Singapore and the Sea of Discontent

Southeast Asia is home to roughly 630 million people, who combined produce a GDP of around 2.4 trillion dollars. It is also a region beset with complicated territorial squabbles, stemming from border to sea-lane disputes. There are many fault lines in this region, and none are more volatile than the South China Sea, a misnomer by some accounts but also a fragile zone of conflict on the precipice of conflict.

As an economic and military juggernaut, China is beginning to realize the challenges it faces in the 21st century. One is energy and the other is territory, hence when 80 percent of Chinese oil imports flow through the Strait of Malacca and into the South China Sea, and when competing nations contest the nine-dashed line, it is clear that China will, short of naval warfare, do everything in its power to establish dominance in a region contested by other naval powers.

Singapore is economically tied to the boom in China, and diplomatically associated with the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN). At present, Singapore is not heeding the maxim si vis pacem para bellum (if you want peace, prepare for war). In short, Singapore’s foreign policy initiatives are based on a simplistic calculation that the cost of war in the region will exceed any gains, which it believes would deter any nation from initiating hostilities. It is a dangerous assumption.

ASEAN has been in existence for a little more than half a century, yet despite its history, it has yet to prove itself to be an influential organization like Mercosur or the African Union. ASEAN’s failure lies in its inability to wrest power from its member states and adjudicate on matters of political or economic importance. Its impotence lies in its inability to become a supranational power with decision-making abilities in the mold of the EU, leaving it a weak, fragmented and feeble institution reflective of the ineffectual treaties and declarations in place.

This poses a geopolitical challenge for weaker countries that have territorial disputes with militarily strong nations in the region. For instance, China has always claimed the nine-dashed line demarcates its territory, and in pushing this claim it prefers to bypass the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, to negotiate its own terms bilaterally with other contesting parties.

The use of ASEAN as an arbiter in such matters is unwise, as it has always used consensus-based negotiations, as reflected in its charter, declarations and treaties. The 2002 Declaration of Conduct of Parties is structurally and legally insufficient to deal with the territorial issues of the South China Sea, as it cannot legally force states to change their behavior, but is rather based on the consensus and goodwill of the parties.

The Treaty of Amity and Cooperation is a framework intended to deal with regional disputes, but like the DOC, it lacks a mechanism to legally enforce any ruling. This was done specifically so as to not contravene Chapter XVI, Article 103 of the United Nations Charter. The apparent weakness of ASEAN as a mediating body is clear, and with growing regional tensions the bloc could find itself playing a peripheral role on an issue of central importance.

This is where Singapore comes into play. As a country of 5.3 million people, Singapore is not viewed as a military threat in the South or East China Sea. If Singapore could strategically position itself in a central role, it could be expected to mediate with the contesting parties and become a point of contact to facilitate discussions and negotiations between China, Japan, and the U.S. This year’s Shangri-La Dialogue is an apt example of how it can maintain such a unique position.

Singapore is neither a military nor an economic heavyweight, hence it has to calculate the future economic costs should China ever decide to blockade vital sea lanes that account for 33 per cent of world sea-borne trade. The city state should plan ahead by being politically active and invested in this dispute, most usefully by positioning itself as a mediating force with the explicit intention to avert and possibly stave off both possible economic sanctions and naval confrontations in the region.

A financial hub for most of Southeast Asia, Singapore has the financial means to pursue this path. For instance, it could create a Regional Maritime Forum, where important political actors from the principal claimant countries can converge to deliberate on a preliminary treaty that would codify a unified position towards the ongoing disputes.

Second, Singapore should prevail on the signatories to the DOC to replace the pact with a more robust provisional agreement that addresses, say, military activities within exclusive economic zones and perhaps even the regional naval arms race. That, of course, would be very difficult to achieve, but a lengthy negotiation process could be justified by the end goal of regional stability.

Finally, Singapore should call for the establishment of a South China Sea Arbitration Court, with a rules-based procedure based partly on the processes of UNCLOS. China could dismiss Singapore as a gadfly, but it understands better than anyone that having Singapore drive the process would provide it with a better outcome than having its claims contested in The Hague. China knows it can negotiate a better deal within the region with Singapore at its helm. Singapore’s close cultural and linguistic ties to China would also help.

