A new poll by the New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union shows that almost half of respondents oppose the Cook Islands having automatic New Zealand citizenship.

Thirty percent of the 1000-person sample supported Cook Islanders retaining citizenship, 46 percent were opposed and 24 percent were unsure.

• The Cook Islands government is pursuing closer strategic ties with China, ignoring New Zealand’s wishes and not consulting with the New Zealand government. Given this, should the Cook Islands continue to enjoy automatic access to New Zealand passports, citizenship, health care and education when its government pursues a foreign policy against the wishes of the New Zealand government?
• READ MORE: Other Cook Islands reports

Taxpayers’ Union head of communications Tory Relf said the framing of the question was “fair”.

“If the Cook Islands wants to continue enjoying a close relationship with New Zealand, then, of course, we will support that,” he said.

“However, if they are looking in a different direction, then I think it is entirely fair that taxpayers can have a right to say whether they want their money sent there or not.”

But New Zealand Labour Party deputy leader Carmel Sepuloni said it was a “leading question”.

‘Dead end’ assumption
“It asserts or assumes that we have hit a dead end here and that we cannot resolve the relationship issues that have unfolded between New Zealand and the Cook Islands,” Sepuloni said.

“We want a resolution. We do not want to assume or assert that it is all done and dusted and the relationship is broken.”

The two nations have been in free association since 1965.

Relf said that adding historical context of the two countries relationship would be a different question.

“We were polling on the Cook Islands current policy, asking about historic ties would introduce an emotive element that would influence the response.”

New Zealand has paused nearly $20 million in development assistance to the realm nation.

Foreign Minister Winston Peters said the decision was made because the Cook Islands failed to adequately inform his government about several agreements signed with Beijing in February.

‘An extreme response’
Sepuloni, who is also Labour’s Pacific Peoples spokesperson, said her party agreed with the government that the Cook Islands had acted outside of the free association agreement.

“[The aid pause is] an extreme response, however, in saying that we don’t have all of the information in front of us that the government have. I’m very mindful that in terms of pausing or stopping aid, the scenarios where I can recall that happening are scenarios like when Fiji was having their coup.”

In response to questions from Cook Islands News, Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown said that, while he acknowledged the concerns raised in the recent poll, he believed it was important to place the discussion within the full context of Cook Islands’ longstanding and unique relationship with New Zealand.

“The Cook Islands and New Zealand share a deep, enduring constitutional bond underpinned by shared history, family ties, and mutual responsibility,” Brown told the Rarotonga-based newspaper.

“Cook Islanders are New Zealand citizens not by privilege, but by right. A right rooted in decades of shared sacrifice, contribution, and identity.

“More than 100,000 Cook Islanders live in New Zealand, contributing to its economy, culture, and communities. In return, our people have always looked to New Zealand not just as a partner but as family.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

New Zealand has paused $18.2 million in development assistance funding to the Cook Islands after its government signed partnership agreements with China earlier this year.

This move is causing consternation in the realm country, with one local political leader calling it “a significant escalation” between Avarua and Wellington.

A spokesperson for Foreign Minister Winston Peters said the Cook Islands did not consult with Aotearoa over the China deals and failed to ensure shared interests were not put at risk.

• READ MORE: Other Cook Islands and China reports

On Thursday (Wednesday local time), Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown told Parliament that his government knew the funding cut was coming.

“We have been aware that this core sector support would not be forthcoming in this budget because this had not been signed off by the New Zealand government in previous months, so it has not been included in the budget that we are debating this week,” he said.

How the diplomatic stoush started
A diplomatic row first kicked off in February between the two nations.

Prime Minister Brown went on an official visit to China, where he signed a “comprehensive strategic partnership” agreement.

The agreements focus in areas of economy, infrastructure and maritime cooperation and seabed mineral development, among others. They do not include security or defence.

However, to New Zealand’s annoyance, Brown did not discuss the details with it first.

Prior to signing, Brown said he was aware of the strong interest in the outcomes of his visit to China.

Afterwards, a spokesperson for Peters released a statement saying New Zealand would consider the agreements closely, in light of the countries’ mutual constitutional responsibilities.

The Cook Islands-New Zealand relationship
Cook Islands is in free association with New Zealand. The country governs its own affairs, but New Zealand provides assistance with foreign affairs (upon request), disaster relief and defence.

Cook Islanders also hold New Zealand passports entitling them to live and work there.

In 2001, New Zealand and the Cook Islands signed a joint centenary declaration, which required the two to “consult regularly on defence and security issues”.

The Cook Islands did not think it needed to consult with New Zealand on the China agreement.

Peters said there is an expectation that the government of the Cook Islands would not pursue policies that were “significantly at variance with New Zealand’s interests”.

Later in February, the Cooks confirmed it had struck a five-year agreement with China to cooperate in exploring and researching seabed mineral riches.

A spokesperson for Peters said at the time said the New Zealand government noted the mining agreements and would analyse them.

How New Zealand reacted
On Thursday morning, Peters said the Cook Islands had not lived up to the 2001 declaration.

Peters said the Cook Islands had failed to give satisfactory answers to New Zealand’s questions about the arrangement.

“We have made it very clear in our response to statements that were being made — which we do not think laid out the facts and truth behind this matter — of what New Zealand’s position is,” he said.

“We’ve got responsibilities ourselves here. And we wanted to make sure that we didn’t put a step wrong in our commitment and our special arrangement which goes back decades.”

Officials would be working through what the Cook Islands had to do so New Zealand was satisfied the funding could resume.

He said New Zealand’s message was conveyed to the Cook Islands government “in its finality” on June 4.

“When we made this decision, we said to them our senior officials need to work on clearing up this misunderstanding and confusion about our arrangements and about our relationship.”

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon is in China this week.

Asked about the timing of Luxon’s visit to China, and what he thought the response from China might be, Peters said the decision to pause the funding was not connected to China.

He said he had raised the matter with his China counterpart Wang Yi, when he last visited China in February, and Wang understood New Zealand’s relationship with the Cook Islands.

Concerns in the Cook Islands
Over the past three years, New Zealand has provided nearly $194.6 million (about US$117m) to the Cook Islands through the development programme.

Cook Islands opposition leader Tina Browne said she was deeply concerned about the pause.

Browne said she was informed of the funding pause on Wednesday night, and she was worried about the indication from Peters that it might affect future funding.

She issued a “please explain” request to Mark Brown:

“The prime minister has been leading the country to think that everything with New Zealand has been repaired, hunky dory, etcetera — trust is still there,” she said.

“Wham-bam, we get this in the Cook Islands News this morning. What does that tell you?”

Will NZ’s action ‘be a very good news story’ for Beijing?
Massey University’s defence and security expert Dr Anna Powles told RNZ Pacific that aid should not be on the table in debate between New Zealand and the Cook Islands.

“That spirit of the [2001] declaration is really in question here,” she said.

“The negotiation between the two countries needs to take aid as a bargaining chip off the table for it to be able to continue — for it to be successful.”

Dr Powles said New Zealand’s moves might help China strengthen its hand in the Pacific.

She said China could contrast its position on using aid as a bargaining chip.

“By Beijing being able to tell its partners in the region, ‘we would never do that, and certainly we would never seek to leverage our relationships in this way’. This could be a very good news story for China, and it certainly puts New Zealand in a weaker position, as a consequence.”

However, a prominent Cook Islands lawyer said it was fair that New Zealand was pressing pause.

Norman George said Brown should implore New Zealand for forgiveness.

“It is absolutely a fair thing to do because our prime minister betrayed New Zealand and let the government and people of New Zealand down.”

Brown has not responded to multiple attempts by RNZ Pacific for comment.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

That is exactly where the government of Sir Keir Starmer finds itself. Despite a mammoth majority and a dramatically diminished Tory opposition, the Prime Minister acts like a man permanently besieged, his Labour Party seemingly less popular than Typhoid Mary. His inability to be unequivocal to questions of whether he will contest the next election suggest as much.

The same cannot be said about his enthusiasm for the sword and sabre. There are monsters out there to battle, and Sir Keir is rising to the plate. Sensing this, the military mandarins, most prominently General Sir Roland Walker, head of the Army, have been more than encouraging, seeing the need to ready the country for war by 2027. Given the military’s perennial love affair with astrology, that state of readiness could only be achieved with a doubling of the Army’s fighting power and tripling it by 2030.

Given that background, the UK Strategic Defence Review (SDR) was commissioned in July 2024. Led by former Labour Defence Secretary and NATO Secretary General Lord George Robertson, the freshly released report promises a fat boon for the military industrial complex. Like all efforts to encourage war, its narrative is that of supposedly making Britain safer.

Starmer’s introduction is almost grateful for the chance to out the blood lusting enemy. “In this new era for defence and security, when Russia is waging war on our continent and probing our defences at home, we must meet the danger head on.” The placing of noble Ukraine into the warming fraternity of Europe enables a civilisational twist to be made. The Russian military efforts in Ukraine are not specific to a murderous family affair and historical anxieties but directed against all Europeans. Therefore, all Europeans should militarise and join the ranks, acknowledging that “the very nature of warfare is being transformed” by that conflict.

In pursuing the guns over butter program, Starmer recapitulates the sad theme of previous eras that led to global conflict. As Europe began rearming in the 1930s, a prevalent argument was that people could have guns and butter. Greater inventories of weaponry would encourage greater prosperity. So, we find Starmer urging the forging of deeper ties between government and industry and “a radical reform of procurement”, one that could only be economically beneficial. This would be the “defence dividend”, another nonsense term the military industrial complex churns out with such disconcerting ease.

The foreword from the Defence Secretary, John Healey, outlines the objectives of the SDR. These include playing a leading role in NATO “with strengthened nuclear, new tech, and updated conventional capabilities”; moving the country to a state of “warfighting readiness”; nourishing the insatiable military industrial Moloch; learning the lessons of Ukraine (“harnessing drones, data and digital warfare”); and adopting a “whole-of-society approach”, a sly if clumsy way of enlisting the civilian populace into the military enterprise.

The review makes 62 recommendations, all accepted by the grateful government. Some £15 billion will go to the warhead programme, supporting 9,000 jobs, while £6 billion will be spent on munitions over the course of the current Parliament. A “New Hybrid Navy” is envisaged, one that will feature Dreadnought and the yet to be realised SSN-AUKUS submarines, alongside “support ships” and “autonomous vessels to patrol the North Atlantic and beyond.” Submarine production is given the most optimistic assessment: one completion every 18 months.

The Royal Air Force is not to miss out, with more F-35s, modernised Typhoons, and the next generation of jets acquired through the Global Combat Air Programme. To his splurge will be added autonomous fighters, enabling global reach.

Mindless assessments are abundant in the Review. The government promises a British army 10 times “more lethal to deter from the land, by combining more people and armoured capability with air defence, communications, AI, software, long-range weapons, and land drone swarms.” Some 7,000 new long-range weapons will be built and a New CyberEM Command established “to defend Britain from daily attacks in the grey zone.” Keeping those merchants of death happy will be a new Defence Exports Office located in the Ministry of Defence, one intended “to drive exports to our allies and growth at home.”

The fanfare of the report, festooned with fripperies for war, conceals the critical problems facing the British armed forces. The ranks are looking increasingly thinned. (In 2010, regular troop numbers stood at 110,000; the current target of 73,000 soldiers is being barely met.) Morale is ebbing. The state of equipment is embarrassingly poor. The UK’s celebrated submarine deterrent is somewhat less formidable in the deterrence department, with its personnel exhausted and subject to unpardonably lengthy stints at sea. The 204-day patrol by HMS Vanguard is a case in point.

Whether the SDR’s recommendations ever fructify remains the hovering question. It’s all very good to make promises about weapons programmes and boosting a country’s readiness to kill, but militaries can be tardy in delivery and faulty in execution. What saves the day may well be standard ineptitude rather than any firebrand conviction in war. To the unready go the spoils.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

Fiji cannot compete with Australia and New Zealand to retain its teachers, the man in charge of the country’s finances says.

The Fijian education system is facing major challenges as the Sitiveni Rabuka-led coalition struggles to address a teacher shortage.

While the education sector receives a significant chunk of the budget (about NZ$587 million), it has not been sufficient, as global demand for skilled teachers is pulling qualified Fijian educators toward greener pastures.

• READ MORE: Other Fiji education reports

Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Biman Prasad said that the government was training more teachers.

“The government has put in measures, we are training enough teachers, but we are also losing teachers to Australia and New Zealand,” he told RNZ Pacific Waves on the sidelines of the University of the South Pacific Council meeting in Auckland last week.

“We are happy that Australia and New Zealand gain those skills, particularly in the area of maths and science, where you have a shortage. And obviously, Fiji cannot match the salaries that teachers get in Australia and New Zealand.

According to the Education Ministry’s Strategic Development Plan (2023-2026), the shortage of teachers is one of the key challenges, alongside limited resources and inadequate infrastructure, particularly for primary schools.

Hundreds of vacancies
Reports in local media in August last year said there were hundreds of teacher vacancies that needed to be filled.

However, Professor Prasad said there were a lot of teachers who were staying in Fiji as the government was taking steps to keep teachers in the country.

“We are training more teachers. We are putting additional funding, in terms of making sure that we provide the right environment, right support to our teachers,” he said.

“In the last two years, we have increased the salaries of the civil service right across the board, and those salaries and wages range from between 10 to 20 percent.

“We are again going to look at how we can rationalise some of the positions within the Education Ministry, right from preschool up to high school.”

Meanwhile, the Fiji government is currently undertaking a review of the Education Act 1966.

Education Minister Aseri Radrodro said in Parliament last month that a draft bill was expected to be submitted to Cabinet in July.

“The Education Act 1966, the foundational law for pre-tertiary education in Fiji, has only been amended a few times since its promulgation, and has not undergone a comprehensive review,” he said.

“It is imperative that this legislation be updated to reflect modern standards and address current issues within the education system.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

“President Trump’s billionaire Commerce Secretary has been playing the ultimate Washington insider game to pad his family’s riches,” said Accountable.US Executive Director. “From the White House, Howard Lutnick has played a leading role in orchestrating Trump’s Bitcoin reserve policy at the same time his family company was pumping hundreds of millions of dollars into the biggest corporate Bitcoin holder in the game – pushing up their stake by at least $300 million. While both the Lutnick and Trump families seem to be self enriching from positions of power with their massive crypto interests, their bumbling tariff policies and harsh budget plans stand to leave millions of working people with less health and financial security.”

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW:

• In early March 2025, President Trump held the first White House Crypto Summit, where industry leaders discussed “regulations, stablecoins, and Bitcoin’s potential role in the financial system.”
• Ahead of the summit, Trump’s billionaire Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick broke news by saying the summit would likely reveal a “unique status” for Bitcoin, the most popular cryptocurrency, in an unprecedented national crypto strategic reserve Trump announced days earlier. Then, the day before the summit, Trump signed an executive order establishing a “Strategic Bitcoin Reserve,” plus a separate “U.S. Digital Asset Stockpile” for other types of cryptocurrencies. Ahead of the policy announcement, critics called Trump’s crypto plans a “gift to the industry,” “open corruption,” and possibly a “blatant insider trading scam.”
• Lutnick, who was CEO of “titan” financial firm Cantor Fitzgerald, helped lead Trump’s crypto reserve and sovereign wealth fund, which was expected to invest in crypto. After his confirmation, Lutnick gave control of the business to his two 20-something-year-old sons—though insiders said his “grip on his various businesses is bolted tight” ahead of his confirmation, and expressed skepticism about his ability to truly relinquish control.
• In a new filing for Q1 2025, Cantor Fitzgerald revealed holding up to $2.1 billion in Microstrategy Inc. (now called Strategy), which has “the largest corporate Bitcoin holding in the world” and was seen as “‘a big beneficiary’” of Trump’s crypto reserve announcement, also made in Q1 2025. Ahead of Trump’s official announcement, Lutnick notably said the reserve would give Bitcoin a “unique status” over other cryptocurrencies.
• From Q4 2024 to Q1 2025, Cantor Fitzgerald increased its total holding in Strategy by over 1.9 million shares valued at over $568 million, to a total of over 7.4 million shares valued at over $2.1 billion. Excluding puts and calls, Cantor still bought over 1 million more shares valued at $304 million in Q1 2025.
• In Q1 2025, Strategy continued to be Cantor Fitzgerald’s largest holding, according to Fintel, with the company representing 44.5% of Cantor’s portfolio, including puts and calls.
• CNN previously reported Accountable.US research revealing Cantor Fitzgerald’s total investment of $1.5 billion in Strategy in Q4 2024.
• On March 7, 2025, the day after he established the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, President Trump held a White House crypto summit—with Howard Lutnick and Strategy’s Executive Chairman Michael Saylor in attendance. Meanwhile, Cantor Fitzgerald’s holding in Strategy’s Class A shares soared by 20% from the day before Trump’s reserve announcement to the day Lutnick announced Bitcoin’s unique status in the fund.
• In Q1 2025, Cantor Fitzgerald also reported nearly $88 million in other Bitcoin-related investments, including over $86 million in iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF.
• In March 2025, after the Bitcoin strategic reserve announcement, Cantor Fitzgerald announced a new $2 billion Bitcoin financing partnership, with Cantor’s Head of Bitcoin Financing saying they “‘expect to substantially grow the operation over time.’” The move was seen as an expansion of Cantor’s bitcoin business “in the wake of Trump administration changes.”
  

Accountable.US has previously documented billions of dollars of interests Cantor Fitzgerald is involved in that could directly benefit from Lutnick’s role as Commerce Secretary – including urging a national television audience to “buy Tesla” stock in March while his family-run firm Cantor Fitzgerald reported holding nearly $840 million in Tesla Inc. in its most recent holdings report. Conveniently, Lutnick’s appeal to would-be average investors came on the same day Cantor Fitzgerald analysts upgraded Tesla to a “buy” rating.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

Last week, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un oversaw the test flight of a Saetbyol-4-class UAV at Panghyon Airbase. The North first revealed the Saetbyol-4 during a military parade in July 2023, drawing comparisons from analysts to a sophisticated U.S. drone, the RQ-4B Global Hawk.

The Global Hawk is a high-altitude, long-endurance UAV used for surveillance and reconnaissance and capable of monitoring vast areas with advanced sensors for as long as 30 hours without refueling.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies, or CSIS, said the North Korean drones were not as advanced as the Global Hawk as they merely mimic the airframes of the U.S. aerial vehicles.

“Despite widespread claims that North Korea has been building copies of U.S. drones such as the RQ-4B Global Hawk, the North Korean drones are not clones,” CSIS said Tuesday via its analysis platform Beyond Parallel.

The North Korean drones are “presently determined as not carrying advanced equipment similar to that found in U.S. UAVs,” the thinktank said.

CSIS reported that the airframe of the Saetbyol-4 appears slightly shorter, measuring approximately 12 meters (39 feet) in length, compared to the RQ-4B Global Hawk’s 14.5 meters.

Saetbyol-9

In addition to the Saetbyol-4, North Korea’s state media released footage of another drone in 2023, later identified as the Saetbyol-9, which appeared to be a replica of the U.S. MQ-9A Reaper – a remotely piloted attack drone.

However, CSIS believes that this characterization is also inaccurate.

The Saetbyol-9 appears slightly shorter, measuring approximately 9 meters in length, compared to the Reaper’s 11 meters, it said.

The North Korean drone is unlikely to carry the advanced targeting and communications equipment found in the MQ-9A Predator.

Mimicking of the U.S. UAVs was likely undertaken to expedite development by utilizing proven airframe designs, according to CSIS.

“From a propaganda perspective, the North Korean designations may imply a level of capability that North Korea wants the world to believe that they have achieved,” it said.

(KCNA/Reuters)

Last week, North Korea unveiled what appears to be its first airborne radar system and suicide attack drones equipped with artificial intelligence, adding to indications that Russia has provided technical assistance in exchange for the North sending troops to fight Ukraine.

The North’s state media also highlighted the trial of a reconnaissance drone and released photos of a suicide drone test, inspected by Kim, showing what it said were AI-powered drones successfully hitting ground targets, including a tank.

During the inspection, Kim “made an important evaluation of the military effectiveness and strategic value of the strategic reconnaissance drone with improved performance and the suicide attack drones with the introduction of new artificial intelligence,” the Korea Central News Agency said.

Pyongyang and Moscow reportedly reached an agreement in February under which Russia will provide technical assistance to North Korea for the development and mass production of various types of drones.

The agreement was in return for North Korea’s deployment of soldiers to aid Russia in its war against Ukraine.

Military analysts also believe North Korea has supplied conventional weapons to Russia for its war in Ukraine in return for military and economic assistance.

North Korea has reportedly deployed as many as 12,000 troops and supplied ballistic missiles to support Russia’s efforts in Ukraine, marking its first significant military involvement abroad since the 1950s. Neither Russia nor North Korea has confirmed the claims made by the U.S. and South Korea.

Edited by Mike Firn and Stephen Wright.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Taejun Kang for RFA.

Photo by Kanchanara

The Republicans and Donald Trump seem set on establishing a strategic crypto reserve. They are claiming this will somehow be an important source of economic security for the country. It’s clear that establishing the reserve will be an important way to give tens of billions of dollars to Donald Trump’s campaign contributors, but it is much harder to see how it will provide any economic security to the country.

To better understand the logic of a strategic crypto reserve, it is useful to consider a strategic baseball card reserve. Instead of the U.S. government investing $100 billion in crypto, imagine Donald Trump announced plans to put $100 billion into a strategic baseball card reserve.

Now just to quell those skeptics saying that the entire stock of baseball cards is not worth $100 billion, you’re ignoring the price of effect of the government committing itself to spend $100 billion on baseball cards. If the government wants to spend $100 billion on baseball cards, you can be sure that the price of many cards will rise astronomically so that there will be supply to meet the demand.

But beyond the question of how much we can pay for baseball cards, it is worth asking what it would mean if we actually had a $100 billion strategic baseball card reserve (SBCR)? This can tell us what we can expect from having a large strategic crypto reserve.

If the government held a $100 billion SBCR it would support a much larger private market in baseball cards. People would presumably be buying up cards, knowing that the government was always there as a buyer of last resort. If prices started to plunge for any reason, the government would be prepared to step in to sustain the value of its $100 billion SBCR.

And this commitment would support an industry of people engaged in the buying and selling of baseball cards, authenticating the cards, possibly issuing futures and options on the cards, and of course offering investment advice on baseball cards. Who knows, this industry could easily support tens of thousands of workers, maybe even hundreds of thousands.

Anyone who thinks that’s a good thing needs to think a bit harder. There are productive things in society that we need workers to do. We need more and better housing. That means we need workers in a wide variety of construction trades. We need workers in health care, we need workers in teaching. We need people to fight fires, and we need honest cops.

There are plenty of productive tasks that we need workers for, which would make our lives better and make us richer as a society. But our $100 billion SBCR will pull some people away from these productive jobs and instead employ them in various aspects of the baseball card economy.

It’s possible that some people, other than those directly profiting, may feel better knowing that the government holds a large quantity of baseball cards, but it is hard to understand why that would be the case. If the United States has a strong healthy economy, where workers actually engage in productive tasks, the U.S. government should have little problem meeting whatever financial obligations it faces.

