Armageddon: The Devastating Consequences of a Second Korean War

Armageddon: The Devastating Consequences of a Second Korean War

The label of the North Korean state as a Marxist-Leninist regime, even of the particularly repressive Maoist Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution variety, is a misnomer. North Korea is a dynastic autocracy, ruled by a semi-divine Kim family with absolute power over both the inner court and the general populace in a way comparable to a Henry Tudor or a Caesar. Even family members who fall into disrepute are not beyond bloody retribution. Just as a Korean king once sentenced his errant crown prince son to die in a rice box of starvation in the sweltering sun, so too Kim Jong-un recently struck down his own half brother with an internationally banned chemical weapon.

The fanaticism of the North Korean public, in its devotion to its leader, is not some Broadway-like drama of feigned affectation. A visit to North Korea and discussion with members of the public at large revealed a clear devotion to the Kims. Implied was a willingness to die in defense of the juche philosophy and the great leader and his bloodline. North Korea, for almost four decades a colony of imperial Japan, has seemingly absorbed the kamikaze-like death wish of those pilots who once made a last-ditch suicidal stand to die for the emperor.

And North Korea is not Iraq. North Korea’s estimated elite thirty-thousand-strong special-operations unit is not Saddam’s Republican Guard, which was easily vanquished. These special forces lie in wait ready to burst through underground tunnels to wreak havoc on South Korea’s civilian population. Then there is the fact that North Korea is now a self-proclaimed “nuclear weapons state” with up to twenty nuclear weapons. It also holds an arsenal of chemical weapons to be delivered by an estimated ten thousand artillery pieces, stashed in mountain tunnels near the DMZ, ready to rain down on metropolitan Seoul a mere thirty-five miles away. This treasure trove of chemical death would be the envy of Syria’s Assad. (Seoul has a population of over ten million, and the metropolitan area holds over twenty-five million people.)

According to South Korea’s 2016 White Paper, North Korea, which has been developing chemical weapons since 1980, has between 2,500 and 5,000 tons of chemical weapons, including anthrax, smallpox and the plague. And CNN reported on April 13 that Japan’s Prime Minister Abe has warned publicly that “North Korea may already have the capability to deliver missiles equipped with sarin nerve agent.” North Korea will therefore not go quietly into the night.

As Kim Jong-un displays open defiance of President Trump with possible preparations for a sixth nuclear test on or around the April 15 anniversary of the founder’s birth, he has likely calculated that, despite the American president’s red line, even President Trump would not risk the devastation of a second Korean war.

Kim Jong-un’s grandfather did not hesitate in taking the most provocative of actions against previous U.S. commanders in chief. The American reconnaissance ship USS Pueblo was seized in international waters in January 1968—it remains, to this day, in North Korea—and its eighty-two remaining crew members, one being killed in the attack, were held for almost a year. President Lyndon B. Johnson, caught up in the growing quagmire of the Vietnam War, withheld retaliatory action against Pyongyang. Just a year later, in April 1969, a U.S. reconnaissance aircraft was shot down over the Sea of Japan by a North Korean MIG-21 aircraft, resulting in the deaths of all thirty-one U.S. crew members, the largest single loss of a U.S. aircrew during the entire Cold War era. Still, Pyongyang craftily calculated that, due to the escalation of the Vietnam War, Washington would keep its powder dry. Then, in the summer of 1976, following by just a year President Gerald R. Ford’s withdrawal of U.S. forces from Vietnam, Pyongyang struck at the American military again, killing two U.S. Army officers in the infamous “axe murder incident” in the DMZ. Pyongyang perceived that a war-weary Washington was not about to engage in yet another land war in Asia. So brinkmanship, even involving the loss of American lives, has always been an essential weapon in North Korea’s strategic toolbox.

As recently as 2010, Pyongyang torpedoed a South Korean naval vessel, killing forty-six seamen, and then later that same year shelled a South Korean island, killing two South Korean marines and two civilians. Again, Pyongyang escaped major consequences for its provocations, with its ally Beijing blocking an effective UN response.

Would Kim Jong-un strike again? There is, on record, the testimony of North Korea’s most recent high-level defector. The DPRK’s former vice ambassador to London, Thae Yong-ho, has spoken directly on the inner workings of Kim Jong-un’s mind. “Don’t underestimate Kim Jong Un,” Thae told CBS on February 17. His capacity to “wreak harm, not only to America, but also South Korea and the world, should not be underestimated,” Thae said. “Kim Jong Un strongly believes that once he possesses an ICBM, then he can easily scare off America.” Thae had previously told the BBC that Kim Jong-un would nuke Los Angeles if threatened. He “will press the button on these dangerous weapons when he thinks that his rule and his dynasty are threatened.”

At present, Kim is thought to lack the ICBM capability to reach the American mainland, a capability he will likely acquire in the next few years. His short- and medium-range missiles, however, could likely reach U.S. bases in South Korea, Japan and even Guam. Tokyo has, in addition, a real concern that Pyongyang, given its long-term anti-Japanese, anti-imperialist propaganda left over from the colonial era, would in a crisis rain chemical weapons down on Japanese cities.

The United States has twenty-eight thousand service personnel stationed in South Korea, which would effectively serve as the trip wire for U.S military involvement should war break out. In addition, there are thousands more U.S. military family dependents, including children, in the country. While there is a Noncombatant Evacuation Operation in place to expeditiously extricate thousands of U.S. and allied civilians from the country, two major issues remain: First, with a number of these civilians, despite U.S. base relocations, still living in the Seoul metropolitan area, would they be able to effectively escape a sudden chemical-weapons attack? Second, if in anticipation of an impending crisis Washington ordered the evacuation of U.S. dependents from South Korea, the resulting wholesale panic could cause mass population movement toward the bottom of the peninsula, a flooding of airports, an exodus of capital, and a devastating drop in the Seoul stock market.