ASEAN has outlived its usefulness and it is in the region’s best interest if a politically neutral entity assumes the mantle of responsibility. Singapore could be a good candidate.

Suhith Sitharthan has worked as a Maritime Security Analyst as well as a Southeast and Northeast Asian research analyst for a top think tank in Australia.

Australia’s Economic Diplomacy

A sensible sounding policy needs the structure to support it.

For a newly elected government, there is nothing more difficult than trying to sketch out a grand, overarching policy idea ahead of time. Without any track record to go by, even the most well thought-out proposals can start to sound vague and lofty, reinterpreted by both supporters and detractors alike to suit their own political views. Think of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s Chinese Dream, which means political and economic reform for some and a stronger, nationalist military for others. And when rhetoric outpaces the reality on the ground, it only invites criticism and constrains implementation. The U.S. “pivot” to Asia looked far more promising before TPP negotiations began to stall, threatening the much larger promise of balanced engagement with the region.

This predicament would have likely been on the minds of Julie Bishop, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, and Andrew Robb, the Minister for Trade and Investment, as they launched the government’s economic diplomacy agenda on April 18 at the Lowy Institute. The term “economic diplomacy” has been frequently used by Bishop in particular since the Coalition government came to power. Economic diplomacy is front and center in most of the minister’s big foreign policy speeches and often makes an appearance in her talking points. Less clear is what it actually means.

The easiest way to grasp the concept is to look at what it aims to achieve. The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) defines four key pillars: promoting trade, encouraging growth, attracting investment, and supporting Australian businesses. All of these goals have to varying degrees played a major role in Australia’s foreign policy. Economic diplomacy is best seen as an attempt to tie these loose ends together into one common thread. On the lofty side of things is the belief that Australia’s prosperity depends on the growth and vitality of the global economy. “If the goal of traditional diplomacy is peace,” Bishop suggested, “then the goal of economic diplomacy is peace and prosperity.” On the practical side is a recognition that Australia owes much of its recent economic success to liberal and open markets, broadly favorable business conditions and strong ties with the world’s most innovative and dynamic economies.

In her speech, Bishop describes economic diplomacy as an “overarching principle that puts strong economic outcomes at the centre of our foreign, trade, investment, tourism and development assistance policies.” If that seems like a fairly accurate reflection of what most countries do most of the time, it’s because it is. The difference perhaps has less to do with the outward-focused goals and more with the internal changes taking place. Economic diplomacy is seen as a way for reorganizing the government’s approach to foreign policy.

Drawing on a global network of 95 ambassadors, high commissioners and consul generals and 72 trade commissioners, the minister declared that the government “will be harnessing broader aspects of our international diplomatic work” to achieve these economic outcomes. This includes much closer engagement with NGOs, the private sector and the business community. To achieve this, Bishop requested an economic diplomacy strategy from all of 95 heads of mission, detailing how each post could advance Australia’s trade, growth, investment and business interests. The result is over 2,000 “specific, practical ideas to implement” – a number that would surely test the department’s capacity in the best of times, let alone after successive years of budgetary cuts and “efficiency dividends.”

This points, of course, to the key predicament at the heart of economic diplomacy: is the government able to follow through effectively in implementation. In terms of size and geographic reach, Australia has the smallest diplomatic footprint of any G20 nation and following the merger with AusAID, DFAT has experienced considerable staffing cuts. Even as the department has achieved notable wins of late with free trade agreements with Japan and South Korea, for instance, recent research suggests that Australian exporters are failing to take advantage of the gains FTAs provide and that a “knowledge gap” exists amongst Australian businesses. Dealing with these more intractable everyday challenges is often just as important as securing big trade deals or introducing new initiatives.

Although Bishop envisions a much more prominent role for NGOs and the business community, ensuring economic diplomacy as an “overarching principle” has a credible “overarching structure” will be crucial. Giving the department the resources and space necessary to lead a long-term whole-of-government approach was probably the most important point left out of what is an otherwise smart and sensible policy shift.

The Diplomat

Why Japan's Abe and India's Modi Are Asia's New Best Friends

 

 

India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrives in Japan Saturday for a five-day state visit focused on trade and defense ties. India and Japan have mutual concerns about China's rise – but China is also both countries' largest trade partner.