The strength of the U.S. economy is ultimately the reason that investors, both foreign and domestic, are willing to hold U.S. dollars and U.S. government bonds. However, if we divert our resources from productive uses to shuffling baseball cards, or crypto, we will be weakening our economy. In a $30 trillion economy, $100 billion for a SBCR or crypto reserve is not an especially big deal, but from the standpoint of providing economic security, it goes in the wrong direction.

This first appeared on Dean Baker’s Beat the Press blog.

The post Crypto and Donald Trump’s Strategic Baseball Card Reserve appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Dean Baker.

One of the leading Middle East’s leading political and media analysts, Marwan Bishara, has accused President Donald Trump of applying a doctrine of ‘strategic coercion” and “economic blackmail” in his approach to the Gaza ceasefire.

Bishara, senior political analyst of the Doha-based Al Jazeera global television network, was responding to the news that Trump has apparently backed off his plan for expelling more than 2 million Palestinians from their Gaza homeland and to redevelop it as the “Riviera of the Middle East”.

He has now been describing it as a “recommendation” that would not be enforced.

• READ MORE: Hamas says remains of Israeli captive Shiri Bibas given to Red Cross
• Fiji’s diplomatic move to Jerusalem sparks controversy with Palestine
• Other Gaza ceasefire reports

“The idea that Trump starts with [about taking over Gaza] is mad. But there is a method to the madness,” Bishara said.

“The method to the madness, you can see it in the context of Trump’s doctrine, if you will – and that is strategic coercion and economic blackmail.

“In fact, he started his administration by inviting [Israeli Prime Minister] Netanyahu to Washington, blessing him with all kinds of support . . .  and blackmailing Egypt and Jordan into accepting two million refugees, or else — and then asking them to come up with something else.”

Bishara said he expected the Trump doctrine to be applied elsewhere in the world, such as with his efforts to end the war in Ukraine.

‘This kind of strategic coercion of Arab countries on behalf of the United States and Israel, and economic blackmail — I think we’re going to see it as part of the Trump doctrine throughout the world.

President Trump’s walkback on his “Riviera” plan for Gaza. Video: Al Jazeera

‘Surprised’ over opposition
The US president had said in a radio interview with Fox News that he was “a little bit surprised” that Jordan and Egypt had voiced opposition to his plan to “take over” Gaza and displace Palestinians.

“I’ll tell you, the way to do it is my plan — I think that’s the plan that really works,” Trump said.

“But I’m not forcing it, I’m just going to sit back and recommend it.

“And then the US would own the site, there’d be no Hamas, and there’d be development and you’d start all over again with a clean plate.”

A former Egyptian deputy foreign affairs minister to the European Union, Gamal Bayoumi, said the “informal” meeting in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, of the leaders of several Arab countries to discuss an Egyptian counterproposal had led to the softening of Trump’s stance.

Speaking from Cairo, Bayoumi said Trump had appeared “inexperienced concerning international law” and the Middle East, saying the US president’s plan “has no logic . . . to ask the Palestinians to leave their own country.”

The Riyadh meeting has ended with the leaders rejecting Trump’s plan and the Arab League will meet in Cairo, Egypt, on March 4 to discuss the counterproposal in more detail.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.

One of the leading Middle East’s leading political and media analysts, Marwan Bishara, has accused President Donald Trump of applying a doctrine of ‘strategic coercion” and “economic blackmail” in his approach to the Gaza ceasefire.

Bishara, senior political analyst of the Doha-based Al Jazeera global television network, was responding to the news that Trump has apparently backed off his plan for expelling more than 2 million Palestinians from their Gaza homeland and to redevelop it as the “Riviera of the Middle East”.

He has now been describing it as a “recommendation” that would not be enforced.

• READ MORE: Hamas says remains of Israeli captive Shiri Bibas given to Red Cross
• Fiji’s diplomatic move to Jerusalem sparks controversy with Palestine
• Other Gaza ceasefire reports

“The idea that Trump starts with [about taking over Gaza] is mad. But there is a method to the madness,” Bishara said.

“The method to the madness, you can see it in the context of Trump’s doctrine, if you will – and that is strategic coercion and economic blackmail.

“In fact, he started his administration by inviting [Israeli Prime Minister] Netanyahu to Washington, blessing him with all kinds of support . . .  and blackmailing Egypt and Jordan into accepting two million refugees, or else — and then asking them to come up with something else.”

Bishara said he expected the Trump doctrine to be applied elsewhere in the world, such as with his efforts to end the war in Ukraine.

‘This kind of strategic coercion of Arab countries on behalf of the United States and Israel, and economic blackmail — I think we’re going to see it as part of the Trump doctrine throughout the world.

President Trump’s walkback on his “Riviera” plan for Gaza. Video: Al Jazeera

‘Surprised’ over opposition
The US president had said in a radio interview with Fox News that he was “a little bit surprised” that Jordan and Egypt had voiced opposition to his plan to “take over” Gaza and displace Palestinians.

“I’ll tell you, the way to do it is my plan — I think that’s the plan that really works,” Trump said.

“But I’m not forcing it, I’m just going to sit back and recommend it.

“And then the US would own the site, there’d be no Hamas, and there’d be development and you’d start all over again with a clean plate.”

A former Egyptian deputy foreign affairs minister to the European Union, Gamal Bayoumi, said the “informal” meeting in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, of the leaders of several Arab countries to discuss an Egyptian counterproposal had led to the softening of Trump’s stance.

Speaking from Cairo, Bayoumi said Trump had appeared “inexperienced concerning international law” and the Middle East, saying the US president’s plan “has no logic . . . to ask the Palestinians to leave their own country.”

The Riyadh meeting has ended with the leaders rejecting Trump’s plan and the Arab League will meet in Cairo, Egypt, on March 4 to discuss the counterproposal in more detail.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.

Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown hopes to have “an opportunity to talk” with the New Zealand government to “heal some of the rift”.

Brown returned to Avarua on Sunday afternoon (Cook Islands Time) following his week-long state visit to China, where he signed a “comprehensive strategic partnership” to boost its relationship with Beijing.

Prior to signing the deal, he said that there was “no need for New Zealand to sit in the room with us” after the New Zealand Foreign Affairs Minister raised concerns about the agreement.

• READ MORE: Explainer: what the withdrawal of USAid will mean for the Pacific
• Cook Islands’ deal with China takes NZ government by surprise
• NZ media in the middle of Asia-Pacific diplomatic drama
• Other Cook islands reports

Responding to reporters for the first time since signing the China deal, he said: “I haven’t met the New Zealand government as yet but I’m hoping that in the coming weeks we will have an opportunity to talk with them.

“Because they will be able to share in this document that we’ve signed and for themselves see where there are areas that they have concerns with.

“But I’m confident that there will be no areas of concern. And this is something that will benefit Cook Islanders and the Cook Islands people.”

He said the agreement with Beijing would be made public “very shortly”.

“I’m sure once the New Zealand government has a look at it there will be nothing for them to be concerned about.”

Not concerned over consequences
Brown said he was not concerned by any consequences the New Zealand government may impose.

The Cook Islands leader is returning to a motion of no confidence filed against his government and protests against his leadership.

“I’m confident that my statements in Parliament, and my returning comments that I will make to our people, will overcome some of the concerns that have been raised and the speculation that has been rife, particularly throughout the New Zealand media, about the purpose of this trip to China and the contents of our action plan that we’ve signed with China.”

1News Pacific correspondent Barbara Dreaver was at the airport but was not allowed into the room where the press conference was held.

The New Zealand government wanted to see the agreement prior to Brown going to China, which did not happen.

A spokesperson for New Zealand’s Foreign Minister Winston Peters said Brown had a requirement to share the contents of the agreement and anything else he signed under the 2001 Joint Centenary Declaration.

‘Healing some of the rift’
Brown said the difference in opinion provides an opportunity for the two governments to get together and “heal some of the rift”.

“We maintain that our relationship with New Zealand remains strong and we remain open to having conversations with the New Zealand government on issues of concern.

“They’ve raised their concerns around security in the Pacific. We’ve raised our concerns around our priorities, which is economic development for our people.”

Brown has previously said New Zealand did not consult the Cook Islands on its comprehensive strategic partnership with China in 2014, which they should have done if the Cook Islands had a requirement to do so.

He hoped people would read New Zealand’s deal along with his and show him “where the differences are that causes concern”.

Meanwhile, the leader of Cook Islands United Party, Teariki Heather, said Cook Islanders were sitting nervously with a question mark waiting for the agreement to be made public.

“That’s the problem we have now, we haven’t been disclosed or told of anything about what has been signed,” he said.

“Yes we hear about the marine seabed minerals exploration, talk about infrastructure, exchange of students and all that, but we haven’t seen what’s been signed.”

However, Heather said he was not worried about what was signed but more about the damage that it could have created with New Zealand.

Heather is responsible for filing the motion of no confidence against the Prime Minister and his cabinet.

The opposition only makes up eight seats of 24 in the Cook Islands Parliament and the motion is about showing support to New Zealand, not about toppling the government.

“It’s not about the numbers for this one, but purposely to show New Zealand, this is how far we will go if the vote of no confidence is not sort of accepted by both of the majority members, at least we’ve given the support of New Zealand.”

Heather has also been the leader for a planned planned today local time (Tuesday NZ).

“Protesters will be bringing their New Zealand passports as a badge of support for Aotearoa,” he said.

“Our relationship [with New Zealand] — we want to keep that.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

China has confirmed details of its meeting with Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown for the first time, saying Beijing “stands ready to have an in-depth exchange” with the island nation.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun told reporters during his regular press conference that Brown’s itinerary, from February 10-16, would include attending the closing ceremony of the Asian Winter Games in Harbin as well as meeting with Premier of the State Council Li Qiang.

Guo also confirmed that Brown and his delegation had visited Shanghai and Shandong as part of the state visit.

• READ MORE: Will New Zealand ‘invade’ the Cook Islands to stop China? Seriously – Eugene Doyle
• Should New Zealand invade the Cook Islands?
• Cook Islands opposition files no-confidence motion against PM
• Cook Islands crisis: Haka with the taniwha or dance with the dragon?
• Explainer: The diplomatic row between New Zealand and the Cook Islands
• Other China in Pacific reports

“The Cook Islands is China’s cooperation partner in the South Pacific,” he said.

“Since the establishment of diplomatic ties, the two countries have respected each other, treated each other as equals, and sought common development.”

Guo told reporters that the relationship between the two countries was elevated to comprehensive strategic partnership in 2018.

“Our friendly cooperation is rooted in profound public support and delivers tangibly to the two peoples.

‘New progress in bilateral relations’
“Through Prime Minister Brown’s visit, China stands ready to have an in-depth exchange of views with the Cook Islands on our relations and work for new progress in bilateral relations.”

Brown said on Wednesday that he was aware of the strong interest in the outcomes of his visit, which has created significant debate on the relationship with Cook Islands and New Zealand.

He has said that the “comprehensive strategic partnership” deal with China is expected to be signed today, and does not include a security component.

While on one hand, the New Zealand government has been urged not to overreact, on the other the Cook Islands opposition want Brown and his government out.

Locals in Rarotonga have accused New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters of being a “bully”, while others are planning to protest against Brown’s leadership.

A local resident, Tim Buchanan, said Peters has “been a bit bullying”.

He said Peters had overacted and the whole issue had been “majorly” blown out of proportion.

‘It doesn’t involve security’
“It does not involve our national security, it does not involve borrowing a shit load of money, so what is your concern about?

“Why do we need to consult him? We have been a sovereign nation for 60 years, and all of a sudden he’s up in arms and wanted to know everything that we’re doing”

Brown previously told RNZ Pacific that he had assured Wellington “over and over” that there “will be no impact on our relationship and there certainly will be no surprises”.

However, New Zealand said it should have seen the text prior to Brown leaving for China.

Vote of no confidence
Cook Islands opposition MP Teariki Heather said he did not want anything to change with New Zealand.

“The response from the government and Winston Peters and the Prime Minister of New Zealand, that’s really what concerns us, because they are furious,” said Heather, who is the leader of Cook Islands United Party.

Heather has filed a no confidence motion against the Prime Minister and has been the main organiser for a protest against Brown’s leadership that will take place on Monday morning local time.

He is expecting about 1000 people to turn up, about one in every 15 people who reside in the country.

Opposition leader Tina Browne is backing the motion and will be at the protest which is also about the Prime Minister’s push for a local passport, which he has since dropped.

With only eight opposition members in the 24-seat parliament, Browne said the motion of no confidence is not about the numbers.

“It is about what are we the politicians, the members of Parliament, going to do about the two issues and for us, the best way to demonstrate our disapproval is to vote against it in Parliament, whether the members of Parliament join us or not that’s entirely up to them.”

The 2001 document argument
Browne said that after reading the constitution and the 2001 Joint Centenary Declaration, she agreed with Peters that the Cook Islands should have first consulted New Zealand on the China deal.

“Our prime minister has stated that the agreement does not affect anything that he is obligated to consult with New Zealand. I’m very suspicious of that because if there is nothing offensive, why the secrecy then?

“I would have thought, irrespective, putting aside everything, that our 60 year relationship with New Zealand, who’s been our main partner warrants us to keep that line open for consultation and that’s even if it wasn’t in [the Joint Centenary Declaration].”

Other locals have been concerned by the lack of transparency from their government to the Cook Islands people.

But Cook Islands’ Foreign Minister Tingika Elikana said that is not how these deals were done.

“I think the people have to understand that in regards to agreements of this nature, there’s a lot of negotiations until the final day when it is signed and the Prime Minister is very open that the agreements will be made available publicly and then people can look at it.”

New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said the government would wait to see what was in the agreement before deciding if any punishment should be imposed.

With the waiting, Elikana said he was concerned.

“We are worried but we want to see what will be their response and we’ve always reiterated that our relationship is important to us and our citizenship is really important to us, and we will try our best to remain and retain that,” Elikana said.

He did not speculate about the vote of no confidence motion.

“I think we just leave it to the day but I’m very confident in our team and very confident in our Prime Minister.”

‘Cook Islands does a lot for New Zealand’
Cultural leader and carver Mike Tavioni said he did not know why everyone was so afraid of the Asian superpower.

“I do not know why there is an issue with the Cook Islands and New Zealand, as long as Mark [Brown] does not commit this country to a deal with China with strings attached to it,” he said.

Tavioni said the Cook Islands does a lot for New Zealand also, with about 80,000 Cook Islanders living in New Zealand and contributing to it’s economy.

“The thing about consulting, asking for permission, it does not go down well because our relationship with Aotearoa should be taken into consideration.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

COMMENTARY: By Eugene Doyle

The country’s leading daily newspaper, The New Zealand Herald, screamed out this online headline by a columnist on February 10: “Should New Zealand invade the Cook Islands?”

The New Zealand government and the mainstream media have gone ballistic (thankfully not literally just yet) over the move by the small Pacific nation to sign a strategic partnership with China in Beijing this week.

It is the latest in a string of island nations that have signalled a closer relationship with China, something that rattles nerves and sabres in Wellington and Canberra.

• READ MORE: Should New Zealand invade the Cook Islands?
• Cook Islands opposition files no-confidence motion against PM
• China: Cook Islands’ relationship with Beijing ‘should not be restrained’
• Cook Islands crisis: Haka with the taniwha or dance with the dragon?
• Explainer: The diplomatic row between New Zealand and the Cook Islands
• Cook Islands’ diplomatic snub to NZ will be noticed – commentator
• Mark Brown on China deal: ‘No need for NZ to sit in the room with us’
• No debt in China deal – Mark Brown
• Mediawatch: NZ media in the middle of Asia-Pacific diplomatic drama
• Other China in Pacific reports

The Chinese have politely told the Kiwis to back off.  Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun told reporters that China and the Cook Islands have had diplomatic relations since 1997 which “should not be disrupted or restrained by any third party”.

“New Zealand is rightly furious about it,” a TVNZ Pacific affairs writer editorialised to the nation. The deal and the lack of prior consultation was described by various journalists as “damaging”, “of significant concern”, “trouble in paradise”, an act by a “renegade government”.

Foreign Minister Winston Peters, not without cause, railed at what he saw as the Cook Islands government going against long-standing agreements to consult over defence and security issues.

‘Clearly about secession’
Matthew Hooton, who penned the article in The Herald, is a major commentator on various platforms.

“Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown’s dealings with China are clearly about secession from the realm of New Zealand,” Hooton said without substantiation but with considerable colonial hauteur.

“His illegal moves cannot stand. It would be a relatively straightforward military operation for our SAS to secure all key government buildings in the Cook Islands’ capital, Avarua.”

This could be written off as the hyperventilating screeching of someone trying to drum up readers but he was given a major platform to do so and New Zealanders live in an oxygen-starved media environment where alternative analysis is hard to find.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

A motion of no confidence has been filed against the Prime Minister and his Cabinet following the recent fiasco involving the now-abandoned Cook Islands passport proposal and the comprehensive strategic partnership the country will sign with China this week.

Cook Islands United Party leader Teariki Heather said Prime Minister Mark Brown should apologise to the people and “graciously” step down, or else he would move a no-confidence vote against him in Parliament.

Clerk of Parliament Tangata Vainerere today confirmed that a motion of no confidence has been filed, and he had placed the notice with the MPs.

• READ MORE: China: Cook Islands’ relationship with Beijing ‘should not be restrained’
• Cook Islands crisis: Haka with the taniwha or dance with the dragon?
• Explainer: The diplomatic row between New Zealand and the Cook Islands
• Cook Islands’ diplomatic snub to NZ will be noticed – commentator
• Mark Brown on China deal: ‘No need for NZ to sit in the room with us’
• No debt in China deal – Mark Brown
• Mediawatch: NZ media in the middle of Asia-Pacific diplomatic drama
• Other China in Pacific reports

Parliament will convene for the first time this year next Monday, February 17, to consider various bills and papers, including the presentation of the supplementary budget.

Heather, an Opposition MP, is concerned with Brown’s lack of consultation regarding the passport issue, which the Prime Minister later confirmed was “off the table”, and the China agreement with New Zealand.

New Zealand has raised concerns that it was not properly consulted, as required under their special constitutional arrangement.

However, PM Brown said he had advised them and did not believe the Cook Islands was required to provide the level of detail New Zealand was requesting.

‘Handled the situation badly’
“He [Brown] has handled the situation badly. He has to step down graciously but if he doesn’t, I’m putting in a no confidence vote in Parliament — that’s the bottom line,” Heather told the Cook Islands News.

“I will move that motion and if there’s no support at least I’ve done it, I’ve seen it through.”

Heather also said that he believed the Prime Minister should apologise to the people of the Cook Islands.

“A simple apology, he made a mistake, that’s it.”

Cook Islands News asked the Leader of the Opposition Tina Browne for comment on Heather’s no confidence motion.

Browne on Sunday told PMN that residents were angry, and there was mounting pressure and strong feeling that the PM Brown “should go” (step down).

Backed by cabinet ministers
The Prime Minister has the confidence of his Cabinet Ministers, who are backing their leader and the China agreement, according to Foreign Affairs Minister Tingika Elikana.

Brown is in China on a state visit with his delegation. Yesterday marked the third day of the visit, during which he will oversee the signing of a Joint Action Plan for Comprehensive Strategic Partnership (CSP) with China.

He is also expected to meet with Chinese Premier Li Qiang and President Xi Jinping.

The content of the agreement and its signing date remain unknown.

“At this stage, discussions regarding the agreement are still ongoing, and it would be premature to confirm a signing date at this time. However, once there are any formal developments, we will ensure updates are shared through an official MFAI media release,” a spokesperson for the Cook Islands Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Immigration told Cook Islands News.

Public protest march
A public protest march will convene at Parliament House on Monday to challenge the government’s direction for the people of the Cook Islands.

Heather is spearheading the “peaceful” protest march, rallying citizens against PM Brown’s controversial proposal to introduce a Cook Islands passport.

More than 100 people attended Heather’s public meeting last Monday evening at the Aroa Nui Hall to voice their concerns about government’s actions disregarding the voices of the people.

“Do we just sit around no. Te inrinaki nei au e te marama nei kotou te iti tangata,” Heather said.

“We have to do this for the sake of our country. This is not a political protest, it’s people of the Cook Islands uniting to protest, if you understand the consequences, you will understand the reason why.”

Although Brown has since ditched the proposal after New Zealand warned it would require holders to renounce their New Zealand one, “the damage is done”.

This has sparked heated debates about national identity, sovereignty and the implications for the Cook Islands relationship with New Zealand.

Concerns of citizens
Heather has taken onboard the concerns of citizens and argued that such a move could undermine the historical ties and shared citizenship that have long defined the relationship between the Cook Islands and New Zealand.

He has no confidence in Brown’s statement that the proposed Cook Islands identity passport is “off the table”.

“I think it is off the table for now . . .  but for how long?” Heather questioned.

“Then there’s the impact of what he has done with our relationship with New Zealand so we are very much concerned about that.

“We are making a statement. The march is actually to show the government of New Zealand that we the people of the Cook Islands don’t agree with the Prime Minister on that.

“We want New Zealand to see that the people of the Cook Islands – that we love to keep our passport, that we care about our relationship as well.”

Heather said they are also concerned about New Zealand’s reaction to the Cook Islands proposed agreement with China.

‘Peaceful’ protesters welcomed
He welcomes members of the community to join the “peaceful” protest.

On Monday morning, drummers will be located on both sides of Parliament House on the main road.

At 10.45am, the proceedings will start when people start moving towards Parliament. Heather wants all protesters to bring along their New Zealand passports.

Heather would like to remind people not to use dirty language at the protest — “auraka e autara viiviii, don’t bring your dirty laundry . . . ”

First published by the Cook Islands News and republished with permission.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown says New Zealand is asking for too much oversight over its deal with China, which is expected to be penned in Beijing next week.

Brown told RNZ Pacific the Cook Islands-New Zealand relationship was reciprocal.

“They certainly did not consult with us when they signed their comprehensive partnership agreement [with China] and we would not expect them to consult with us,” he said.

• READ MORE: Other Pacific and China reports

“There is no need for New Zealand to sit in the room with us while we are going through our comprehensive agreement with China.

“We have advised them on the matter, but as far as being consulted and to the level of detail that they were requiring, I think that’s not a requirement.”

Brown is going to China from February 10-14 to sign the “Joint Action Plan for a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership”.

The Cook Islands operates in free association with New Zealand. It means the island nation conducts its own affairs, but Aotearoa needs to assist when it comes to foreign affairs, disasters, and defence.

NZ seeks more consultation
New Zealand is asking for more consultation over what is in the China deal.

Foreign Minister Winston Peters said neither New Zealand nor the Cook Island people knew what was in the agreement.

“The reality is we’ve been not told [sic] what the nature of the arrangements that they seek in Beijing might be,” he told RNZ Morning Report on Friday.

In 2023, China and Solomon Islands signed a deal on police cooperation as part of an upgrade of their relations to a “comprehensive strategic partnership”.

Brown said he had assured New Zealand “over and over” that there would be no impact on the countries’ relationship and “no surprises”, especially on security aspects.