Another victim of a second Korean war would be international trade. In 1950, when the Korean War broke out, East Asia was not, unlike today, the economic engine driving the global economy. With missiles flying across the Pacific as far as Guam or even beyond, the shelves of Walmart, stocked with goods from China and other East Asian producers, would likely go largely vacant. Cargo vessels would not wish to risk being caught in the cross fire, and the movement of U.S. troops and equipment across the Pacific would take priority.

If war erupted as a result of a U.S. surgical strike on North Korean nuclear and missile facilities, and Beijing chose to honor its defense treaty commitment to its North Korean ally, the results on the global economy would be devastating. China did, of course, intervene in Korea in 1950, when it felt its own vital national interests were threatened.

U.S. battle deaths in the Korean War, according to a 2000 Pentagon figure, are listed at 33,651, with additional figures for “other,” including deaths from illness and accident. The total Korean War–era casualties etched into the Korean War Memorial is 54,246. China lost between 132,000 and 400,000, including one of Chairman Mao’s sons. The United Kingdom, Turkey, Canada, Australia, France and other allies lost altogether between three and four thousand. As many as two million Koreans, including civilians, died as a result of the war. The war cost the United States an estimated twenty billion dollars, and China 2.5 billion dollars.

The costs of a second Korean war, then, would be massive: another possible two million or more Korean casualties; fifty thousand or more dead Americans; the potential mass military mobilization of the U.S. civilian population for another land war in Asia; the utter destruction of South Korea’s infrastructure, “the Miracle on the Han” that turned a war-devastated backwater into an economic powerhouse; possible chemical attacks on U.S. Pacific bases and South Korean and Japanese civilians; plunging Pacific stock markets; the total disruption of global trade; the possible intervention of China; and, most devastating of all, the potential use of nuclear weapons in combat for the first time since Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

So the question must be asked: is a surgical strike worth the risk?

Dennis Halpin, a former adviser on Asian issues to the House Foreign Affairs Committee, is currently a visiting scholar at the U.S.-Korea Institute at SAIS (Johns Hopkins) and a consultant at the Poblete Analysis Group.

Image: Creative Commons

 

A Labyrinth Of Deception: Hilary Clinton And The Honduran Coup

(Appreciate this is not Asia related but felt it needed to be posted)

At 4 a.m. on June 28, 2009, a battalion of 150 masked Honduran soldiers under orders from Gen. Romeo Vásquez Velásquez initiated a shootout with the Presidential Honor Guard. Honduras’s President Manuel Zelaya was then dragged in his pajamas onto a plane at gunpoint and left on the tarmac in San José, Costa Rica. Foreign Minister Patricia Rodas was also seized by Honduran soldiers and flown out in an aircraft belonging to one of Honduras’s wealthiest billionaires, Miguel Facussé. Power, cell-phone service, and broadcast facilities were promptly cut throughout the capital city Tegucigalpa, followed by a weeklong curfew enforced by tanks in the streets.

Within days, Honduras reverted to its recurrent role as a narco-state due to the coup,^[i] as had been in the cases of 1978 and 1987. Public death lists began to circulate.^[ii] By 2013 seventy percent of the police would be found “beyond saving,” paid off or themselves engaged in organized crime, including trafficking, extortion, rape, and murder for hire. Twelve percent of Congress was narco.^[iii] The son of Porfirio Lobo Sosa, President from 2010 to 2014, was a trafficker trading off of his lucrative government ties.^[iv] U.S. funds poured into the unrepentantly brutal Miguel Facussé, a supporter of the 2009 coup and a known kingpin^[v] who had acquired his billions by defrauding state enterprises and murdering scores of campesinos until he owned a fifth of the land in the Aguán Valley.^[vi]

The coup similarly represented a full takeover by the country’s big ranching, trafficking, oil-palm, and mining interests.^[vii] These interlocking political-economic families and cartel chiefs are “violence entrepreneurs” relying on the connections, the budgets, and the impunity provided by the state. This sector of the elite were long accustomed to using terror to get their way economically and politically.

The “continuing coup” has imposed a death toll that is directly caused by the security forces, not due to the surge in the mara violence. Over two hundred campesinos were killed in what is now the world’s most dangerous country for community land advocates.^[viii] 215 LGBT people were recorded murdered between July 2009 and 2015, compared to only twenty during 1994-2008, when mara violence was already on the rise.^[ix] More than 50 journalists and over 100 lawyers and public prosecutors—even Cabinet ministers—have been gunned down by hitmen and narco-police.^[x] Not even the members of the death squads have been immune.^[xi] Deadliest has been the National Party’s embezzlement from the public healthcare system, which condemned over 3,000 to their deaths over 2013-15.^[xii] Bertha Oliva, founder of the Committee of Relatives of the Disappeared/Detained, who witnessed her husband get dragged away in the night to be murdered in 1981, concludes that the post-coup regimes are unimaginably worse than the death-squad-ridden military-run regimes that prevailed in the 1980s.^[xiii] Decades of hard-won democratization and strengthening of civil society have been permanently reversed by the coup and years of consequent open state aggression.

