Peace and Justice for Guam and the Pacific: November 2016

Wednesday, November 30, 2016

Military awards $9.63 million job to LMS

[GREAT use of money when we don't even have enough for basic social services for our civilian population! But hey, at least the bases will have almost $10 million of landscaping.]

Landscape Management Systems has been awarded a $9.63 million modification under its contract to provide ground maintenance and tree trimming services Naval Base Guam and Naval Support Activity Andersen, according to an announcement on the military’s contracting website.

The work is to be completed by November 2017.

Retired U.S. Admirals Debate China’s Military Might

American allies and partners in the Pacific don’t Washington or Beijing, “to do anything stupid” that would lead to war after the Trump administration takes office in January, retired Rear Adm. Mike McDevitt, USN, said Tuesday.

The allies and partners “don’t want to have to choose” sides in such a dispute. They want the United States to be “an over-the-horizon force” to counter China militarily. At the same time, they recognize their dependence on China economically, the senior fellow at CAN said during a debate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies on Tuesday.

Right-Wing Viewpoint: A U.S. Army Role in Countering China’s A2/AD Efforts: The Expeditionary Coastal Artillery Brigade

In much of Asia, ground forces continue to exercise substantial political and bureaucratic power. In most Asian militaries, the ground forces are the largest service and control a substantial portion of most nations’ military budgets. This, in turn, means that ground force commanders exercise substantial political power, both within their respective national security establishments, and also in their political environments. Consequently, the U.S. Army potentially plays a vital role through its interactions with local militaries as fellow ground force leaders who speak the same “language.” This political role is further enhanced by the common desire among many of these militaries to work with a premier ground force, arguably the premier ground force in the world. Because of the various wars in which the United States has engaged since 1990, the U.S. Army has combat experience that is unrivaled in the Asia–Pacific region—which means that the U.S. Army represents a key means of engaging significant military and political players throughout the Asia–Pacific region.

US Coast Guard Chief Seeks Expanded Asia-Pacific Role

The top U.S. Coast Guard official is eyeing a unique role for his fleet in maintaining peace and stability in the East and the South China seas under the incoming presidential administration.

By mirroring the role of China's Coast Guard in parts of the Asia-Pacific, said Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Paul Zukunft, the U.S. Coast Guard could be the face of U.S. military presence in disputed waters without appearing too threatening.

"When you look at the East and South China seas, look at China's Coast Guard, it is really the first face of China," he told VOA. "So I've proposed to the Department of Defense that if they were to leverage the U.S. Coast Guard, I would look at providing resources to provide the face of the United States behind a Coast Guard ship, and should that be a consideration for our approach to the East and South China seas with the next administration."

Opinion - Trump must salvage the 'Pacific pivot'

It is said in military organizations that "no good idea survives a change-of-command ceremony," and the same may be said of a U.S. presidential inauguration. Despite several years of advocacy -- with surprisingly little actual shift of attention or resources -- the much vaunted "Pacific pivot" of the Obama administration seems unlikely to be a central organizing feature of a Trump presidency, to say the least. Where will Asia policy go under the new administration? And what does it mean for Asia in the security dimension?

China Wants Stable Ties with Trump Administation

China said Wednesday that it hopes to work with the incoming administration of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump to promote healthy and stable ties between the two nations’ armed forces.

Chinese Defense Ministry spokesman Yang Yujun said efforts by both Beijing and Washington — including high-level visits, institutional consultations, academic exchanges, and joint training — have further developed military ties.

While the two powers have frequently spared over issues such as North Korea’s nuclear weapons program and the disputed South China Sea, Yang said both have been trying to improve communication on the military front and reduce the risk of misunderstandings.

15TH India-Us military cooperation group meeting begins

New Delhi, Nov 30 (IBNS): A two-day meeting of the 15th India-US Military Cooperation Group (MCG) began here on Wednesday.

India-US MCG is a forum established to progress Defence Cooperation between HQ Integrated Defence Staff and US Pacific Command at the strategic and operational levels.

Pacom Chief Praises Stronger Indo-Asia-Pacific Maritime Partnerships

WASHINGTON, Nov. 29, 2016 — As U.S. forces strengthen ties in the Indo-Asia-Pacific region, the island nation of Sri Lanka has emerged as a significant contributor to regional stability and security, U.S. Pacific Command’s commander said yesterday at the Galle Dialogue 2016 conference in Sri Lanka’s capital city of Colombo.