“But the contents of this agreement is something that our team are working on with our Chinese counterparts, and it is something that we will announce and provide once it is signed off.”

He said it was similar to an agreement New Zealand had signed with China in 2014.

Deep sea mining research
Brown said the agreement was looking for areas of cooperation, with deep sea mining research being one area.

However, he said the immediate area that the Cook Islands wanted help with was a new interisland vessel to replace the existing ageing ship.

Brown has backed down from his controversial passport proposal after facing pressure from New Zealand.

He said the country “would essentially punish any Cook Islander that would seek a Cook Islands passport” by passing new legislation that would not allow them to also hold a New Zealand passport.

“To me that is a something that we cannot engage in for the security of our Cook Islands people.

“Whether that is seen as overstepping or not, that is a position that New Zealand has taken.”

A spokesperson for Peters said the two nations did “not see eye to eye” on a number of issues.

Relationship ‘very good’
However, Brown said he always felt the relationship was very good.

“We can agree to disagree in certain areas and as mature nation states do, they do have points of disagreement, but it doesn’t mean that the relationship has in any way broken down.”

On Christmas Day, a Cook Islands-flagged vessel carrying Russian oil was seized by Finnish authorities. It is suspected to be part of Russia’s shadow fleet and cutting underwater power cables in the Baltic Sea near Finland.

Peters’ spokesperson said the Cook Islands shipping registry was an area of disagreement between the two countries.

Brown said the government was working with Maritime Cook Islands and were committed with aligning with international sanctions against Russia.

When asked how he could be aligned with sanctions when the Cook Islands flagged the tanker Eagle S, Brown said it was still under investigation.

“We will wait for the outcomes of that investigation, and if it means the amendments and changes, which I expect it will, to how the ship’s registry operates then we will certainly look to make those amendments and those changes.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

ANALYSIS: By Abdulwahab al-Mursi

On May 5, 2024, nearly seven months into Israel’s ongoing genocidal war on Gaza, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that the main goal of the war was to destroy Hamas and prevent it from controlling Gaza.

However, over 250 days since this statement, and 470 days into the Israeli aggression, it has become clear that Netanyahu’s promises have faded into illusions.

In the early hours of the first phase of the ceasefire on Sunday, Israeli military radio reported that Hamas forces were reasserting their control over Gaza, stating that Hamas, which had never lost control of any part of the territory during the war, was using the ceasefire to strengthen its grip.

• READ MORE: Palestinian prisoners to be freed after 3 captives held in Gaza released
• Delay in Gaza ceasefire as Israel kills 19 fails to daunt people celebrating
• Ceasefire in Gaza – so much excitement
• Gaza genocide protesters in NZ welcome ceasefire but will fight on for justice
• Other Israeli war on Gaza reports

This development highlights the gap between Israel’s strategic objectives and the reality on the ground, as images from Gaza continue to reveal widespread devastation and loss of life, yet Hamas remains firmly in control.

Popular Support: The backbone of Hamas
Military literature highlights the concept of “Center of Gravity” (COG) for military organisations, a concept that can vary depending on the organisation and context.

In the case of Hamas and Palestinian Resistance, the central element of their strength lies in the support of the local population.

This grassroots support provides Hamas with invaluable social depth, a continuous supply of human resources, and strong strategic backing.

The popular support and belief in the resistance’s strategic choices and leadership have allowed Hamas to maintain its popular mandate to achieve Palestinian national goals.

Recognising this, Israel has targeted Gaza’s civilian infrastructure both militarily and psychologically, aiming to raise the costs of supporting the resistance and weaken Hamas’s popular base.

Israel has treated Gaza’s entire civilian infrastructure as military targets, believing that expanding the death toll among civilians and inflicting maximum suffering would force the population to turn against Hamas.

Yet, despite these efforts, images of celebrations in Gaza, even in areas heavily targeted by Israel, underscore the exceptional nature of the Gaza situation, where resistance culture is deeply rooted and unyielding.

The strategic consciousness of Gaza’s people
There appears to be a collective strategic awareness among Gaza’s people to maintain a victorious image at all costs, even in the midst of devastating humanitarian crises.

This desire to project an image of resistance and triumph, despite the overwhelming tragedy, has led to spontaneous public displays of support for Hamas and resistance forces, reinforcing their resolve against the Israeli onslaught.

Failure of forced displacement plans
In the initial weeks of the war, Israel revealed its plan to forcibly relocate Gaza’s population.

Israeli media outlets reported in October 2023 that Netanyahu had proposed relocating Gaza’s residents to other countries.

However, after months of war, Gaza’s residents have shown an unshakable determination to remain, with displaced individuals in refugee camps celebrating their return to their homes, despite the widespread destruction they have suffered.

In northern Gaza, particularly in Beit Lahiya, Beit Hanoun, Jabaliya, and Shuja’iyya, Israel’s attempts to prevent the return of displaced residents became a significant obstacle to a ceasefire agreement, delaying it for months.

Israel’s plan, known as the “Generals’ Plan” by former Israeli military advisor Giora Eiland, aimed to create a buffer zone in northern Gaza by applying immense military and living pressures on the population.

However, as evident from the ongoing images from the region, the displaced population continues to resist and return, undermining Israel’s relocation goals.

Hamas’s military structure endures
One of Netanyahu’s primary goals was to dismantle Hamas’s military wing, the Al-Qassam Brigades.

However, in the early hours of the first phase of the ceasefire, images showed Hamas fighters organising military parades in southern Gaza, signalling the resilience of Hamas’s military structure even before the ceasefire officially began.

Despite Israeli claims of killing thousands of Hamas fighters and destroying significant portions of Gaza’s tunnel network, the rapid and organized emergence of Al-Qassam forces on the ground suggests that these Israeli claims may have been aimed more at reassuring the Israeli public about the progress of the war, rather than reflecting the true situation on the ground.

Failure of post-war plans
In December 2023, Netanyahu rejected Palestinian proposals that Hamas be included in Gaza’s post-war governance, insisting, “There will be no Hamas in the post-war period; we will eliminate them.”

Throughout the war, Israel attempted various unilateral methods to manage Gaza, including direct military administration and creating a new technocratic authority with local leaders, but all efforts failed.

Israeli military attempts to distribute humanitarian aid in Gaza also proved ineffective, as the army struggled to manage these operations.

As the conflict nears what is supposed to be its final phase, the governance structure in Gaza has not changed.

Hamas’s leadership, especially the Al-Qassam Brigades, continues to operate effectively, and the ceasefire agreement has allowed for the resumption of local security forces.

Even after Israel’s targeted assassinations of 723 members of Gaza’s police and security apparatus, the resilience of Gaza’s security forces has remained evident.

This failure of Israel’s post-war vision was highlighted by a comment from a political analyst on Israeli i24 News, who questioned the results of the prolonged military operation: “What have we achieved in a year and five months?

“We destroyed many homes, lost many of our best soldiers, and in the end, the result is the same: Hamas rules, aid enters, and the Qassam Brigades return.”

Republished from The Palestinian Chronicle with permission.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

ANALYSIS: By Abdulwahab al-Mursi

On May 5, 2024, nearly seven months into Israel’s ongoing genocidal war on Gaza, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that the main goal of the war was to destroy Hamas and prevent it from controlling Gaza.

However, over 250 days since this statement, and 470 days into the Israeli aggression, it has become clear that Netanyahu’s promises have faded into illusions.

In the early hours of the first phase of the ceasefire on Sunday, Israeli military radio reported that Hamas forces were reasserting their control over Gaza, stating that Hamas, which had never lost control of any part of the territory during the war, was using the ceasefire to strengthen its grip.

• READ MORE: Palestinian prisoners to be freed after 3 captives held in Gaza released
• Delay in Gaza ceasefire as Israel kills 19 fails to daunt people celebrating
• Ceasefire in Gaza – so much excitement
• Gaza genocide protesters in NZ welcome ceasefire but will fight on for justice
• Other Israeli war on Gaza reports

This development highlights the gap between Israel’s strategic objectives and the reality on the ground, as images from Gaza continue to reveal widespread devastation and loss of life, yet Hamas remains firmly in control.

Popular Support: The backbone of Hamas
Military literature highlights the concept of “Center of Gravity” (COG) for military organisations, a concept that can vary depending on the organisation and context.

In the case of Hamas and Palestinian Resistance, the central element of their strength lies in the support of the local population.

This grassroots support provides Hamas with invaluable social depth, a continuous supply of human resources, and strong strategic backing.

The popular support and belief in the resistance’s strategic choices and leadership have allowed Hamas to maintain its popular mandate to achieve Palestinian national goals.

Recognising this, Israel has targeted Gaza’s civilian infrastructure both militarily and psychologically, aiming to raise the costs of supporting the resistance and weaken Hamas’s popular base.

Israel has treated Gaza’s entire civilian infrastructure as military targets, believing that expanding the death toll among civilians and inflicting maximum suffering would force the population to turn against Hamas.

Yet, despite these efforts, images of celebrations in Gaza, even in areas heavily targeted by Israel, underscore the exceptional nature of the Gaza situation, where resistance culture is deeply rooted and unyielding.

The strategic consciousness of Gaza’s people
There appears to be a collective strategic awareness among Gaza’s people to maintain a victorious image at all costs, even in the midst of devastating humanitarian crises.

This desire to project an image of resistance and triumph, despite the overwhelming tragedy, has led to spontaneous public displays of support for Hamas and resistance forces, reinforcing their resolve against the Israeli onslaught.

Failure of forced displacement plans
In the initial weeks of the war, Israel revealed its plan to forcibly relocate Gaza’s population.

Israeli media outlets reported in October 2023 that Netanyahu had proposed relocating Gaza’s residents to other countries.

However, after months of war, Gaza’s residents have shown an unshakable determination to remain, with displaced individuals in refugee camps celebrating their return to their homes, despite the widespread destruction they have suffered.

In northern Gaza, particularly in Beit Lahiya, Beit Hanoun, Jabaliya, and Shuja’iyya, Israel’s attempts to prevent the return of displaced residents became a significant obstacle to a ceasefire agreement, delaying it for months.

Israel’s plan, known as the “Generals’ Plan” by former Israeli military advisor Giora Eiland, aimed to create a buffer zone in northern Gaza by applying immense military and living pressures on the population.

However, as evident from the ongoing images from the region, the displaced population continues to resist and return, undermining Israel’s relocation goals.

Hamas’s military structure endures
One of Netanyahu’s primary goals was to dismantle Hamas’s military wing, the Al-Qassam Brigades.

However, in the early hours of the first phase of the ceasefire, images showed Hamas fighters organising military parades in southern Gaza, signalling the resilience of Hamas’s military structure even before the ceasefire officially began.

Despite Israeli claims of killing thousands of Hamas fighters and destroying significant portions of Gaza’s tunnel network, the rapid and organized emergence of Al-Qassam forces on the ground suggests that these Israeli claims may have been aimed more at reassuring the Israeli public about the progress of the war, rather than reflecting the true situation on the ground.

Failure of post-war plans
In December 2023, Netanyahu rejected Palestinian proposals that Hamas be included in Gaza’s post-war governance, insisting, “There will be no Hamas in the post-war period; we will eliminate them.”

Throughout the war, Israel attempted various unilateral methods to manage Gaza, including direct military administration and creating a new technocratic authority with local leaders, but all efforts failed.

Israeli military attempts to distribute humanitarian aid in Gaza also proved ineffective, as the army struggled to manage these operations.

As the conflict nears what is supposed to be its final phase, the governance structure in Gaza has not changed.

Hamas’s leadership, especially the Al-Qassam Brigades, continues to operate effectively, and the ceasefire agreement has allowed for the resumption of local security forces.

Even after Israel’s targeted assassinations of 723 members of Gaza’s police and security apparatus, the resilience of Gaza’s security forces has remained evident.

This failure of Israel’s post-war vision was highlighted by a comment from a political analyst on Israeli i24 News, who questioned the results of the prolonged military operation: “What have we achieved in a year and five months?

“We destroyed many homes, lost many of our best soldiers, and in the end, the result is the same: Hamas rules, aid enters, and the Qassam Brigades return.”

Republished from The Palestinian Chronicle with permission.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

ANALYSIS: By Abdulwahab al-Mursi

On May 5, 2024, nearly seven months into Israel’s ongoing genocidal war on Gaza, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that the main goal of the war was to destroy Hamas and prevent it from controlling Gaza.

However, over 250 days since this statement, and 470 days into the Israeli aggression, it has become clear that Netanyahu’s promises have faded into illusions.

In the early hours of the first phase of the ceasefire on Sunday, Israeli military radio reported that Hamas forces were reasserting their control over Gaza, stating that Hamas, which had never lost control of any part of the territory during the war, was using the ceasefire to strengthen its grip.

• READ MORE: Palestinian prisoners to be freed after 3 captives held in Gaza released
• Delay in Gaza ceasefire as Israel kills 19 fails to daunt people celebrating
• Ceasefire in Gaza – so much excitement
• Gaza genocide protesters in NZ welcome ceasefire but will fight on for justice
• Other Israeli war on Gaza reports

This development highlights the gap between Israel’s strategic objectives and the reality on the ground, as images from Gaza continue to reveal widespread devastation and loss of life, yet Hamas remains firmly in control.

Popular Support: The backbone of Hamas
Military literature highlights the concept of “Center of Gravity” (COG) for military organisations, a concept that can vary depending on the organisation and context.

In the case of Hamas and Palestinian Resistance, the central element of their strength lies in the support of the local population.

This grassroots support provides Hamas with invaluable social depth, a continuous supply of human resources, and strong strategic backing.

The popular support and belief in the resistance’s strategic choices and leadership have allowed Hamas to maintain its popular mandate to achieve Palestinian national goals.

Recognising this, Israel has targeted Gaza’s civilian infrastructure both militarily and psychologically, aiming to raise the costs of supporting the resistance and weaken Hamas’s popular base.

Israel has treated Gaza’s entire civilian infrastructure as military targets, believing that expanding the death toll among civilians and inflicting maximum suffering would force the population to turn against Hamas.

Yet, despite these efforts, images of celebrations in Gaza, even in areas heavily targeted by Israel, underscore the exceptional nature of the Gaza situation, where resistance culture is deeply rooted and unyielding.

The strategic consciousness of Gaza’s people
There appears to be a collective strategic awareness among Gaza’s people to maintain a victorious image at all costs, even in the midst of devastating humanitarian crises.

This desire to project an image of resistance and triumph, despite the overwhelming tragedy, has led to spontaneous public displays of support for Hamas and resistance forces, reinforcing their resolve against the Israeli onslaught.

Failure of forced displacement plans
In the initial weeks of the war, Israel revealed its plan to forcibly relocate Gaza’s population.

Israeli media outlets reported in October 2023 that Netanyahu had proposed relocating Gaza’s residents to other countries.

However, after months of war, Gaza’s residents have shown an unshakable determination to remain, with displaced individuals in refugee camps celebrating their return to their homes, despite the widespread destruction they have suffered.

In northern Gaza, particularly in Beit Lahiya, Beit Hanoun, Jabaliya, and Shuja’iyya, Israel’s attempts to prevent the return of displaced residents became a significant obstacle to a ceasefire agreement, delaying it for months.

Israel’s plan, known as the “Generals’ Plan” by former Israeli military advisor Giora Eiland, aimed to create a buffer zone in northern Gaza by applying immense military and living pressures on the population.

However, as evident from the ongoing images from the region, the displaced population continues to resist and return, undermining Israel’s relocation goals.

Hamas’s military structure endures
One of Netanyahu’s primary goals was to dismantle Hamas’s military wing, the Al-Qassam Brigades.

However, in the early hours of the first phase of the ceasefire, images showed Hamas fighters organising military parades in southern Gaza, signalling the resilience of Hamas’s military structure even before the ceasefire officially began.

Despite Israeli claims of killing thousands of Hamas fighters and destroying significant portions of Gaza’s tunnel network, the rapid and organized emergence of Al-Qassam forces on the ground suggests that these Israeli claims may have been aimed more at reassuring the Israeli public about the progress of the war, rather than reflecting the true situation on the ground.

Failure of post-war plans
In December 2023, Netanyahu rejected Palestinian proposals that Hamas be included in Gaza’s post-war governance, insisting, “There will be no Hamas in the post-war period; we will eliminate them.”

Throughout the war, Israel attempted various unilateral methods to manage Gaza, including direct military administration and creating a new technocratic authority with local leaders, but all efforts failed.

Israeli military attempts to distribute humanitarian aid in Gaza also proved ineffective, as the army struggled to manage these operations.

As the conflict nears what is supposed to be its final phase, the governance structure in Gaza has not changed.

Hamas’s leadership, especially the Al-Qassam Brigades, continues to operate effectively, and the ceasefire agreement has allowed for the resumption of local security forces.

Even after Israel’s targeted assassinations of 723 members of Gaza’s police and security apparatus, the resilience of Gaza’s security forces has remained evident.

This failure of Israel’s post-war vision was highlighted by a comment from a political analyst on Israeli i24 News, who questioned the results of the prolonged military operation: “What have we achieved in a year and five months?

“We destroyed many homes, lost many of our best soldiers, and in the end, the result is the same: Hamas rules, aid enters, and the Qassam Brigades return.”

Republished from The Palestinian Chronicle with permission.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

Refugee advocates and academics are weighing in on Australia’s latest move on the Pacific geopolitical chessboard.

Canberra is ploughing A$100 million over the next five years into Nauru, a remote 21 sq km atoll with a population of just over 12,000.

It is also the location of controversial offshore detention facilities, central to Australia’s “stop the boats” immigration policy.

• READ MORE: Other Australian offshore detention policy reports

Political commentators see the Nauru-Australia Treaty signed this week by Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Nauru’s President David Adeang as a move to limit China’s influence in the region.

Refugee advocates claim it is effectively a bribe to ensure Australia can keep dumping its refugees on Nauru, where much of the terrain is an industrial wasteland following decades of phosphate mining.

The Refugee Action Coalition told RNZ Pacific that there were currently between 95 and  100 detainees at the facility, the bulk of whom are from China and Bangladesh.

The deal was said to have been struck after months of secretive bilateral talks, on the back of lucrative counter offers from China.

The treaty ensures that Australia retains a veto right over a range of pacts that Nauru could enter into with other countries.

In a written statement, Albanese described the agreement as a win-win situation.

“The Nauru-Australia treaty will strengthen Nauru’s long-term stability and economic resilience. This treaty is an agreement that meets the need of both countries and serves our shared interest in a peaceful, secure and prosperous region,” he said.

‘Motivated by strategic concerns’ – expert
However, a geopolitics expert says Australia’s motivations are purely selfish.

Australian National University research fellow Dr Benjamin Herscovitch said the detention centre had bipartisan support and was a crucial part of Australia’s domestic migration policies.

“The Australian government is motivated by very self-interested strategic concerns here,” Herscovitch told RNZ Pacific.

“They are not ultimately doing it because they want to assist the people of Nauru, Canberra is doing it because it wants to keep China at bay and it wants to keep offshore processing in play.”

The Refugee Action Coalition in Sydney agrees.

The Coalition’s spokesperson Ian Rintoul said Canberra had effectively bribed Nauru so it could keep refugees out of Australia.

“It’s a very sordid game. It’s a corrupt arrangement that the Australian government has actually bought Nauru and made it a wing of its domestic anti-refugee policies,” he said.

“It’s small beer for the Australian government that thinks that off-shore detention is critical to its domestic political policies.”

Rintoul said that in the past foreign aid had not been used to improve life for Nauruans.

“The relationship between Nauru and Australia is pretty extraordinary and Nauru has been able to effectively extort huge amounts of foreign aid to upgrade their prison, they’ve built sports facilities,” he said.

“I suspect a large amount of it has also found its way into the pockets of various elites.”

Herscovitch said Nauru is in a prime position to negotiate with its former coloniser.

“When China comes knocking, Australia immediately gets nervous and wants to put on the table offers that will keep those Pacific countries coming back to Australia.

“That provides a wide range of Pacific countries with a huge amount of leverage to extract better terms from Australia.”

He added it was unclear exactly how the funds would be used in Nauru.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

The Washington-based Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative, or AMTI, said in a new report there are indications Hanoi is developing airstrips on several of the artificial islands, and “signs of potential military structures” have also been spotted across a number of features.

Radio Free Asia reported on Oct. 25 on the construction of a runway on Barque Canada reef, the largest-to-date reclaimed island under Vietnam’s control in the Spratly archipelago.

Known as Bai Thuyen Chai in Vietnamese, the reef has undergone intensive development since 2021 and its current total landfill area is estimated at nearly 2.5 square kilometers, or 617.7 acres.

The airstrip has since been lengthened from 1,050 meters to approximately 1,600 meters and could be extended to 3,000 meters or more, long enough to accommodate larger aircraft.

Until now, Vietnam has only one 1,300-meter airstrip on the islands in the South China Sea, on an island called Spratly. The new runway “significantly expands Vietnam’s options for deploying combat aircraft to the Spratly Islands,” AMTI said, adding that it “may not be the only runway Hanoi has planned for the Spratlys.”

The AMTI said there may be plans to develop airstrips on at least two other reclaimed islands, Pearson reef and Ladd reef. Both of the features are being built up fast.

Military structures

Besides the runways, AMTI said in its report that new formations of berms, or raised barriers, encasing six areas “are visible in recent imagery of Barque Canada Reef, Central Reef, Tennent Reef, Namyit Island, South Reef, and Ladd Reef.”

“Given the coastal orientation of most formations, it’s possible these areas could be intended to house anti-ship artillery or missile platforms,” the group said.

Analysts have said that military bases and runways in the Spratlys would bolster Vietnam’s strategic capabilities to counter China’s power projection in the South China Sea.

Beijing has fully developed and militarized at least three artificial islands, known as “The Big Three”, including Fiery Cross, Subi reef and Mischief reef in the Spratly archipelago.

“Three years from when it first began, Vietnam is still surprising observers with the ever-increasing scope of its dredging and landfill in the Spratly Islands,” AMTI said.

Yet as reclamation work continues fast on new features and “in unexpected directions,” the think tank said the extent of new capabilities Vietnam would have remains to be seen.

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Edited by Mike Firn.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by RFA Staff.

His next appearance in the capital Yaounde is scheduled for August 27, but Bondjock has little hope there will be any resolution in what is seen as a classic example of a SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) — a vexatious type of lawsuit increasingly used against those who express critical opinions.

These suits frequently invoke criminal defamation laws to punish and censor journalists. In Cameroon, Bondjock — the publishing director of the privately owned online news site Direct Info — is the country’s latest journalist to be accused of defaming influential figures such as football stars, writers, government officials, lawmakers, pastors, and the politically connected.

“Authorities must end the legal harassment and weaponization of Cameroon’s judicial system against Samuel Bondjock, especially as the country’s media regulator has already exonerated him,” said Angela Quintal, head of CPJ’s Africa program, in New York. “Cameroon should follow the examples of several other African states to decriminalize defamation, in line with a 2010 resolution of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, and must ensure that SLAPP lawsuits are not used to censor the press.”

