Globalaffairs

Issue 24/May-August 2011
By Abdulkadir Suleiman

Although China’s strategic position in the region is still on its track of conventionality yet the zero-sum game politics of Korean-peninsula would likely be shifted into a new direction of a new adopted policy. China has opened up its markets rightly opposite on its ideological foundation and adopted what some analysts call as a State-run-Capitalism. On the other hand, North Korea even further closed tightly its doors and stands quite opposite on the direction of China. But America and it’s traditionally ally in the region South Korea, stand somewhere in between them watching and thinking properly of how and where to push the pendulum. If America and South Korea keep preserving their existing policy of isolating North Korea and refusing to resume the six-talks unless and until North Korea officially acknowledges the Yeonpyeong incidents; what effort China would have to adopt as to balance its Strategic interest in region as well as that of globally economic interest.

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Issue 22/October-December 2010
By Niruban Balachandran

Founded in 1967 in the spirit of working together on economic and security issues, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN; pronounced “AH-see-ahn”) is arguably the world’s most dynamic multilateral organization, after the European Union (EU). Encompassing 10 Southeast Asian states - Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Burma (Myanmar), the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam - ASEAN spans a geographical area of 4.46 million square kilometers, with a population of roughly 600 million people. It is comprised of constitutional monarchies, single-party republics, dictatorships and democracies. If ASEAN was a single market, it would rank as the ninth largest economy in the world with a combined nominal GDP of US $1.8 trillion, and it would be the third largest in Asia. For a multitude of complex reasons, the organization has frequently inspired contentious debate, scrutiny and curiosity.

Critics often dismiss ASEAN as an ineffectual and expensive talking shop - a forum where policymakers chatter endlessly, where no significant decisions or policies are implemented, and where bureaucracy, inaction, hemming and hawing rule the day. Detractors usually point (correctly) to ASEAN’s failure to address the 1997 Asian financial crisis, to build support for the bloc among Southeast Asian citizens and to admit Burma as a member state without garnering any promises from the ruling military junta to reform its repressive political system. Because of these and other issues, ASEAN’s very purpose and mandate has been called into question by a number of foreign-policy scholars and practitioners.

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Issue 22/October-December 2010
By Ivan Giménez Chueca

Last October 10th Pyongyang welcomed a spectacular military parade and a demonstration of loyalty to the regimen in occasion of the 65th anniversary of the governmental Workers’ Party (WP). With a paraphernalia according to the totalitarian states’ script, the Government of North Korea introduced the successor of President Kim Jong II to the world, his son Kim Jong-on. A group of 70 foreign journalists could assist to the event, sold as a demonstration of power but it has raised a lot of questions for the future.

North Korea consolidates itself as a “communist monarchy” with the designation of Kim Jong Il’s son as successor. With Kim Jong Il designating his son as the future President, the “Dear Leader” culminates a process initiated by himself when he succeeded his father Kim II Jung, founder of the State, in 1994. Being the most hermetic State of the planet, all this process has created a lot of enigmas and speculations about the future of the country, a key state for stability in northeastern Asia.

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Issue 21/July-September 2010
By Alexandre Calvo Cristina

The USS George Washington aircraft carrier visit to Vietnam waters makes clear that both countries share an important interest in the South China Sea. They defend a peaceful solution of territorial conflicts in the area and are trying to avoid a Chinese lake.

Double anniversary but looking at the future

The powerful USS George Washington aircraft carrier based in Japan has been sailing in waters close to Vietnam for a few days with the approval of Hanoi. Sunday 8th August a High officials delegation from Vietnam visited the ship with the USA ambassador.

Officially the aircraft carrier presence is part of the 15th anniversary of the establishment of full diplomatic relations that took place in July. It is very symbolic that those waters are very close to Dan An, the stage of Marines disembark in 1965 traditionally considered as the beginning of the “American phase” in the Indochina War.

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Issue 20/April -June 2010
By Javier Delgado

Thailand has been severely hit by a deeply-rooted and now overly exposed social clash. The Red-Shirt demands, the camps’ raising factionalism, and the hidden agendas across the divide could be tracked down into the divisive figure of Thaksin Shinawatra.

His rise in 2001 to the premiership polarised Thailand’s society in a way unseen since the end of the absolute monarchy in 1932. By launching an ambitious range of pro-poor policies, Thaksin gained the unconditional support of north Thailand’s rural and working classes. This popularity posed an outright threat to the elites’ grip on the country affairs, what triggered a succession of questionable manoeuvres engineered to kick Thaksin out.

While in office, Thaksin also used his position to boost his numerous businesses, expanding an already vast fortune in a corrupt race that was eventually picked up by the army to oust him.

