Atlantic Sentinel

Tag: East Asia

  • Japan’s F-35 Struggles Help Inspire Domestic Fighter Program

    American F-35 fighter jets
    American F-35 Joint Strike Fighter jets at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada, April 4, 2013 (USAF/Brett Clashman)

    Major Akinori Hosomi vanished on a cool evening in April 2019 while flying one of the world’s most modern and deadliest aircraft — the F-35A Joint Strike Fighter.

    When the 41 year-old pilot took off from Misawa Air Base in northern Japan on the night of April 19, there was little sign of trouble. An experienced pilot with sixty hours on the F-35A, the multirole jet he was flying was state-of-the-art and the mission profile was to be another routine night-training exercise. Yet his plane fell into the Pacific Ocean without so much as a distress call on the part of the pilot.

    Akinori Hosomi’s remains were recovered from the seabed months later leaving behind a mystery about the first fatal crash for the Pentagon’s most expensive weapons system. (more…)

  • Macron Defends Rules-Based Pacific Order, Five Stars Call for New Elections

    Paolo Gentiloni Emmanuel Macron
    Italian prime minister Paolo Gentiloni is received by French president Emmanuel Macron in the Elysée Palace in Paris, September 27, 2017 (Elysée)

    During a visit to Sydney, French president Emmanuel Macron said he wanted to work with the largest democracies in the region — Australia, India, Japan and the United States — to “balance” Chinese power and protect “rule-based development” in Asia.

    “It’s important… not to have any hegemony in the region,” he said.

    Australia has eyed accommodation with China since Donald Trump withdrew from the Trans Pacific Partnership in 2017. But Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, speaking alongside Macron, insisted his country is still committed to preserving a rules-based order.

    France is a Pacific power. It has around one million citizens in the region. (more…)

  • Don’t Risk War with North Korea: Experts

    American F-16 fighter jet
    American F-16 fighter jet at Kunsan Air Base, South Korea, May 4, 2016 (USAF/Nick Wilson)

    American president Donald Trump’s advisors have floated the possibility of what they call a “bloody nose” attack on North Korea.

    The Wall Street Journal reports that officials are “quietly debating whether it’s possible to mount a limited military strike against North Korean sites without igniting an all-out war on the Korean Peninsula.”

    Experts doubt it. (more…)

  • Why America Should Rethink Its Alliance with South Korea

    Barack Obama Park Geun-hye
    Presidents Barack Obama of the United States and Park Geun-hye of South Korea walk in the garden of the Blue House in Seoul, April 25, 2014 (White House/Pete Souza)

    America should rethink its alliance with South Korea, writes Adam Garfinkle in The American Interest. (more…)

  • Retired Military Chiefs Caution Trump Against North Korea Strike

    The Financial Times quotes four retired American military officials cautioning President Donald Trump against attacking North Korea. (more…)

  • Canceling South Korean Trade Deal Would Be a Mistake

    Seoul South Korea
    The sun sets over Bukchon Hanok Village in Seoul, South Korea (Unsplash)

    Various American media report this weekend that President Donald Trump is thinking of canceling a trade agreement with South Korea.

    This may be bluster: an attempt to force the South Koreans to make concessions. It’s the way Trump “negotiates”.

    But if he makes good on this threat, it would be another self-inflicted wound for American commerce and a setback for America’s strategy in East Asia. (more…)

  • North Korea in the Next Five Years

    The Korean War, fought from 1950-53, was a result of two earlier wars in the 1940s: the American-Japanese War, which ended with the destruction and occupation of Japan in 1945, and the Chinese Civil War, which ended in a Communist victory (and Nationalist retreat to Taiwan) in 1950.

    With the Communists and Americans as the only powers in East Asia following these wars, the Korean Peninsula was split in two, each side taking a piece for itself.

    When the United States triumphed over the Soviet Union around 1990, many expected the North Koreans to fix their broken ties with South Korea. That this did not occur was partly the result of inertia, partly the result of Kim Il-sung’s living until 1994 and partly the result of the 1997 East Asian financial crisis, which kept the South Koreans too poor to want to bear the cost of investing in North Korean infrastructure or labor.

    It was also partly the result of a miscalculation on behalf of North Korea in 1987, 24 months before the Berlin Wall came down. Seeking to ruin the South’s first-ever Olympics in 1988, the North blew up a commercial airplane. It was by far the deadliest attack on the South since the armistice began in 1953. South Korea’s anger and mistrust of North Korea as a result of this deed persisted during the 90s. (more…)

  • Time Looks Ripe for Japan-NATO Cooperation

    American Japanese ships
    American and Japanese ships conduct a joint naval exercise in the Pacific Ocean, November 19, 2014 (USN/Chris Cavagnaro)

    Strategic thinkers have proposed closer cooperation between Japan and NATO for more than a decade. The circumstances are now such that this could become a reality.

    Japan has surprised many by weakening its post-World War II pacifist posture, increasing defense spending and investing in fifth-generation warplane technology. These reforms are an invitation to NATO to engage more seriously.

    Part of the work is being done for it. Japan’s security pivot brings the island nation in closer alignment with the United States. This, in turn, brings Japan closer to NATO.

    Japan’s reinterpretation of its constitutional self-defense clause could be a stepping stone to collective self-defense. It has already taken part in multinational military exercises and contributes to peace and stability missions around the world. Its security doctrine is well in line with NATO’s. Both sides are committed to upholding democracy and the rule of law and advancing the cause of international security.

