic growth and political stability.

For China is, first and foremost, a matter of regional sovereignty, with inevitable global repercussions. For the United States, the main concern is represented by the freedom of navigation in the Pacific rim, where the US has built its own supremacy, after the end of the Cold War, with the help of regional allies, primarily Japan and South Korea. However, China is now questioning this assumption, emerging as a new power in the South China Sea and making explicit its hegemonic ambitions over the area. A redefinition of the balances that Washington sees as a serious problem.

Supremacy on the water has always been a fundamental element of American global strategy. Control over the seas, assured by the military supremacy of the US Navy, guarantees fast and secure trade routes for goods going to or coming from US ports and allows to quickly move large amounts of troops in case of need, even at a great distance. But these same necessities have now become vital for China, a global power whose economy is increasingly focused on export and therefore require more control over maritime trade routes, especially in the South China Sea, rich in fishery resources and natural gas. China is therefore trying to reshape the status quo, taking advantage of the weakness of regional adversaries, unable to cope with the Asian giant on the military level, and the uncertainties of American rival, who seems unwilling to use the force of weapons to contain its expansionist ambitions.

However, the Chinese construction activities in the middle of Southern Sea provoked the strong irritation of the Southeast Asia neighbors, primary the Philippines who claim sovereignty over many of the small islands cemented by the Chinese construction activities. China, however, think that is possible to control the countries of ASEAN, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, acting directly on the organization at the political level and operating its economic and military levers against the single states involved. Beijing also trust to be able to manage the reactions of Washington, in the belief that the US will avoid any escalation, fearing a direct conflict in the waters of the South China Sea. The facts, so far, proved China is right.

It remains to understand what is the position of Japan within this puzzle. The power of the Rising Sun is perhaps the only opponent that China really fears, right now. For the first time in decades, Japan seems determined to take a more active role in the Pacific and the South China Sea. Tokyo recently has signed new agreements with Manila and other ASEAN countries to conduct joint operations and to facilitate the supply of its fleet and its aircrafts. In return, he offered to the Philippines and Vietnam ships and aircrafts for the Navy and the Coast Guard. Japan has also reached an agreement with the US to carry out joint patrol operations in the South China Sea, starting next year.

Why this new activism? Japan is an island, with few natural resources. Tokyo must therefore necessarily safeguard its own interests on the seas, to ensure the subsistence of the Japanese economy, and it has realized that the new Chinese expansionism is a threat that can not remain unanswered.

From the point of view of Beijing, the new policy of Tokyo is a serious problem, especially if Japan acts in synergy with the United States for the creation of a joint force in the South China Sea. The answer for now is diplomatic. Through various channels, Beijing is trying to persuade Washington not to engage in the side of Japan, suggesting that Tokyo would be pursuing only its own interests in the area. Looking ahead, China also suggest that the conflict could lead to a possible military escalation with the Philippines, supported by Japan, for of the disputed islands control. A scenario that would oblige the US to make a difficult choice: whether or not to intervene on the side of its ally, with all the military and political consequences that the decision would generate.

 

Luca Marchesini

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Thailand-Japan: together against terrorism

Asia @en di

Monday, November 16, as part of the bilateral talks at the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum of Manila, the Thai Foreign Minister Don Pramudwinai and his Japanese counterpart Fumio Kishida have reached a preliminary agreement for cooperation in the fight against international terrorism. The agreement comes in response to the attacks that have bloodied Paris on the night of Friday and to the attack suffered by the Thai capital in August, which killed 20 people.

 

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” The international community – said Kishida – should be united to resolutely condemn the terrorist acts”. The two ministers then promised closer cooperation between their countries in the fight against the terrorist threat.

4500 Japanese companies operates in Thailand and over 60,000 Japanese citizens live and work in the country. Foreign Minister Kishida has therefore asked the Thai government to do everything is possible to ensure the safety of its citizens and to protect Nipponese investments. At the same time, he confirmed the support of his government for the development of new infrastructure in the country of Southeast Asia, starting from the rail network.

The meeting also focused on the South China Sea issue and tensions involving the powers of the area, for the control of maritime communications. Keshida hopes that ASEAN, the Association of South-East Asian Nations, launches a joint appeal at the next summit in Kuala Lumpur to demand greater regional stability and respect for the rule of law.

Japan, in fact, is directly interested in the dispute. Although Tokio has not territorial claims, It considers crucial for japanase economy to ensure free navigation on the South China Sea waters and is putting pressure on the Southeast Asia countries to create a joint front that could limit Chinese expansionism. A difficult goal to achieve since Beijing is acting in parallel, on the diplomatic front, to strengthen its positions and weaken the ASEAN countries claims.

Even the Asian stocks initially suffered the effects of the Paris attacks, with substantial losses on Monday, when the markets opened. Fear was short-lived, on the financial markets, and already on Tuesday the main lists of the continent were back in positive territory, with gains over 1%, after the European and US stock markets recorded a first bounce.

 

Luca Marchesini

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