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Issue 18/December-January 2010
By Paul Pryce

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), more commonly known as North Korea, is fixed with many labels on the international stage. It has been accused repeatedly of “…unpredictable behaviour…” (1) and assigned the nickname of the Hermit Kingdom by American policymakers. (2) The imagery is quite clear. The portrayal of North Korea is one of a madman running amok in the international system, acting irrationally with impunity and bordering on absolute and institutionalized insanity.

Yet is there some form of rationality evident in North Korean foreign policy? Is North Korea truly as capricious as the public rhetoric of diplomats and political leaders would have us believe, or are the actions of the regime based on careful calculations about what kinds of interaction would best serve the state’s interests? If there is some rationality to the manner in which North Korea interacts with its environment, the Northeast Asian region, what can be done to reduce tensions and achieve something approaching normalized relations on the Korean peninsula?

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Issue 17/October-November 2009
By Mauricio Palma Gutiérrez

A couple of weeks ago, Kan Guek Evan, alias Comrade Duch, made headlines as he publicly expressed his remorse for the demise of nearly 12,000 people who died while in his charge as the director of the S21-the most infamous prison camp from the Khmer Rouge era. However, the attention his declarations attracted was minor compared to the more recent events surrounding the bringing to justice of those who are accused of committing war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide.

The issuing of arrest warrants by the International Court or the mandates of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia have attracted the most attention around the world and thereby the majority of the academic discourse on the matter. Notwithstanding, the case of the Tribunal for the Cambodian Genocide is seen as singular and innovative in its legal constitution and regulation of international legal elements for the statutes and the legal bodies established in the budding international legal order. The declarations of this person have become the perfect excuse to conduct an evaluation of the understandings of the action-taking logic of a peculiar legal body in action, within the context of one of the most remembered genocides of the latter half of the twentieth century, perhaps only comparable to the Rwandan genocide.

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Issue 16/August-September 2009
By Roger Casas

More than one year after ethnic riots rocked the city of Lhasa and other Tibetan-populated areas in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), the inter-ethnic violence recently unleashed in Urumqi, capital city of the Xinjiang Autonomous Region, has brought to light the deep ethnic cleavages and tensions showing the social fabric of the country. According to Uyghur (1) exile organizations, violence broke out when the police tried to dissolve by force what had been so far a peaceful demonstration by a Uyghur group; allegedly in reaction to this, Uyghur attacked the police as well as Han (2) shop-owners and passer-bys. Officially, more than 190 people were killed and almost 1,700 injured in the riots. Strain was also high during the following days, when armed bands of Han civilians patrolled the streets of Urumqi vowing retaliation against the Uyghurs -and forcing the regional government to display an impressive police and military force to avoid new clashes.

Accounts of the riots in Urumqi are in any case confuse and contradictory, due partly to the strong control still exercised by the Chinese government over the media: in spite of the relative openness in relation to similar incidents during the past decade, figures of dead and injured, as well as of their ethnic distribution have been issued by government offices with extreme caution, while attempts for an independent verification of the facts have been blocked.

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Issue 15/June-July 2009
by Esteban del Sar

The past May 18, the President of the government of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, Mahinda Rajapaksa, announced the end of the civil war that devastated the country for 26 years.

This conflict involved, since 1983, on one side the forces of the government (Sinhalese and Buddhist) and on the other the “Tamil Tigers” (LTTE, Liberation Tigers of Eelam Tamil), an insurgent group that fighted for the independence of a part of Sri Lanka’s territory to establish a state of their own (from the Tamil ethnia and practicing Hinduism). It left behind itself between 75/100 thousand victims and nearly 100.000 refugees, according to United Nations.

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Issue 15/June-July 2009
by Javier Delgado

India is often described as the largest democracy in the world. A label widely honoured last April and May, as the 58 per cent of the 714 India’s eligible voters went to the polls in largely peacefully and internationally praised parliamentary elections. Exceeding even the best previsions, the incumbent Congress Party (‘the Congress’) won a remarkable victory at the Lok Sabha, the lower House of the Indian Parliament, taking over 206 of its 543 seats.

In a country as vast as linguistically, ethnically and religiously diverse as is India, transparent, free and fair elections would have signed a significant achievement by its own right. Instead, India has reached further beyond. Although faced with overwhelming challenges as ingrained poverty, widespread corruption, volatile religious tensions and bloody internal uprisings, Indians have elegantly manifested a surprising political sophistication.

The following article breaks down the importance of last Indian elections’ result by scrutinising the poll’s backdrop. Issues like the shameful failure of literally all voting predictions; the key components of the Congress’ success; the dire prospects of the defeated major political forces; as well as the challenges down the road for the ruling coalition articulate this in-depth but affordable outlook on the so called ‘largest democratic election in history’.

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