In March 2022, Ahmadou Sardaouna, the managing director of the state-run Cameroon Real Estate Company (SIC), filed criminal complaints against Bondjock for “impugning his honor” in two articles published in December 2021 and February 2022, according to CPJ’s review of the complaints and news reports.

Four months later, Sardaouna also lodged a complaint with Cameroon’s National Communication Council (NCC) for “unsubstantiated accusations likely to damage his image.” The media regulator ruled in Bondjock’s favor, saying his journalism had met “professional requirements of investigation and cross-checking,” according to a copy of its July 29, 2022, decision, reviewed by CPJ.

Bondjock told CPJ that he has little hope that his trial will begin this month because Sardaouna’s absence led to repeated postponements of previous hearings  “The plaintiff is doing nothing but delaying tactics to prolong this trial in order to exhaust me financially, morally, and even professionally, by wasting my time. My lawyer defends me despite many unpaid fees,” he said.

Joseph Jules Nkana, Sardaouna’s lawyer, told CPJ that his client had not refused to attend previous hearings and that mediation was undertaken by “Bondjock’s colleagues.” However, the journalist had refused to meet to conclude an agreement, Nkana said.

François Mboke, president of the Cameroon network of press outlet owners, who initiated mediation in 2022 to stop the prosecution, told CPJ that it had not been successful.

Bondjock told CPJ there was no reason for him to try to seek an agreement with Sardaouna, as the NCC had ruled in his favor.

Under Cameroon’s penal code, defamation is punishable by a prison sentence of six days to six months and a fine of up to 2 million CFA francs (US$3,330).

In a joint 2023 submission to the U.N. Human Rights Council scrutinizing Cameroon’s human rights record, CPJ and other rights groups noted at least four cases of arrest and conviction for defamation between 2019 and 2022, including against Martinez Zogo, who was killed in 2023.

Other sub-Saharan countries that have criminalized defamation include Nigeria, Angola, Togo, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In June 2024, Niger reinstated prison sentences for defamation and insult that had been replaced by fines two years earlier.

Denis Omgba Bomba, director of the media observatory at Cameroon’s Ministry of Communication, did not respond to CPJ’s request for comment on Bondjock’s case via messaging app.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

This is Chinh’s first visit as head of the government and also the first visit by a Vietnamese prime minister to India in 10years. 

Chinh is the second foreign leader, after Bangladesh prime minister Sheik Hasina, to visit Delhi since Narendra Modi began his third term as India’s prime minister.

Security and defense are two core “pillars” in Vietnam-India relations, said the office of Vietnam’s prime minister.

Delhi is one of Hanoi’s seven comprehensive strategic partners – the top tier of bilateral relations – on par with China, Russia and the United States.

Prime Minister Modi once said that Vietnam is an important pillar of India's Act East Policy. 

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The two countries signed a Joint Vision Statement on a defense partnership, as well as a memorandum of understanding on mutual logistics support in June 2022 during a visit to Vietnam by India’s defense minister Rajnath Singh. 

“Vietnam-India defense cooperation went back a long time,” said Yusuf Unjhawala, an Indian defense analyst.

India donated a domestically built missile corvette, INS Kirpan, to Vietnam in June 2023 and “also sold a number of smaller vessels to Hanoi,” Unjhawala told RFA, referring to high-speed guard boats built in both India and in Vietnam under an Indian credit scheme.

India’s naval vessels have been allowed to make port calls in Vietnam.

“Hopefully this can be elevated to another level with a mutual logistics agreement” to grant the Indian navy better access to Vietnam’s strategic port of Cam Ranh, he said. 

Maritime cooperation

Both Vietnam and India are wary of China’s growing military might and assertiveness. 

Maritime security is seen as one of the most important parts of Vietnam-India bilateral relations and they have held regular maritime security dialogues since 2019.Vietnam is embroiled in an intense territorial dispute with China in the South China Sea and is keen to upgrade its navy and boost its capabilities.

Vietnam is also looking to diversify its defense industry to end dependence on Soviet and Russian weaponry and India  could provide a promising alternative, the Bangalore-based  analyst Unjhawala said.

BrahMos Aerospace – a joint venture between India and Russia – is in talks to export its supersonic cruise missiles to Southeast Asian countries including Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam.

The company has begun delivering shore-based anti-ship missile systems to the Philippines under a US$375-million contract and Vietnam has indicated its interest in acquiring similar missiles, according to the defense intelligence company Janes.

RFA’s sources said Vietnam is also exploring possibilities to purchase India’s indigenous medium-range mobile surface-to-air missile (SAM) Akash systems. 

India has also provided a multi-million-dollar grant to develop an Army Software Park in Vietnam.

While it is unclear whether any arms contract would be signed during the Vietnamese prime minister's visit to India, it is almost certain that discussions are underway on strengthening security cooperation, analysts said.

Edited by Mike Firn.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Staff.

How did we get here? This is not the world that was envisioned in the years following the greatest war in history.

If you consider yourself a hammer, you seek nails, and this seems to be the nature of US foreign policy today. Nevertheless, when WWII ended in 1945, the US had no need to prove that it was by far the most powerful nation on the planet. Its undamaged industrial capacity accounted for nearly half the economy of an otherwise war-torn and devastated world, and its military was largely beyond challenge, having demonstrated the most powerful weapons the world had ever known, for better or worse.

That was bound to change as the world recovered, but even as the rebuilding progressed, it did so with loans from the US and US-dominated institutions like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, which added international finance as another pillar of US supremacy. The loans built markets for US production, while creating allies for its policies in the postwar period.

It wasn’t all rosy, of course. But the war and its immediate aftermath introduced greater distribution of wealth, both in the US and much of the world, than had hitherto been the case. Highly graduated income taxes – with rates greater than 90% on the highest incomes – not only funded the war effort, but also assured relative social security and prosperity for much of the working class in the postwar period. In addition, the GI Bill provided funds for college education, unemployment insurance and housing for millions of returning war veterans. Although a main purpose of the legislation may have been to avoid the scenes of armed repression against unemployed and homeless war veterans, as occurred with a much smaller number of veterans after WWI, it had the effect of ushering many of them into middle class status. Another factor was the introduction of employee childcare and health insurance benefits during the war, in order to entice women into the work force and make it possible for them to devote more of their time to war production. These benefits (especially health insurance) remained widespread and even increased after the war, contributing to higher living standards compared to the prewar era.

Internationally, wider distribution of wealth was seen as a means of deterring the spread of Soviet-style socialism by incorporating some of the social safety net features of the socialist system into a market economy that nevertheless preserved most of the power base in capitalist and oligarchical hands.

Unfortunately, many of the wealthy and powerful may have seen these developments as temporary measures to avoid potential social disorder, and a means of fattening the cattle before milking, shearing and/or butchering. One of the earliest rollbacks was the income tax structure, which saw a decades-long decline in taxation of corporations and the wealthy, as well as features in the tax code that allowed many of the wealthy to dodge income taxes altogether.

Similarly, savings and loan institutions, designed to serve the financial needs of the middle class, became a means to exploit them, thanks to changes in chartering rules engineered by the lobbyists of the wealthy to profit from speculative trade in mortgage securities. The most egregious consequence of this was the crash of 2008, resulting in the greatest transfer of wealth in US history to the top 1% (or even 0.1%) in such a short time. By then the neighborhood savings and loan was a memory, having been devoured by investment bankers to satisfy (unsuccessfully) their insatiable appetites.

In the international dimension, another important development was the uncoupling of the US dollar from the gold standard in 1971. This ended the Bretton Woods agreement of 1944, and made the untethered dollar the standard, rendering its value equivalent to whatever purchasing power it might possess at any given time, and placing the United States in unprecedented control of international exchange.

A further instrument of postwar power was NATO, an ostensibly voluntary defensive alliance of nonsocialist western European and North American nations, to which the socialist countries reacted with their own Warsaw Pact. Both were voluntary to roughly the same imaginary degree, and justified each other’s existence. But both were also a means for the great powers of the US and the USSR to dominate the other members of their respective alliances. The defensive function of these alliances became obsolete with the dissolution of both the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact in 1991. NATO then became an offensive alliance, functioning to preserve, enhance and expand US hegemony and domination in the face of its descent into internal dysfunction and external predation.

These transfers of wealth and power, both domestically and internationally took place even as US industrial and manufacturing power waned. This was due not only to competition from the expected postwar recovery of powers destroyed during the war (as well as newly rising ones), but also to the unmanaged voracious appetites of US speculators and venture capitalists, who replaced vaunted US industrial capacity with cheap foreign (“offshore”) sources. This eventually converted the US from a major production economy to a largely consumer one. It also helped to transfer middle and lower class wealth from the American masses to its upper echelons, as well-paying union and other full-time jobs were replaced by menial minimum wage and part-time ones, or by unemployment, welfare and homelessness. The service industries, construction, entertainment, finance, military, government and agriculture usually remained relatively stronger than industry and export, but less so than during the 1950s, and were increasingly funded by expansion of the national debt, rather than a strong economic base.

Of course, concentration of wealth is commensurate with concentration of power, and although the wealthy always have greater political power than the less wealthy, the transition to an increasingly oligarchical US society got a major boost in 2010 with the Supreme Court decision Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which granted corporations and other associations unprecedented power to use their vast financial resources to control the outcome of elections. It was a bellwether: despite the fact that Supreme Court justices are unelected officials, it is hard to imagine such a decision taking place a half century earlier (during the Warren Court, for example), when popular power in the US (though never as great as proclaimed) was perhaps at its peak, and which was reflected in the composition of the court and its decisions in that era. Citizens United gave corporations and well financed interest groups virtually unlimited control over US domestic and international policy.

The coalescing of these trends has resulted in a power structure and decision-making procedure (or lack thereof) that accounts for the astonishing headlong rush toward Armageddon described in the introductory paragraph of this article. The US is currently considered the only remaining superpower, but what is the basis of that power? It is not industrial or economic power, which the US abandoned for the sake of short-term profits in “offshore” manufacturing, as previously stated.

It is not even military power, much of which has been invested in extremely expensive air and sea forces that are now becoming obsolete, as second and third tier powers like Russia and Iran develop cheaper mass drone architecture, untouchable hypersonic missiles and electronic systems that make traditional weaponry less relevant. An extreme example of such irrelevance can be seen in the strategies of Hamas and its Palestinian allies, armed largely with low-tech self-developed weapons designed to exploit the vulnerabilities of massively armed Israeli forces laying waste to the Palestinian population and infrastructure above ground, while the resistance forces remain relatively invulnerable below ground, and able to attack effectively and indefinitely from their hundreds of miles of deep reinforced tunnels.

Similarly, the irrelevance and obsolescence of US arms became evident in the Ukraine war, as the US, and indeed all of NATO, proved themselves incapable of manufacturing more than a fraction of the artillery, shells and armored vehicles that Russia produces, with a military budget hardly more than a tenth that of the US, much less the combined NATO budget.

The US aim in the Ukraine war was and is ostensibly to defeat Russia. But it will consider the war a success even if (as seems certain) this objective fails. This is because the more immediate US goal is to assure and reinforce the subjugation of the western NATO countries, as well to expand to the rest of Europe. In effect, the Ukraine war solves the problem perceived by US policymakers that the dissolution of the USSR removed much of the justification for a defensive alliance which was no longer facing a threat of the sort against which it was created to defend.

But that question was apparently raised mainly if at all by academics at the time, not diplomats. Perhaps a partial explanation was inertia: why change what seemed to be keeping both peace and prosperity (for its members)? The US also found missions for NATO from the Balkans to 9/11 response to West Asia to Afghanistan and North Africa. But all of these paled in comparison to its previous function of deterring the Soviet Union. In order to justify the continued existence of NATO, a new, similar threat was needed, not merely “police actions”. This was manufactured by the US, starting with expansion of NATO to eastern Europe, in violation of its promises in 1991 to the leadership of the dissolving Soviet Politburo not to expand “an inch beyond the eastern border of [East] Germany.” Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic joined in 1999. Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia in 2004. In 2009, Albania and Croatia also joined, followed by Montenegro in 2017 and North Macedonia in 2020. Finland joined in 2023 followed by Sweden in 2024.

The purpose of the expansion, while giving the appearance of relevance, was not so much to respond to a perceived threat as to manufacture one, and Russia was selected to be the threat, despite the fact that it had posed no apparent strategic threat to NATO for more than two decades after the end of the Soviet Union. It even discussed the possibility of joining the Alliance. But the US had other intentions. Without a credible common threat, NATO might cease to be a defensive military alliance, with the eventual possibility of defections by members that no longer saw a significant benefit to their otherwise exorbitant and oppressive membership. Furthermore, many western European nations were finding common interests with Russia, most notably the Nordstream pipelines providing cheap, plentiful and reliable Russian natural gas to the European economies.

Obviously, this was intolerable for the US and its plan to dominate all of western and eastern Europe combined. Russia soon understood that the expansion of NATO was intended as a strategic threat to Russia’s security. As successor of, and inheritor to, the Soviet nuclear arsenal and its delivery systems, Russia could not afford to have NATO nuclear strike systems sitting on its doorstep any more than the US could accept nuclear missiles in Cuba in 1962. The US therefore chose to threaten Russia’s existence through Ukraine.

Ukraine was the perfect weapon to prod the Bear. It was poor and corrupt, and it had a substantial racist and ultranationalist anti-Russian Nazi and Fascist minority, with origins dating to collaboration with Nazi Germany. These elements hated Ukraine’s large ethnically and linguistically Russian population, who had a strong traditional link with Russia and its history, including Ukrainian cities founded by Russia. With well-placed undercover money, arms and expert CIA covert manipulation, a small but violent uprising, a coup d’état and civil war might turn Ukraine into a security threat to Russia that could be used to seal NATO under US control.

Under the stewardship of Hillary Clinton’s handmaiden, Victoria Nuland, laden with $5 billion (actually, with unlimited funds), this is exactly what happened in 2013-14. The newly installed Ukrainian coup government promptly began the repression of its ethnically Russian population, which mounted a resistance movement to defend itself, as intended by the US/NATO covert operators. Over the next eight years, the US funded, armed and trained its Ukrainian puppet, all the while amplifying the repression against the ethnic Russians, whose resistance groups Russia supported with arms and training. Negotiated agreements in 2014 and 2015 (the Minsk accords) to end the fighting were only partially and temporarily effective, and as German Chancellor Angela Merkel admitted in an interview with Die Zeit in 2022, they were only an attempt to gain time [to strengthen the Ukrainian military until they were ready to take on Russia].

That time was February, 2022, when – on cue from its US puppeteers – Ukraine escalated its attacks on its Russian minority in Lugansk and Donetsk oblasts (provinces), instantly raising the daily casualty toll from dozens to hundreds. As intended, this prompted Russia to intervene directly with a “Special Military Operation”, ostensibly limited mainly to ending the massacres and defending the population that was under attack, but also to driving Ukraine to the negotiating table.

It worked. At the end of March, the two countries reached a ceasefire agreement at negotiations in Istanbul, under the auspices of the Turkish government. But this was not what the US had in mind, so British Prime Minister Boris Johnson was promptly dispatched to Istanbul, to remind the Ukrainians that puppets are controlled by the hands of their masters. From then on, the war escalated until it engaged more than a million armed combatants and resulted in more than a half million casualties. And in case some NATO member might be tempted to explore reconciliation with Russia, the US destroyed the Nordstream pipelines, breaking a major foundation of Russia’s peaceful economic bonds with the rest of Europe, and with them much of Europe’s heretofore economic success, on the assumption that weaker partners are more dependable than strong ones (and constitute weaker economic competition, as well).

The US thus became the undisputed hegemon of Europe by means of a conventional proxy war with Russia. But their original plan included the defeat of Russia, as well, both militarily and economically, the latter by means of sanctions that would deny markets and world trade to the Russian economy. This part of the plan was a miserable failure, as Russia found prosperity in new markets, and invested in an astonishingly productive, innovative and efficient strategic defense industry, mainly at its robust defense complex in the Ural mountains. No matter. War, destruction and wanton slaughter had nevertheless proven to be effective strategies for European domination, even without defeating Russia. In addition, the US had shown that, despite its industrial limitations, it could impose its will through proxies bought, trained and supplied with its most powerful weapon, which it had in unlimited supply: the mighty US dollar.

I therefore return to the question of the basis of US power. What enables a country with a declining industrial base and stagnating military production, a shrinking working and middle class and an expanding homeless population to expend vast sums of money to hire and arm proxy fighting forces, purchase and develop foreign political parties, overthrow governments, maintain a military budget that is the equal of the next nine countries combined, and an intelligence budget that is larger than the entire defense budget of every other country except China and Russia?

Part of the answer is that the US increases its national debt by whatever amount it wishes, usually paying low but reliable rates of interest, depending on the market for US Treasury notes. Currently, the debt is roughly $35 trillion, more than the annual US GDP. The only other time in history that debt has exceeded GDP was in WWII, which hints at profligate borrowing. But the US is not worried about the size of the debt or about finding takers for its IOUs. As mentioned earlier, the dollar was uncoupled from the value of gold in 1971. The untethered dollar is therefore the basis for most currencies in the world. As a result, the  entire world is heavily invested in the dollar and in maintaining its value, and will buy US Treasury notes as needed to assure that it remains stable and valuable. This enables the US to outspend all other countries to maintain and augment its power throughout the globe. Some have accused the US of treating this system of funding as “the goose that lays the golden egg”.

Others have accused it of coercing or “shaking down” other countries to participate in this financing scheme or face unpleasant consequences. The same accusation has sometimes been leveled with respect to the purchase of US “protection services” and expensive military hardware as part of the NATO member “contributions” that bring US installations and personnel to those countries, and to other US satellite countries around the globe.

The other major basis of US power is the use of unlimited dollar resources to visit extreme violence, death, war and destruction upon countries and societies that do not accept subordinate status, or even those who do, but whose destruction may be seen as a necessary object lesson to those who might otherwise step out of line. This is a commitment to use totally disproportionate force with little or no effort at diplomatic efforts to reach strategic goals. The Israelis call this the “Dahiyeh Doctrine”, in reference to turning entire suburbs (“dahiyeh” in Arabic) or cities and their populations into smoldering ruins for the sake of intimidation. In the case of Ukraine, the US/NATO, has raised the stakes in the destructiveness of the weapons being used against Russia, as well as the choice of increasingly deeper targets inside Russia, while refusing negotiated diplomatic solutions. Threats to use low yield nuclear weapons have also been suggested.

This is, in effect, the insanity ploy, “We are unreasonable and capable of anything. Do what we say or accept terrible consequences.” It is the Armageddon strategy, “We are willing to go to any lengths.” It is the strategy of those who think they are invincible, and who demand complete obedience from, and dominance of, potential rivals. It is the strategy of those who think that they can do whatever they want without serious consequence to themselves. The direct origin of this strategy is the Wolfowitz Doctrine, first issued by Under Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz in 1992, and submitted to his superior, Defense Secretary Dick Cheney. The basis of the doctrine is that any potential rival to US power must be destroyed or reduced to size.

Cheney and Wolfowitz are part of the neoconservative political movement that began during the Vietnam war. It is a movement of warmongers and autocrats who believe that the control of US foreign policy must be kept in the hands of “experts” (themselves) and out of the hands of elected officials who don’t support them. The dissolution of the Soviet Union was in their eyes a vindication of their influence in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations, and their “success” led to the founding of the short-lived Project for a New American Century think tank during the latter part of the Clinton presidency.

The Project for a New American Century in turn became a springboard for neocon saturation of the George W. Bush administration in the major foreign policy arms of the government – the cabinet, the National Security Agency, the State Department, the intelligence services, and eventually the military. Since then, neoconservative control has only broadened and deepened in the U.S. To a large extent they are the unelected cabal that run US foreign policy and related agencies, with support from the interests that profit from war and exploitation, including weapons manufacturers, petroleum and mineral companies, and, of course, the similarly-minded Israel Lobby.

It is in these circles that arrogance knows no bounds, that no risk is too great, and that no amount of death and destruction is inconceivable, because you are not invited to participate unless you consider yourself too intelligent and powerful to make a mistake, and because Armageddon can only happen if you will it so.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Paul Larudee.

Edwin said Prabowo was to go to Japan for a Tuesday meeting to strengthen long-standing bilateral relations.

“Yes, the statement is confirmed. He will also visit Japan on April 2 to 3, scheduled to meet with the Japanese prime minister and defense minister,” Edwin told BenarNews on Monday.

During his meeting with Prabowo, Xi also emphasized that China was ready to make positive contributions to maintaining regional and global peace and stability.

“President Xi emphasized the importance of cooperation between China and Indonesia in maintaining maritime security in the Southeast Asia region, especially regarding the South China Sea issue which is of global concern,” Edwin said.

Prabowo conveyed greetings and a message from Jokowi to Xi, and said he was happy to make China the first country he visited following the election.

In his message, Jokowi told Xi that his successor as president supported developing closer ties with China and would continue Indonesia’s friendly policy toward China, according to Xinhua, the Chinese state-run news agency.

During Jokowi’s nine years in office, bilateral trade with China has soared and Beijing has invested billions of U.S. dollars in infrastructure projects in Indonesia.

Recalling the development of bilateral relations over the past decade, Xi said both sides had made the Jakarta-Bandung High-Speed Railway an example of high-quality cooperation and entered a new stage of development.

China views its relations with Indonesia from a strategic and long-term perspective, Xi said, according to Xinhua.

He said Beijing would work with Jakarta to build a Sino-Indonesian community with a shared future that has regional and global influence to contribute to regional and world peace, stability and prosperity.

‘Too soon’

Indonesian international political analysts, meanwhile, questioned making China the first stop for Prabowo before taking office.

“Prabowo’s visit to China is too soon. It would have been better if he had waited until he was inaugurated first, then visited a foreign country,” Raden Mokhamad Luthfi, a defense analyst at Al Azhar University, told BenarNews last week.

“Visits to foreign countries by the newly inaugurated Indonesian president should first be toneighboring ASEAN-member countries such as Malaysia, considering that Indonesia’s interests are much greater in ASEAN than in other countries,” Raden said, referring to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Pizaro Gozali Idrus and Dandy Koswaraputra.

The United States and Britain on January 23 followed Australia in imposing sanctions on Russian citizen Aleksandr Yermakov, who was designated for his alleged role in a cyberattack that compromised the personal information of 9.7 million Australians.

The U.S. Treasury Department announced its sanctions against Yermakov after Australian authorities said their investigation tied him to the breach of Australian private health insurer Medibank in October 2022.

The department said in a statement that the United States and Britain imposed sanctions on Yermakov because of the risk he poses. The U.S. action freezes any assets he holds in U.S. jurisdiction and generally bars Americans from dealing with him.

“Russian cyber actors continue to wage disruptive ransomware attacks against the United States and allied countries, targeting our businesses, including critical infrastructure, to steal sensitive data,” said Brian Nelson, U.S. undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence.

"Today’s trilateral action with Australia and the United Kingdom, the first such coordinated action, underscores our collective resolve to hold these criminals to account," he added in a statement.

Yermakov, 33, who used the online aliases blade_runner, GustaveDore, and JimJones, resides in Moscow, according to the U.S. Treasury Department.

