Category Archives: United States

Asia, China, Foreign Affairs, United States

China: An international ruling over the South China Sea

CHINA

Intro: The ruling was made by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, following a case which was brought by the Philippines

OVER THE PAST FEW YEARS China has displayed an often aggressive stance over its vast territorial grab in the South China Sea. This has terrified its neighbours and set it on a collision course with the United States, long seen as the guarantor of peace in East Asia. In the last few days an international tribunal has demolished China’s vaguely defined claims to most of the South China Sea. How Beijing now reacts to this ruling is of the utmost geopolitical importance. If, in its anger, China flouts and ignores the verdict and continues its creeping annexation, it will be perceived as elevating brute force over international law as the arbiter of disputes among states. Continued bullying by China of its neighbours greatly raises the risk of a local clash and which could escalate into a war with America. The stakes couldn’t be higher.

The ruling was made by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, following a case which was brought by the Philippines. The verdict is firm, clear and everything which China did not want to hear. The judges decreed that the UN Convention on the Law of the Seas (UNCLOS) should solely determine how the waters of the South China Sea are divided among countries, and rejected China’s ill-explained ‘nine-dash line’ which implies the sea belongs to China. They ruled that none of the Spratly Islands in the south of the sea, claimed (and occupied) by several countries including China, can be defined as islands that can sustain human life. In practice, this means that no country can assert an Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) extending up to 200 nautical miles around them.

south-china-sea-dispute-7-638

Map depicting the disputed islands in the South China Sea

While the court had no power to decide who owns which bits of land in the South China Sea, the judges said that by building on rocks visible only at low tide (and thus not entitled under UNCLOS to any sovereign waters), China had encroached illegally into the Philippines’ EEZ. The court also determined that China had violated UNCLOS by blocking Philippine fishing boats and oil-exploration vessels, and cited that Chinese ships had acted dangerously and unlawfully in doing so. Moreover, China’s island-building had caused ‘severe harm’ to the habitats of endangered species, and Chinese officials had turned a blind eye to such practices.

For China, this is undoubtedly a humiliation. Its leaders have been quick to denounce the proceedings as illegal. Its massive recent live-firing exercises in the South China Sea implies it may be planning a tough response. This might involve the imposition of an ‘Air Defence Identification Zone’ of the kind it has already declared over the East China Sea. Or it might mean that China starts building on the Scarborough Shoal, which it wrested from the Philippines in 2012 after a stand-off involving patrol vessels. That would be hugely provocative. Although the U.S. is deeply reluctant to risk a conflict, President Barack Obama is believed in March to have warned his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, that any move on Scarborough Shoal would be seen as threatening American interests (the Philippines is a U.S. ally). Any attempt by China to call its bluff in a sea that carries $5.3 trillion in annual trade would be reckless and irresponsible.

There is a better way. China could climb down, and, in effect, quietly recognise the court’s ruling. That would mean ceasing its island-building, letting other countries fish where UNCLOS allows and putting a stop to poaching by its own fishermen. It should have good reason: its prestige and prosperity largely depends on a rules-based order. It certainly would be in China’s own interests to secure peace in its region by sitting down with the Philippines, Vietnam and other South-East Asian neighbours and trying to resolve differences.

Standard
Government, Politics, Turkey, United States

Turkey’s failed military coup…

TURKEY

Intro: Turkey’s failed coup now gives Recep Tayyip Erdogan a chance to seize more power

IN just the space of four decades Turkey has seen four governments ousted by its military, the most recent was in the late 1990s. Until now, another coup had been considered extremely unlikely. Many senior army officers resent Turkey’s increasingly authoritarian and autocratic president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, for his single-handed attempts to reshape society along Islamic lines and to rein in the military. Few would have reason to think that an attempt to depose him would ever have been successful. Mr Erdogan has won every election since 2002, and retains the support of roughly half the electorate. A decade of economic prosperity, Mr Erdogan is considered a lesser evil than army rule even by many of his committed opponents.

The attempted coup on July 15th, was dismantled in just a matter of hours amid a massive show of popular support for continued civilian rule. According to official sources, at least 265 people were killed. Mr Erdogan has emerged from the episode stronger than ever. His ultimate desire of changing the constitution to grant the presidency executive powers may now be within reach. Mr Erdogan wants power around himself and not shared through parliament.

The Turkish president plays a masterful game at being both victor and victim. This is the man who brought Turkey’s secularist old guard to heel and gave a voice to the country’s conservatives, but, at the same time, also claimed to be surrounded by enemies both at home and abroad. For Mr Erdogan, the world is divided into two groups: on the one hand, his voters; on the other, a coalition of foes that includes the political opposition, Western countries ostensibly envious of Turkey’s progress, the global financial elite, and a secretive Islamic movement, the Gulen community. In the eyes of his supporters, the coup attempt has proven Mr Erdogan right. He will now likely claim a mandate for amassing even more power and eliminating the remaining centres of opposition.

To the relief of most Turks, the military is no longer the credible and alternative power base it once was. It will be the first target for any purge under sweeping changes being considered by Mr Erdogan. While the coup had the support of only part of the officer corps, this was not a coup by the military as an institution but more of a mutiny. The plotters did, however, deploy large numbers of troops and heavy armour in both Istanbul and in Ankara, where their aircraft bombed the national parliament. Over 2,800 military personnel, including a number of generals, have been arrested.