The first American four-star officer to visit Sri Lanka in almost a decade, Navy Adm. Harry B. Harris Jr. said at the two-day international maritime conference that he was pleased to see a deepened military-to-military relationship between Sri Lanka and the United States.

“To continue along a prosperous path, we must expand partnerships among like-minded nations to uphold the rules-based global operating system,” Harris said. “This helps build what [Defense Secretary Ash] Carter calls a ‘principled security network.’”

Japan scrambles jets as Chinese warplanes fly near Okinawa

The Chinese military has conducted air force drills in the western Pacific close to Beijing’s regional rivals Japan and Taiwan on Friday and Saturday. The Japanese Air Force scrambled fighter jets to shadow the Chinese planes.

On Friday, Chinese military planes flew through the Bashi Channel that separates Taiwan and the Philippines. Later on Saturday, the planes passed through the Miyako Strait near Japan's Okinawa island, which hosts a large portion of the US military troops stationed in the country.

The Chinese Air Force said the annual drills went as scheduled and “are not aimed at any specific country, region or target.”

Informed-Public Project seeks environmental justice on Okinawa

A recently founded organization on Okinawa is attempting to hold to account the powers-that-be for the damage that military contamination is causing the island’s environment.

Established this year by Masami Kawamura, the Informed-Public Project (IPP) seeks to bring transparency to the often murky dealings between the national governments of the United States and Japan, as well as Okinawa’s prefectural authorities.

“Tokyo is officially supposed to act as a go-between, delivering Okinawa’s requests to the U.S. side,” Kawamura says. “However, the Japanese government sometimes works in dishonest ways that distort or minimize Okinawans’ will. What’s worse is the prefecture’s failure to oversee these exchanges.”

Feature: Okinawa mourns murder of local girl by U.S. military worker, calls rise for base-hosting liberation

by Jon Day

TOKYO, Nov. 20 (Xinhua) -- Japanese people in the southernmost prefecture of Okinawa observed six months since the arrest of a U.S. military worker who was suspected of brutally raping and killing a young women, with thousands paying tributes and eulogies at the site of the women's murder on both Saturday and Sunday while calling for the island's base-hosting burdens to be lifted.

As evidenced by the outpouring of grief over the weekend observers close to the matter said that it was apparent that anti-U.S. base sentiment is steadily on the rise in the prefecture that hosts the vast majority of the U.S.'s military bases in Japan, and Okinawans are adamant that the central government and the U.S. returning land used by the bases and relocating the troops off the island is the only way for them to ever hope to lead normal lives.

"It seems as though just as we recover from one horrific incident involving losing one of our family members, neighbors, or our friends, at the hands of (U.S.) troops here, another situation occurs," Yuichiro Taga, 71, the owner of a small hotel in Naha, Okinawa's capital, lamented to local media Sunday.

EDITORIAL: Upcoming base return does little to reduce burden on Okinawa

About half of the 7,824-hectare U.S. Marine Corps Northern Training Area in Okinawa Prefecture, also known as Camp Gonsalves, will be returned to Japan on Dec. 22.

The return will be marked by ceremonies at the prime minister’s office in Tokyo and in the southern prefecture.

A plan for the return of the jungle warfare training area, which straddles the villages of Higashi and Kunigami, was part of the final report in 1996 of the Japan-U.S. Special Action Committee on Okinawa. We appreciate the very fact that the longstanding plan, which has remained pending for two decades, is finally going to be realized.

Questions and concerns abound, however.

Four arrested in Okinawa for obstructing U.S. base transfer work

NAHA, OKINAWA PREF. – Four men were arrested Tuesday for obstructing work on moving a major U.S. military base within Okinawa, police said, despite local pressure for it to be shifted outside of the island prefecture.

The four men are suspected of piling around 1,400 concrete blocks at the gate of the U.S. Marine Corps Camp Schwab from Jan. 28 to 30, blocking the passage of vehicles used for construction work, the police said.

The four also allegedly obstructed the movement of trucks hauling construction materials by standing in front of the vehicles, and had other protesters sit on the blocks on Jan. 30.

Camp Schwab is located close to where Japan is building a replacement facility for Marine Corps Air Station Futenma.