Even by Japan’s standards of hospitality, it is hard to recall a time in recent years when the visit of a foreign leader has been so eagerly awaited.

The blossoming economic and diplomatic ties between Tokyo and New Delhi were evident even before India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, leaves Saturday for his first major diplomatic debut: a five-day state visit to Tokyo that will include talks with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and an audience with the emperor and empress.

In a tweet posted in Japanese and English, Mr. Modi expressed “excitement” over his meeting with Mr. Abe, adding that he “deeply respects his leadership and enjoys a warm relationship with him.” Abe reciprocated, tweeting that “India has a special place in my heart.”

The two leaders will need to draw on that personal affinity as Modi arrives in the ancient capital of Kyoto for a visit framed by mutual concern over their unpredictable and increasingly assertive neighbor China. Japan and India face a tricky act balancing their apprehension over China’s vigorous territorial claims with their desires to court its huge markets.

India, locked in a Himalayan border dispute with China, is also concerned about China's closer ties with neighboring Sri Lanka and Pakistan. Diplomatically, Tokyo and Beijing remain all but estranged after two years of heightened tensions over sovereignty of the Senkaku-Diaoyu island chain in the South China Sea. Both countries fear Chinese naval aggression in the economically vital sea lanes of the East and South China seas.

Closer military cooperation between India and Japan will help correct the current “disequilibrium” in the region caused by China’s rapid rise, says Brahma Chellaney, a professor of strategic studies at the Center for Policy Research in New Delhi.

“China, India, and Japan form Asia’s strategic triangle. If side A were China, side B were India, and side C were Japan, the sum of B plus C will be always greater than A,” Mr. Chellaney says. “That is what is bringing Japan and India closer. That also is the reason why China sees a Japan-India axis as a strategic nightmare.”

Security cooperation

In the four months since he took office, Modi’s caution over Chinese naval power has quickly come to mirror that of Abe. Japan participated in recent joint exercises between India and the United States in the Pacific Ocean.

“Little else is more reassuring, and promising, for Japan than Delhi pronouncing that they are willing to collaborate with Tokyo not only on economic development but also on security provision in the vital sea passage ways from the Indian Ocean through the Straits of Malacca and even beyond,” says Tomohiko Taniguchi, a special adviser to the Abe administration.

Building closer Japan-India defense ties has acquired greater urgency amid signs that the US is eager for its allies to take more responsibility for regional security.

But it would be wrong to expect Modi’s visit to produce any agreement that smacks of a new anti-Chinese coalition, says Rory Medcalf, a former Australian diplomat in India and now director of the international security program at the Lowy Institute for International Policy in Sydney.

Tokyo and Delhi, Mr. Medcalf says, “will deepen cooperation in military exercises, intelligence, and even technology, but that does not mean they would put their direct interests at risk to help the other in a crisis.”

Nationalist leanings and firm friendship

The leaders' shared nationalist leanings and friendship will make it easier to navigating not only China but civil nuclear cooperation, another area of mutual interest.

“Abe and Modi share political values ­– free-market reforms, soft nationalism, and Asianism,” says Prof. Chellaney. “Not surprisingly, they have established a close personal rapport.”

As they contemplate the regional security environment over cups of bitter green tea at a traditional tea ceremony in Tokyo on Monday, Modi and Abe will be aware that their approach to China must look beyond security concerns if it is to stand any chance of success.

China is India’s biggest trading partner, with annual two-way trade accounting for about 9 percent of the country’s total commerce, according to India’s Commerce ministry. China is also Japan’s biggest trade partner, with trade between the two countries expected to grow for the first time for three years in 2014 after it was dented by fallout from the Senkaku-Diaoyu islands dispute.

The idea, therefore, that Japan’s recent diplomatic overtures to the US, Australia, and now India are the first step in a regional power grab are off the mark, according to officials close to Abe.

“The truth of the matter is that none of the above can afford to alienate China,” said one official on condition of anonymity. He predicted a slight ease in tensions as Beijing prepares to host the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in November, but added that in the long-term, Japan and its regional partners “should continue to build their joint deterrence power over an extremely ambitious elephant in the room.”

Modi, who will be accompanied by a dozen businessmen who include the country’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani, will use the visit to boost exports and seek Japanese investment in Indian infrastructure, including a high-speed rail network linking the financial capital Mumbai with the commercial city of Ahmedabad.

