A Chaotic Start: Foreign Affairs in the New U.S. Congress

Posted on February 6, 2019 by admin

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is photographed seated on the left and Nechirvan Barzani seated to the right. A gold coffee table is located between them. Another table with a flower arrangement appears in the foreground.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo meets with Nechirvan Barzani, outgoing Prime Minister of Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), in the province’s capital Arbil during a Middle East tour on January 9, 2019. The eight-day tour comes weeks after the US President announced that the United States would quickly pull its 2,000 soldiers out of Syria, declaring that IS — also known as ISIS — had been defeated. Source: US Department of State via Flickr.

Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 7, No. 2, February 2019

William R. Hawkins

International Economics and National Security Consultant

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Taiwan and the Lesson of Chiang Kai-shek: Hard Cuts Soft

Posted on January 22, 2019 by admin

Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 7, No. 1, January 2019

Ma Ying-jeou is photographed next to a podium. He is smiling, holding his glasses in his hands.

Taiwan president-elect Ma Ying-jeou makes a speech, 2011. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

Arthur Waldron, Ph.D.

University of Pennsylvania

Taiwan is never to be taken for granted. We really have to get one thing straight, which is that without Chiang Kai-shek (CKS), his mainlander army, and even aspects of his dictatorship, the free Taiwan that we love today simply would not exist. Its natural leaders, both from the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and Kuomintang (KMT), would either be long dead or in prison, while its young people, now among the best educated in the world, would be memorizing idiocies from the imperial thoughts of Xi Jinping.

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THE BATTLE FOR WEST PAPUA

Posted on January 18, 2019 by admin

Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 8, No. 1, January 2019

Ben Bohane

Photojournalist

Supporters carry West Papuan leader Benny Wenda through Port Vila, Vanuatu. The supporters are holding flags and a man in a red shirt appears is sitting on a plank of wood held up by the crowd.

Reports of the Indonesian military using white phosphorous munitions on West Papuan civilians in December are only the latest horror in a decades-old jungle war forgotten by the world. But new geopolitical maneuvering may soon change the balance of power here, prompting regional concern about an intensifying battle for this rich remote province of Indonesia. It is time for the US and Australia to change policy, complementing Pacific island diplomacy, or risk a major strategic setback at the crossroads of Asia and the Pacific.

Once again, Papuan highlanders have fled their villages into the bush where they are starving and being hunted by Indonesian security forces.

Fighting between OPM (Free Papua Movement) guerrillas and the Indonesian military has increased in recent months creating a fresh humanitarian crisis in a region cut off from the world: Indonesia prevents all foreign media and NGOs from operating here. This makes West Papua perhaps the only territory besides North Korea that is so inaccessible to the international community.

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Huawei and China: Not Just Business as Usual

Posted on January 1, 2019 by admin

Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 8, No. 1, January 2019

A Huawei mobile smartphone is photographed close-up. The home screen is visible.

Huawei at Mobile World Congress, Barcelona, 2015. Source: Karlis Dambrans via Flickr.

Douglas Black

Technology Journalist

To the average consumer around the world, Huawei is likely thought of as a Chinese company that makes nice phones — a “Chinese Apple” of sorts. The average American consumer might associate the firm as one that makes nice phones but, for some vague, political reasons, is not trustworthy. As of early December, the average Canadian consumer might recognize Huawei as the company at the focus of some political gamesmanship between the US, Canada, and China. All of these lay-interpretations are indeed valid, but there is a great deal more going on than revealed by a cursory glance. This article is intended as a brief explainer of Huawei’s history and current market position, the importance of the company to the ruling Communist Party and their strategic goals, and the far-reaching implications of the outcome of the arrest of Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou.

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Incurring Strategic Risk in the East Asian Littoral: On What Basis?

Posted on December 3, 2018 by admin

Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 7, No. 12, December 2018

A world globe is photographed from below. It focused on the South China Sea region.

Globe displaying the South China Sea. China claims nearly all of the South China Sea — a vast tract of water through which a huge chunk of global shipping passes. The Philippines, Taiwan, Brunei, Malaysia and Vietnam have competing claims to parts of the sea, which is believed to harbour significant oil and gas deposits. Source: Adam Jones via Flickr.

Captain Robert C. Rubel

USN (Ret)

Recently, two US Navy ships conducted a transit of the Taiwan Straits in an exercise of freedom of navigation. Right now, US naval forces can conduct freedom of navigation exercises throughout most of the East Asian littoral, including the South China Sea (SCS) without serious fear that they will provoke open hostilities with the Peoples Republic of China (PRC), but as the PRC builds up its forces and gains more confidence, such an escalation may become a distinct possibility. China started building up its “islands” in 2014, and at the time the US did nothing to stop it. The Permanent Court of Arbitration ruled in the Philippines’ favor in 2015 over the status of Scarborough Shoal and other SCS features, but China ignored the ruling and the US did nothing to enforce the ruling. Now Beijing has its “great wall of SAMs” there and it will likely take war to change things. If China decides in the future to threaten or use force to enforce its claims to the entirety of the SCS as sovereign territory, there will be considerable finger-pointing in Washington concerning “who lost the South China Sea.” US inaction concerning the buildup could be attributed to misdiagnosis of Chinese intent or even a desire to accommodate what was seen as strategically harmless initiatives; however one potential explanation that has implications for future decision making is that the Obama Administration did not feel it had the backing of the international community and more specifically the support of regional countries to take action that would risk war.

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