Documents recently released under the Freedom of Information Act show that the U.S. military has been keeping hundreds of environmental accidents at three of its most important bases on Okinawa under wraps

BY JON MITCHELL

SPECIAL TO THE JAPAN TIMES

Since 2002, at least 270 environmental accidents on U.S. Marine Corps bases on Okinawa have contaminated land and local waterways but, until now, few of these incidents have been made public. Internal reports highlight serious flaws in training and suggest the lessons of past accidents have not been effectively implemented. Moreover, recent USMC guidelines order service members not to inform Japanese authorities of accidents deemed “politically sensitive,” raising concerns that many incidents may have gone intentionally unreported.

Catalogued in 403 pages of USMC handbooks and reports obtained under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act, the accidents occurred on three of the USMC’s most important installations on Okinawa: Marine Corps Air Station Futenma, Camp Hansen and Camp Schwab. The earliest report is dated June 2002 and the most recent is from June 2016.

Although the original FOIA request sought documents from 1995 to 2016, only three reports were released for the period between 1995 and 2005. Likewise, no reports for Camp Schwab were released for the years 2008 and 2010, nor were there any documents related to the crash of a HH-60 Pave Hawk helicopter on Camp Hansen in August 2013. At the time, the crash caused a public outcry because it occurred near a dam and dangerous levels of arsenic were later discovered in the vicinity.

Trump's parade of retired generals raises questions

WASHINGTON — The military parade for Donald Trump has come early. Two months before Inauguration Day festivities, an extraordinary number of recently retired generals, including some who clashed with President Barack Obama's administration, are marching to the president-elect's doorstep for job interviews.

It's not unusual for an incoming administration to consider a retired general for a top position like CIA director. But Trump has turned to retired officers so publicly and in such large numbers that it raises questions about the proper balance of military and civilian advice in a White House led by a commander in chief with no defense or foreign policy experience.

The tilt toward military officials may reflect a limited pool of civilian options. Many officials from previous Republican administrations politically disowned Trump during the campaign, calling him unqualified. And Trump suggested he wouldn't want many of them, as he vowed to "drain the swamp" by running establishment figures out of town.

Robert Goldich, a retired government defense analyst who has watched administrations for 44 years, says Trump's focus on retired generals might be unprecedented.

Opinion: It's time to drop Operation Christmas Drop

Luke Davis2:21 p.m. ChST November 25, 2016 PACIFIC DAILY NEWS - OPINION

As a note, the us military (U.S. Military), america/americans (America/Americans), have been purposely left lowercase, not to offend those who identify under these labels, but to express the contempt I feel for these entities in this specific context.

At first it all seemed like just another charitable event, like many others, a good cause. However, learning more over the years, gaining a better understanding of indigenous communities on one end and the pursuits of the us military on the other, have led me to a point where I am now — feeling disgusted, sometimes depressed yet desperate to take action while at the same time remaining cautious that I, like my forbearers, don’t do more harm than good.

Guam Land Could Go to Traditional Chamorro Healers

HAGATNA, GUAM —

Guam lawmakers are considering legislation that would dedicate 15 acres of land on the eastern shore of the island to preserve the Chamorro indigenous art of herbal healing.

The bill was discussed during Monday's legislative session, The Pacific Daily News reported (http://bit.ly/2gEkIU1).

The proposal states that the land in Mangilao will be designated to increase access to plants for Chamorro traditional healers, or suruhana and suruhanu. It would also protect a variety of plants and the land from residential or commercial development.

Speaker Judith Won Pat said preserving the traditional healing arts on Guam is a challenge because many herbal plants are on military land.

"The unfortunate thing about it is that some of these you can't just pick them at the hour set by the military," Won Pat said.

Trump's military ambitions could run into budget buzzsaw

As President-elect Donald Trump narrows down his pick for secretary of defense, military spending is close to historic highs with $596 billion budgeted in 2016. The United States spends more on defense than the next seven countries combined, including China, Saudi Arabia and Russia.

Trump’s military readiness plan may drive spending even higher. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates his plan would add another $150 billion in spending.

The plan includes building an active Army of around 540,000 personnel and an Air Force of at least 1,200 fighter aircraft. Those numbers are based on recommendations from various government agencies and think tanks.

