Tackling the South China Sea Together: British and French Navies Chart a Course

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Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 7, No. 6, June 2018 

Pictured are Royal Navy Marines taking part in a simulated beach landing using Landing Platform Dock ships. Two ships appear in the foreground, with a larger one in the background.

Pictured are Royal Navy Marines taking part in a simulated beach landing using Landing Platform Dock ships.
The Assault Ship HMS Bulwark is visable in the distance. The Marines were part of the NATO Exercise, Trident Juncture. The role of the Landing Platform Dock ships, HMS Bulwark and HMS Albion, is to deliver the punch of the Royal Marines ashore by air and by sea, with boats from the landing dock in the belly of the ship and by assault helicopter from the two-spot flight deck. LPDs can carry 256 troops, with their vehicles and combat supplies, and this can be swollen up to 405 troops. Source: Defence Imagery via Flickr.

Peter M. Solomon

Government and Regulatory Affairs Consultant

At a September 2015, joint press conference at the White House, China’s President Xi Jinping stood beside U.S. President Barack Obama and said, “China does not intend to pursue militarization” with respect to “construction activities that China are undertaking” on the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea.[1] Since then, China has established several offensive capabilities in the region, including surface-to-air and anti-ship missile systems on three features in the Spratly Islands and the ability to deploy strategic bombers from the Paracel Islands.[2]  In comparison to the United States, which has been a consistent critic of China’s reclamation and militarization and has embarked on numerous freedom of maritime navigation exercises in the region, the European Union (EU) has historically been reserved in its comments regarding China’s activities in the South China Sea. Instead, the EU has limited itself to general comments about the importance of maintaining freedom of the seas and resolving disputes peacefully. While these statements are not without importance, the lack of a more critical, unified EU approach to China’s destabilizing activities has left missing a crucial voice. The tides could soon turn.

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Reason, Imagination and Invention in the South Pacific: The Laser Beam Kiwi

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Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 7, No. 6, June 2018 

Three troops in uniform pose with the "Laser Kiwi" flag. A New Zealand flag is visible in the background.

Troops pose with the “Laser Kiwi” flag, submitted to the New Zealand Flag Consideration panel in 2015 by James Gray. Source: Reddit.

Bernard Cadogan, Ph.D.

Foreign Affairs and Diplomatic Advisor to King Tuheitia, the seventh King of the Maori Kiingitanga

Address to the U.K. Defence Academy, Shrivenham, 7th February 2018

New Zealand is proof that nature does not always abhor, a vacuum. The country is truly, “the last, the loneliest and the loveliest” as Rudyard Kipling declared Auckland to be in his “Song of the Cities”. Strategic systems never tolerate vacuums. They punish confusion and ambivalence. New Zealand is no redoubt, nor is it overlooked.

The intention of this address is to consider New Zealand’s sense of geopolitical reality. Are we proof that the Versailles Conference unassociated Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) nation state has been outclassed in the 21st century Pacific? Are we a living fossil ?

Woodrow Wilson envisaged a world in which there would be no assemblages such as empires, nor alliance systems even. Sovereignty-pooling exercises such as the European Union and Mercosur or Caricom would have been anathema to Wilson. They are not an option for us.

When asked at the Versailles Conference, why we had made the effort we did in the Great War, our Prime Minister Bill Massey replied, “we did it for Civilisation”.

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Duterte’s Immigration Agreement with China: Subversion by Numbers

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Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 7, No. 6, June 2018 

Demetrius Cox

Analyst and Consultant

A PLA Air Force (PLAAF) military transport plane (IL-76) is photographed leaving the airstrip.

A PLA Air Force (PLAAF) military transport plane (IL-76) in Davao City on 8 June 2018. Source: Philippine Plane Spotters Group (PPSG).

“The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.”
― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

On June 9, 2018 the Philippine Star published an article titled “More than 3 million Chinese allowed entry into Philippines since 2016 — Immigration data”.

In what may become one of the most remarkable subversions in recent history, the article describes how the immigration floodgates have been thrown open by Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte.  With a current national population of 103 million, Duterte has allowed a 3% direct population increase (3+ million) of Chinese immigrants to the Republic of the Philippines in less than three years, which is enough to keep most demographers up at night.  And there is no end in sight.

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Trade Strategy is a Proper Part of National Security

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Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 7, No. 6, June 2018 

A ship, the Emerald Princess, is photographed crossing the new Cocoli Locks of the Panama Canal expansion in Panama City.

Emerald Princess crosses the new Cocoli Locks of the Panama Canal expansion in Panama City. A giant Chinese-chartered freighter nudged its way into the expanded Panama Canal on Sunday to mark the completion of nearly a decade of work forecast to boost global trade. Source: Craig Stanfill via Flickr.

William R. Hawkins

International Economics and National Security Consultant

On June 4, the Koch brothers (Charles and David) announced the launch of a “multi-year, multimillion-dollar” campaign against the tariffs and trade restrictions imposed by the Trump administration; especially those levied on China. The billionaire brothers are regularly called “conservatives” because they make large campaign donations to Republican candidates. But they are not conservatives; they are libertarians, a very different breed of cat. And their donations to the GOP are meant to sway the party in their ideological direction, not merely support it. The liberal media tries to tarnish conservatism by placing libertarians on “the Right” even though this is not their intellectual origin. This is done to further the left-wing narrative that “conservatives” are self-interested, greedy individuals who are enemies of organized society and the common good. This is true for libertarians, who doubt the very legitimacy of the nation-state or the “higher” norms of society. Too often they define right and wrong on the basis of whether it turns a profit.

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Legislatures Elected by Evaluative Proportional Representation (EPR): An Algorithm

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Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 7, No. 6, June 2018 

A person in a work shirt is photographed from above looking at documents. The person's face is not visible, only their hands, arms, and part of their chest. A corner of a laptop keyboard is also visible in the bottom right corner.

Illustration of grading. Source: Pexels.

Steve Bosworth and Anders Corr1

Abstract

This article describes a new and relatively simple evaluative method to elect all the members in any legislative body, such as a city council or national legislature.2 Called Evaluative Proportional Representation (EPR), each voter grades any number of candidates on their fitness for office as EXCELLENT, VERY GOOD, GOOD, ACCEPTABLE, POOR, or REJECT.  These evaluations are counted by hand or computer algorithm (here provided in the R statistical computer language).  This evaluative method of social choice is particularly good at revealing and optimizing voters’ utilities.  It ensures proportionate minority representation in legislative bodies by enabling each voter to guarantee that his or her evaluations of the candidates will continue fully to count in the deliberations and decisions made by their elected legislative body.  Each elected member of this body is given a different weighted vote as determined by counting all voters’ evaluations. As a result, each citizen’s vote continues to count within the weighted vote given to the elected member she most highly values.

Note: An updated version of this article is available at: https://www.jpolrisk.com/legislatures-elected-by-evaluative-proportional-representation-epr-an-algorithm-v2/

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