In return he will offer exports of up to 2,000 tons a year of rare earth metals, thereby reducing Japan’s dependence on Chinese exports of the materials. The Christian Science Monitor By Justin McCurry, Correspondent

 

Neighbours wary as another arms deal between Beijing and Moscow looms

                                                       The S-400 system

Beijing and Moscow are growing ever closer, and the sale of Russian anti-aircraft missiles will only make their neighbours more wary

Intensive military cooperation between China and Russia is set to raise the eyebrows of their wary neighbours.

One of the developments being closely watched is the negotiations between Beijing and Moscow over the sale of the S-400 anti-aircraft missile system. While they have dragged on since 2010, a senior Russian official said progress was made recently.

"The chances that China may be the first foreign buyer [of S-400s] are high," the official Voice of Russia cited the Kremlin's chief of staff, Sergei Ivanov, as saying last month. But he didn't give any additional details.

If the deal is approved, it will be their third big arms deal since last year.

The S-400 Triumph, a new-generation system upgraded from the S-300, which the PLA is using, is capable of countering all air attack weapons, including tactical and strategic aircraft, ballistic missiles and hypersonic targets such as the US' F-35 fighter jet.

Both Beijing and Moscow need to get something from each other

Adviser Wang Xudong

With a range of 2,400km, the S-400 can engage up to 36 targets simultaneously with as many as 72 missiles at altitudes of five metres to 30km.

Dr Rajeswari Rajagopalan, a defence analyst at the New Delhi-based Observer Research Foundation think tank, said as India also relied more on Russian arms and military supplies, the S-400 deal between Moscow and Beijing would make India increasingly concerned.

"The Russian insensitivity in selling advanced weapons and platforms to China at the cost of India is a reflection of the new emerging dynamics, and India has to take measures to ensure its own maneuverability while maximising its gains," she said.

"The S-400 deal will not push India to come up with new military strategies, but [will] change geopolitical development and the balance of power in Asia."

Wang Xudong, an adviser on satellites to the central government, said China had other new advanced weapons and missile systems, such as the DF-21D anti-ship ballistic missile, known as a carrier killer, and the DF-41, which is capable of hitting anywhere in the United States.

"China wants to buy the S-400 missile system from Russia because both Beijing and Moscow need to get something from each other," Wang said, adding that Russia needed Chinese funding for research work.

"The S-400 missile system will provide the PLA [with] an alternative weapon, if necessary, and Beijing also doesn't need to spend so much time on producing such a sophisticated armament as tension in the East and South China seas all remind us to be well prepared."

Macau-based military expert Antony Wong Dong said a deal between Russia and China would encourage the US to build closer relationships with the Philippines, Vietnam and even Taiwan.

"It's not clear [how] the military cooperation between Beijing and Moscow will go, but the US would definitely keep a close eye on it, and come up with new strategies," he said.

Wong said the West's decision to punish and isolate Russia in the aftermath of the Ukraine crisis had drawn Moscow closer to Beijing.

"The PLA is expecting to learn some particular missile technologies from the S-400 system. I think China will soon produce a new type of anti-aircraft missile that compares with S-400 because Chinese are [good] copycats," Wong said.

China and Russia are expected to cooperate further on developing the IL-476 transport aircraft and IL-78 airborne refuelling tanker, according to state media in both countries.

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as Arms deal will send message to world . Photo: AFP

Pakistan, obsessed over India, risks anarchy

Islamabad cannot afford Delhi as a lasting enemy, yet agitators won't let leaders make peace

The elaborate diplomatic dance between India and Pakistan has been interrupted once again. The two sides remain far from a major breakthrough in their troubled relationship. As long as the Pakistani Army continues to view India as an existential threat and maintains its grip over security policy, the two countries may never achieve permanent peace.

India called off the meeting between its Foreign Secretary Sujata Singh and her Pakistani counterpart Aizaz Chaudhry scheduled for Monday in Islamabad, after Pakistan's High Commissioner in Delhi met Kashmiri separatist leaders. This has ended the euphoria following Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's journey to New Delhi for the inauguration of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in May. Pakistan's decision to remind Indians of their dispute over Kashmir followed Modi's comments about Pakistani support for terrorism during a recent visit to Kargil, where the two countries fought a war in 1999.