US Navy Plans To Release 20,000 Tons Of Explosives, Heavy Metals Into Pacific Ocean

The US Navy is set to release massive amounts of explosives and contaminants along the country’s Western coast over the next 20 years.

Several times a year, the US publicizes its “war games,” both domestic and abroad, allowing the massive, heavily-funded US military to showcase its might, develop new strategies, and test combat readiness. Yet, ignored all too often is the environmental impact of these exercises which, since World War I, have left behind tons of bombs, heavy metals, explosives, depleted uranium, missiles, and sonarbuoys, which contaminate the world’s oceans and harm humans and marine animals alike. Even though the outright dumping of chemical weapons was banned in 1972, the Navy has continued to carry out a policy of “leaving behind” munitions and explosives following its military exercises. The Navy, for its part, insists that the “contamination of the marine environment by munitions constituentis not well documented,” though critics insist that the Navy has intentionally not looked for or measured its environmental impacts.

China slams ‘unprecedented’ US military build-up in Asia

NOVEMBER 25, 2016

by: Charles Clover in Beijing

Barack Obama has overseen an “unprecedented” US military build-up in the Asia-Pacific region, according to Chinese government-backed analysts, who warn that a dramatic rise in US surveillance activities threatens stability in the region.

At the dawn of a new era in US foreign policy heralded by the election of Donald Trump as US president, analysts at the National Institute for South China Sea Studies said they saw the “rebalance” to Asia launched by the US in 2009 as dangerously escalatory.

The US “is continuously increasing its military deployments and military base network in the Asia-Pacific region,” Wu Shicun, the institute’s director, said at a press conference on Friday. “Currently the scale of US military deployments in the region is unprecedented.”

US to expand military presence in Asia-Pacific but Trump ‘unlikely to chart dramatic new course’

US president-elect Donald Trump is unlikely to completely scrap Washington’s existing policy on the Asia-Pacific, an influential mainland South China Sea specialist said on Friday.

The assessment by Wu Shicun, president of think tank the National Institute for South China Sea Studies, came as the institute released a landmark report on the United States’ military presence in the Asia-Pacific.

Wu said that while the US was likely to expand its military presence in the region under Trump, the incoming US leader was not likely to push for drastic changes in the country’s approach to Asia.

U.S. naval patrols threaten China's sovereignty, Chinese think tank warns

American military vessels and aircraft carried out more than 700 patrols in the South China Sea region during 2015, making China the U.S.'s No. 1 surveillance target, according to a report by China's only state-backed institution dedicated to research of the waters.

The patrols pose a threat to China's sovereignty and security interests, said the report by the National Institute for South China Sea Studies, which is headquartered in Hainan island. The document, the first of its kind released by China, warned that continued targeted operations by U.S. patrols would lead to militarization of the waters.

"China could possibly set up an Air Defense Identification Zone in the South China Sea if the U.S. continues to intensify patrols and low-altitude spying in the region," Wu Shicun, president of the think tank, told reporters in Beijing.

Donald Trump will not back down on America’s military presence in China, experts say

DONALD Trump looks set to ramp up tensions in the South China Sea, Chinese research academics have warned.

A recent analysis by a leading think tank in China has found the US leader will not rescind the country’s military presence from the disputed region.

Wu Shicun, president of the National Institute for South China Sea Studies think tank (NISCSS), has issued a landmark report on the United States’ military presence in the Asia-Pacific.

“There will not be a reversal in the Asia-Pacific policy, but the strategic rivalry between China and the US is likely to continue over the South China Sea,” he told reporters in Beijing.

By Peter Symonds
28 November 2016

A report released last Friday by an influential Chinese think tank, the National Institute for South China Sea Studies (NISCSS), provides details of the US military build-up in Asia under President Barack Obama and also a glimpse of the nervousness in Chinese ruling circles over the Donald Trump presidency.

The Obama administration’s “pivot to Asia” has transformed the South China Sea into a dangerous geo-political flashpoint by deliberately inflaming longstanding territorial disputes between China and its South East Asian neighbours. The US has seized on China’s land reclamation activities on islets under its control to ramp up military provocations, including three “freedom of navigation” operations within the 12-nautical-mile territorial limit claimed by China around its land features.

