Category: Asia

Prosecuting Syrians for war crimes now

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By Richard Falk

A major undertaking of the victorious powers in World War II was to impose individual criminal accountability upon political and military leaders for alleged crimes committed during wartime before a tribunal convened by the victors that gave those accused a fair opportunity to present a defense.

This application of this idea of accountability to German and Japanese surviving leaders at trials held in Nuremberg and Tokyo was hailed at the time as a major step in the direction of a ‘just peace.’

International law was treated as binding upon sovereign states and those that represented the government, conceived to be a major step in the direction of a global rule of law. The final decisions of these tribunals also produced a narrative as to why World War II was a necessary and just war. Such an outcome was both a vindication of the victory on the battlefield and a punitive repudiation of those who fought and lost. Significantly, this criminal process was formally initiated only after the combat phase of the war had ended and Germany and Japan had surrendered.Read More »

TFF PressInfo: Democracy’s crisis – 10 points

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By Jan Oberg

Democracy is a core feature of Western society, normally understood as representative parliament – i.e. in free elections citizens vote for people to represent their interests for a parliament consisting of parties of which some form the government and some the opposition.

It’s not always included in the definitions that democracy requires a reasonable level of knowledge and information, freely available. For instance, one often hears that India is the world’s biggest democracy but 26% of the people are still illiterate (287 million people).

So the ”world’s largest democracy” also has the world’s largest population who can’t read and write. In comparison, China illiterate citizens make up about 3% and is regularly called a dictatorship.

Also, in a society where the persons running for office are – or have to be – extremely wealthy to pay for their campaign and where large corporations make multi-million dollar contributions to certain candidates (presumably not out of altruism), falls outside a reasonable definition of democracy – even though they may also not be dictatorships; there are many stations in-between the two.

Are young people giving up parliamentary democracy?

When I was in my high-school years – a few decades ago – and wanted to contribute to changing society for the better, the most natural thing to do – and the finest – was to join a political party. Not so today. My students in peace studies around the world often ask me at the end of a course and it is time to say goodbye whether I can help them somehow in making their career. Their career dreams may be to work for the UN, for human rights, the environment or starting their own NGO with a peace profile or set up their own consultancy firm for a better world.

Significantly, over all these years, only one single student asked me what I thought about contributing to peace and development by becoming a politician.

As is well-known, people today engage in social issues mainly through civil society and the use of social media as their primary tool. This is good from most perspectives and holds fascinating prospects for de facto global citizenship and action, but it does something to the old type of representative democracy.

When we talk about global crisis, people think much more of the environment, identity issues or warfare than of democracy being in crisis. I think it is in fundamental crisis for the the following reasons.Read More »

Keeping Africa going up

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By Jonathan Power

Black Africa long went deeply down. Now it is rushing headlong up. But “up” brings problems of its own. A country’s policy makers have to work as hard in successful, speedy, times as they did when they moved painfully from the first rung of the ladder to the second and third.

Take today’s news – according to the Financial Times, Kenya, one of the poster boys of the African revival, is now financially strong enough to make its debut on the sovereign bond market in a deal worth $2 billion. But it has become entangled in a decade-old corruption scandal that cost Kenya $770 million. The government has decided to take on the responsibility for paying off the $770 million in order to get the $2 billion (and future bond market loans).

In Mozambique last week Christine Lagarde, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, warned that the planned issuing this year of a total of $11 billion worth of sovereign bonds around Africa could overload economies with too much debt. (This is up from $6 billion a year ago and $1 billion in 2000.)Read More »

The mouse that roared

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By Gunnar Westberg

The Mouse that roared was a much acclaimed movie comedy from 1955 in which a small European Duchy tried in vain to get the attention of the USA for a trade conflict. To get the attention of the mighty superpower the Duchy finally declared war on the USA. And to its surprise, won!

The story to be told below is less funny.

The Minister of Foreign Affairs for the Marshall Islands, Mr. Tony de Brum, spoke at the recent conference on the treaty against nuclear weapons, NPT, in New York. He remembered his experience of nuclear weapon tests in his childhood:

– “I have witnessed nuclear weapon explosions and my memories from the Lipiep atoll in Northern Marshall Islands are strong. I lived there as a boy during the 12 years of nuclear testing. I remember the blinding white light from the Bravo test on the Bikini atoll in 1954, a thousand times stronger than that over Hiroshima.

The Marshall Islands was used for 67 nuclear tests between 1946 and 1958, with an explosive yield corresponding to 1.6 Hiroshima bombs every day for twelve years. The consequences are still with us as a burden which no nation, no population, should be forced to bear.” Read More »

Vietnam and the US versus China over oil in the sea

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By Jonathan Power

May 20th 2014.

Who makes the law of the sea as China and Vietnam clash over China moving an oil rig close to an island only 25 miles from the mainland of Vietnam?

One would hope that China which has ratified the Law of the Sea Treaty which has, among its other virtues, an arbitrating court for such disputes, would seek international, but disinterested arbitration. It refuses to.

Has this got something to do with the fact that the US has not ratified the Treaty? The Chinese don’t say so explicitly, but if the world’s one and only superpower refuses to sign up why should China pay the Treaty due regard? Is that what China is thinking? It is not a very good reason, but conceivably an understandable one.Read More »

TAP+TPP = “All But China” = TAP+TIPP?

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By Johan Galtung

Washington is working hard to reconquer slipping world hegemony; in the Anglo-American tradition assuming that No. 2–this year maybe No. 1 economically–is an enemy, instead of deepening cooperation.

In addition to military confrontation, NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization)-AMPO (Japan-US Security Treaty) against SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization) over Crimea-Ukraine, economic exclusion; isolating China like they try to isolate Russia over Ukraine. Together in SCO, with new ties being spun daily in the budding Eurasia and giga gas deals in the making, “isolation” of the most populous and largest countries in the world seems out of touch with reality.