Despite abundant expert warning, Washington has continuously and directly supported this political violence.^[xiv] Over $57 million in direct military aid has been sent to Tegucigalpa for fiscal years 2009-14, in violation of the 1997 Leahy Amendment forbidding military assistance to governments violating human rights.^[xv] The U.S. has rewarded the heavily-compromised military and police with a total of $200 million.^[xvi] The Honduran forces depend on U.S. training and funding, joint exercises, and “counterinsurgency” intelligence-sharing against campesinos. U.S. agents have sometimes fought alongside Honduran soldiers.^[xvii] The ostensible motive for increasing military aid and training was to provide leverage and influence to improve the forces’ deplorable human-rights record.

This series of disasters has occurred strictly because the coup’s perpetrators were allowed to set out all the terms, setting up a successor regime and institutionalizing the cloak of absolute impunity. The Secretary of State’s goal matched the main goal of the coup—to keep Zelaya out, at all cost. She locked out anyone who understood Honduras’s politics and history, in order to avoid changing course. Clinton concealed the preplanned and criminal nature of the coup as it unfolded, at the time when an official declaration would have had the most potentially significant impact. She repeatedly dismissed internal warnings that she was letting a dangerous and corrupt regime succeed, during the most critical time when it could have been reversed.

U.S. Ambassador to Honduras Hugo Llorens warned Clinton about the coup a week in advance.^[xviii] He threatened the plotters that the “heavens would fall” if Zelaya was removed, whether by kangaroo court or by outright coup. Washington and the world community would completely choke them off.^[xix] However the State Department had also sent John D. Negroponte to consult with the golpistas. As U.S. Ambassador from 1981 to 1985, Negroponte funded and operated the Contra War out of his massive Embassy in Tegucigalpa. He had direct relations with Honduras’s Battalion 3-16, which illegally abducted, clandestinely tortured, and summarily murdered well over 200 victims. He disregarded their atrocities—though he did intervene in selected cases, in order to preserve their secrecy. Negroponte has always vociferously denied the existence of the death squad—as a hoax by the Russian-influenced enemies of freedom.^[xx] This was not a case of mixed messages from the Department: the Ambassador had already been sidelined, neutralized by his own superiors.

On the morning of June 28, Ambassador Llorens explicitly reported to Clinton that the coup was preplanned and illegal, a “coordinated effort by the Supreme Court, the Honduran Congress, and the armed forces to prevent President Zelaya from holding a non-binding poll on a possible constituent assembly,” which would have been legal. Llorens told her that “The seizure and expulsion of the President was an intolerable act by the armed forces and we are going to have to say this loud and clear.”^[xxi]

But despite being forewarned that either legislative or judiciary removal was going to be flagrantly illegal, Clinton unsteady announced on June 29 that “We are withholding any formal legal determination” on whether the coup legally counted as a coup.^[xxii] This open redefinition of the word “coup” signaled to the new regime that expulsion of the legitimate President was acceptable, so long as the Department certified a subsequent regime as sufficiently “democratic.”^[xxiii] Clinton kept all knowledge of the coup’s illegality a state secret before and after the fact, letting the golpistas present their act as spontaneous and at least partly legal in its foundation.

Ambassador Llorens’ July 24 cable, “Open and Shut,” clearly underscored to Clinton and to the White House “that the military, Supreme Court and National Congress had conspired on June 28 in what constituted an illegal and unconstitutional coup […] a hasty, ad-hoc, extralegal, secret, 48-hour process” without even a show trial. Any talk of legality was a sham aimed at those who could reverse the coup—that is, Clinton herself.^[xxiv] The Embassy report was a thoroughly-argued smoking gun, but would remain concealed from all public knowledge; it was never used to pressure de facto interim President Roberto Micheletti. Coup supporters in the United States—most prominently the interminable hustler Lanny Davis—quickly scheduled themselves on television to “dispute basic facts about the coup which the U.S. Embassy in Honduras had reported were not subject to reasonable dispute.”^[xxv]

Clinton’s own well-trusted staffers were stonewalled if they went against the emerging party line. On August 16, 2009, Anne-Marie Slaughter begged Secretary Clinton to change course and take some noticeable action against Micheletti: “The current stalemate favors the status quo; the de facto regime has every incentive to run out the clock as long as they think we will have to accept any post-election government,”^[xxvi] she warned. Instead, Clinton kept the Micheletti regime afloat by continuing aid through the Millennium Challenge Corporation, which she had chaired as Secretary of State. She has even admitted that, in September 2009, she deliberately chose to break the law that cut off MCC aid to any “country whose duly elected head of government is deposed by military coup or decree.”^[xxvii]

Slaughter’s letter had concluded that the Department had to “find that [the] coup was a ‘military coup’ under U.S. law,” or else Clinton would continue damaging Obama and the United States’ image.^[xxviii] Clinton instead moved to concoct a factitious distinction between a “coup” and a “military coup.”^[xxix] Micheletti received $17.5 million in U.S. economic assistance in July and August 2009 alone, and Lobo Sosa would be granted another $100 million for 2010.^[xxx] Clinton undoubtedly had wanted to use the money for leverage over Micheletti, but instead it left the de facto President completely secure that any U.S. criticism was for show. Washington would back down if pressure meant restoring Zelaya to his constitutional office. In fact, the oligarchs were being fully guaranteed that aid, investment, and credit would resume flowing by 2010, regardless of conditions. No matter what funds had been suspended, the Department reassured the golpistas that they did have their backs.

From the beginning, the only entity with the power to restore Zelaya^[xxxi] had secretly decided to undercut the White House’s initial denunciation of the coup.^[xxxii] The State Department’s only goals were the November 29 elections and Micheletti’s departure from office. But without a legitimate President this strategy actually caused the coup’s moment of ultimate victory rather than its defeat.