The Australian government imposed its power to sanction an individual for cybercrime for the first time, applying the law against Yermakov after Australian Federal Police and intelligence agencies linked the Russian citizen to the Medibank cyberattack.

"This is the first time an Australian government has identified a cybercriminal and imposed cybersanctions of this kind and it won't be the last," Home Affairs Minister Clare O'Neil told reporters.

The cyberattack on Medibank, Australia’s largest health insurer, involved sensitive medical records that were released on the dark web after the company refused to pay a ransom.

O’Neil said it was “the single most devastating cyberattack we have experienced as a nation."

The leaks targeted records related to drug abuse, sexually transmitted infections, and abortions.

"We all went through it, literally millions of people having personal data about themselves, their family members, taken from them and cruelly placed online for others to see," O’Neil said, calling the hackers “cowards” and “scum bags."

The Australian sanctions impose a travel ban and strict financial sanctions that make it a criminal offense punishable by up to 10 years imprisonment for anyone found guilty of providing assets to Yermakov or using his assets, Foreign Minister Penny Wong said.

Australian Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles said the sanctions are part of Australia’s efforts to expose cybercriminals and debilitate groups engaging in cyberattacks.

“In our current strategic circumstances we continue to see governments, critical infrastructure, businesses, and households in Australia targeted by malicious cyberactors," Marles said in a statement.

With reporting by AP, Reuters, and AFP

This content originally appeared on News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.

The post A Strategic Dilemma appeared first on Al-Shabaka.

This content originally appeared on Al-Shabaka and was authored by Tariq Kenney-Shawa.

A simultaneous war with China and Russia is a strategic nightmare that sober American strategists such as Henry Kissinger have been warning the US to avoid at all costs, and it is also a topic that some US media outlets have become more and more fond of talking about in recent years. At least from the publicly available information, Washington has never previously addressed it as a formal political agenda, supposedly aware of its seriousness and the terrible risks it carries. But the publication of a report by a congressionally appointed bipartisan panel titled America’s Strategic Posture crossed this “red line” on October 12.

The central point of the 145-page report is that the US must expand its military power, particularly its “nuclear weapons modernization program,” in order to prepare for possible simultaneous wars with China and Russia. Notably, the report diverges completely from the current US national security strategy of winning one conflict while deterring another, and from the Biden administration’s current nuclear policy. It is not a fantasy among the American public, but a serious strategic assessment and recommendation in the service of policymaking.

The 12-member panel that wrote the report was hand-picked by the US Congress from major think tanks and retired defense, security officials and former lawmakers. This report makes us feel that a “strategic nightmare” is sneaking into the US political agenda, but has not drawn due concern and vigilance in Washington, and to a large extent, the American elite group represented by the panel is actively working to make this nightmare come true.

A look at the specific recommendations of this report will send shivers down the spine of those who retain any basic rationality. The report recommends that the US deploy more warheads, and produce more bombers, cruise missiles, ballistic missile submarines, non-strategic nuclear weapons and so on. It also calls on the US to deploy warheads on land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and to consider adding road-mobile ICBMs to its arsenal, establishing a third shipyard that can build nuclear-powered ships, etc.

What depths of insanity is the US sinking to? The US’ military spending accounts for nearly 40 percent of the world’s total defense expenditures, and it has been growing dramatically for several years, with military spending in 2023 reaching $813.3 billion, more than the GDP of most countries, but even that is not enough for these politicians. Such a report full of geopolitical fanaticism and war imagery, whether or not it actually ends up as a “guide” for Washington’s decision-making, is dangerous and needs to be resisted and opposed by all peace-loving countries.

According to some American media, the report ignores the consequences of a nuclear arms race. In fact, the report doesn’t seem to consider this at all and doesn’t suggest any measures other than nuclear expansion to address this issue. In other words, it is a reckless approach. Both China and Russia are nuclear powers, and everyone knows that provoking a confrontation between nuclear powers is a crazy idea. Even promoting a nuclear arms race under the banner of “deterrence” is a disastrous step backward in history. Washington’s political elites, who lived through the Cold War, cannot be unaware of this. However, the fact that such an absurd and off-key report is being presented in all seriousness by the US Congress is both surreal and unsurprising. It is in line with the distorted political atmosphere in Washington today.

The motives behind this exaggeration of threats and creating a warlike atmosphere are highly suspicious. The recent outbreak of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict caused a sharp increase in US defense industry stocks, while American defense industry companies have also been the biggest beneficiaries of the long-standing Russia-Ukraine conflict. The military-industrial complex, like a geopolitical monstrosity, parasitically clings to American society, manipulating its every move, pushing Washington step by step to introduce and even prepare for ideas that were once considered “impossible.” The prosperity of the American military-industrial complex is built upon blood and corpses, and carries a primal guilt. Serving the interests of the American military-industrial complex is unethical.

The reality is that such rhetoric is becoming increasingly politically acceptable in today’s Washington. The idea of “preparing for possible simultaneous wars with Russia and China,” once a fringe fantasy, has gradually made its way into Washington’s agenda, which is deeply unsettling. If Washington were to adopt even a small portion of the recommendations in this report, the harm and threats it could pose to world peace would be immeasurable and would ultimately backfire on the US itself. There is an old Chinese saying: “Those who play with fire will perish by it.” This is something that is worth Washington’s careful consideration.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Global Times.

South Korea’s first vice minister for foreign affairs Chang Ho-jin and his Japanese counterpart Masataka Okano met in Seoul on Thursday, where the agenda centered around bilateral, regional and global issues, including the Indo-Pacific strategy and geopolitics of East Asia, according to the South’s foreign ministry statement.

The two also jointly condemned North Korea’s nuclear provocations during the talks, the statement added. They concurred that the United States, South Korea, and Japan must “collaborate to spearhead a resolute and unified international response,” vowing that the three nations will put efforts towards improving human rights in North Korea.

“The vice-ministerial strategic dialogue is a part of the close communication between ROK and Japan, and we expect it to further strengthen our cooperation on issues of common interest based on this communication,” said Lim Soo-suk, South Korea’s foreign ministry spokesperson in a regular briefing, referring to South Korea by its formal name.  

Seoul’s ties and communication with Tokyo were improving at both bilateral and multilateral levels, she added. 

The meeting between the two key U.S. allies took place for the first time since 2014, after the two leaders of the countries, Yoon Suk Yeol and Kishida Fumio agreed to mend ties during a summit in March.

The meeting was first held in 2005, with the aim of expanding  bilateral strategic cooperation to tackle regional challenges, but was suspended as relations between Seoul and Tokyo soured over disagreement surrounding Japan’s colonial rule over the Korean peninsula.

Most notable is the issue of compensating forced laborers and ‘comfort women,’ a Japanese euphemism for wartime sex slaves. As the dispute showed no signs of reaching a resolution, its implication has extended to other areas, affecting military and economic security.

The discord between Tokyo and Seoul ran against the interests of Washington to reunite allies in addressing challenges posed by China. South Korea’s conservative President Yoon Suk Yeol, who took office last year, made steps to reconcile the dispute, and had proposed measures to compensate the wartime victims using South Korean funds, despite the domestic backlash.

Expanding cooperation

Thursday’s meeting signals South Korea and Japan’s effort to expand their scope of cooperation – a move that could aid U.S. President Joe Biden’s Asia strategy to unite regional allies.

Initial indications of reconciliation have appeared in the military sector, with the navies of South Korea and Japan actively and openly participating in drills in waters that divide the Koreas and Japan.

The scope of cooperation then extended to the finance sector, with the two countries agreeing to revive their financial cooperation earlier this week, in the face of heightened geopolitical risks including those that could potentially stem from China’s unstable property market.  

During the U.S.-South Korea-Japan trilateral summit at Camp David in August, Yoon indicated that the cooperation is poised to expand its hi-tech industries. “In the fields of artificial intelligence, quantum, bio, next-generation information and communication, and space, ROK-US-Japan cooperation has great synergies,” Yoon said.

Kishida also echoed Yoon in the press conference: “In the area of economic security, there was consensus on promoting cooperation in key emerging technologies and cooperation related to strengthening supply chain resilience,” Kishida said, indicating that Tokyo’s cooperation with Seoul would create a foundation for continued and stable strengthening of trilateral cooperation.

The real game now is bringing specific measures into strengthening the cooperations, pointed out Cheon Seong-whun, a former security strategy secretary for South Korea’s presidential office.

“The devil is in detail,” Cheon said. “It’s essential to identify specific methods to enhance collaboration. One approach could be establishing a committee dedicated to fostering direct cooperation.”

“The focus now should be on achieving tangible outcomes. Operating the current framework without producing meaningful results is futile,” he added.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Lee Jeong-Ho for RFA.

The post The Strategic Nightmare That Follows the “Forever War” appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Melvin Goodman.

The post The Strategic Nightmare That Follows the “Forever War” appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Melvin Goodman.

The announcement of a partnership between the New Zealand government and the world’s biggest investment manager BlackRock in a NZ$2 billion climate infrastructure fund suggests the company is expecting renewable energy in New Zealand to increase its own profitability.

The new fund is the first country-specific renewable investment BlackRock has made, following its 2022 acquisition of New Zealand company SolarZero, which produces solar battery storage and other energy services.

The initiative also underpins the government’s aspirational goal of having 100 percent of electricity generated by renewable sources by 2035.

The purpose of this fund is to accelerate investment from Crown companies and agencies to speed up decarbonisation. But will it cut costs to consumers?

Given New Zealand’s isolation and reliance on exports and tourism, the country remains vulnerable to climate change impacts and carbon pricing designed to help cut emissions.

Aside from storm and drought damage from climate change that disrupts food production, both imports and exports are likely to increase in price, and carbon-based tariffs may adversely affect New Zealand’s economy.

To address climate change threats in New Zealand will require more than mobilising private investment with a focus on renewable energy. It will need a comprehensive and collaborative approach that acknowledges dependencies on shipping and air travel, which continue to depend on fossil fuels.

Here are ten broad areas that must be considered when tackling the specific and sometimes unique challenges New Zealand faces in the years ahead:

1. Maximising renewable energy
Most of New Zealand’s electricity comes from hydro power as well as wind and solar power. It is already over 80 percent renewable, but the grid is topped up by coal.

Promoting renewable electricity is essential but likely not enough. Energy for industrial processes (heating, drying, steel production) still relies on fossil fuels, and we need to make more use of abundant solar and wind resources.

Because these resources are intermittent, they must be integrated with hydro power to serve as a “battery” by storing water behind a dam. This requires a national, publicly owned entity whose goal is to maximise renewable energy production (not profits in private companies).

2. Rethinking travel
New Zealand has a growing fleet of electric vehicles, but the transport system still largely runs on fossil fuels. It is one of the country’s largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions, responsible for 17 percent of gross emissions.

Apart from improving public transport and promoting cycling and walking, simply avoiding unnecessary travel becomes essential. The covid pandemic has shown the way with teleconferencing and virtual meetings.

3. Reduce shipping emissions
If shipping were a country, it would be sixth in total emissions. Last month, the International Maritime Organisation (IMO), a UN agency that regulates global shipping, agreed to a new climate strategy to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions “close to 2050”.

Already, penalties are being implemented to prevent use of high-sulphur oil. A carbon tax or levy is likely, starting in the European Union in 2024. Biofuels, methanol and perhaps even wind power may help shipping.

4. Trains versus planes
For international air travel, development of sustainable aviation fuels is progressing. Further optimising air traffic and flight routes and promoting the use of fuel-efficient aircraft and technologies is essential.

It seems likely carbon offsets may be required, and these could be expensive. For domestic travel, trains may become more viable.

Climate policy expert ‘cautiously optimistic’ over BlackRock deal https://t.co/6GwrYVrIP1

— RNZ News (@rnz_news) August 9, 2023

5. Prepare for tourism declines
Ecotourism is likely to grow, and operators will have to abide by sustainability certifications and limits to fragile ecosystems areas. Off-peak and new, dispersed destinations seem likely.

Offsetting carbon may become mandatory and the cost is likely to go up, with adverse effects on New Zealand’s economy.

6. Better carbon offsets
The need for quality offsets for fossil fuel use is likely to increase. The main potential is wood in trees, since plants take up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

However, trees have a finite lifetime and this can only be a temporary fix. Indigenous trees grow more slowly and can lock up carbon for more than a century. But considerable care is needed to avoid forest fires and disease, or the offset value diminishes rapidly.

7. Strategic forestry
Protecting and restoring existing native forests helps conserve biodiversity. It also helps limit runoff and erosion. Large-scale afforestation and reforestation efforts to expand forest cover should continue, as strategic planting of native trees will enhance carbon sequestration and restore ecosystem balance.

Implementation of sustainable forest management practices, emphasising selective logging and reforestation after harvesting, will ensure a continuous carbon sink, preserve biodiversity and protect sensitive ecosystems.

8. Greener cities and towns
Urban forestry can counteract urban heat island effects and enhance air quality. Planting trees in public spaces and along streets in residential areas can reduce energy consumption for cooling and improve people’s wellbeing.

9. Biofuel development
As well as using wood to temporarily sequester carbon, it can be used as a biofuel. Torrefaction is a thermal process that involves heating biomass in the absence of oxygen to produce a more energy-dense and stable material.

This process can be applied to various types of biomass, including wood chips, slash, agricultural residues and other organic materials. The resulting torrefied biomass has several advantages, including improved grindability, increased energy density and reduced moisture content.

It is currently used at the Huntly power station in place of coal but the torrefied wood chips are imported. Instead, this could be an important fuel and an export, given the shortages in Europe arising from the Ukraine war.

10. Incentives for better land use
Regenerative farming, agroforestry and silvopasture techniques integrate trees with agricultural practices. This enhances carbon sequestration, improves soil health and provides additional income streams for farmers.

New Zealand should implement financial incentives and regulations to encourage private landowners to participate in tree planting and sustainable forest management. Tax incentives, carbon offset programmes and grants can drive private investment in climate-friendly practices.

A more self-sufficient future
Addressing climate change threats in New Zealand requires acknowledgement of the dependencies on shipping, air travel and tourism. Planning for the consequences of climate change and building resilience are both essential.

New Zealand needs to become a lot more self-sufficient and reduce volumes of exports by increasing domestic processing and manufacture. These changes may be hastened by international tariffs on trade based on carbon content.

By transitioning to green shipping, transforming air travel and fostering sustainable tourism, New Zealand can mitigate its carbon footprint, protect natural ecosystems and ensure long-term socioeconomic prosperity. Public-private partnerships and robust policy implementation are crucial.

Kevin Trenberth, distinguished scholar, NCAR; affiliate faculty, University of Auckland. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

A Papua New Guinean academic says the new security deals with the United States will militarise his country and anyone who thinks otherwise is naïve.

In May, PNG’s Defence Minister Win Barki Daki and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken signed the Defence Cooperation Agreement and the Shiprider Agreement.

Last week they were presented to PNG MPs for ratification and made public.

• LISTEN TO RNZ PACIFIC WAVES: Michael Kabuni talks defence treaties
• READ MORE: Other PNG-US defence pact reports

The defence cooperation agreement talks of reaffirming a strong defence relationship based on a shared commitment to peace and stability and common approaches to addressing regional defence and security issues.

Money that Marape ‘wouldn’t turn down’
University of PNG political scientist Michael Kabuni said there was certainly a need for PNG to improve security at the border to stop, for instance, the country being used as a transit point for drugs such as methamphetamine and cocaine.

“Papua New Guinea hasn’t had an ability or capacity to manage its borders. So we really don’t know what goes on on the fringes of PNG’s marine borders.”

But Kabuni, who is completing his doctorate at the Australian National University, said whenever the US signs these sorts of deals with developing countries, the result is inevitably a heavy militarisation.

“I think the politicians, especially PNG politicians, are either too naïve, or the benefits are too much for them to ignore. So the deal between Papua New Guinea and the United States comes with more than US$400 million support. This is money that [Prime Minister] James Marape wouldn’t turn down,” he said.

The remote northern island of Manus, most recently the site of Australia’s controversial refugee detention camp, is set to assume far greater prominence in the region with the US eyeing both the naval base and the airport.

US fighter jets now (21.06.23) at Jacksons International Airport, Port Moresby.

Walen Parange pic.twitter.com/EVrOV7CWZ3

— Bobby Jr (@tambijr_4rmPNG) June 21, 2023

Kabuni said Manus was an important base during World War II and remains key strategic real estate for both China and the United States.

“So there is talk that, apart from the US and Australia building a naval base on Manus, China is building a commercial one. But when China gets involved in building wharves, though it appears to be a wharf for commercial ships to park, it’s built with the equipment to hold military naval ships,” he said.

Six military locations
Papua New Guineans now know the US is set to have military facilities at six locations around the country.

These are Nadzab Airport in Lae, the seaport in Lae, the Lombrum Naval Base and Momote Airport on Manus Island, as well as Port Moresby’s seaport and Jackson’s International Airport.

According to the text of the treaty the American military forces and their contractors will have the ability to largely operate in a cocoon, with little interaction with the rest of PNG, not paying taxes on anything they bring in, including personal items.

Prime Minister James Marape has said the Americans will not be setting up military bases, but this document gives them the option to do this.

Marape said more specific information on the arrangements would come later.

Antony Blinken said the defence pact was drafted by both nations as ‘equal and sovereign partners’ and stressed that the US will be transparent.

Critics of the deal have accused the government of undermining PNG’s sovereignty but Marape told Parliament that “we have allowed our military to be eroded in the last 48 years, [but] sovereignty is defined by the robustness and strength of your military”.

The Shiprider Agreement has been touted as a solution to PNG’s problems of patrolling its huge exclusive economic zone of nearly 3 million sq km.

Another feature of the agreements is that US resources could be directed toward overcoming the violence that has plagued PNG elections for many years, with possibly the worst occurrence in last year’s national poll.

But Michael Kabuni said the solution to these issues will not be through strengthening police or the military but by such things as improving funding and support for organisations like the Electoral Commission to allow for accurate rolls to be completed well ahead of voting.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

Two Pacific nations considered by Washington as crucial in its competition with China for influence in the region have agreed to 20-year extensions of funding arrangements as part of security and defence treaties.

The Federated States of Micronesia signed off on a nearly-final Compact of Free Association on Monday with US Presidential Envoy Joseph Yun, followed by Palau on Wednesday.

Both documents are expected to be formally signed later this month, ending two years of negotiations.

• READ MORE: PNG’s Marape confident of pulling off PNG-US defence pact in spite of leak
• Other US defence reports

However, the Marshall Islands, the third North Pacific nation with a Compact, is unlikely to sign primarily because of outstanding issues surrounding the US nuclear testing legacy in the country.

The FSM will reportedly receive US$3.3 billion and Palau US$760 million over the 20-year life of the new funding agreements, according to US officials.

Yun was due to visit the Marshall Islands capital Majuro this week to discuss the situation further.

But the situation in the Marshall Islands appeared murkier than ever.

“The RMI (Republic of the Marshall Islands) looks forward to reaching an agreement soon with the US,” Marshall Islands Chief Negotiator and Foreign Minister Kitlang Kabua said on Wednesday.

Doubtful over new Compact
It is unclear at this stage when the two governments will reach agreement on a new 20-year deal, despite Kabua and Yun having initialled a memorandum of understanding in January that spelled out the amounts of funding to be provided to RMI over 20 years.

That would bring in US$1.5 billion and an additional US$700 million related to the nuclear weapons test legacy.

Yun acknowledged the situation with the Marshall Islands telling Reuters it was “doubtful” that the US and Marshall Islands would sign off on the Compact before he departs from Majuro this weekend.

At least one member of the Marshall Islands Compact Negotiation Committee said he was in the dark as to next steps.

“I really have no idea what is the game plan here,” he said.

In a widely-circulated email on the eve of Yun’s visit, Arno Nitijela (parliament) member Mike Halferty said there had been no involvement of the atoll of Arno and the majority of islands in the nation in developing the Compact.

“There is no report on the Compact negotiations for us to understand the situation,” he said. He objected to the exclusion of Arno and other islands from participation, saying the people of Arno are Marshallese like the people involved in the talks with the US.

‘Let people decide own fate’
“If we are truly a democracy, we should have had (a vote on Compact Two) and should now let the people vote to decide their own fate,” he said.

Reuters cited an unnamed “senior US official” who said the discussion between the US and RMI “is no longer about the amount of money but … about how the money will be structured and how it will be spent and what issues it will cover.”

Kitlang Kabua’s comments to the Marshall Islands Journal tended to confirm this analysis: “The RMI has matters tabled in the negotiations that are unique to our bilateral relationship with the US.

“These matters include the nuclear legacy, the communities affected by the US military operations and presence in-country, and the existential threat of climate change,” she said.

“We are also keen on strengthening processes to facilitate the RMI working jointly with the US, without jeopardising accountability and transparency, to utilise resources for areas of priorities as deemed by the RMI government’s strategic plan and other planning documents for the future.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

Papua New Guinea’s Prime Minister James Marape is still confident of delivering the PNG-US Defence Cooperation Agreement despite the cancellation of US President Joe Biden’s visit, and the leaking of a draft copy of the confidential document on Tuesday.

He said PNG’s national interest was at the heart of the agreement, which was still expected to be signed on Monday in Port Moresby between himself and the US government leader or official who would step in for Biden.

Marape said yesterday the agreement that was leaked on Tuesday was still in draft format, and he would announce the finer details today following a cabinet meeting yesterday

• READ MORE:  US planned security pact with PNG raises concerns for Pacific
• Other PNG-US defence pact reports

By yesterday afternoon, the White House was still yet to confirm who would step in for Biden to visit Papua New Guinea.

Copies of the leaked agreement were circulated to PNG and regional media on Tuesday, with Radio New Zealand carrying it on its website the same afternoon.

Marape said the agreement would greatly boost PNG’s defence capabilities and provide key infrastructure in strategic air and sea ports.

“There is a lot of misinformation in the news release. I will announce to the country the upsides of these agreements on Thursday [today],” Marape said told the Post-Courier.

Still in draft form
“The agreement was still in draft form and we will discuss it fully at our cabinet meeting later today [Wednesday].

“I want to inform all that PNG’s national interest is the reason why we [are] elevating our traditional military relationship with USA to a higher and better level, including addressing the needs of our military, to upgrade and sea and airspace border protection.”

Speaking to the Post-Courier separately on Tuesday, and without making any particular reference to the US-PNG Defence Cooperation Agreement, Chief of the PNG Defence Force Major-General Mark Goina said budget support to the military over the years had been unsatisfactory.

“Such agreements with our bilateral partners are crucial in helping plug the gaps,” he said.

“We have devised plans where we have a budget put in place, in accordance to our needs, and based on that, we have identified where the gaps are, and that is where our partners are brought in, partners like Australia, New Zealand, US, China, India, UK and other partners we have relationships with.

“So they come and cover those gaps for us,” General Goina said.

“That’s how we have been addressing our budget shortfalls.

“And this will continue until such time, when we are able to meet our own needs satisfactorily.”

Pact yet to be finaiised
The 14-page agreement, a copy of which was also seen by the Post-Courier, will be finalised by the end of this week for signing on Monday in Port Moresby.

When signed, the agreement will work in line with all previous defence agreements between the two countries.