Bordering on the Asian sub-continent and the Islamic world most of them might actually lean toward China-Russia, or prefer being open to “isolators” and “isolated” alike.Read More »

TFF PressInfo: GCC Military Command or a More Open Society

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By Farhang Jahanpour*

Short e-mail PressInfo version here.

Saudi Military exercises

On 30th April 2014, Saudi Arabia staged its largest-ever military exercises codenamed “Abdullah’s Shield” after the kingdom’s 91-year old ruler and coinciding with the ninth anniversary of his ascension to the throne. The exercises involved 130,000 Saudi troops and showcased some of the latest weapons purchased by the kingdom from the United States and China, including the Chinese CSS-2 intermediate-range ballistic missiles with a range of 2,650 kilometers (1,646 miles) which are capable of carrying nuclear warheads. The Chinese version of these missiles is already equipped with nuclear warheads. This was the first time that these missiles had been seen in public in Saudi Arabia.

Crown Prince Salman presided over the exercises, which were also watched by a number of prominent foreign guests, including King Hamad of Bahrain and more pointedly by Gen. Raheel Sharif, the Pakistani chief of the army Staff. There have been persistent rumors over many decades that in return for Saudi funding of the Pakistani nuclear weapons’ program, Pakistan had committed to provide nuclear warheads for CSS-2 missiles, should Saudi Arabia decide to have them. Earlier in the year when Prince Salman visited Pakistan, he personally invited Gen. Sharif to be his guest at the exercises. Pakistani media stressed the point that Gen. Sharif had gone to Jeddah “on the invitation of Crown Prince Salman bin Abdulaziz al Saud to witness the military exercise…” (1)

With the exception of Bahrain’s ruler, none of the other GCC rulers watched the exercises. The guests included the crown prince of the UAE, the prime minister of Jordan and military commanders from some GCC states, but Qatar pointedly did not send any representatives. This was yet another sign of a growing rift between Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

A unified GCC Command and Monetary Union

At the GCC summit held in Kuwait in December 2013, the Saudis called for a unified GCC military command to have 100,000 forces, half of which would be contributed by the Saudis. (2) However, other GCC members opposed the idea as they saw it as a way of consolidating Saudi domination of other GCC states and affirming Saudi Arabia’s position as the big brother. Many smaller GCC states value their independence, and while they would like to cooperate with other GCC members, they do not wish to be absorbed into a unified military alliance as junior partners. Oman openly expressed its opposition to the proposal and Qatar and Kuwait also followed suit. Read More »

University cooperation for equity and empathy

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By Johan Galtung

China Three Gorges University, Yichang, 23 Apr 2014

A great honor to open the 11th university cooperation conference of N.E.W.S–North-East-West-South—founded in 1993 at the Freie Universität, Berlin by S.P. Park.

Classical university cooperation across borders has professors teaching in one country students from other countries. Thus, when Copenhagen ruled Denmark-Norway 1397-1814 Norwegians studied at the University of Copenhagen, founded in 1479. The University in Oslo came in 1811, but the asymmetry continued; some of it necessary and useful, but not ideal. Missing was equity, “I learn from you, you from me”; missing was empathy, “You learn about me, I about you”. The teaching country is superior in power, shaping the minds in the learning country. But the learning country learns about the deeper features of the teaching country, not vice versa.

A colonial relation. The colonialist leader, England – also in Scotland-Wales-Ireland – imports raw students for processing at huge fees, and exports English as patented commodity with no processing rights. Major industries both; but learning nothing about the world. Of course old knowledge must flow from those with more to those with less, even if professors often exaggerate their own importance: students may learn more together and by self-study–maybe 10%-40%-50%. But professors monopolize exams and diplomas, so better absorb well.Read More »

East-South China Seas, Islands – Solutions?

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By Johan Galtung

Nanjing University Conference

A Chinese proverb: better than giving a starving person a fish is teaching her to fish. So, not only solutions but how to solve conflicts: in the East China Sea between China and Japan over Diaoyu-Senkaku and between Korea and Japan over Dockdo-Takeshima; and in the South China Sea between China-Taiwan and Philippines-Vietnam-Malaysia-Brunei over the Nansha-Spratly islands. However, China-Taiwan can here be seen as one party with the same claims, and China has agreed to deal with ASEAN-Association of Southeast Asian Nations collectively, not with only four of the ten member states bilaterally. In short: China vs ASEAN.

The goals in these bilateral conflicts–conflict=incompatible goals! – is state sovereign rights not over mainlands but is-lands – essentially over their EEZs, exclusive economic zones 200 nautical miles from the coast base–to exploit live and non-live resources; fish, hydrocarbons, minerals. And sovereignty over a 12-mile zone–with air space–excluding others, their shipping lanes and flights.Read More »

This Indian government has done well

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By Jonathan Power

E.M. Forster, the English novelist, wrote in his “Passage to India” of India “swelling here, shrinking there, like some low, indestructible, form of life”.

But the India of today is a totally different place from 1920. Economic growth was tiny in British times (even though a large network of railways and schools were built). Since independence in 1947 infant mortality has dropped to one fourth of what it used to be and longevity has more than doubled. Economic growth has increased since the 1960s from around 3% a year – the so-called “Hindu growth rate” – to a high of 10% – the peak achievement of the present Congress government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and party president, Sonia Gandhi.

Why then is the opposition leader of the BJP, Narendra Modi, who has a repugnant reputation when it comes to dealing with India’s Muslims, set for victory? Admittedly, as chief minister, he has industrialised Gujarat but the state, growing at 10%, has done less well than four other states in its poverty reduction and improved education and health services.

It’s because the government has taken one bad knock after another. Read More »