Clinton’s upbeat view of the election was expressed by Assistant Secretary of State Thomas A. Shannon, Jr., who described it as a way for the Department to keep up the image of being the “only honest broker […] the only hope of the Honduran people” against the coup.^[xxxiii] Therefore they gave Micheletti free rein do what he wanted, negating even the harshest of State Department warnings—they offered him full impunity instead.^[xxxiv] Deputy Assistant Secretary Craig A. Kelly even edited Micheletti’s speeches, in order to make him look like an anti-coup statesman,^[xxxv] if that was what it would take to get him to step down in 2010.

Kelly had warned Clinton in September that Micheletti was engaging in “a deliberate delaying tactic designed to move the country toward elections without Zelaya.”^[xxxvi] But on November 3 Shannon attacked the constitutionalists by declaring that Washington recognized the elections whether Zelaya was reinstated or not.^[xxxvii] This decision had actually been made in September^[xxxviii]: the entirety of the intense San José negotiations between Honduras’s two Presidents had been one big Washington-orchestrated sham to neutralize Zelaya’s legitimacy and delay Honduras’s popular movements.^[xxxix] Clinton allowed the Department’s anticipated electoral milestone to be turned into a charade: she in fact burned through all of Washington’s political capital in Latin America and gave up the U.S.’s entire hand over Micheletti.

Clinton’s State Department was in fact rewarding the termination of Honduran democracy. In the weeks before the 2009 election the de facto regime suspended all freedom of expression and association, ordering soldiers to storm radio and TV stations. Hundreds were beaten and tortured in custody; female demonstrators were raped for protesting.^[xl] This naked despotism provoked the withdrawal of the hundreds of anti-coup politicians from the election. Independent Presidential candidate Carlos H. Reyes withdrew, after his wrist was broken by a police attack.^[xli] Micheletti laid a pall of terror over the campaign, strangulating any meaningful democracy: Clinton was the election’s ultimate gravedigger.

The United Nations, the European Union, the Organization of American States, the Carter Center, and most Latin American governments unequivocally denounced the November 2009 vote as illegitimate.^[xlii] Clinton however called the vote “free and fair.” Against the facts she declared in January 2010 that “The Honduras crisis has been managed to a successful conclusion […] without violence,”^[xliii] the country having “restore[d] its constitutional and democratic processes through negotiation, without imposition from the outside.”^[xliv] Shannon concluded that the election was a triumph for Clinton over both the U.S. Republican Party and those Latin American governments that he deemed “our adversaries in the region” for criticizing the election^[xlv]: the election would in fact cost Shannon his initial standing in Latin America.

Clinton’s management style constructed a nested—or Maginot-like—succession of proxies, firewalls, buffers, and intermediaries to provide herself with plausible deniability and political protection.^[xlvi] As Secretary of State she was not an autocrat ruling her Department,^[xlvii] but nevertheless carefully arranged it to produce only those outcomes that she and her most influential lackeys had personally decided upon. Only one viewpoint was allowed to drive foreign-policy outcomes once a decision had been made. She disposed the people around her in such a way that produced a classic “stovepipe” arrangement, which shuts out non-favorable data. Any advisor who persisted in transmitting anything discordant with a predetermined goal was thus filtered out. Her Department was thus converted into a veritable maze of stovepipes and stonewalls that controlled how Honduras was viewed. Types like Lanny Davis were allowed to bypass the normal structure of the Department, given an Ariadne’s thread in the labyrinth.

The Honduran coup plotters immediately hired Washington lobbyists, specifically selecting Clinton insiders for their ties to the head of U.S. foreign policy. Lanny Davis and Bennett Ratcliff were experienced surrogates for the Clintons, which is why they immediately became the coup’s two top representatives in Washington. The de facto government did not take one move without consulting Ratcliff: he wrote literally everything that the regime said at the negotiating table in San José.^[xlviii] Davis was paid over $350,000 by Micheletti,^[xlix] and later $20,000 a month by Lobo Sosa.^[l] As professional name-droppers these lobbyists were valuable to regimes solely for their personal connections to the Secretary of State. The golpistas in fact paid these two Clinton confidantes for the very same reasons that the Clintons trusted them.

Despite his highly public commission by the coup’s main financers—Camilo Atala Faraj, Jorge Canahuati Larach, and Miguel Facussé—Davis publicly denied ever discussing Honduras with Clinton in 2009.^[li] At the same time he was actually placing himself at the heart of her dealings with Tegucigalpa. He was her secret San José backchannel to Micheletti in October 2009.^[lii] She was fully aware that he was the top lobbyist for golpistas and traffickers—but since he was a longstanding underling he was allowed to directly feed her every notion that his commissioners fed to him.

Lanny Davis was hardly a stranger to authoritarian clients: he has represented leaders of such heavy caliber as Laurent Gbagbo, Teodoro Obiang Nguema, and Pervez Musharraf. “I’ve been a liberal Democrat all my life. I haven’t changed my values. But what am I supposed to do if the leader of a country comes to me and says he wants to get right with the world, and get right with the United States?”^[liii] To Robert Scheer, Davis exemplifies the art of selling out while keeping a progressive or even radical veneer.^[liv] Honduran human-rights organizations expressed disgust at Clinton’s willingness to use the Democratic Party’s “liberal sheen” to mask the coup’s atrocities and debase U.S. foreign relations^[lv]—to convince Americans that it had been a move against a tyrant trying to reelect himself. Davis himself bragged to Clinton that his dictator public-relations work was getting “hate” from the Republicans and, especially, from the left.^[lvi] His view of politics meshed nicely with Clinton’s self-image, that of always pragmatically furthering the most progressive causes possible in the teeth of unfair and extremist criticism from.