    Areas of cooperation could include counterterrorism, cybersecurity and peacekeeping. Both sides would benefit from an open exchange of experiences, ideas and technologies in these regards.

    Japan also holds a wealth of experience when it comes to responding to and managing human crises, like natural disasters. NATO’s civil response capacities, in turn, can serve as an example for Japan’s Self-Defense Forces and the two can be mutually reinforcing. (more…)

  • Duterte’s Play for a Dictatorship

    When you yearn for a caesar, you more often than not get it. Such now is the price being paid by the people of the Philippines, who swept to power a man whose harsh authoritarianism was clear as day. As the southern island of Mindanao slips into chaos, Rodrigo Duterte’s not-so-subtle desire for absolute power has become all too obvious.

    From Reuters:

    “Anyone now holding a gun, confronting government with violence, my orders are spare no one, let us solve the problems of Mindanao once and for all,” said Duterte, who is from the island, after cutting short a visit to Russia and returning to Manila.

    “If I think you should die, you will die. If you fight us, you will die. If there’s an open defiance, you will die and if it means many people dying, so be it. That’s how it is.” (more…)

  • Trump Blunders by Withdrawing from Trans Pacific Partnership

    Donald Trump made good on his campaign promise to withdraw the United States from the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) on Monday.

    It was one of his first acts as president — and a terrible mistake.

    Not only is Trump robbing American companies of business opportunities in the Far East; he disappoints American allies in the region and cedes the initiative to China. (more…)

  • Why Taiwan Could (Still) Start World War III

    American Japanese fighter jets
    An American B-52 Stratofortress bomber leads a formation of American and Japanese fighter jets over Guam, February 21, 2011 (USAF/Angelita M. Lawrence)

    Surely you know already the tripwire: Taiwan is a de facto country but a de jure province of mainland China. The people’s republic wants to bring it back under mainland China’s rule while the people of Taiwan want exactly the opposite.

    Moreover, Taiwan’s military security is guaranteed by the United States via the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979, which stipulates the United States must respond militarily to a communist invasion.

    So if the PRC tries to bring Taiwan back into the fold by military force, the United States must retaliate. Conventional battles turn to nuclear battles and then we all die in the irradiated glow of our own monstrous weapons. (more…)

  • In Era of Trump, Australia Looks to China for Leadership on Trade

    Sydney Australia
    Skyline of Sydney, Australia (Unsplash/Dan Freeman)

    Australia isn’t waiting for Donald Trump to assume office in January before recalibrating its foreign relations.

    The island nation — America’s most reliable ally in the Pacific — has thrown its support behind Chinese trade initiatives now that the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) appears dead.

    Steven Ciobo, Australia’s trade minister, told the Financial Times he would work to conclude new trade pacts with other countries in the region, including China’s proposed Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific.

    “Any move that reduces barriers to trade and helps us facilitate trade, facilitate exports and drive economic growth and employment is a step in the right direction,” Ciobo said.

    But there is a strategic component to this as well. (more…)

  • The Death of a King

    Thailand’s King Bhumibol Adulyadej had a long run: from 1946 until today, his living memory involved Japanese occupation, cold warriors burning Vietnam, the self-immolation of Cambodia, the shunning and decades-later rehabilitation of Myanmar and the rise of China.

    His death leaves many questions for Thai politics, not the least of which is what to do with the widely disliked crown prince, heir apparent to the throne.

    But it also reveals the slow grind down of monarchy as a system, as Thais contemplate — quietly for now — whether they even need a king at all. (more…)

  • Duterte Wants to Ditch America for China and Russia. Can They Bite?

    Betteridge’s law of headlines states that any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered no. And so it is with this one, with a strong caveat: at least not now.

    Since election in May, Rodrigo Duterte, the Philippines’ “gotta make some murder to stop some murder” president, has grabbed up headlines by getting so tough on crime, crime is shot in the streets and by insulting the American president. Now, and most geopolitically significantly, Mr Duterte has threatened to bring his country into alliances with China and Russia.

    As much of a boon as this would be to the Chinese and Russians, neither can replace the Americans. At least, not right now. (more…)

  • How Vietnam Went from American Foe to American Friend

    Nguyễn Phú Trọng Joe Biden
    American vice president Joe Biden listens to a speech by Nguyễn Phú Trọng, the general secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam, in Washington DC, July 7, 2015 (State Department)

    It’s easy to hold grudges; it envelopes one in a sense of superiority, a feeling of wronged righteousness, that allows irrational behavior to feel very, very good. When someone hurts you, it can be wonderful to lord that over them forever.

    Few wars in American history involve as many hurt feelings as the Vietnam War. Depending on when you chart it, the war lasted anywhere from the late 40s to 1975, when North Vietnam conquered the South. For the US, earnest combat began in 1965 and lasted until 1973, when the Nixon Administration washed its hands of Southeast Asia.

    The toll was hefty: 58,000 Americans and anywhere from 1.4 to 3.8 million Vietnamese died. On the American side of the Pacific, the war gave counterculturalism a salient boost in the body politic and for decades much of American foreign and domestic policy hung on the legacy of those years. In Vietnam, the regime used fear of another American invasion to build legitimacy — and support war in Cambodia — up until the 1990s.

    So it would be rather easy for both sides to neither forgive nor forget. Whole careers could be made off holding a grudge.

    And yet the Americans are about to start arming the Vietnamese.

    What the hell just happened here? (more…)