Territorial disputes resemble pieces on a ‘geopolitical chessboard’ as the US and China struggle for hegemony in Asia

Tensions between the US and China over the South China Sea, which have been rising over the past year, spike dramatically when an international tribunal in The Hague delivered a sweeping rebuke on 12 July of China’s behaviour in the South China Sea, including its construction of artificial islands, and found that its expansive claim to sovereignty over the waters had no legal basis. The case in the obscure Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) was initiated by the Philippines government which has clashed repeatedly with China for control of disputed islands and reefs. China boycotted the court’s verdict.

Alongside North Korea’s nuclear brinkmanship and the enduring India-Pakistan tensions, the conflict in the South China Sea has now become one of Asia’s major flashpoints. It is where the most direct confrontation between the world’s two largest economies and military powers is taking place. In this sense it has become the frontline in the unfolding ‘Cold War’ between the giants of the eastern and western Pacific.

The conflict hinges on rival claims to uninhabited rocky features – most are too small to count as islands – and control over the surrounding waters. China claims sovereignty over more than 80% of the South China Sea, a claim formulated as the ‘nine-dash line’ – a u-shaped demarcation line that cuts southwards towards Malaysia. China’s claim overlaps territorial claims by Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan.

Okinawa, host to many US military bases, braces for a Trump presidency

Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe met with US President-elect Donald Trump in New York last week. Abe was the first foreign leader to meet Trump since the US presidential election, and he conveyed to reporters afterward that he hopes to maintain strong ties with the new administration.

It's unclear whether the US-Japan security alliance came up at their meeting, but, during his campaign, Trump repeatedly said that Japan should pay more for hosting US forces.

Under a treaty that dates back to the end of World War II, Japan does not use its own Self-Defense Forces to wage war, and relies on US forces to act as a buffer against rival nations.

Japan scrambles out defence planes after Chinese bombers carry out drill in politically sensitive passage in the Pacific

Japan scrambled out defence planes after Chinese bombers flew through a key passage into the Pacific Ocean

The drill happened in the Bashi Channel and the Miyako Strait

Although legal, it happened in a politically sensitive area

It happened on a day when talks were held between the two countries

By DAVE BURKE FOR MAILONLINE

PUBLISHED: 18:37 GMT, 27 November 2016 | UPDATED: 02:09 GMT, 28 November 2016

Japanese defence planes were deployed after Chinese bombers flew through a key passage into the Pacific Ocean, it has been confirmed.

Chinese jets carried out drills in the Western Pacific, flying through the Bashi Channel - which separates Taiwan and the Philippines - and the Miyako Strait near Japan's Okinawa island.

The Chinese air force described the exercises as part of annual planned drills, which it says accord with international law and practice.

Although the flights were legal, they did pass through a sensitive area - despite not infringing into Japanese airspace.

For military-weary Okinawa, Donald Trump offers a glimmer of hope

By Anna Fifield November 24

NAHA, Japan — From Brussels to Bahrain, London to Lima, Peru, there’s concern about what Donald Trump might do as president.Military alliances and trade pacts are in doubt, and anxieties are running high.

But for many people in the southern Japanese island prefecture of Okinawa, Trump offers a slight glimmer of hope, a potential crack in the wall that has repelled their attempts to lessen the American military footprint here.

“Lots of people are saying the same thing — that they have a tiny hope that something will change, that Donald Trump might reduce the burden of military bases on Okinawa,” said Hiroko Ohshiro, 65, a retired office clerk who regularly protests base construction here.

Sun Tzu & The South China Sea

While not a model, China’s shaping operations and operational preparation of the environment may be more easily understood through the lens of a strong-influence on Chinese strategic thought, Sun Tzu’s The Art of War.

By Jules Hurst

In the past two weeks, Filipino President Duterte has agreed to 13.5 billion dollars in trade deals [3] with China, softened his country’s claims to Scarborough Shoal, and called for the expulsion of U.S. troops [4]. This Chinese relations coup, along with growing Asian appetite for alternative trade deals [5] to the stalled Trans-Pacific Partnership and the creation of the Asian infrastructure development bank [6], illuminate China’s success in its contrarian campaign to the U.S. Pivot to Asia.