Hillary Clinton has indeed asserted that she fought and even defeated the coup.^[lvii] But that only meant a redefinition of the election in 2009—regardless of circumstance—and the departure of Micheletti in 2010 for the fraudulently-elected Lobo Sosa. “Defeat” of the coup was a mere illusion without the restoration of the legitimate and democratic President.^[lviii] Clinton shared Davis’s rhetoric but also his worldview, where rewarding a dictatorship can liberalize it and guaranteeing the continuation of a coup can be redefined into a democratic outcome.

Davis’s entire aim in 2009 had been to make golpismo palatable and plausible to Democrats, to join the Republicans in permitting the coup regimes to continue. Clinton and Davis readily agreed with hardline right-wingers as Jim DeMint, Roger Noriega, and Otto Reich that the Honduran coup was in fact not a coup.^[lix] Davis iterated the golpistas’ carefully-composed falsehoods that Zelaya had been legally impeached, that Zelaya had incurred automatic destitution from Honduras’s Presidency by trying to get himself reelected, that Llorens was a gringo interventionist Ambassador for opposing the coup.^[lx] Davis’s argument that the coup was a legal “civilian ordered arrest warrant” that had gone slightly awry^[lxi] was one that only neoconservatives held in 2009—but which Clinton would wholly adopt.

Latin American “adversaries” were chosen on fatuous geopolitical grounds: Clinton and her circle considered Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela as aggressive enemies of the United States bent on dominating the continent. They were certain that Zelaya’s Honduras had joined Russia’s orbit along with Ecuador, Bolivia, and Paraguay. Under this zero-sum view of the world—a Cold-War vintage that erased local realities—Zelaya’s restoration would be a victory for Havana and Moscow, and an unacceptable defeat for Washington.^[lxii] In fact she expressed personal revulsion for Zelaya, seeing him as nothing more than “a throwback to the caricature of a Central American strongman”^[lxiii]—as really no more legitimate than Micheletti.

Davis had been hired by the golpistas to provide not just influence on Capitol Hill or Foggy Bottom, but to generate a parallel epistemology about Honduras in the U.S. media—to make the idea of a legal coup plausible, to say that the removal was universally supported by every sector of Honduras. He managed to flabbergast Greg Grandin by declaring that “ ‘Elite’ is an ad hominem word.”^[lxiv] His commission was to rewrite what could be heard, to define whose perceptions on Honduras could be believed. His task was to make U.S. citizens not quite certain about what had happened—to destabilize the U.S. public’s ability to perceive history long enough for the coup to make itself irreversible.

Since 2009 Clinton has explicitly excused the coup—legitimating a political-economic system that relies on death lists, on the criminalization and murder of dissenters fighting the neoliberalism and militarization unleashed on Honduras by the coup regimes. In 2016, after all the atrocities were the topic of public debate, she declared that the golpistas “actually followed the law in removing President Zelaya” and had presented “a very strong argument that they had followed the constitution.” “I didn’t like the way it looked or the way they did it,” but at least it was all managed “without bloodshed.”^[lxv]

Those closest to Clinton in her personal and political life were allowed to set the agenda on Honduras and elsewhere, and she reshaped her interpretation of events to suit them. Other financially-interested outsiders would be allowed influence in the innermost aspects of the State Department’s decision-making, notably Sidney Blumenthal’s 2011 stovepipe of sensitive intelligence on Libya.^[lxvi] Blumenthal’s business associates (unsuccessfully) relied on his Clinton connection to get the regime change they needed to derive a profit.^[lxvii] As with Honduras, Clinton still saw the Libya of 2016 as a flawed but bloodless success, as a model for intervention in the Syrian Civil War.^[lxviii] Clinton’s actions in Honduras and in Libya also share a pattern of indecision followed by a hawkish snap judgment—which she never allowed to be second-guessed—in order to compensate for the initial fence-sitting.

Davis and Blumenthal had proven their personal loyalty to the Clintons by going above what was required of them, having said anything they could to attack Barack Obama in 2008, and having defended the Clintons from the Republicans in the 1990s. In return, Clinton put the weight of the Department fully behind the removals of Manuel Zelaya and Muammar Qaddafi because any viewpoint contradicting those of her private favorites was refused completely. Clinton was hardly being “played” by her unconditional friends, but she always defaulted to placing the likes of Davis and Blumenthal ahead of experts and even her own personal confidantes.

The stonewalls against Llorens and Slaughter, the channeling of pro-coup views within the Department through Shannon, and Davis’s ability to leapfrog the entire structure all had the same causation. Clinton had set up the State Department to serve her personal needs—not Honduran democracy, nor a sustainable and honorable foreign policy. Clinton prevented open and honest assessment of Honduras’s realities, locking out the professionals and allowing illusion and falsehood to become unquestionable doctrine.

In a cable from November 2009 Zelaya had “stressed that if he was not restored the elections would not be legitimate and those involved in the coup would not [sic] be able to free themselves from the stigma of their actions […] He predicted that if he was not restored that Honduras faced a bleak future led by a weak and discredited government and with a high probability of violence and civil conflict.” U.S. Ambassador Llorens irritatedly dismissed this as typical zelayista self-importance.^[lxix] Even when told exactly what was going to happen to Honduras, it had come from the wrong messenger and bore the wrong message for the Department of State that Hillary Clinton had created.