The draft agreement, titled “Agreement on Defence Cooperation Between the Government of the United States of America And the government of the Independent State of Papua New Guinea’, contains a total of 22 specific sections or articles, which deal with a broad range of issues.

The articles range from issues such as:

• the status of US personnel who will pass through or be based in PNG military facilities;
• access to and use of agreed facilities and areas covered in the agreement;
• pre-positioning and storage of equipment, supplies and materials;
• property ownership, security; entry and exit;
• movement of aircraft, vehicles and vessels; importation, exportation and taxes;
• driving and professional licenses;
• contracting;
• logistics support; medical and mortuary affairs, postal and recreational facilities and communications services; and
• utilities and communications; and o

Strategic specifics
The specific areas and facilities covered under the agreement include the strategically-valuable Nadzab airport and Lae wharf, the Lombrum naval base and Momote airport in Manus, and the Port Moresby seaport and Jackson’s International Airport.

Access to these strategic areas and facilities are covered in article five of the agreement, which states, in part, that: “The parties shall cooperate to facilitate the required approvals to enable unimpeded access to and use of the agreed facilities and areas to US Forces and US contractors as mutually agreed.”

“Such agreed facilities and areas may be used for mutually agreed activities including visits, training, exercises, manoeuvres, transit, support and related activities, refueling of aircraft . .” and others.

There were fears that the agreement would undermine PNG’s sovereignty, even though many similar agreements exist between the US and its allies around the world and the Indo-Pacific region — countries which still enjoy their freedoms and sovereignty.

Lawrence Fong and Gorethy Kenneth are PNG Post-Courier reporters. Republished with permission.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

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This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

The post European ‘Strategic Autonomy’ and the Perception of Reality appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Alfred de Zayas.

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Flush with $80 billion in new funding, the IRS is aiming to ramp up audits of wealthy taxpayers and large corporations, according to a strategic operating plan it released Thursday. The 150-page plan also includes a lengthy list of proposed changes intended to improve customer service, upgrade the agency’s notoriously outdated computer systems, boost hiring and even “explore making it easier” to file tax returns directly with the IRS for free.

Until a spurt of funding during the early pandemic and then the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, the IRS had been hobbled by a decade of budget cuts, causing audit and enforcement rates to plummet. As the report notes: “Taxpayers earning $1 million or more were subject to an audit rate of just 0.7% in 2019 — a sharp decline from 7.2% in 2011. We will increase enforcement for high-income and high-wealth individuals to help ensure they are paying the taxes they owe.” It cites employment taxes, excise taxes, and estate and gift taxes as areas of focus. The plan promises to comply with a Treasury Department directive not to increase audit rates for small businesses and people making $400,000 or less.

ProPublica has been chronicling the tax agency’s woes for almost five years, first in a series titled “Gutting the IRS,” which examined the slashing of its budget and its consequences in reduced enforcement, as well as in decreased volume and quality of audits of the rich. ProPublica also published articles that showed how a person making $20,000 was more likely to be audited than a person making $400,000 and a map that revealed the geographic overlay of poverty, race and high audit rates.

ProPublica followed its first IRS series with “The Secret IRS Files,” a second multiyear series that has explored how the U.S. tax system favors the rich, including how its focus on income allows people with massive wealth to sidestep taxes on an epic scale — to the point where some of the wealthiest people, such as Jeff Bezos, had years in which they paid no federal tax.

In comments to The Washington Post about the new IRS plan, Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo said: “One of the things that people talk about when they say that the tax code is unfair is, if you’re low-income, you’re more likely to be audited than if you’re wealthy. ... That is not consistent with tax fairness.”

The plan, released by recently confirmed IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel, aligns with the remarks made by President Joe Biden in his most recent State of the Union address: “I think a lot of you at home agree with me that our present tax system is simply unfair,” Biden said. He reiterated his proposal for what he calls his billionaire minimum tax, which would mandate a 20% minimum levy on income, including unrealized capital gains, for people with a net worth of $100 million or more.

The IRS plan also includes an initiative to “study the feasibility” of allowing taxpayers to file directly with the agency. That study will likely face opposition from companies such as Intuit, the maker of the widely used TurboTax software. In another series, “The TurboTax Trap,” ProPublica documented in exhaustive detail multiyear efforts taken by tax prep companies to undercut free tax-filing.

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., chair of the Senate Finance Committee, applauded the IRS plan. “The bulk of this funding,” he noted in a statement, “will go toward building up the IRS’s capacity to root out cheating by sophisticated, wealthy individuals and companies with highly complex structures.” (The Inflation Reduction Act legislation directed an additional $45.6 billion to IRS enforcement, through September 2031, on top of its previously allotted budget.)

Republicans were less enthusiastic, calling the plan “big government at its worst,” among other things. In January, House Republicans renewed their attempts to reduce the agency’s funding.

Do you have expertise in tax law, accounting or wealth management? Do you have tips to share? Here’s how to get in touch. We are looking for both specific tips and broader expertise.

This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by Jeff Ernsthausen.

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Flush with $80 billion in new funding, the IRS is aiming to ramp up audits of wealthy taxpayers and large corporations, according to a strategic operating plan it released Thursday. The 150-page plan also includes a lengthy list of proposed changes intended to improve customer service, upgrade the agency’s notoriously outdated computer systems, boost hiring and even “explore making it easier” to file tax returns directly with the IRS for free.

Until a spurt of funding during the early pandemic and then the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, the IRS had been hobbled by a decade of budget cuts, causing audit and enforcement rates to plummet. As the report notes: “Taxpayers earning $1 million or more were subject to an audit rate of just 0.7% in 2019 — a sharp decline from 7.2% in 2011. We will increase enforcement for high-income and high-wealth individuals to help ensure they are paying the taxes they owe.” It cites employment taxes, excise taxes, and estate and gift taxes as areas of focus. The plan promises to comply with a Treasury Department directive not to increase audit rates for small businesses and people making $400,000 or less.

ProPublica has been chronicling the tax agency’s woes for almost five years, first in a series titled “Gutting the IRS,” which examined the slashing of its budget and its consequences in reduced enforcement, as well as in decreased volume and quality of audits of the rich. ProPublica also published articles that showed how a person making $20,000 was more likely to be audited than a person making $400,000 and a map that revealed the geographic overlay of poverty, race and high audit rates.

ProPublica followed its first IRS series with “The Secret IRS Files,” a second multiyear series that has explored how the U.S. tax system favors the rich, including how its focus on income allows people with massive wealth to sidestep taxes on an epic scale — to the point where some of the wealthiest people, such as Jeff Bezos, had years in which they paid no federal tax.

In comments to The Washington Post about the new IRS plan, Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo said: “One of the things that people talk about when they say that the tax code is unfair is, if you’re low-income, you’re more likely to be audited than if you’re wealthy. ... That is not consistent with tax fairness.”

The plan, released by recently confirmed IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel, aligns with the remarks made by President Joe Biden in his most recent State of the Union address: “I think a lot of you at home agree with me that our present tax system is simply unfair,” Biden said. He reiterated his proposal for what he calls his billionaire minimum tax, which would mandate a 20% minimum levy on income, including unrealized capital gains, for people with a net worth of $100 million or more.

The IRS plan also includes an initiative to “study the feasibility” of allowing taxpayers to file directly with the agency. That study will likely face opposition from companies such as Intuit, the maker of the widely used TurboTax software. In another series, “The TurboTax Trap,” ProPublica documented in exhaustive detail multiyear efforts taken by tax prep companies to undercut free tax-filing.

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., chair of the Senate Finance Committee, applauded the IRS plan. “The bulk of this funding,” he noted in a statement, “will go toward building up the IRS’s capacity to root out cheating by sophisticated, wealthy individuals and companies with highly complex structures.” (The Inflation Reduction Act legislation directed an additional $45.6 billion to IRS enforcement, through September 2031, on top of its previously allotted budget.)

Republicans were less enthusiastic, calling the plan “big government at its worst,” among other things. In January, House Republicans renewed their attempts to reduce the agency’s funding.

Do you have expertise in tax law, accounting or wealth management? Do you have tips to share? Here’s how to get in touch. We are looking for both specific tips and broader expertise.

This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by Jeff Ernsthausen.

Among the wreckage the riots that have convulsed Paris may leave in their wake include President Emmanuel Macron’s pension reform; Macron’s ability to effectively govern for the next four years; and, quite possibly, the Fifth Republic itself. As The New York Times reported in March, protesters have been heard chanting, “Paris Rise Up…We decapitated Louis XVI. We will do it again, Macron.”

But another, less noted, casualty of Macron’s high-handed attempt to impose a neoliberal “reform” opposed by large pluralities of French citizens, may well be the idea of European strategic autonomy on matters relating to defense and foreign policy.

Hall Gardner, a professor of international relations at the American University of Paris tells me in his view, “Macron saw himself as the mediator between Russia and the West, but Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and seeming refusal to compromise hurt Macron’s international credibility, while Macron’s apparent inability to foresee the extent of French social protest against his proposed reforms in the French system of retirement reveal him to be a weak leader, who is not in touch with his citizens, so that Putin will attempt to play the Far Right and Far Left, and increasingly the Center, against him, so as to reduce French diplomatic and military support for Ukraine.”

“At the same time,” says Gardner, “the domestic crisis in France is so deep that it will weaken Macron’s efforts to play a constructive role in building an all-European foreign policy vis-a-vis Russia, the U.S. and other states.”

Macron had been pushing the concept of strategic autonomy for years, and during his first campaign for president in 2017 he pledged to “bring an end to the form of neoconservatism that has been imported to France over the past 10 years.”

From the perspective of American restrainers, this should have been welcome news; after all why, eighty years after the end of the Second World War and thirty years after the end of the Cold War is the United States, with $31 trillion in debt, still subsidizing the defense of Europe, which has over 100 million more people and a GDP of roughly $18 trillion?

But then the war in Ukraine came, and with it, a swift and effective effort by the Biden administration—through any means necessary—to impose a strict discipline among its NATO allies.

And so, in the aftermath of Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, strategic autonomy’s future began to look bleak and the riots in Paris have now only served to further drive a stake through its heart.

Some might argue, however, that EU leaders are in fact pursuing a strategy of strategic autonomy as a result of the war in Ukraine. After all, European Commissioner for Internal Market Thierry Breton’s recently announcedplans to transform the European Defense Industry Reinforcement Through Common Procurement Act (EDIRPA) into a vehicle through which the EU can meet the new defense requirements for the war in Ukraine. Still more, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, in his much-heralded “Zeitenwende” (“Turning Point”) speech of last year, pledged €100 million in new defense spending.

But an increase in spending—something the Americans have, after all, been demanding of its European partners for years—is not an alternative strategy. The fact is, the war in Ukraine has consolidated American hegemony in Europe. Firstly, the financial and military contributions to Ukraine by the United States dwarfs the contributions made by EU member states.

And then there is the curious non-reaction by the leaders of the Germany parliamentary coalition, the Social Democrats (SPD) to the destruction of Nord Stream 2. As the German sociologist Wolfgang Streeck, emeritus director of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies recently wondered:

“How long the German government can remain as subservient to the United States as it has now promised to be is an open question, considering the risks that come with Germany’s territorial closeness to the Ukrainian battlefield – a risk not shared by the U.S.”

After conversations with German parliamentarians and activists from across the political spectrum over the past week, one comes away with the impression: Quite a good deal longer.

In Germany, the appetite for a freer hand in the formation of their own national security policy exists in pockets (on the part of the Left that still understands the value of Ostpolitik, and the far-right) but is nowhere evident among the political establishment and still less among Scholz’s coalition partners, particularly the bellicose Greens, who now seem to relish their role as a proxy for the U.S. foreign policy establishment.

Yet over the long term, Germany’s economic, energy and national security interests will likely dictate it come to reject (or take a polite pass on) American demands to sign up for the now looming global confrontation between Western democracies and Eurasian authoritarian regimes led by China and Russia.

Over time, Ostpolitik (The “Eastern Policy” of normalized relations with the communist states of Eastern Europe pursued by German Chancellor Willy Brandt in the late 1960s and early 1970s) may have a second life after all, given the German industry’s dependence on cheap natural gas and its ever-increasing trading ties with China: In 2021 two-way trade between Germany and China hit a record $320 billion.

But as things now stand, with Paris distracted by a populist revolt, Washington—with the enthusiastic backing of Warsaw, London, Prague, Riga, Tallinn, Vilnius, and the foreign ministry in Berlin—is exercising a kind of hegemony on the continent not seen since the days when President Reagan, against vast popular protests, placed Pershing II missiles in West Germany in late 1983.

To his great credit, Macron realizes—as did his model, the great Charles de Gaulle—that protracted U.S. hegemony over Europe is both unsustainable and indeed, given Washington’s ever-deepening involvementin the Ukraine war and the new cold war posture it has taken with regard to China, dangerous. But now he is likely helpless to pursue his favored alternative strategy.

In the end, a politically stable France and German buy-in are the two foundational prerequisites for strategic autonomy to succeed. And as of this writing, there is neither.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by James Carden.

The key takeaway of President Ebrahim Raeisi’s state visit to Beijing goes way beyond the signing of 20 bilateral cooperation agreements.

This is a crucial inflexion point in an absorbing, complex, decades-long, ongoing historical process: Eurasia integration.

Little wonder that President Raeisi, welcomed by a standing ovation at Peking University before receiving an honorary academic title, stressed “a new world order is forming and taking the place of the older one”, characterized by “real multilateralism, maximum synergy, solidarity and dissociation from unilateralisms”.

And the epicenter of the new world order, he asserted, is Asia.

It was quite heartening to see the Iranian president eulogizing the Ancient Silk Road, not only in terms of trade but also as a “cultural bond” and “connecting different societies together throughout history”.

Raeisi could have been talking about Sassanid Persia, whose empire ranged from Mesopotamia to Central Asia, and was the great intermediary Silk Road trading power for centuries between China and Europe.

It’s as if he was corroborating Chinese President Xi Jinping’s famed notion of “people to people exchanges” applied to the New Silk Roads.

And then President Raeisi jump cut to the inescapable historical connection: he addressed the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), of which Iran is a key partner.

All that spells out Iran’s full reconnection with Asia – after those arguably wasted years of trying an entente cordiale with the collective West. That was symbolized by the fate of the JCPOA, or Iran nuclear deal: negotiated, unilaterally buried and then, last year, all but condemned all over gain.

A case can be made that after the Islamic Revolution 44 years ago, a budding “pivot to the East” always lurked behind the official government strategy of “Neither East nor West”.

Starting in the 1990s that happened to progressively enter in full synch with China’s official “Open Door” policy.

After the start of the millennium, Beijing and Tehran have been getting even deeper in synch. BRI, the major geopolitical and geoeconomic breakthrough, was proposed in 2013, in Central Asia and Southeast Asia.

Then, in 2016, President Xi visited Iran, in West Asia, leading to the signing of several memoranda of understanding (MOU), and recently the wide-ranging 25-year comprehensive strategic agreement – consolidating Iran as a key BRI actor.

Accelerating all key vectors

In practice, Raeisi’s visit to Beijing was framed to accelerate all manner of vectors in Iran-China economic cooperation – from crucial investments in the energy sector (oil, gas, petrochemical industry, pipelines) to banking, with Beijing engaged in advancing modernizing reforms in Iran’s banking sector and Chinese banks opening branches across Iran.

Chinese companies may be about to enter the emerging Iranian commercial and private real estate markets, and will be investing in advanced technology, robotics and AI across the industrial spectrum.

Sophisticated strategies to bypass harsh, unilateral US sanctions will be a major focus every step of the way in Iran-China relations. Barter is certainly part of the picture when it comes to trading Iranian oil/gas contracts for Chinese industrial and infrastructure deals.

It’s quite possible that Iran’s sovereign wealth fund – the National Development Fund of Iran – with holdings at estimated $90 billion, may be able to finance strategic industrial and infrastructure projects.

Other international financial partners may come in the form of the Asian Infrastructure Development Bank (AIIB) and the NDB – the BRICS bank, as soon as Iran is accepted as a member of BRICS+: that may be decided this coming August at the summit in South Africa.

The heart of the matter of the strategic partnership is energy. The China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) pulled out of a deal to develop Phase 11 of Iran’s South Pars gas field, adjacent to Qatar’s section.

Yet CNPC can always come back for other projects. Phase 11 is currently being developed by the Iranian energy company Petropars.

Energy deals – oil, gas, petrochemical industry, renewables – will boom across what I dubbed Pipelineistan in the early 2000s.

Chinese companies will certainly be part of new oil and gas pipelines connecting to the existing Iranian pipeline networks and configuring new pipeline corridors.

Already established Pipelineistan includes the Central Asia-China  pipeline, which connects to China’s West-East pipeline grid, nearly  7,000 km from Turkmenistan to the eastern China seaboard; and the Tabriz-Ankara pipeline (2,577 km, from northwest Iran to the Turkish capital).

Then there’s one of the great sagas of Pipelineistan: the IP (Iran-Pakistan) gas pipeline, previously known as the Peace Pipeline, from  South Pars to Karachi.

The Americans did everything in the book – and off the books – to stall it, delay it or even kill it. But IP refused to die; and the China-Iran strategic partnership could finally make it happen.

A new geostrategic architecture

Arguably, the central node of the China-Iran strategic partnership is the configuration of a complex geostrategic economic architecture:  connecting the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), the flagship of BRI, to a two-pronged Iran-centered corridor.

This will take the form of a China-Afghanistan-Iran corridor and a China-Central Asia-Iran corridor, thus forming what we may call a geostrategic China-Iran Economic Corridor.

Beijing and Tehran, now on overdrive and with no time to lose, may face all manner of challenges – and threats – from the Hegemon; but their 25-year strategic deal does honor historically powerful trading/ merchant civilizations now equipped with substantial manufacturing/ industrial bases and with a serious tradition in advanced scientific innovation.

The serious possibility of China-Iran finally configuring what will be a brand new, expanded strategic economic space, from East Asia to West Asia, central to 21^st century multipolarity, is a geopolitical tour de force.

Not only that will completely nullify the US sanction obsession; it will direct Iran’s next stages of much needed economic development to the East, and it will boost the whole geoeconomic space from China to Iran and everyone in between.

This whole process – already happening – is in many aspects a direct consequence of the Empire’s “until the last Ukrainian” proxy war against Russia.

Ukraine as cannon fodder is rooted in Mackinder’s heartland theory:  world control belongs to the nation that controls the Eurasian land mass.

This was behind World War I, where Germany knocking out Russia created fear among the Anglo-Saxons that should Germany knock out France it would control the Eurasian land mass.

WWII was conceived against Germany and Japan forming an axis to control Europe, Russia and China.

The present, potential WWIII was conceived by the Hegemon to break a friendly alliance between Germany, Russia and China – with Iran as a privileged West Asia partner.

Everything we are witnessing at this stage spells out the US trying to break up Eurasia integration.

So it’s no wonder that the three top existential “threats” to the American oligarchy which dictates the “rules-based international order” are The Three Sovereigns: China, Russia and Iran.

Does that matter? Not really. We have just seen that while the dogs (of war) bark, the Iran-China strategic caravan rolls on.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Pepe Escobar.

We all breathed an enormous collective sigh of relief when Nikita Khruschev publicly agreed to withdraw the Soviet missiles from Cuba. John F. Kennedy secretly reciprocated by removing US missiles from Turkey aimed at the Soviet Union. The whole world rejoiced. A close encounter with a war, which could have threatened civilization, had been avoided.

In the aftermath, a robust international peace movement demanded and achieved some successes including the Anti-Ballistic Missile and the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaties. Those halcyon days are now over. The US is largely responsible for scrapping those disarmament treaties. The last remaining Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) expires in February 2026 and has faint prospects of being renewed.

Back in 1962, in the midst of the Cold War, it would have been unfathomable to think that we were living in hopeful times of relative security. But such was the case, compared to the current situation. The US and the USSR were both willing to step back from the brink of nuclear conflict in 1962. Both sides sought accommodation; neither sought victory. Now the US and its allies seek a mortal defeat of Russia.

No Exit Strategy

History has shown wars either end in a negotiated peace or in victory for one side.

The world was fortunate that the Cuban Missile Crisis ended with both sides willing to seek accommodation rather than victory. In contrast, the currently raging and indeed escalating Ukraine War could be the prelude to World War III because neither side appears to have an exit strategy; one by choice, the other because its back is to the wall.

The US’s intent is victory by “overextending and unbalancing” Russia in the words of the 2019 position paper by the semi-governmental Rand Corporation. As analyst Rick Sterling pointed out, this was the playbook for the US to provoke Russia into the current conflict. Bombers have been repositioned within striking range of key Russian strategic targets, additional tactical nuclear weapons deployed, and US/NATO war exercises have been held on Russia’s borders.

German ex-Chancellor Angela Merkel recently revealed that the western powers never intended to make peace with Russia. That admission explicitly articulated what had been long enshrined in US foreign policy. Sooner or later the mounting provocations by the US and its allies deliberately threatening its existence would have had to be addressed by Russia.

Expansion of NATO

NATO was founded in 1949 at the onset of the Cold War against the then Soviet Union and later against Russia. NATO was from the beginning not so much an “alliance” as it was a military extension of the US empire where all members had to be integrated with and under US military command.

From its initial 12 members, NATO had expanded east toward the USSR with the addition of Greece, Turkey, and West Germany, by the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis. After that crisis and despite assurances to the Soviets and then the Russian Federation, NATO has expanded to the very borders of what is today Russia with a full membership of 28 hostile states.

Nuclear proliferation

The horrendous bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 marked the dawn of the nuclear era with the US holding a monopoly of this ultimate weapon of mass destruction. The Soviet Union defensively developed its own capacity by 1949, followed by the UK in 1953. Since 1962, the nuclear club expanded to France, China, Israel, rivals India and Pakistan, and finally North Korea.

Currently, the US has 1644 deployed strategic nuclear warheads compared to 1588 by Russia. The only other powers with strategic warheads deployed on intercontinental missiles or bombers are France and the UK.

All of today’s nuclear powers, according to the Federation of American Scientists, “continue to modernize their remaining nuclear forces at a significant pace, several are adding new types and/or increasing the role they serve in national strategy and public statements, and all appear committed to retaining nuclear weapons for the indefinite future.” The danger of nuclear war is ever greater, exacerbated by potential unintentional or accidental triggers.

US hegemony threatened

Especially with the rise of China as a world economic power, US hegemony is being challenged. Washington has not adjusted to an emerging multilateral world graciously.

The one third of humanity that has failed to be sufficiently subservient to what President Biden calls his “rules-based order” have been placed under asphyxiating unilateral economic sanctions. Western Europe, a would-be natural trade partner with their neighbor to the east, has been pressured to sever their economic ties with Moscow. And if there is a hint of hesitancy, the US simply uses force as it did to end the export of Russian gas to Germany via the Nord Stream pipelines.

However, the US has found that it cannot always prevail. Pentagon Plan B, accordingly, is a plague of chaos as has been the fate for Afghanistan, Libya, Haiti, Syria, Iraq, Palestine, etc. For the hegemon, a failed state is better than an independent one. Given the alternative of chaos, one that would make the fire-sale Yeltsin period look like a picnic (and one in which Putin was complicit), Russia sees no alternative but to try to prevail at whatever cost.