Both Sharif and Modi spoke of the need to bury the hatchet during their meeting on occasion of Modi's inauguration. But the expressions of desire for normalisation could not contain the more substantive problems in the India-Pakistan relationship. India remains unhappy over Pakistan's failure to prosecute terrorists involved in the 2008 Mumbai attacks. Sharif, on the other hand, must deal with hardliners in Pakistan's military who insist on seeing India as their country's permanent enemy - unwilling to look too closely at the terrorists involved in the attack.

For India, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks were as much a challenge as the 9/11 assault was for Americans. The 12 coordinated shootings and bombings carried out by ten Pakistani terrorists killed 164 people and terrorised India's commercial capital for almost three days before commandos flushed them out of various buildings, including five-star hotels and a Jewish Community Centre. The images of the attacks, telecast live into Indian homes, are seared in the memory of most Indians.

Although Pakistan arrested several individuals involved in planning and executing the Mumbai attacks, prosecution has been repeatedly delayed. Intelligence reports, including some from US sources, have indicated that the detained commanders of Lashkar-e-Taiba, or LeT, enjoy amenities not available to prisoners. Some have been found passing instructions on the phone to operatives. Recently, their trial was once again postponed.

LeT chief Hafiz Muhammad Sayeed remains free, appearing on television spouting venom against India, Israel and the United States from his massive headquarters near Lahore. Indian officials read Pakistan's refusal to prosecute the 26/11 accused or clamp down on Hafiz Sayeed as a sign of reluctance in shutting down anti-India jihadi groups.

In July Pakistan's military launched a military operation against terrorist safe havens along its border with Afghanistan, yet the Pakistani state is far from shutting down the jihadi infrastructure built since the 1980s war against the Soviets in Afghanistan and the subsequent militant uprising in Kashmir during the 1990s.

The Pakistani military continues to seek military advantage against India even though the possession of nuclear weapons by both countries should deter the prospect of war. Jihadis offer Pakistan a deterrent against India's overwhelming advantage in conventional military capability. Most Pakistani civilian politicians recognise the dangers of reliance on terrorism as an element of Pakistan's strategic planning, but the military retains control over security policy despite civilian rule's return in 2008.

Like his civilian predecessor Asif Ali Zardari, Sharif has declared normalisation of relations with India as a priority. Zardari's government tried to open travel and trade and, in 2011, agreed to Most Favoured Nation status for India. Despite completion of legal formalities, the status has not yet been granted, demonstrating behind-the-scenes military influence.

After his election last year, Sharif renewed talk of normalising relations with India, with special emphasis on trade. India and Pakistan have a combined population of 1.4 billion, share a 3,200-kilometre border and a common history up to 1947. Their languages are mutually understandable, and parts of their populations have overlapping ethnicity. There is also significant complementarity in the two neighbours' economies. Still, trade between them amounted less than 0.5 per cent ($2.6 billion) of India's total commerce last year. As a businessman, Sharif says he understands the benefit of freer trade between the two countries.

Rhetoric and expressions of desire for more trade notwithstanding, security remains the overarching consideration in India-Pakistan ties.

Sharif's participation in Modi's inauguration was billed as the first time a Pakistani prime minister had attended such celebrations in India - an opportunity for laying foundations of a new relationship between India and Pakistan. The prospect of a new beginning, however, was soon undermined by incidents of firing along the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir. The two countries have fought over Kashmir since 1947.

According to Indian officials, Pakistan has violated the ceasefire in the disputed territory 54 times this year through July 16 and 19 times since the Modi government took office May 26. Defence Minister Arun Jaitley told parliament recently that Pakistan violated the ceasefire agreement 199 times last year. Pakistan flatly denies reports of these incidents just as it denies support for jihadi groups operating in Kashmir, though they operate in full view of Pakistani and international media.

There are many logical reasons for why and how Indian-Pakistan ties can be normalised. Psychological, not logical, factors have held the relationship back so far. Since the country's birth through India's partition in 1947, Pakistanis have sought to define their national identity through denial of commonality with India.

Disputes, such as the one over Jammu and Kashmir, have over the years become more symptom than cause of tensions in the subcontinent. At the heart of the problem is Pakistan's carefully nurtured national narrative and state ideology, diametrically opposed to India's view of itself as the region's pre-eminent power.