*Daniel Beckman, Research Fellow at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs

Additional editorial support provided by Alex Rawley and Kayla Whitlock, Research Associates at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs

 

Rethinking Australia’s relationship with China

Rethinking Australia’s relationship with China

Australia needs to rethink its relationship with China. In addition to small but important policy changes, this also means thinking big — strategically and for the long term. It is an undertaking that requires the full engagement of Australian society: politicians, public servants, military officers, business leaders, educational institutions, youth groups and community associations.

Australia is the G20 country that is most dependent on China in terms of export revenue. Nearly one-third of Australia’s exports by value are sold to China. Chinese tourists are the largest group of visitors coming to our shores — more than 1 million each year — and the biggest spenders once they get here. An estimated 54 per cent of Chinese demand for iron ore is met by Australian exports. Nearly one-fifth of Chinese students abroad choose Australia as the place to pursue their studies.

Chinese immigrants have been part of Australian society since the early 19th century. Today there are 482,000 Australian residents who were born in China and Mandarin is the second most commonly spoken language. Over the past four decades, 115 sister-city and sister-state relationships have formed between Australia and China; the list even includes a partnership between Wagga Wagga, a town of 63,000 residents, and Kunming, a provincial capital with 100 times that population.

But there are also downsides to closer interaction: the Chinese government can exert pressure on our political leaders and citizens to accept its point of view, sometimes in ways contrary to Australian values.  For example, the Chinese government is known to monitor Chinese visitors to Australia and even Australian citizens of Chinese descent—such as Chinese international students or adherents of Falun Gong—as to their activities which might run contrary to Chinese interests.

So is Australia ready for a future where China presents enormous opportunities and challenges for Australians, and what would it look like?

Making China the focus of a regular whole-cabinet meeting would be a start. A meeting of this kind, which would focus on a comprehen­sive approach to China, has not been convened for over a decade. While the Australian government’s National Security Committee has approved a new China strategy , it is imperative to bring together all federal ministers together to exclusively discuss China. Key federal government department secretaries, in turn, should regularly focus on China.

Second, Australian businesses and state and federal governments should jointly support the establishment of a long-term, extensive exchange pro­gram for the next generation of Australian and Chinese rising stars. Australian participants should be senior state and federal officials, promising backbenchers and future CEOs, among others. China’s participants should include vice-governors and provincial deputy party secretaries, deputy mayors of major Chinese cities and future business leaders.

An intensive exchange program would provide firsthand experience of both countries’ political and economic landscapes and create professional networks and personal friendships. For Australians, it will mean interacting with men and women who will rise to paramount positions of power in China in the next 10 years. It is in Australia’s inter­ests that at least one of China’s top leaders in 2027 has an intimate knowledge of Australia.

Third, Australia needs a peak national body with a mandate to advance the Australia–China relationship as it enters an unpredict­able and challenging era. This organisation should serve as an honest broker and a reliable safety net, even when inevitable ten­sions put enormous pressure on the relationship. With people-to-people ties as its focus, its activities should include a national lecture series, workshops, retreats and educational pro­grams in Australia and China. It should draw together the experience and knowledge of the innumerable Australians and Chinese who have created the remarkable dynamic between the two countries over the years.

Such an organisation would be useful to Australia because it would offer a trusted yet unofficial forum where visiting Chinese lead­ers could engage with Australian experts and the broader public. It could even assume responsibility for the Australia–China High Level Dialogue and other fora to ensure frank discussions in an informal setting. Its funding should derive from both government and private sources. Strong statutory regulations and a mandate for autonomy should be implemented to keep this body independent of either government.

Fourth, Asian literacy needs to be institutionalised. Learning about Asian cultures and societies should be made compulsory as soon as Australians start school. This initiative is not merely about learning Asian languages — though this is a critical component. Rather, this big idea aims for every Australian child and young adult, regardless of their talents and particular path, to gain a deeper knowledge of the cultures and societies in Asia — Australia’s home region. An Asian literacy course should also be compulsory for all university undergraduate students.

This will prepare Australians for a future in which Asia, particularly China, will be of overwhelming signifi­cance. It could also counter potential xenophobia and racism that is grounded in ignorance.

The educational policy need not focus specifically on China. But a richer understanding of Asian cultures and societies will inescapably generate a deeper appreciation of China’s historically prominent influence as well as its role and ambitions in the region today.

But thinking big is not enough. Big ideas demand leadership, determination and a long-term vision. A strong endorsement from Prime Minister Turnbull for a new approach to China is imperative, but even that is not enough. Ultimately it is up to leaders and citizens across society to transform Australia’s engagement with China. That begins with understanding that China is increasingly important for the things that Australians value most: principles, prosperity and security.

For Australia, getting China right is more important than ever before.

Bates Gill is Professor of Asia Pacific Strategic Studies at The Australian National University and Linda Jakobson is Founding Director of China Matters.

 

Mindanao no place for a caliphate

Mindanao no place for a caliphate

The impending fall of Mosul and Raqqa have stoked concerns over the future of Islamic State (IS) fighters. As the coalition dragnet falls upon the so-called caliphate, it is expected that jihadists will try to escape, either returning to their home countries or coalescing into other conflict regions. Southeast Asia has recently been cast as the potential site for a replacement caliphate. Mindanao’s decades-long struggle with Islamist extremism has made it a constant trope for analysts seeking to portray the southern Philippines as the next epicentre for international terrorism.

Observers have pushed the narrative that an imminent IS province in Mindanao may ultimately lead to the establishment of a new Southeast Asia-based caliphate. This perspective neglects the distinct socio-economic realities in the southern Philippines. While it is true that jihadist camps were established in central Mindanao, they were intended as training camps for a small foreign cadre. No jihadist camp in Mindanao, whether occupied by foreign or Filipino militants, was permanently occupied beyond the need for tactical expediencies.

