Obama wrestles the ox – ISN
January 19th, 2009
http://www.isn.ethz.ch/isn/Current-Affairs/Security-Watch/Detail/?lng=en&id=95464
Amid economic flux, Obama faces challenges and opportunities across Asia, with the possibility of revolutionary change in China, but state failure in Pakistan.
Chinese year of the Ox (ISN)
By Simon Roughneen in Singapore for ISN Security Watch
Just days after Barack Obama assumes office in the US, 26 January will mark the Year of the Ox in Asia. As the global downturn pushes dozens of countries into recession, Asia, like much of the world, faces a deeply uncertain 2009.
When the subprime crisis morphed into full-scale Wall Street meltdown and pan-European banking panic during in the fall of 2008, longer-term predictions about a rebalancing of global geopolitics – with the rise in relative importance of India and China in particular, and Asia in general – were taken as imminent by some.
Longer-term, this rebalancing seems inevitable. However, Obama will have to contend with a rising Asia, managing relationships with an array of economies, as well as contribute to defusing security threats on the Indian subcontinent, in Afghanistan, and with North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. (more…)
Military Grip on Burma backed by China and India – The Irish Catholic
October 4th, 2007
Cracks in army needed to unseat Generals
The Buddhist-led anti-military protests in Burma have faded as an army crackdown has prevented monks from getting onto the streets. Fears that hundreds may have died in the brutal reaction to peaceful protests, has cowed the demonstrators, for now at least.
After more than a week of protests in Rangoon and other cities, on Wednesday September 26 the Burmese military dictatorship lived up to threats to “take action” against protesters, with over 14 deaths reported by last weekend and dozens of bloodied Buddhist monks reeling from the military’s counter-action on the city’s streets.
Although the protests were led by monks, by Thursday September 27 the proportion of monks versus laypeople than in previous days, after hundreds of were rounded up and troops surrounded monasteries.
UN Envoy Ibrahim Gambari visited Burma over last weekend, but despite meeting the democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi, the former Nigerian foreign minister was not permitted meet the military dictator General Than Shwe. Thus far, mission failed.
Last week, the UN Security Council sought to impose western-led global sanctions against the Burmese regime, but this was blocked by China and Russia on Wednesday evening. Agreement was reached on a watered-down press statement expressing “concern” and urging “restraint especially from the government.” (more…)
Influence Anxiety: China in Africa – ISN
May 15th, 2006
By Simon Roughneen in Nairobi for ISN Security Watch (15/05/06)
Chinese investment in Africa, 2005 (risingpowers.foreignpolicyblogs.com)
“Business is business. We try to separate politics from business. Secondly I think the internal situation in the Sudan is an internal affair, and we are not in a position to impose upon them,” Chinese Deputy Foreign Minister Zhou Wenzhong said in an interview with the New York Times on 22 August 2005.
In the Mao era, China dealt with Africa as part of a show of solidarity with countries that shared some of China’s experience of Western oppression. However, these links were fostered in an ideologically charged time, when China sought to display affinity with other socialist countries and to demonstrate an almost nihilistic aversion to the institutions and norms of international relations. Although it joined the UN in 1971, any real alteration of China’s foreign policy did not come until the Deng-initiated reforms post-1979.
Even then reform was piecemeal and cautious, predicated on careful changes to China’s domestic political economy, which allowed for marketization of the economy while retaining a totalitarian state. According to Christopher Alden, senior lecturer in International Relations at the London School of Economics, in an article for YaleGlobal magazine, China’s foreign policy changed in 1993 when it shifted from being an oil exporter to being an oil importer. (more…)