Normalization of nuclear war

Adding to the present danger is the normalization of war. When I was in elementary school, the US government’s policy was to bring home the fear of nuclear war in order to justify the post-WWII expansion of the empire’s military. So, us children were terrorized with “duck-and-cover” drills. Families were to sequester in their own private bomb shelters.

Now the prevailing propaganda from Washington is that nuclear war can be “won.” Dr. Strangelove is no longer satire. This planning to fight a nuclear war as if it were not an existential threat is institutionalized insanity. Symptomatic is the Smithsonian Magazine’s reassurance: “Today we live in a vastly different world…the threat of global thermonuclear war has mostly faded.”

However, Robert Kagan, spouse of the US Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, asks: “Can America learn to use its power?” The neo-con then argues in favor of a vigorous nuclear confrontation with Russia on the grounds that Putin will most likely back down.

As if in response, the inimitable Caitlin Johnstone retorts: “It’s as rational as believing Russian roulette is safe because the man handing you the pistol didn’t blow his head off when he pulled the trigger.”

A pathway to a negotiated peace settlement is lacking

The Rand Corporation recently floated the perspective that: “The costs and risks of a long war in Ukraine are significant and outweigh the possible benefits of such a trajectory for the US.” Rand not only reflects, but also leads ruling class opinion. So, this analysis is significant because it backs off from advocating complete victory in Ukraine against Russia.

Unfortunately, not only does the Biden administration have no exist strategy to its wars without end, but it also faces little domestic opposition to this policy compared to former times.

While a handful of Republicans – mainly for narrow partisan reasons – have questioned the ever-expanding US war efforts, there is absolute war unanimity among Democrats. The Democrats have become the full-throated party of war. United with the neoconservatives, the “pimps of war” are charting the course of our future. Even some putative leftists in the US are beating the war drums to “support Ukraine’s victory against the Russian invasion.”

How I long for those days gone by when the choice of “better red than dead” was an option.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Roger D. Harris.

“This nonsensical bill shows that the House Republicans’ climate-killing, anti-public lands agenda is more extreme than ever,” said Brett Hartl, government affairs director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Sacrificing millions more acres of public lands for oil and gas leasing shows just how beholden the Republican majority is to its special interest benefactors.”

Based on the Department of the Interior’s own data, approximately 36.5 million acres of public lands (24.9 million onshore and 11.6 million offshore) are currently leased for oil and gas production. These leases produced approximately 923 million barrels of oil in FY 2021 alone.

Under the legislation, if there were a draw down from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which currently sits at 398 million barrels of oil, by 10% or roughly 40 million barrels of oil, the number of acres leased from public lands and oceans would also increase by 10% or roughly 3.6 million acres under lease to the oil and gas industry (approximately 2.4 million acres onshore and 1.2 million acres offshore).

Assuming a similar amount of oil wells are found on areas of public lands under lease, 2.4 million acres of onshore leases would likely result in more than 8,000 additional oil wells on just public lands alone. With an estimated ultimate recovery of 100,000 barrels of oil per well, this would result in more than 800 million barrels in new onshore production over the lifespan, which is larger than Strategic Petroleum Reserve itself. Such new onshore production would cause more than 517 million metric tons of greenhouse gas pollution.

Even assuming the legislation’s premise was rational, it would only take 400 new onshore wells to offset a one-time, 10% draw down from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

“If it’s a day that ends with a Y, then the Republican plan is to destroy our public lands and pour napalm on the climate emergency,” said Hartl. “It’s tragic, but not unexpected, that the next two years will be marked by these nonserious shenanigans.”

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

The Federated States of Micronesia will receive more US economic assistance under the Compact of Free Association in exchange for the Pacific nation’s broader role in regional security that entails expanded military use of its land, water and air.

“Of paramount importance is that our nation’s citizenry be informed in advance when US fighter jets fly over the State of Yap, for example, or when the US practice firing anti-aircraft missiles from the ground,” FSM President David Panuelo said in a state of the nation address delivered on Friday before the FSM Congress.

Panuelo advised the FSM citizens to also expect more training exercises in and around the nation’s ocean.

• READ MORE: Other FSM reports

“These exercises will be increasing in frequency over the next several years, and while they are ultimately in our national interest and in the interest of our nation’s security — of which the US is our indisputable guardian — it is important that our citizens know about them well in advance so that our people do not see these activities and then immediately fear the worst,” he added.

The compact grants the United States “strategic denial” — the option to deny foreign militaries access to the freely associated nation and provide for US defence sites.

Panuelo acknowledged that the US military’s ramped-up presence in the region was brought about by growing geopolitical conflicts in the Pacific, where Washington and Beijing play tug of war.

The unabated rivalry is compounded by China’s persistent threats to take over Taiwan, which the US vows to defend.

Panuelo said the amplified military activities in Yap will require the expansion of the state ports and increased presence from the US Navy Seabees.

In his state of the nation address, Panuelo said the FSM would receive $140 million in annual sector grant assistance from Washington under the compact’s renewed economic provisions. The agreed amount represents more than $50 million a year over current assistance levels, the president added.

“The good news is that there is much we have already completed successfully with regards to our compact’s negotiations,” Panuelo said.

“I have also made clear that in addition to this sector grant assistance, a one-time contribution of funds into our Compact Trust Fund remains a critical component of our nation’s economic requirements, and is necessary for the health and sustainability of the fund,” Panuelo said.

The economic provisions of the compact are set to expire in September. Washington last week announced the signing of a memorandum of understanding, separately with Palau and the Marshall Islands, renewing the economic assistance for both freely associated states.

Washington and the FSM have yet to formally sign an agreement, but Panuelo said he has “shaken hands” with Joseph Yun, the US special presidential envoy for compact negotiations, on the proposed new deal.

“There remains some important work to be done before our nation’s negotiating teams can sign off,” Panuelo said.

Among the sticky points is the FSM-proposed update on fiscal procedures, which Panuelo said must “reflect more deference to the FSM in the management and implementation of funding assistance.”

Panuelo earlier asked Washington to let the FSM manage its own financial responsibilities under the compact, noting that the funds provided by the treaty are part of diplomatic arrangements rather than largesse.

Read related story US asked not to micromanage FSM Other pending issues include “the development of mutually acceptable subsidiary agreements that are appropriate for the next compact period.”

At the same time, the negotiating panels are working on the continuation of US programmes such as Pell grants, and the reinstatement of US Department of Education programmes previously made available to FSM students.

“The FSM will work very hard until we are satisfied with all aspects of the agreements between our country and the United States,” Panuelo said.

Besides the compact funds, Panuelo reported that the FSM has received a total of $747 million from other foreign donors and lenders including the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, Japan, China, the European Union, Australia and India.

“The figure would be higher if we could financially measure certain forms of in-kind assistance,” Panuelo said.

“Part of this success is due to the improved coordination between the nation and its development partners since the establishment of the Overseas Development Assistance policy in 2013,” Panuelo said.

Foreign donations financed the FSM’s infrastructure projects including the administration’s $100 million “Pave the Nation” initiative.

Republished from the Pacific Island Times with permission.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

"As you know, the United States is the world's largest historical contributor to climate change."

"Our leadership in supporting loss and damage financing would pave the way for transformative improvements in the global response on climate."

That's how 13 progressive U.S. lawmakers began a Wednesday letter to John Kerry, President Joe Biden's climate envoy, about funding to help the countries that contributed the least to the climate emergency but are disproportionately enduring its impacts.

Loss and damage funding for the Global South is a significant topic at the ongoing United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP27), which is set to wrap up in the Egyptian city of Sharm El-Sheikh this week.

"As we've seen with the historic flooding in Pakistan, the fourth consecutive drought in the Horn of Africa, the painfully slow recovery from hurricane damage in Central America, among many other examples, it is the Global South that disproportionately suffers the harms," wrote the lawmakers, led by Reps. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) and Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.).

They argued that "we have both a moral and a strategic responsibility to provide comprehensive support for countries facing climate disaster, including debt forgiveness and reparations. While we work toward those crucial goals, there are also smaller but no less important mechanisms we should be supporting."

"One specific step we urge you to take immediately is to throw the United States' support behind the establishment of a loss and damage finance facility under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) for the purpose of channeling new, grant-based public finance from developed to developing countries to help them recover from climate catastrophes," the letter continues.

According to the U.S. lawmakers, "Ad hoc humanitarian assistance flows, insurance schemes, debt-based financing, and neglected existing funds under the UNFCCC are wholly insufficient to address the current reality in which countries are facing billions of dollars in loss and damage needs."

The letter stresses the need for "a collaborative international effort… to make more high-quality, accessible, and fit-for-purpose financing available," adding that it "must be supplementary to climate financing for mitigation and adaptation and should be unconditional public funding that does not deepen the debt crises faced by many vulnerable countries."

"We have a momentous opportunity to bring other partner countries to the table and shape an equitable path forward—as you know and have proven repeatedly in your own career, when the United States leads, others follow," they wrote to the former secretary of state, who played a key role in the 2015 Paris agreement. "Our leadership in supporting loss and damage financing would pave the way for transformative improvements in the global response on climate."

The letter was also signed by Democratic Reps. Cori Bush (Mo.), André Carson (Ind.), Steve Cohen (Tenn), Jesús G. "Chuy" García (Ill.), Raúl M. Grijalva (Ariz.), Andy Levin (Mich.), Betty McCollum (Minn.), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.), Mark Pocan (Wis.), Jan Schakowsky (Ill.), and Rashida Tlaib (Mich.).

Their message to Kerry comes as leaders of top economies are under fire for ignoring pleas from activists and representatives from the Global South to swiftly establish an international mechanism for loss and damage financing.

Reuters on Tuesday obtained a draft proposal from the Group of 77 (G77) and China to create a loss and damage fund for countries impacted by climate disasters. Under their plan, the fund's principles and policies would be worked out by the 2023 climate talks in Dubai.

However, CNN reported from Sharm El-Sheik Wednesday that "the United States, the European Union, and the United Kingdom are united against establishing a new fund this year to help the world's developing nations."

According to that report:

An E.U. source directly involved in the negotiations at the summit told CNN on Tuesday that the bloc doesn't believe there should be a binding agreement on a new loss and damage fund before the details of how it would work are agreed on.

The source added that the E.U. believes the COP27 agreement could include an agreement that work needs to be done on the issue and a solution should be found by 2024.

Similarly, the U.K. government submitted a document to the conference saying it wants to establish a "process" that would lead to a concrete solution in 2024 at the latest.

U.S. senior administration officials have only committed to having a conversation about loss and damage but have not gone further to explain what kind of fund they would ultimately support. They, too, see 2024 as the deadline for an agreement on loss and damage, but do not support the proposals put forward so far, concerned it could open up developed nations to legal liability in the coming years.

Pressed on what kind of loss and damage fund the U.S. would be open to, officials have repeatedly declined to say. And they want to take the next two years to hammer those questions out, rather than come to an agreement this year.

The outlet noted that a spokesperson for Kerry did not respond to a request for comment.

Meanwhile, Oxfam climate change policy lead Nafkote Dabi was quick to weigh in, saying Wednesday that as COP27 "enters the final crucial days, it is a shame that rich countries—especially the U.S.—continue to reject calls" for creating a loss and damage fund at the current conference.

"Oxfam is in full support of the G77's position and is saddened that the inclusion of loss and damage in the COP27 agenda remains a political game for developed countries, who may likely exit this summit with no agreement on the way forward," Dabi continued. "The principles that underpin the global climate discussion—responsibility, equity, justice, fairness—have left the conference room."

Pointing out that over 40 million people in the Horn of Africa are enduring climate-induced hunger crises while Pakistan faces $30 billion in damage from the floods, Dabi declared that "it is crucial that developing countries can access a formal fund to pay for the damages and losses they are already suffering today."

"Rich countries must meet their $100 billion annual goal for climate finance in addition to establishing a new loss and damage fund that is fit for purpose, accessible, and gender-responsive," she added. "It is long overdue."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Jessica Corbett.

The Pacific Islands Forum has launched a new longterm strategy to address present and future challenges faced by Pacific peoples.

The “2050 Strategy for the Blue Pacific Continent” was endorsed by regional heads of governments as the curtains fell on the 51st Forum Leaders’ summit in Suva.

“As Pacific leaders, our vision is for a resilient Pacific region of peace, harmony, security, social inclusion and prosperity, that ensures all Pacific peoples can lead free, healthy and productive lives,” the 2050 strategy’s leaders’ vision states.

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Forum chair and Fiji’s Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama said the new regional blueprint “is about who we are”.

“The 2050 Strategy is about what we share in common, our challenges and our opportunities about what we need to do together. This is why the 2050 Strategy focuses on our people,” Bainimarama said.

“It is our people who have sent us here to deliberate on their behalf and we owe them strategic response to their greatest challenges especially our youth, our children and grandchildren, who will inherit this strategy and our collective ambitions.”

Bainimarama said the “climate crisis, socio-economic development challenges, slow economic growth and geopolitical competition” were major issues faced by the region”.

‘Must work together’
“We must work together. The 2050 Strategy will serve as our guide for the decades to come, setting out our longterm vision, key value to guide us and key thematic areas and strategic pathways that will pave our shared trajectory as a region.”

He also acknowledged that successful implementation of the strategy will require that “our dialogue and development partners, regional agencies, and international agencies understand and align their development plans to the strategy and engage with us on this basis”.

According to the strategy, the Blue Pacific is about Pacific peoples, their faiths, cultural values, and traditional knowledge.

The 36-page document outlines 10 commitments across seven interconnected thematic areas most crucial for the sustainable longterm development of the region.

The focus areas include political leadership and regionalism, people-centred development, peace and security, resource and economic development, climate change and disasters, ocean and environment, and technology and connectivity.

Forum Secretary-General Henry Puna said the new plan was about Pacific regionalism “which is not an easy thing to progress”.

“Pacific regionalism is more than a set of activities,” Puna said.

“It is vital that the 2050 Strategy guide our collective activities and actions as we address our challenges and exploit our strengths and our opportunities.”

With the 2015 strategy now endorsed, the forum will focus on its delivery and implementation.

“My promise is to ensure that we take the strategy forward as it is intended,” Puna said.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

The 2022 NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) summit, which was held in Madrid, Spain, from June 28-30, has produced a new strategic concept for an alliance which only a few years ago was declared "brain-dead" by French President Emmanuel Macron that will define its future for the next ten years.

Indeed, thanks to Russian President Vladimir Putin, the world's largest military alliance has made a comeback, and with a vengeance. Russia has once again become its main target. The new strategic concept names it as the "most significant and direct threat to the security of allies and to the peace and stability of the Euro-Atlantic area."

Countries with a long history of neutrality, such as Finland and Sweden, will soon be joining NATO after Turkey dropped its opposition. NATO will add 1300 kilometers more of border with Russia. Since 2016, NATO also has an "enhanced forward presence" in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland.

The western encirclement of Russia, which loomed large both before and after the 1917 Bolshevik revolution and has continued with the same zeal even after communism had collapsed, is now virtually complete.

This is a development with staggering implications for international peace and security. NATO was of course a source of instability and a threat to international peace and security throughout the Cold War as it was a central instrument to the US imperial project. With its eastward expansion following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, NATO's role in restoring America's unipolar world hegemony sowed the seeds of mistrust between Russia and the western powers and set the stage for the renewal of a protracted conflict, reminiscent of the Cold War.

The U.S.-led and western-centric alliance bears a great deal of responsibility for the ongoing tragedy in Ukraine. Many top foreign relations experts had predicted that NATO's eastward expansion was a move that would eventually provoke a hostile Russian reaction. Russia had been warning the west about NATO expansion for decades.

In September 1993 Boris Yeltsin send a letter to Bill Clinton in which he warned that an enlargement of NATO might be interpreted by Russia as a national security threat.

"We believe that the eastward expansion of NATO is a mistake and a serious one at that," Boris Yeltsin, Russia's first post-Soviet president, told reporters at a 1997 news conference with US President Bill Clinton in Helsinki, where the two signed a statement on arms control.

At the Madrid summit, NATO leaders agreed to a new strategic concept for the alliance that will make the world even more dangerous than it is now. But before we delve into what NATO's new strategy means for world order, let's briefly recall the history of the U.S.-led military alliance.

NATO was created in 1949 by the United States and 11 other western nations with the stated objective of acting as a deterrent to an invasion of western Europe by the Soviet Union.

Of course, there was no Soviet military threat. Stalin had no intention of invading western Europe. He was a ruthless tyrant in change of a police state that he had built, almost single-handedly, but his approach to foreign policy was not driven by ideology but rather by the dictates of Realpolitik. He was an ultra-realist, having no desire for a military confrontation with the Americans and the British on the continent.

"I can deal with Stalin. He is honest—but smart as hell," Harry Truman wrote in his diary entry dated July 17, 1945, the first day of the Potsdam Conference in Germany.

Indeed, Stalin's geostrategic approach was not geared towards the export of a revolutionary ideology. "The export of a revolution is nonsense," he pointed out in a 1936 interview given to Roy Howard, president of the Scripps-Howard Newspapers. Stalin's primary concern was the security of the Soviet Union. His interest in having Eastern Europe under his thumb was for the purpose of creating a buffer zone between the West and the Soviet Union.

The Soviet Union lost as many as 27 million lives during the Second World War, half of her industry, and thousands of villages, towns, and cities were destroyed. That's the price that it paid for saving the world from Nazi Germany. To be sure, it would be good to remind western readers that "four-fifths of the fighting in Europe took place on the Eastern front, and that's where Germans suffered virtually all of its casualties," as Rodric Braithwaite, former British Ambassador to the Soviet Union/Russian Federation accurately stated during the course of a lecture that he delivered on June 13, 2005, at Kennan Institute.

For all the above reasons, the mere suggestion that Stalin might have any intention of embarking on wild military adventures to conquer Paris or London should have been rejected as utterly ridiculous by any rational policymaker at the time, but obviously that wasn't the case. Take, for instance, the attitude of an anticommunist reactionary like Winston Churchill. His pathological hatred toward the Soviet Union was so intense that even with Operation Barbarossa well under way, and the Soviet Union on the verge of collapse, it was communist Russia, not Nazi Germany, that he considered as the barbaric antithesis of western civilization. "It would be a measureless disaster if Russian barbarism overlaid the culture and independence of the ancient states of Europe" he wrote to Anthony Eden in late 1942.

As stated earlier, NATO's explicit purpose was to "deter Soviet aggression." But the creation of NATO had another goal, though it was never mentioned either by NATO leaders or foreign policy experts and commentators. The goal was to cement western Europe's position in the capitalist world economy with the U.S. at the helm. A year earlier, the Marshall Plan had been introduced, whose purpose was to prevent the spread of communism in western Europe, stabilize the international economic order, and provide markets for U.S. goods. By integrating European countries into NATO, the U.S. was seeking to safeguard its investments in the European economies. In other words, NATO was also seen as a bulwark against radical political change inside different European countries. It was a way to ensure that their future is tied to the capitalist world order.

NATO began to expand only a few years after its creation. Two countries with proclivity for authoritarianism but avowedly anti-communist political establishments, namely Greece and Turkey, joined NATO in 1952. Of course, both countries had already felt the presence of the U.S. in their domestic political affairs long before they were formally accepted into the transatlantic alliance. When the British informed the United States on February 24, 1947, that Great Britain "….feels itself unable, in view of the economic situation in Great Britain, any longer to bear the major share of the burden of rendering assistance in the form of money and military assistance which Greece and Turkey should have if they are to preserve their territorial integrity and political independence," a piece of news that undoubtedly made senior level officials at the State Department jump with excitement, Truman appeared before a joint session of Congress less than a month later to request $400 million of economic and military assistance to both the Greek and Turkish governments.

At that time, Greece was in the midst of the second stage of a civil war (1946-49) and the communists were on the verge of proclaiming a provisional government in the northern mountains. Local conditions and geopolitics would eventually play a role in the defeat of the communists, but U.S. assistance to the Greek army was as instrumental in the crushing of the second communist insurgency as was British support to the Greek government for the defeat of the communists in the first stage of the civil war (December 1944-January 1945).

"It must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or outside pressures," proclaimed Harry S. Truman on March 12, 1947. By "free peoples," of course, Truman meant the forces fighting against communism. It didn't make a difference if, as in the case of Greece, those forces happened to be fascists. Great Britain had also sided with Nazi collaborators and the most reactionary elements inside Greece in its noble attempt to deprive those political groups that had fought against the Axis powers during the Second World War from having any role in the future governance of the country.

In the case of Turkey, the Truman Doctrine served as a tool of influence in the making of Turkish foreign policy and by linking the country with western states. Only a handful of critics inside the U.S. were concerned over the fact that Turkey was governed by military regimes with no respect for human rights and freedom and that it had actually signed a treaty of friendship with Hitler in the summer of 1941.

Unlike Switzerland, whose neutrality toward warring nations originates with the Congress of Vienna in1815 and was confirmed by the League of Nations in 1920, Turkey remained neutral during the Second World War for purely pragmatic reasons. It did not severe its relations with Nazi Germany until early August 1944, when it was quite evident by then that Germany was going to lose the war and that the Soviet Union was a rising power. And when it finally declared war on Germany in late February 1945, it did so under pressure and in exchange for a seat in the future United Nations. At the Yalta Conference, held from February 4-11, 1945, Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin had issued a call for a United Nations conference at San Fransisco on April 24. Only nations that had declared war on Germany and Japan before March 1945 would be invited to the San Francisco Conference.

The Truman Doctrine changed U.S. foreign policy and created a new world (dis)order. It launched the Cold War and made the U.S. the world's policeman. Europe was, of course, the most geographically important region for the United States, which is why NATO was founded. The alliance's first secretary general, Baron Hastings Ismay, was right on the mark when he described its purpose as follows: "to keep the Soviet Union out, the Americans in, and the Germans down."

It took several years for the Soviet Union to create a rival organization, and it did so only when NATO failed to keep the Germans down. Indeed, the Warsaw Pact was created in response to the integration of West Germany into NATO in 1955. In the early 1950s, the Soviet government considered joining NATO, but the idea was met with silence at first and later rejected on the grounds that Soviet membership was incomparable with NATO's promotion of democratic values. In fact, the Soviets seemed to have been quite sincere when they expressed interest in the establishment of pan-European security structures. They were deeply concerned about the prospect of a Third World War which, as far as they were concerned, would have meant the end of human civilization due to the existence of nuclear weapons. The west, however, had no interest in any European security treaty that involved the Soviets.

From the perspective of the Soviet Union and its Eastern allies, NATO became a security threat when West Germany was allowed to join the U.S-led military alliance.

The last country to join NATO before the collapse of the Soviet Union was Spain in 1982. The structure of NATO evolved throughout the Cold War and so did its approach towards defense and deterrence, though nuclear weapons remained a key component of the alliance's collective defense policy.

The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 marked the end of the Cold War, and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev played a pivotal role not only in the events that led to the Berlin wall coming down and the subsequent unification of Germany but also in the political transformation of Eastern Europe and the dissolution of the Soviet Union on Christmas Day 1991.