Armed conflict in Mindanao is a volatile mix of clan networks, political rivalries and the utilitarian use of religious narratives rooted in the history of the region. Collusion between local officials, tribal leaders and clan-centred private armies in organised criminal activities can be traced back to the Spanish colonial period, even before the foundation of the modern Philippine state.

Rather than providing a semblance of governance as seen in Raqqa, Filipino militants such as the Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG) subsist through criminal acts such as extortion and kidnapping for ransom. Since the death of founder Abdurajak Abubakar Janajalani, the ASG has lost its ideological moorings and instead regressed into the western Mindanao ransom industry. Reliance on criminal acts is symptomatic of the lack of ideological commitment by ASG members and the largely financial motivations that drive membership.

Isnilon Hapilon, the leader of the ASG Basilan faction, tried to gain the attention of the IS leadership by pledging allegiance to IS ‘caliph’ (spiritual leader) Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in 2014. The move was likely motivated by Hapilon’s desire to increase his influence vis-à-vis the ASG Sulu faction, which was always flush from successful ransom activities. In response the IS leadership, through its Dabiq publication, mentioned that it had accepted the pledge from Hapilon but had ‘delayed the announcement of their respective [wilayah]’.

The reluctance of the IS leadership to declare a wilayah (province) is probably due to the present inability of Hapilon’s faction to exercise de facto governance. But even if Hapilon could somehow control wide swathes of Mindanao, changes in the strategic priorities of IS may make it moot. There is speculation that IS may already have abandoned its wilayah-based expansion model. Instead of being declared an emir, Hapilon was referred to as a ‘wali’ or governor of an IS ‘division’, with the Philippines being considered part of ‘the land of jihad’ and not as the ‘land of the caliphate’.

Manila is presently trying to jumpstart the stalled Mindanao peace process by reconvening the Bangsamoro Transition Commission (BTC). The BTC is tasked with drafting the basic law that will establish a new autonomous Bangsamoro government in Mindanao. It is hoped that meaningful political autonomy in Mindanao will insulate Filipino Muslims from extremist recruitment and diminish the attraction of IS propaganda.

The complexity of conflict in Mindanao is recognised by the overarching military strategy being pursued by the Duterte administration. The Armed Forces of the Philippines Development Support and Security Plan prescribes the use of intelligence-driven combat operations against terrorist groups like the ASG. Recent operations demonstrated growing military capability to conduct kinetic operations against the ASG.

But at the strategic level, Duterte’s perspective becomes ambiguous. The administration has oscillated from a hard-line to a soft approach and back. Duterte himself has referred to the ASG as desperate men driven by poverty to barbarity, men he literally intends to eat raw with vinegar and salt. These conflicting messages may harm efforts to construct a narrative against extremist groups as well as undertake development activities to address the roots of conflict. The sympathetic Duterte perspective where the ASG are seen as driven to desperation could legitimise the group’s extortion and kidnapping activities.

Beyond domestic audiences, Duterte’s colourful language may complicate multilateral counterterrorism cooperation especially with Western allies such as the United States. Duterte had no qualms using colonial atrocities in Mindanao from the early 1900s to underpin his anti-US opinions. It is difficult to imagine the redeployment of a US military advisory unit to Mindanao in such a political climate.

Closer to home, Duterte’s close affinity to China could also alienate ASEAN members who are critical to securing the Sulu and Sulawesi Seas. The tri-border area shared by the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia are prime target areas for ASG ransom activities targeting foreigners. The immediate solution was to strengthen regional cooperation. Joint maritime patrols to secure the Sulawesi and Sulu Seas were reinvigorated after the 3rd Trilateral Defence Minister’s Meeting in August 2016 in response to a series of kidnappings that victimised Indonesian and Malaysian citizens.

The idea of an IS caliphate is unlikely to perish with the retaking of Mosul and Raqqa. But the physical manifestation of the IS vision requires a confluence of history and socio-economic realities. It is irresponsible to assume that an illicit institution could be transplanted from the plains of the Levant to the jungles of Mindanao.

Joseph Franco is a Research Fellow with the Centre of Excellence for National Security (CENS), a constituent unit of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

 

eBook Bahasa Indonesia version “Merdeka Square”

eBook Bahasa Indonesia version “Merdeka Square”

http://www.portcampbellpress.com.au/TitleDetail.php?recordID=9781925282313

 

Indonesia - Intrik Perebutan Takhta Istana, 1965-1967 "Bagaimana kalau kita memanfaatkan tanggal Lima Oktober?" Saran Yani, ketika Dewan Jenderal mengadakan rapat untuk melakukan perlawanan terhadap Komunis pada 5 Oktober. "...kita harus melangsungkan gerakan sebelum 5 Oktoberodan menangkap (anggota) Dewan itu pada hari Kermerdekan Cina," kata Soebandrio, ketika mereka (Aidit, Soebandrio dan Omar Dhanai) membahas rencana untuk menghalangi rencana Nasution mengambil alih Negara. Peristiwa 1965 merupakan puncak dari segala pertarungan ideologis. Skenario-skenario politik pelbagai pihak dimainkan seperti kisah "Bharatayudha". Akibat konflik ini rakyat sipil yang tidak tahu apa-apa menjadi korban, layaknya wayang, yang siap "dikorbankan" oleh dalangnya. MERDEKA SQUARE ditulis berdasarkan penelitian atas fakta-fakta sejarah serta ingatan pribadi Kerry B. Collison selama bertugas di Jakarta. Memaparkan tentang pertarungan dua kubu, Angkatan Darat dan PKI yang klimaks pada 30 September 1965. Bagainman kisah selanjutnya? Dan siapakah pemenang konflik perebutan kukasa ini?   Reviewers praised Kerry Collison's bestselling first novel, Timor Man. "... hard to put down..." The Canberra Times "... certainly a powerful doomsday thriller..." Australian Book Review "... inspired by his long experience... intriguing plot... vivid descriptions." Sydney Morning Herald