Since independence, Pakistanis have been told, and with greater vehemence since 1977 with the rule of military dictator Muhammad Zia ul-Haq, that their country is a "citadel of Islam", that its destiny is to be an Islamic State and its army is "the sword of Islam". Advocates of modern, secular values, even pluralism, are denigrated as "enemies of the ideology of Pakistan", therefore cast as "traitors to Pakistan". Pakistan's establishment, led by its military, also seeks parity with India, not only in the legal sense of sovereign equality between nations but in military and political terms.

This ideological milieu has helped religious-political groups exercise greater influence on national discourse than is justified by either the size of their membership or number of votes in Pakistan's general elections and led to the outgrowth of jihadi groups, one more extreme than the other.

Pakistan's state ideology has undermined prospects for peace with India since 1950, when Pakistani Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan travelled to Delhi and signed the first major agreement. The optimism about the agreement died within a year with the assassination of its Pakistani signatory. Pakistan has since gone through years of political instability while the army has gained influence in policymaking.

Over the years, Pakistan participated in US-led anti-communist military alliances to secure military hardware that would enable it to deal with a larger, ostensibly hostile neighbour. It has fought four wars with India, including the one in 1971 resulting in the creation of Bangladesh, leaving Pakistan with half its 1947 territory. Although Pakistan has acquired nuclear-weapons capability, its insecurity in relation to India has not diminished.

Soon after independence, Pakistan's founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah had said that he expected India and Pakistan to live alongside each other like Canada and the United States. But as long as Pakistan's establishment continues to paint India as an existential threat and a permanent enemy in the minds of its people, no Pakistani leader - civilian or military - can embrace the Canada-US model. For now, the two sides will maintain their well-worn pattern of diplomatic engagement interspersed with periods of intense hostility.

Husain Haqqani, director for South and Central Asia at the Hudson Institute, Washington, served as Pakistan's ambassador to the United States.

 

Japan and Italy: troubled twins of globalisation

In separate quests for beauty and perfection, Japanese and Italians are lulled into a provincial trap

It might seem odd but two inward-looking countries from old Europe and the Pacific, troubled twins with such strong cultures, offer insights into the future of globalisation: Italy has campanilismo, or loyalty to the village bell-tower. The Japanese talk about takotsubo-ka, being caught in the clay pot that traps octopus. Japan is the world's third largest economy and Italy is ninth - though both have slipped in recent years. Both attract millions of visitors each year and sell their products around the world, yet remain rooted in a mindset that is fundamentally provincial.

Provincialism. Insularity. They may seem like bad words, but any visitor to these countries senses that fierce attachment to culture is part of what make Italy and Japan attractive. Visitors strolling into any village in either country, who ask for the local speciality, are treated to unforgettable delights. Both countries have an astonishing array of living dialects that are nearly incomprehensible to people from other parts of the country.

Provincialism can just be a snooty way of saying cultural vibrancy, but it can also be an economic shackle.

Japan and Italy are major developed economies that are struggling mightily with the trade-offs between preserving a way of life and adopting reforms - such as inviting foreign workers, promoting free competition and liberalising labour - that could allow them to succeed in a globalised world.

An insular approach to life offers insights into shared problems. A strong sense of community in both countries, so often admirable, encourages a climate of vested interests that can paralyse politics. Social factors - including respect for elders, expectations of mothers, narrow-minded workplace attitudes - explain the inability of both nations to produce enough babies. A low fertility rate - 1.4 births per woman - is the single biggest threat to both economies today.

Central to both cultures is a quest for perfection, rooted in insular guilds or trade associations, that illuminates strengths as well as frailties in their economies. Suspicion of outsiders combined with fixation on how others perceive them - Italy's bella figura and Japan's mentsu (keeping face) - are two sides of the same coin and inform the challenges both nations grapple with in an age of globalisation.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Italian Premier Matteo Renzi have struck bold paths of reform and need every encouragement to succeed. In Japan, Abe has just unleashed his "third arrow" of structural reform after startling the world by battling deflation with his first two arrows. Renzi is tackling Italy's legislative paralysis with plans to overhaul parliament. But both Japan and Italy have seen false dawns in recent decades, with previous reformers brought down by cultures of vested interest at the centre of provincial life.