Under the U.S. Department of Defense’s Joint Operational Planning Process [7], these efforts would be called shaping activities—interagency activities performed to dissuade or deter potential adversaries and to assure or solidify relationships with allies prior to the start of a conflict. As Paul Scharre recently pointed out, this phasing construct does not adapt to gray-zone conflicts [8], where adversaries aim to accomplish goals prior to major combat.

While not a model, China’s shaping operations and operational preparation of the environment may be more easily understood through the lens of a strong influence on Chinese strategic thought, Sun Tzu’s The Art of War [9]. The Art of War helps expose the motivation behind past, current, and future Chinese actions, and provides a useful frame of reference to interpret Chinese statecraft.

US-China ties can help Asia-Pacific prosper

‘The Chinese grab for fossil fuels or its military competition for naval control is not a challenge, but rather a boost for the United States’ Asia-Pacific posture. Calibrating the contraction of its overseas projection and commitments — some would call it managing the decline of an empire — the US does not fail to note that nowadays half of the world’s merchant tonnage passes though the South China Sea. Therefore, Washington will exploit any regional territorial dispute and other frictions to its own security benefit, including the cost-sharing of its military presence with local partners, as to maintain its pivotal position on the maritime edge of Asia that arches from the Arabian Gulf to the Indian Ocean, Malacca, the South and East China Seas and up to northwest–central Pacific. ‘Is China currently acting as a de facto fund-raiser for the US?’— professor Anis H. Bajrektarevic famously asked in his policy paper ‘What China wants for Asia: 1975 or 1908?’.

Contextualising the challenge, there is room for a fresh take on the issue.

The US pivot to the Asia-Pacific under the administration of US President Barack Obama has concentrated on reinforcing traditional alliances, redeploying naval forces and creating multilateral cooperation mechanisms, such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Unfortunately, mounting suspicions have undermined the Sino-US relationship and stability and prosperity in the Asia-Pacific.

Will anyone in Asia still trust America?

At the conclusion of the leaders’ summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) in Peru last week, the Pacific Rim trade group reasserted the importance of free trade in a joint communiqué. The APEC economies, including the United States, further committed to “keep our markets open and to fight against all forms of protectionism” – an intentional pushback to the growth of protectionist rhetoric, especially from the incoming administration in Washington, DC.

President-elect Donald Trump has vowed, most recently in a YouTube video released on November 21, to make America’s withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the US-led flagship free trade deal in the Asia-Pacific, a top priority for his administration. Trump’s vitriol has already eliminated any chance that Congress will ratify the pact during the remaining lame-duck period of the current administration.

America’s credibility in the region is already crumbling before the TPP’s official burial. The almost certain failure of the deal – at least in its current form – is a body blow to key US allies, especially Japan, and other important states in Southeast Asia, such as Vietnam and Singapore, that viewed the deal as the litmus test of Washington’s commitment to Asia. Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong put it best on the potential of the TPP failing: “It is your credibility as an ally [that is at stake]. How can anyone believe in you any more?”

Hopefully death knell for TPP signals US is about to change tack

US President-elect Donald Trump, his opponent in the election Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and many Chinese have at least one thing in common. None of them is fond of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement; although for very different reasons.

Clinton, when as US secretary of state, called the deal agreed among 12 Asia-Pacific countries the "gold standard" for trade agreements, but she opposed it while campaigning in order to win more union voters.

Trump has been more consistent. He has repeatedly called the TPP "a potential disaster for our country", and he announced on Monday the first thing his administration will do is to withdraw from the agreement.

Trade order battered but not beaten

The world trade system is under great and growing strain. Global trade negotiations under the auspices of the World Trade Organization have stalled and are considered dead. Regional trade initiatives, stimulated by the failures of the WTO, are being undermined by political developments. The United States, under President-elect Donald Trump, is flagging in its commitment, not only to continued liberalization, but even to deals that it has already made.

Yet this environment also offers an opportunity for governments that have traditionally been passive about such negotiations to shed their hesitance and assume leadership. This is a moment for Japan to step up and demonstrate its commitment to free and fair trade. And, while it is anathema for many to say it, Tokyo and Beijing could work together on regional trade initiatives that advance the goal of trade liberalization and promote cooperation among Asia’s two largest economies.

If Trump pulls America out of the TPP, the question is: what next?

Donald Trump this week repeated his pledge to abandon America’s commitment to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement on “day one” of his presidency.