Buy this ebook from:

iBookstore (Australia) (Also available on the iBookstore in: US, Canada, UK, New Zealand, France, Germany and 44 other countries) Kobobooks.com (also available from Kobo partners including: Bookworld, Chapters/Indigo, WH Smith, Pages & Pages) Booktopia.com.au

Malaysians succumb todreaded leptospirosis, or rat urine disease, following routine excursions to food stalls

Malaysians succumb todreaded leptospirosis, or rat urine disease, following routine excursions to food stalls

MALAYSIANS love to boast of their ability to withstand many things foul and profane — yes, we have an iron will. But better than that, we have cast iron stomachs, too.

We endure filth and scum, and we do so even in the establishments serving us food. Malaysians don’t seem to have a significant problem eating in grimy eateries, tolerating their questionable levels of hygiene just because they are convenient or serve otherworldly dishes.

Our foreign friends are told they have not had a proper Malaysian gastronomic experience if they don’t dine alfresco next to disgusting drains, sewage pipes or heaps of garbage. Furry creatures scampering between tables and nibbling on the toes of patrons are dismissed as “normal” and part of an enriching culinary experience. We laugh these incidents off, and sneer at those who don’t, telling them to be “more Malaysian-lah”.

But, it’s no laughing matter. A number of people have succumbed to the dreaded leptospirosis, or rat urine disease, following routine excursions to their favourite foodstalls.

Viral posts showing, among others, rodents scrabbling at loaves of bread for sale, and renowned eateries forced to shut down due to the presence of rats, underscore the enormity of the problem, and the filthiness we have condoned for so long. And, it’s not just backlane eateries that harbour these bearers of plague and pestilence.

Rats have been sighted at upmarket bakeries and well-known neighbourhood convenience stores. The most recent widely shared post was a video of a rodent nestled snugly among grocery items at an established supermarket in an upper middle-class neighbourhood in Kuala Lumpur.

Gratefully, Aeon 1Utama was ordered to close until it passes the Health Ministry’s inspection.

The thing with Malaysians is, however, that it won’t be long before the rot sets in again, once the public forgets and enforcers look the other way.

The hallmark of a First World nation is when social and civic responsibilities are a way of life and exist even in the absence of legislation, enforcement or incentives. But, in Malaysia, there is action only when there is enforcement. We keep clean only when we are compelled to, and act only when threatened with punishment.

While the country has the most modern amenities, First World infrastructure, and a TN50 vision, the general mentality of Malaysians remain, woefully, third world. This blasé attitude is so deeply entrenched that it will likely be there even in the far flung future, when what is now an impossibility — non-race based politics and clinching the Miss Universe crown — becomes reality.

This mentality is also evident in other spheres of our lives. We see it in motorists who barrel into pedestrians at zebra-crossings, those who throw rubbish into the sea or out of moving cars, and do not clean up after themselves at picnic spots, recreational areas, and self-service restaurants.

We see it when the physically able park cars in spots designated for the handicapped, occupy seats in public buses and trains meant for the pregnant and infirm, and when smokers light up at non-smoking areas.

Filthy and perpetually wet public toilets, and the heaps of garbage under “No Littering” signs clearly highlight our low class mindset, too.

It also explains why the children who careen on mosquito bikes unsupervised in the middle of the road can boldly return a few weeks later to do the same even after most of their friends are killed horrifically in an accident.

On our roads too, speed demons and traffic offenders drive heavy vehicles with all the impunity and recklessness of wounded elephants. They have flouted countless traffic laws and killed and maimed many road users, and continue to. This “no enforcer, no need to heed the law” attitude is testament to a third world mentality.

We do things only when we have to, even though it benefits us directly as an individual, or the community as a whole. This is why we manage to resolve most problems only temporarily.

We must overhaul how we think as there is no point having the longest this and tallest that if our attitudes remain the same as our primitive hunter-gatherer tribal forebears.

The facade of an advanced nation is easily achievable. We can take pride in the nation’s development, its gleaming skyscrapers, futuristic airports, and eventual high speed trains, but socially, culturally and mentally, we must all change first, one way or the other.

Chok Suat Ling, the award-winning columnist takes a light and breezy look at hot, everyday topics. A law grad turned journalist, she is now NST Associate Editor News

 

ASIA LINK AND THE AUSTRALIA INDONESIA BUSINESS COUNCIL INVITATION

Asialink Business,  and the Australia Indonesia Business Council are delighted to invite you to attend State of the Nation: Indonesia Indonesia is the world’s third-largest democracy and the largest economy in Southeast Asia. In recent years, Indonesia’s gross domestic product (GDP) has been growing at more than five percent annually on the back of a stable democratic government, open trade and investment policies, increasing domestic consumption, abundant natural resources and a growing skilled workforce. Profound changes in Indonesia’s economy and society in recent decades have combined to make it an increasingly attractive destination for foreign businesses. And Australia, as a close regional neighbour, is well positioned to take advantage. The expert panellists will address the concerns about corruption and bureaucracy in Indonesia and how Australian businesses can succeed in this environment. This event will also touch on the IA-CEPA negotiations as well as provide case studies into Australian businesses currently engaged with Indonesia.