History and geography play a role in both countries' insular inclinations.

If France is a solid hexagon in which power radiates from Paris, Japan and Italy are long and narrow, jutting southward, one tilted west and the other east, near mirror-images with mountain ranges cutting down the centre, fostering communities that develop in isolation. Both are protected from outsiders, and made vulnerable to them, by water - informing paradoxical attitudes to the wider world. Both largely define themselves by centuries of warring among tiny states, historical periods filled with intrigue, heroism and ghastly score-settling before traumatic unification.

Modern history, too, sheds light on the countries' current predicaments.

It's no coincidence that Italy and Japan have such high national debt - in Japan, government debt owed per person is about $90,000; for Italy, it's $46,000 - for addiction to deficit spending is embedded in their post-war experiences: Both have been command economies that enjoyed growth miracles overseen by political juggernauts - Italy's Christian Democrats, Japan's Liberal Democratic Party - fostered by a United States eager for stability in former enemies seen as susceptible to communism. In such a climate, both nations prospered in environments of provincial patronage and corruption, in which the mob - Japan's Yakuza, Italy's Cosa Nostra - often was a hidden government partner.

And insularity means Italy and Japan are conservative in the most basic senses: how communities resist change or families have an instinct to sock away money. Neither the Japanese nor Italians, in general, jump jobs if they can help it. There are strong expectations, increasingly resisted but still deeply felt, for trades to pass down generations. Such conservatism provides protections, even as it makes one vulnerable in times of change.

The quest for perfection can be obsessive, yielding some of the countries' greatest glories: knife blades, cameras, cultured pearls, kaiseki cuisine and Kabuki, to name a few in Japan; handcrafted shirts, the perfect noodle, Ferraris, furniture and Barbarescos, among others in Italy. In both cultures, there is little distinction between craftsmanship and art.

But perfection can be stifling. It can make people miss the big picture and lead to baffling mistakes. It fosters clannishness. It can crush the spirit of all but the strongest, who might emerge from years of apprenticeship, doing the same task relentlessly, with the confidence to innovate and explore.

While a brotherhood of craft has value, it is also a collusive force that rises from seas, fields and workshops and wraps its tentacles around political power centres - Nagatacho in Japan, Montecitorio in Italy. The cult of perfection may also not be the best way to run a 21st-century economy, fostering what economists call low productivity.

Provincialism informs race issues. Italy is one of the few Western democracies in which a senator could compare a black Cabinet minister to an orangutan and get away with it. In Japan, Cabinet ministers are almost Berlusconian in their talent for giving offence - a finance minister last year offered his wisdom on constitutional reform by suggesting that Japan could learn a lot from the Nazis on that front. Both nations are notorious for electing mediocre personalities, so one should not be too shocked. More surprising is how ordinary people can utter strikingly racist comments while overwhelming foreigners with kindness.

Both countries need immigrants to invigorate the economy. Instead, Italy and Japan remain two of the hardest countries to obtain citizenship without a blood link.

In Japan, big business and the government erect a fortress blocking foreign takeovers, and private equity is a particularly evil word among the Japanese - although such attitudes may be changing. In Italy a thicket of Byzantine regulation - which even Italians admit to not understanding - is a major deterrent for foreign companies to set up business.

Family and respect for elders, the heart of provincial life, make life a grande bellezza in both countries. But these are also problems. Old people block the young from fulfilling dreams by sitting on wealth and power. The young live with parents until well into adulthood, with ambition too often gently smothered in a pillow of love.

Both Japan and Italy have problems, but so many of these can also make these countries so appealing.

Take productivity. There is a beauty in rolling into a Japanese gasoline station to find oneself swarmed by attendants who greet, wipe and pamper while another fills the tank. In Italy, one buys a scontrino at the caffè, hands the slip to the barman, who makes the coffee and instructs another busy colleague to fetch a cornetto. Both are textbook examples of inefficiency, and no law makes Japanese and Italians perpetuate them, yet they are part of the poetry of life. Both countries may or may not be better off without such services. But don't ask this free-market globalist who finds himself happiest and most at home in Italy and Japan.

Joji Sakurai is a veteran journalist who has reported from Japan, Italy, North Korea, Mongolia, China, France, Britain and Brazil.