That means on January 20, Inauguration Day, a regional trading agreement embracing nearly half of global GDP will shed the world’s biggest economy, assuming Trump carries out his threat. This would be a hugely significant step both practically and symbolically.

Trump’s action will not kill TPP stone dead, but it will rob the nascent trade pact of its cornerstone participant, and its raison d’etre from an American perspective – which was to give expression to a US pivot to Asia and provide a counterweight for China’s rise.

The question is: what next?

What can be predicted with near certainty is that a vacuum created by the US pulling back from TPP will provide unpredictable trading and political opportunities for its rival in the Asia-Pacific.

Will Trump make China great again?

Donald Trump has effectively killed the Trans-Pacific Partnership by saying the US will not ratify it. China is rubbing its hands.

Having smashed almost every electoral convention during the campaign, Donald Trump was unlikely to fall into line after securing victory. So it has proved. Other candidates might have used a press conference to outline their priorities. Mr. Trump opted for social media.

“My agenda will be based on a simple core principle, ‘putting America first’,” he declared in a YouTube video on November 22. “I am going to issue a notification of intent to withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a potential disaster for our country. Instead we will negotiate fair bilateral trade deals that bring jobs and industry back on our shores.”

If Mr. Trump follows through, he will thrust a knife into Barack Obama’s signature foreign policy: the ‘pivot to Asia’. As Mr. Obama envisaged it, the pivot would be as economic as it was military and diplomatic. The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the largest trade deal in the world, would be its crowning glory.

A message from the Asia-Pacific to President-elect Trump

24 November 2016

Author: Yoichi Funabashi, RJIF

Now that Donald Trump has won the US presidential election, it is high time for him to end the inward-looking ‘America first’ movement and start talking about the United States’ role as a globally engaged leader.

Asia hopes Trump’s provocative and isolationist campaign rhetoric will not be implemented as administration policy. The region is rife with major geopolitical hot spots — China’s rise, maritime disputes in the East and South China Seas, instability on the Korean peninsula and a recent trend of tensions between Southeast Asia’s strongman leaders and Washington. A United States withdrawal would destabilise the region and cause a split between Asia and the Pacific.

The ‘American dream’ is not based on protectionism but rather on the liberal principles of freedom, tolerance and openness. The United States has not always lived up to these ideals perfectly, but it has always set them as an ideal to be reached — and others have followed. As the world’s economic and political focus shifts to the Asia-Pacific, the region’s path is still undetermined. If the United States refuses to participate in the process of building regional architecture, it will be relegated to an alternate rule-maker, and those rules will be based on another vision.

So what does the Asia-Pacific hope for in a Trump presidency?

Asia-Pacific Leaders Consider Next Steps for TPP Accord

US President-elect Donald Trump confirmed on Monday that he would be pulling the United States out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) upon taking office, in a move that has left fellow Asia-Pacific trading partners considering how this will affect plans for deepening trade ties in the region.

The announcement was conveyed by a video message posted on YouTube, in which the incoming US leader outlined a series of executive actions which he intends to enact during his first 100 days in public office, based on what he termed “a simple core principle: putting America first.”

First among his list of actions was trade, with Trump then following with other items such as removing curbs on shale energy and coal production, as well as cutting back on business regulations and investigating “abuses of visa programmes that undercut the American worker.”

Why Trump is right, and wrong, about killing off the TPP

President-elect Donald Trump is right: The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a damaging deal and deserves to be killed off.

But he tells a half truth about why the trade accord among a dozen Pacific Rim nations is a bad deal. InTrump’s view, trade agreements like NAFTA have allowed developing countries to “steal” American manufacturing jobs and decimate the well-waged middle class. This is why he says that America should reject the TPP.

But shifting the blame for American joblessness and stagnant incomes obscures the more complex, largely home-grown pressures that led U.S. companies to offshore manufacturing production to low-wage jurisdictions. Promising to tear up certain trade deals and impose tariffs on imports (chiefly from China and Mexico) will do very little if anything to reverse the problem.

Wednesday, November 30, 2016

Tuesday, November 29, 2016

By Peter Symonds 28 November 2016

Territorial disputes resemble pieces on a ‘geopolitical chessboard’ as the US and China struggle for hegemony in Asia

Friday, November 25, 2016

By Peter Symonds
28 November 2016