Another target on Mr Erdogan’s radar will be the Gulen movement, a Muslim sect headed by a cleric, Fethullah Gulen, who was a close ally of the Turkish president before falling out with him in 2013. The government immediately charged the group with masterminding the violence. The government labelled the Gulenists a terror group this year, and it now has a green light to pursue anyone even remotely suspected of links to them. Some Turkish officials insist that the Gulenists have their finger prints all over this latest coup attempt. On July 16th, Binali Yildirim, Turkey’s prime minister, demanded that America extradite Mr Gulen, who lives in Pennsylvania. “The country that stands behind this man is no friend to Turkey,” he warned.

Mr Erdogan has long sought to undermine his parliamentary political opposition. Last year he responded with massive force to a growing insurgency in the southeast by groups aligned to the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), fanning the flames of the violence and providing an excuse to link moderate Kurdish MPs to the terrorists. They have since been stripped of parliamentary immunity, and now face terrorism charges. Bomb attacks by the PKK and by Islamic State, which Turkey says it is battling in Syria, have legitimised a government crackdown on independent media and free expression. The main independent newspapers and television broadcasters have been taken over by government organisations aligned to the previously issued instructions of Mr Erdogan. Prosecutors have opened some 2000 cases against people suspected of insulting the president since 2014. Following the coup, such repression will probably intensify.

Perhaps most troubling, the coup will provide an opportunity for Mr Erdogan to eliminate what remains of Turkey’s independent judiciary. On July 16th, the government announced that 2,700 judges had been suspended from duty. Two members of the constitutional court have also been detained.

The irony is that the coup’s failure demonstrated just how weak a threat Mr Erdogan actually faces. Almost all people spoke out against the coup, including the entire political class, as well as the overwhelming majority of Turkey’s citizens. That is the good news. The bad is that today’s sense of unity risks being drowned out tomorrow by calls for vengeance. The day after the coup attempt a group of men clad in Turkish flags marched down Istanbul’s main street shouting “We want executions”. The death penalty was abolished in Turkey in the early 2000s. Media photographs and video footage online from the coup’s aftermath showed protesters on one of Istanbul’s bridges beating soldiers and whipping them with their belts.

The failed coup is a golden opportunity for Mr Erdogan to heal a deeply divided society. Past experience suggests that he will instead respond with a vicious crackdown. During the night of July 15th, Turks of all stripes managed to protect their country from a relapse into military rule. Yet, the fragile democracy that many of them died to defend is now in Mr Erdogan’s increasingly untrustworthy hands.

Standard
European Union, Iran, NATO, Russia, United Nations, United States

Moscow says the United States should drop its European Missile Shield…

EUROPEAN MISSILE SHIELD

Russia has urged the United States to scrap plans to station parts of its European missile shield system now that Iran has reached agreement with world powers to limit its nuclear program.

Moscow has long opposed the plan, which it sees as a threat to its nuclear deterrence, and has pledged to retaliate if the missile shield in Europe goes ahead. Washington has previously assured Moscow the shield was meant as a protection from ‘rogue’ states like Iran, and not directed against Russia.

Since the agreement in July was made, under which Tehran has agreed to curb its nuclear program in exchange for an easing of UN, US and EU sanctions, Moscow has stepped up its rhetoric against the missile shield.

The latest diplomatic spat threatens to further worsen relations between Moscow and Washington, now at their lowest point since the cold war because of the conflict in Ukraine.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has said in the last few days that Barack Obama ‘was not telling the truth’ in comments he made in 2009 linking the need for a missile shield to what the president called the ‘real threat’ from Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile activity.

At the time of making those comments, Mr Obama said: ‘As long as the threat from Iran persists, we will go forward with a missile defence system that is cost-effective and proven. If the Iranian threat is eliminated, we will have a stronger basis for security, and the driving force for missile defence construction in Europe will be removed.’

Moscow insists those comments mean that with the resolution of the Iranian nuclear issue, Washington should now walk away from the missile shield plan.

However, sceptics in America (and elsewhere) will argue that even if the agreement was fully implemented it did not annul the threat from Iranian ballistic missiles that Mr Obama referred to back in 2009. Under the July deal, UN sanctions on Iran’s ballistic missiles program will stay in place for eight years.

A spokesperson for the U.S. Government, said: ‘As long as Iran goes on developing and deploying ballistic missiles, the U.S. together with its allies and partners will be working to ensure protection from this threat, including through deploying the NATO missile shield system.’

Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov has ruled out the possibility of using mid-range ballistic missiles with non-nuclear warheads to target Europe. Mr Ryabkov said: ‘So I conclude that the U.S. administration is artificially stitching arguments together behind a decision to continue and increase the pace of creating the European missile shield that was in fact taken for different reasons.’

If the shield goes ahead, Russia has said it would retaliate, including by deploying short-range Iskander ballistic missiles in its enclave of Kaliningrad, on the border with NATO members Poland and Lithuania.

Mr Ryabkov also said Russia and Iran had agreed on two bilateral deals as part of implementing the wider nuclear agreement, and were now discussing the details.

He said Russia would take in some 8 tonnes of low-enriched uranium from Iran in exchange for supplies of natural uranium. Moscow and Tehran would also produce medical isotopes at Iran’s Fordow uranium enrichment facility.

NATO is constructing a missile defence system in the Mediterranean Sea and in the territories of several European member states.

NATO is constructing a missile defence system in the Mediterranean Sea and in the territories of several European member states.

Standard