 

Washington’s Stuttering Foreign Policy

US mistakes IS for an existential threat

US foreign policy is exhibiting an advanced case of ADHD – Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. It bodes ill for those in Asia who welcomed the “tilt” towards the region which was supposed to follow the US withdrawal from Iraq and the run-down of its involvement in Afghanistan.

Instead of focusing on its alliances and role in Asia, the location of big power rivalry, it has now announced that the biggest external threat to the US is not the rise of an expansionist mega state – China – or even a wounded and angry Russia but Islamists in Iraq and Syria who had scarcely been heard of a year ago.

Thus US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel asserts that the nascent Islamic State (IS) is “an imminent threat to everything we have,” General Martin Dempsey says the US must use “all means at our disposal” to wipe it off the face of Syria, and a former commander of US forces in Afghanistan calls on President Obama to do whatever is necessary to kill it.

Obama’s valiant efforts to limit US involvement in the region are under attack not just from the usual bunch of right wing Republicans but from opinion makers in Washington and New York.

Thus having finally seemed to have escaped from a Middle East quagmire that it helped to create, notably with the second invasion of Iraq but with contributions from its policies towards Iran and Israel, the US seems determined to launch itself back into the middle of this extremely complicated fray.

In the space of a few very short years, the US has had a succession of “chief threats,” creating a foreign policy driven by media headlines and the urgings of American politicians with minimal knowledge of the outside world and its complexities. Hence the top threat has moved from El Qaeda to Iran’s nuclear program, to China and its ambitions in the east and south seas, to Ukraine and Russian revanchism and now back to Iraq.

All the while too its policies in that region have been muddied by its ambiguous response to the so-called “Arab Spring” and the contradictions inherent in its policies towards Egypt and Israel.

The US is now in such a muddle that the chief beneficiary of US strikes against IS in Syria will be Bashir el-Assad, the brutal suppressor of an uprising that the US had pledged to support. The usual armchair warriors now accuse Obama of letting this all happen by not giving enough arms to the non-IS opposition to an Assad backed by Iran But that is likely a fantasy given the extent to which the IS in Iraq, and hence into Syria, has been made popular among many Sunni Muslims because of the divisive policies of the pro-Shia Iraqi government of Nouri el-Maliki, whose departure may have come too late. That government was anyway in cahoots with former US enemy number one, Iran.

Meanwhile much of the stirring of Sunni extremism is being financed by the two countries which are supposed to be America’s close friends in the Arab world, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, the latter even hosting a US base.

For sure, it is not easy for the world’s major power to have a consistent foreign policy in a neighborhood of fragile states torn by ethnic, religious and ideological passions. But the US does not seem to learn from past mistakes, the biggest being the mother of them all – its de facto support for Iraq’s invasion of Iran in 1980 in an attempt to topple its new and anti-American clerical regime. The eventual stalemate in that eight-year war in turn led to Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait, and the subsequent two US invasions of Iraq.

The fact is that IS is a danger, for differing reasons. to all kinds of regimes in the region – Syria, Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, even Turkey and Egypt. Its existence is already re-drawing alliances as well as maps. The Kurds are doing the same. A wiser American would let the regional interests find their own ways of cooperation to combat IS, not rely on the US whose involvement lets regional players avoid their own responsibilities. Nor does it make sense to pursue “crusades” against Islamic militants everywhere given that those movements are often more driven by local issues – economic, tribal etc – than by religion itself.

The only issue which should be a worry for western countries – and for Britain and France rather more than the US – is the radicalization of their own disaffected Muslim youth. But that is a domestic issue – and one likely made worse the deeper these countries become involved in combat of any sort against IS.

The zeal for more involvement in Middle East tangles must be a concern to countries in Asia from Japan to India who had believed in the tilt to Asia and been happy to develop closer ties with the US in the face of actual or potential threat from a rising and nationalistic China. As a global power the US cannot just wash its hands of one region – the Middle East – but it must keep it in perspective.

At the very least, the US cannot now see the global wood for the trees. For all one knows IS, for all of its barbaric savagery, will be a flash in the pan, like al Qaeda, and the next “greatest threat” to the US could be deemed to come from anywhere from Yemen, to Liberia to the Mexican border. Asia Sentinel