However, the end of the Cold War did not lead to the disappearance of NATO. Margaret Thatcher, who, incidentally, strongly opposed the reunification of Germany following the dismantling of the Berlin Wall, undoubtedly spoke for all Cold War warriors when she addressed the question of whether NATO should disappear now that the Cold War was over by stating: "You do not cancel your home insurance policy just because there have been fewer burglaries in your street in the last twelve months."

But expansion? No one spoke openly of a NATO expansion eastward in the immediate aftermath of the dismantling of the Berlin Wall. In fact, during discussions over the process of German reunification in 1990 and on into 1991, "not one inch eastward" assurances about NATO expansion were given by western leaders to Mikhail Gorbachev. On different occasions throughout this time period, President George H. W. Bush and scores of other western leaders (Kohl, Mitterrand, Thatcher, Major and others) offered assurances to the Soviets about "protecting Soviet security interests and including the USSR in future European security systems."

NATO's enlargement in the post-Cold War era, which began to take shape in the mid-1990s with the advent of the Partnership for Peace program, had two key objectives: first, to reshape the European order, and second, to marginalize Russia. Eastern European countries, especially the Baltic states, were of course more than eager to join NATO not simply for security purposes but also as a quicker path to European Union (EU) membership.

NATO made its first post-Cold War enlargement in 1999 when the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland became members. There was no reaction on the part of the Kremlin, even with regard to Poland. First, because Russia was in the midst of political and economic chaos, and second, because all political groups in Poland were supportive of both NATO and EU membership. But Russian opposition to NATO expansion was already on the record. In fact, in the autumn of 1996, the Russian State Duma unanimously adopted a resolution which condemned NATO expansion and warned that it would lead to a crisis.

NATO went through several other rounds of enlargement since the end of the Cold War. In 2004, seven countries became members of the alliance: Bulgaria, Romania, Slovenia, Slovakia, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania; in 2009, Albania and Croatia joined NATO, while the most recent members to join the alliance were Montenegro in 2017 and the Republic of North Macedonia in 2020.

At the NATO Summit in Bucharest on April 2008, the U.S. also pushed for an immediate Membership Action Plan (MAP) to Georgia and Ukraine, but Germany, France and smaller NATO states balked at the idea. The case of Georgia and Ukraine was regarded by key European leaders as highly controversial because they knew that such a move would risk provoking a hostile reaction by Russia. On several occasions Vladimir Putin had warned NATO and U.S. leaders that offering NATO membership to Georgia and Ukraine are "red lines" for Russia. Nonetheless, in order to placate Washington, European leaders made a vague pledge to invite Georgia and Ukraine to join NATO at some point in the future.

"We agreed today that these countries will become members of NATO," NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer told a news conference during the NATO summit in Bucharest after leaders had failed to include Georgia and Ukraine at the present time in its MAP.

On August 8, 2008, Putin gave Russian forces a green light to invade Georgia. The conflict was over in a matter of days, but Human Rights Watch said that forces on all sides "committed numerous violations of the laws of war" during the conflict. The conflict was over South Ossetia. Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili made the tragic mistake of ordering a military assault on the pro-Russian breakaway region, but there is little doubt that Russia's invasion of Georgia was also a signal to NATO to keep away from its borders.

Russia's military invasion into Ukraine on February 24, 2022, is unjustified and in gross violation of international law. Noam Chomsky ranks the Russian invasion of Ukraine alongside the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the Hitler-Stalin invasion of Poland. Yet, no one can overlook the fact that Russian leaders had been warning the west for decades about NATO's expansion eastward. No one can honestly say that the US was not in fact deliberately provoking the Russian bear throughout the post-Cold War era. As John Mearsheimer has pointed out in connection with the current invasion of Ukraine, the trouble actually started at the NATO Summit in Bucharest in April 2008.

Yet, none of this seems to matter to NATO and U.S. leaders. On the contrary, they are determined to double down on provocation and aggression. At the Madrid summit, NATO leaders took far-reaching decisions that could trigger global instability, and much worse.

NATO branded Russia "a direct threat" to its members' peace and security. This is a wild idea, because by doing so, NATO is implying that Russia has plans to attack western capitals.

The idea that Russia poses a military threat to the west is as ludicrous as Marjorie Taylor Greene saying that "children should be trained with firearms."

In fact, it is NATO that poses a direct threat to Russian security.

With the adoption of the new strategic concept, the U.S. will significantly expand its military presence (with more troops, warplanes, and ships) on European soil. As such, Europe's existential dilemma of whether to be or not to be a U.S. vassal has finally been resolved.

With the accession of Finland and Sweden, the NATO-ization of Europe is almost complete. The only EU member states who are not yet part of NATO are Austria, Cyprus, Ireland, and Malta.

For clearly defensive purposes, naturally, NATO will also increase massively the number of troops on the eastern flank nearest Russia, and the number of troops on high alert will soar well over 300,000, compared to 40,000 troops that make up the alliance's current quick response force.

There should be no mistake about it. The new strategic concept amounts to the revival and resurgence of an old NATO vision, which is none other than assuring the conditions for the reproduction of U.S. global hegemony.

This is why NATO's regional partners—Australia, Japan, New Zealand, and South Korea—were invited to participate in a NATO summit for the first time. The Indo-Pacific has emerged as one of the most dynamic regions in the world and it is home to China. The quest for global hegemony on the part of the U.S-led, western-centric military mandates that steps be taken to address existing, new, and future threats and challenges.

Accordingly, NATO leaders declared China a security challenge for the first time. They shied away from labelling it an "adversary" for various reasons, even though the U.S-China relationship is in fact quite adversarial.

Firstly, the economies of China and the United States are intricately linked. Cutting China out of the global supply chain and key industries is a nearly impossible task for the United States at the present stage. China is also the European Union's biggest trading partner. Therefore, neither Europe nor the United States have a strong wish to treat China as an adversary.

Secondly, while Russia can be contained in the military realm, China cannot. Only direct military confrontation with China may halt the growth of its military predominance in east Asia. But China is outside NATO's sphere of interest, and while the U.S. will seek to bridge Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific alliances, it cannot be taken as a given that European states will align themselves with the perspective of the U.S. regarding the Indo-Pacific region.

Indeed, one should not expect European citizens to offer support to military adventures abroad. A recent survey released by the European Council of Foreign Affairs reveals that, although in the first 100 days of Russia's war on Ukraine, European citizens supported western intervention and the economic sanctions, "now in all countries, apart from Poland," the public mood is in favor of peace. Indeed, "The surveyreveals a growing gap between the stated positions of many European governments and the public mood in their countries" and "only in Poland, Germany, Sweden, and Finland is there substantial public support for boosting military spending."

NATO's new strategic concept comes at a critical juncture in the evolution of the post-Cold War international system where insecurity reigns supreme and the dominant actors are nuclear superpowers. It is indeed a reckless and highly dangerous initiative that will lead to greater animosity between Russia and the West, to greater mistrust between U.S. and China, and will most likely solidify the authoritarian Russia-China axis. All the needed prerequisites for the eruption of total war.

Unsurprisingly, Beijing already slammed NATO over its so-called new strategic concept, and Chinese President Xi Jinping, perhaps in anticipation of the far-reaching decisions made by NATO leaders at the Madrid summit, assured Putin in mid-June of China's support on Russian "sovereignty and security."

Putin, for his part, warned Finland and Sweden that there would be symmetric responses on the part of Russia in the event that "military contingents and military infrastructure were deployed there," which would include the deployment of nuclear weapons in the Baltic Sea region.

To be sure, a bleak future lies ahead. NATO took decisions at the Madrid summit that may very well lead to the eruption of a global Cold War. In this sense, NATO continues to follow the same path of conflict escalation, except that its endless expansion policy is now broadening the prospect of Armageddon.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by C.J. Polychroniou.

The post Biden, Taiwan, and Strategic Ambiguity appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Mel Gurtov.

The post Biden, Taiwan, and Strategic Ambiguity appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Mel Gurtov.

Biden was again flatly committing the US to a conflict over Taiwan should China deploy its forces.  He has done so on two previous occasions, showing either a degree of ignorance, or a willingness to throw caution to the wind.  The first took place during an interview with ABC News in August, when he equated Taiwan’s status to those of other allies such as South Korea.  The second, in a CNN town hall, took place in October, when he stated that the US had “a commitment to do that”.

In doing so a third time, he was helping no one in particular, and taking the hammer to the strategic ambiguity that has marked US-Taiwan policy for decades.  The only thing that could have been taken away from it is a reminder to Beijing that they are not facing a cautious superpower steered by a sage, but a government not unwilling to shed blood over Taiwan.

Biden has expressed this view before, and grates against a policy Washington has had for 43 years.  It is a policy characterised by two key understandings.  The first is the One China policy, which the Biden administration affirmed in Tokyo.  Beijing, accordingly, remains the sole legitimate authority representing China.

The Taiwan Relations Act of 1979 is the other pillar that guides US policy towards Taiwan.  The Act declares it the policy of the United States “to preserve and promote extensive, close, and friendly commercial, cultural, and other relations between the people of the United States and the people of Taiwan, as well as the people of the China mainland and all other people in the Western Pacific area.”

The Act facilitates the provision of arms to Taiwan “of a defensive character” and maintains “the capacity of the United States to resist any resort to force or other forms of coercion that would jeopardize the security, or social or economic system, of the people of Taiwan.”  It does not impose an obligation on the US to intervene militarily in the event of an attack, or to compel the use of forces in defence of the island.

The first pertinent question was whether an actual change had been heralded in Tokyo.  The National Review certainly thought so.  “Biden’s remarks signal a big shift in US foreign policy regarding Taiwan.”  The New York Times also suggested that, unlike his previous, seemingly incautious remarks on the subject, this could not be treated as a simple gaffe.  Sebastian Smith, White House correspondent for Agence France-Presse, thought that Biden’s response “really raised the adrenaline levels in that palace briefing room”.

Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs was overjoyed, expressing “sincere welcome and gratitude to President Biden of the United States for reiterating its rock solid commitment to Taiwan.”

For his part, Biden was having a bit each way, suggesting that strategic ambiguity was still being retained in some modest form.  “We agree with the One China policy and all the attendant agreements we made.  But the idea that it can be taken by force, would just not be appropriate.”  His Defense Secretary, Lloyd Austin was even more adamant that there had been no change to speak of on the part of the president.  “As the president said, our One China policy has not changed,” he stated at the Pentagon.  “He reiterated that policy and our commitment to peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait.  He also highlighted our commitment under the Taiwan Relations Act to help provide Taiwan the means to defend itself.  So, again, our policy has not changed.”

On being asked by a journalist what potential risks would rise as part of a US military defence of Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion, General Mark A. Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was unwilling to elucidate.  A “variety of contingency plans” were held by the military applicable to the Pacific, Europe “and elsewhere”, all classified.  “And it would be very inappropriate for me on a microphone to discuss the risk associated with those plans relative to anything with respect to Taiwan or anywhere else in the Pacific.”  Reassuring.

As often tends to come to pass, when the potential for war lurks in cupboards and around corners, there are those less than unwilling to repel it.  The chance to exercise muscle, especially indulged vicariously, brings out the inner war monger.  Bret Stephens uses the New York Times to promote the popular view held by many in the US and amongst its allies that Biden was quite right not to stick to “diplomatic formulas of a now-dead status quo”.  President Xi Jinping, that sly devil, had “changed the rules of the game” by crushing protests in Hong Kong, repudiating the “one country, two systems” formula and blithely ignored the ruling by the Permanent Court of Arbitration on Chinese claims on the South China Sea.

Stephens sees opportunity in this statement from Biden, a thankful slaying of ambiguity.  For one, the US can sell more arms to Taiwan while incorporating Taipei into its broader strategic approach.  The administration should also convince Taipei to increase its “scandalously low” military budget.  Washington, for its part, can increase the small component of US Special Operations and Marine personnel already deployed to train local forces.  Biden’s stumble, in short, was a shift; and the shift moves one step closer to inciting war.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin provided a revealing and disturbing glimpse into a darker element of US policy at a press conference held April 25 at the Poland/Ukraine border. The press event followed a trip to Kiev by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Austin.

The US government must not be guided by any notion that a quagmire in Ukraine would drain Russian resources, diminish Russian influence and power globally, and possibly lead to regime change.

Austin was asked how he defines "America's goals for success" in Ukraine. He first said that the US wants to see "Ukraine remain a sovereign country, a democratic country, able to protect its sovereign territory." But then he added: "We want to see Russia weakened to the degree it cannot do the kind things that it has done in invading Ukraine." I had feared that geopolitical strategizing is affecting the US approach, but this is the first public indication of that I have seen.

It cannot be said too strongly: The US government must not be guided by any notion that a quagmire in Ukraine would drain Russian resources, diminish Russian influence and power globally, and possibly lead to regime change. The United States instead should do all within its power to help bring the war to a close rapidly in order to limit suffering; to eliminate risks that the conflict will widen and escalate, possibly to nuclear war; and to limit the negative global economic and food security repercussions.

A broader reason for determined efforts to end the war is the need to work toward restoring a relationship with Russia enabling cooperation on nuclear arms control and disarmament, climate protection, public health, and other vital matters of global concern.

US energy in helping bring the war to a close is also appropriate in view of the political responsibility of the United States, together with NATO, since the late 1990s in helping to create the conditions for a crisis. Actions having this effect included precipitously withdrawing from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2003, subsequently establishing missile defense facilities in Romania and Poland, and opening the door to Ukraine's membership in NATO in 2008.

In a recent paper, End the War, Stop the War Crimes, Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy outlines already widely discussed elements of an approach to ending the war. In brief, Russia and Ukraine should quickly agree to a cease-fire to enable negotiation of a settlement.

Negotiations should then aim to end the war immediately and to resolve the overarching disputes concerning governance of the Donbas region and the status of Crimea. A long-term consultative mechanism could be put in place to resolve time-intensive or recurring issues and to help maintain peace and human security. Ukraine appears ready to forswear any possibility of joining NATO, so long as some form of guaranteed neutrality can be established, but seeks to join the European Union. The overall aim should be the preservation of Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity in accordance with the UN Charter.

In addition to any role they can play, behind the scenes or not, in bringing about a cease-fire and negotiating a settlement, the United States and other states must be ready to lift war-related sanctions and to accept and support some form of neutrality for Ukraine should Ukraine choose that.

Russia's war on Ukraine is already causing appalling suffering and devastation. It is playing with fire—even nuclear fire—to allow the war to go on indefinitely and potentially to widen and escalate, at least partly with the aim of weakening Russia. The right course is to making ending the war on acceptable, if not perfect, terms the highest priority.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by John Burroughs.

Lay Kay Kaw was established as symbol of peace in 2017 through a partnership between Japan’s Nippon Foundation, the Myanmar government and the rebel group Karen National Union (KNU) to house ethnic Karen refugees who were returning home after decades of fighting between the military and armed ethnic groups.

But in recent months, Lay Kay Kaw has been the site of fierce fighting among the junta troops and their opponents. More than 10,000 villagers have been displaced since clashes first broke out in the area on Dec. 15, 2021, as the sides pushed for advantage.

Myo Thura Ko Ko, a spokesman for the Cobra Column, which is affiliated with the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA), an ethnic armed group, said Myanmar soldiers shelled the area before the assault.

“They used a variety of heavy weapons, and the shells fell like rain in the area,” he told RFA.

Fighting between the two sides began at about 3:30 a.m., with Myanmar soldiers retreating with heavy casualties after failing to capture a targeted hill, Myo Thura Ko Ko said. The number of soldiers wounded or killed is not known, however.

“We were close to the fighting zone, only about 100 yards away, so we saw the enemy being injured or killed,” he said. “But it was hard to estimate the exact number of casualties because of the darkness.”

KNLA and Cobra Column troops successfully defended the hills where they were stationed, and there were no casualties on their side, Myo Thura Ko Ko said.

While clearing the area Friday morning, rebel soldiers found an intact rocket-propelled grenade, two mobile phones and some military equipment left by Myanmar forces, he said.

Padoh Saw Tawney, the KNU’s foreign affairs officer, said junta forces attacked the rebels in the hills where the KNLA joint forces are based because they are in a strategic area near Lay Kay Kaw.

“Their main goal is to get control of the area,” he said. “They are desperate for territorial control, and they have tried a couple of times. They also tried it last night and didn’t succeed, but they will do it again.”

Myanmar soldiers launched air strikes on KNLA and anti-junta People’s Defense Force (PDF) fighters in Lay Kay Kaw on April 10, suffering a loss of about 20 soldiers and a captured captain, according to the KNU. The air strikes damaged about 30 houses and a school in the town, residents told RFA in an earlier report.

Some officers and soldiers were injured during an ambush while clearing the town’s sixth ward, said a statement issued by the junta on Apr. 13. It said necessary security measures would be taken to ensure stability and peace in Lay Kay Kaw because the Karen rebels had violated nationwide cease-fire agreements.

Junta spokesman Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun could not be reached for comment on the fighting.

Civilians displaced by clashes are now sheltering along the banks of Thaungyin River near Myanmar’s border with Thailand. They said they were forced to flee to the Thai side as the fighting intensified but returned after it subsided because they were pushed back by Thai authorities.

Myet Hman, who is now living in the P’lotapho refugee camp near the river because of the fighting near Lay Kay Kaw, told RFA that he wanted the armed conflict to end as soon as possible so he and other locals could return to their homes.

“It would be better for us if the two sides killed each other and quickly found a resolution," he said. “That would be good. But now, armed men from this side or that side come into the village, stop for a while, and then engage in clashes. Meanwhile we villagers have had to flee our homes because of their fighting.”

Almost everything left in deserted houses in Lay Kay Kaw has been looted, he added.

Reported by RFA Myanmar Service. Translated by Khin Maung Nyane. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Radio Free Asia.

Repurposing a phrase right-wing Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin recently used to obstruct social spending and climate legislation, Sen. Bernie Sanders on Wednesday called for a "strategic pause" in corporate welfare, referring specifically to a bill that would hand around $53 billion in subsidies to the U.S. semiconductor industry.

"The time has come to take a strategic pause when it comes to providing tens of billions of dollars in corporate welfare."

The bill, known as the COMPETES Act, would also authorize an additional $10 billion in federal funding for moon landers, a provision that Sanders (I-Vt.) has slammed as "a bailout to Jeff Bezos so that his company Blue Origin can launch a rocket ship to the moon."

In a speech on the Senate floor Wednesday, the Vermont senator made the case for amendments that would attach conditions to the $53 billion in federal subsidies and strip out the $10 billion "bailout to Blue Origin."

Politico reported last week that "since NASA chose [billionaire Elon Musk's company] SpaceX a year ago to build its lunar lander, Blue Origin has been lobbying Congress and NASA to open the program back up for competition."

If approved, the $10 billion in the COMPETES Act would be granted to NASA to pick a company to build a second lander.

"Let me be very clear. Mr. Bezos has enough money to buy a very beautiful $500 million yacht—looks very nice to me," Sanders said Wednesday, pointing to a picture of the vessel.

Sanders went on to note that Bezos, the billionaire founder and executive chairman of Amazon, "has enough money to purchase a $23 million mansion with 25 bathrooms."

"Not quite sure you need 25 bathrooms, but that's not my business," the senator added. "So, no, count me in as somebody who does not think that the taxpayers of this country need to provide Mr. Bezos a $10 billion bailout to fuel his space hobby."

Sanders also urged lawmakers "not to provide $53 billion to the highly profitable micro-chip industry without protections for the American taxpayer."

"This is not a radical idea. These exact conditions were imposed on corporations that received taxpayer assistance in the bipartisan CARES Act, which passed the Senate 96 to 0," said Sanders, referring to a coronavirus relief package enacted in 2020. "In other words, every member of the U.S. Senate has already voted for the conditions that are in this amendment."

The House and Senate have both passed versions of the COMPETES Act, but the two bills must be reconciled before they can reach President Joe Biden's desk.

"One of my colleagues in the Democratic caucus has... suggested that we need to take a 'strategic pause' when it comes to making urgent federal investments in childcare, healthcare, education, affordable housing, paid family and medical leave, and home healthcare—policies that would substantially improve the lives of the American people," Sanders said in his floor remarks Wednesday.

"Well, you know what I believe?" he continued. "I believe that, maybe, just maybe, the time has come to take a 'strategic pause' when it comes to providing tens of billions of dollars in corporate welfare to some of the most profitable corporations and wealthiest people on this planet."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Jake Johnson.

Papua New Guinea’s Prime Minister James Marape has flagged a possible partnership with Indonesian state-owned petroleum corporation Pertamina as the western Pacific country deals with the current global surge in fuel prices, reports The National.

Marape, who returned from visiting Indonesia today with a delegation for trade talks, met with Indonesian President Joko Widodo yesterday as PNG looks for alternative sources of fuel.

“I remain confident that our practical discussions and the culmination of the various memorandum of understandings that will be signed will greatly complement PNG’s future socio-economic agenda and reap tangible outcomes,” Marape said after his arrival in Jakarta on Wednesday.

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Marape said his visit was at the invitation of Widodo and acknowledged that Indonesia and Australia were PNG’s closest bilateral partners.

“While I have made important strides in the PNG-Australia relationship, I hope to strengthen the PNG-Indonesian relationship,” he said.

Marape said apart from the usual discussions on traditional issues relating to border management and combating cross-border crime, drug smuggling and terrorism, the talks would focus on other strategic opportunities for the two countries.

“The traditional issues are important but these are the traditional bilateral issues which are recurring in nature,” he said.

Strategic importance
“There is a place for those, but it is important that we use the opportunity to canvas other issues which are of strategic importance to us.”

Marape said the visit would focus on business, trade and investment opportunities and capacity building of human resources, among other practical and meaningful outcomes to complement PNG’s development aspirations.

Marape addressed the PNG-Indonesia Business and Investment Seminar yesterday where he was expected to invite Indonesian investors to develop downstream processing facilities in PNG to add value to its vast natural resources for export to Indonesia, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and other global markets.

Marape was accompanied by wife Rachael, four ministers, one governor, senior government officials, and a business delegation on the official visit who engaged in business and investment exchanges while government officials discussed sectoral issues with their Indonesian counterparts.

The PNG delegation returned today and Marape flew to Wapenamanda Airport, Enga province. He travelled to remote Maramuni to open the Wabag-Maramuni Road, part of the Enga Sepik Highway.

Republished with permission.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

A Committee of Experts with legal and media freedom backgrounds is set to draft a Recommendation for the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers to address strategic lawsuits against public participation, known as SLAPPs.

The joint statement recommended enabling courts to dismiss such lawsuits at an early stage, to sanction individuals who abuse the legal system to limit public participation, to financially and legally support defendants in such cases, and to prevent “forum shopping,” whereby litigants deliberately bring lawsuits in jurisdictions that are inconvenient or expensive for the defendant.

The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, comprised of parliamentarians from member states, has also tabled a motion on SLAPPs that could lead to a separate resolution to restrict their use, the statement says.

Last year, CPJ and other organizations made a similar call to the Council of Europe to take action against SLAPPs.

The full statement can be read here.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Erik Crouch.