Merkel Agrees to let Putin Carve off the Donbass From Ukraine, ahem, Grant it Special Status

Russian President Vladimir Putin and German Chancellor Angela Merkel agreed on Monday that Ukraine should give its separatist-led Donbass region a special status set out in Ukrainian law, the Kremlin said.

It gave no further details of the leaders’ discussions on the future of Donbass during a phone call, but agreement on its status would be a step toward convening a four-nation summit on ending five years of conflict in the eastern region.

Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelenskiy said last month that Kiev had agreed to grant Donbass special status and let local elections go ahead there. The breakthrough raised hopes that a date would be set for the summit involving Kiev, Moscow, Berlin and Paris.

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Putin Names US, NATO as National Security Threats

A new appraisal names the United States as one of the threats to Russia's national security for the first time, a sign of how relations with the west have deteriorated in recent years.

The document, "About the Strategy of National Security of Russian Federation", was signed by President Vladimir Putin on New Year's Eve. It replaces a 2009 version, endorsed by then- President Dmitry Medvedev, the current prime minister, which mentioned neither the United States not NATO.

It says Russia has managed to heighten its role in solving global problems and international conflicts. That heightened role has caused a reaction by the West, it says.

"The strengthening of Russia happens against the background of new threats to the national security, which has complex and interrelated nature," the document says.

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The document says that the United States and the EU have supported an "anti-constitutional coup d'etat in Ukraine", which led to a deep divide in Ukrainian society and a military conflict.

It also names the expansion of NATO as a threat to Russia's national security and said that the United States has expanded its network of military-biological laboratories in neighboring to Russia countries.

The document, which serves as a basis for planning strategy related to national security by different state bodies, does not mention Syria. On Sept. 30, Russia began air strikes against anti-government rebels opposed to the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, a Russian ally.

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The Pentagon states there's no reason to declare the US an enemy.

The Chinese Dragon Awakens

This week will be a big one for China watchers as the People’s Liberation Army holds a massive parade on Thursday in Beijing to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Japanese surrender during World War II.

The parade comes the same week Taiwan released its a report warning that China will declare an Air Defense Identification Zone, or ADIZ, in the South China Sea after it finishes building military facilities on the Spratly Islands, according to the aviation blog Alert 5.

The PLA plans to showcase its increasingly capable weaponry, from guns and missiles to tanks and fighter jets. An estimated 12,000 troops, between 100 and 200 aircraft, and some 500 pieces of equipment are expected to participate in the event, according to CNN.

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Ukraine Formally Abandons Nonaligned Status

Ukraine's parliament on Tuesday voted to abandon the country's nonaligned status, a move that could be a step toward seeking membership in NATO.

Supporters of the move, which passed by a 303-9 vote, said it was justified by Russian aggression toward Ukraine, including the annexation of its Crimean Peninsula in March and Russian support for a separatist insurgency in eastern Ukraine, where some 4,700 people have been killed since the spring.

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India Seeking Closer Ties to Other Nationalist Governments in Asia?

INDIA’S restless prime minister, Narendra Modi, likes to brag that he sleeps for only three or four hours a night and replenishes his energy with yoga. He will need all the vigour he can muster in the coming month, during a punishing diplomatic tour to the rest of Asia. By the end, if he keeps up the pace, Mr Modi may have clarified what sort of policy he intends for India in a region where it punches below its weight.

The marathon begins in Japan on August 30th, where India’s leader travels with a delegation of billionaires and industrialists for a five-day trip. Mr Modi is close to Japan’s prime minister, Shinzo Abe, a fellow nationalist with whom he shares suspicions of China. He gratefully visited Mr Abe in 2007 and 2012 as chief minister for Gujarat, even as Western politicians shunned him after Hindu-Muslim riots in his state in 2002. Gleeful Indian pundits note that social media give a clue to their friendship. Mr Abe follows only three people on Twitter; one of them is his eager fellow tweeter, Mr Modi.

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China's Beginning to Take on the Diplomacy of its Periphery

CHINA’S dilemma in Asia is how to balance the peaceful rise it says it wants with its desire for more regional influence. In its continuing effort to achieve both, on July 3rd Xi Jinping, the country’s president, arrived in South Korea for a state visit. It came several days after Mr Xi had repeated his call for a new security framework in Asia. He was speaking at a conference in Beijing to mark the 60th anniversary of the excitingly named “Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence”, the basis of China’s policy of non-interference. The president does not seem to be unduly troubled by any tension between his words and China’s recent actions. “The notion of dominating international affairs belongs to a different age, and such an attempt is doomed to failure,” he said without apparent irony.

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Japan Approves Change to Military Use in Constitution

Japan took a step away Tuesday from an American-drafted constitution that has long kept its military shackled, approving a plan to allow greater use of a force that was vanquished at the end of World War II.
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In one of the biggest changes to Japanese security policy since the war, the ruling coalition gave approval to reinterpret the constitution on military affairs. It now awaits endorsement — a formality — by the Cabinet of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who has made raising the country's military profile a cornerstone of his nationalist policies.

The move will allow the military to defend other nations in what is known as "collective self-defense."

Previous governments have said that Japan's war-renouncing constitution limits the use of force to defending Japan.

Abe, who has pushed hard for the change, cites a deteriorating security environment, notably China's military rise and North Korea's missile and nuclear threats.

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Does Prime Minister Modi's Cabinet Selection Suggest a Sea Change in Indian Foreign Policy?

Modi’s rise has transformed Indian domestic politics in some fundamental ways. On the foreign policy front too, given his hand-chosen team, he has an opportunity to make a departure from the diffidence of the past. Reflecting his pragmatic instincts with a nationalistic bent, his national security team is well placed to achieve just that. Modi’s success in achieving his domestic agenda will also depend on how successful he is in getting his external priorities right. The world will be watching as closely as the Indian electorate.

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What Will Indian PM Modi's China Policy?

GLOOMY foreign-policy analysts in Beijing look at Narendra Modi, India’s new prime minister, and see a subcontinental version of his Japanese counterpart, Shinzo Abe. Two right-wing nationalists, elected on platforms of restoring economic growth and national pride, both need to act tough in their countries’ territorial disputes with China. Mr Abe’s tenure has marked a nadir in China’s relations with one big neighbour; so Mr Modi’s victory does not look good for China, either. That is one view. But other Chinese thinkers are cheerier, applauding an apparently chummy meeting this week in Delhi between Mr Modi and China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi. Writing in the Communist Party’s Global Times newspaper, Liu Zongyi, of the Shanghai Institute for International Studies, even predicted that Mr Modi is less likely to be “India’s Abe” than its “Nixon”—a right-wing leader who overcomes distrust to transform relations with China.

The Modi-as-Abe camp can point to a tub-thumping speech Mr Modi made during the election campaign in the north-eastern state of Arunachal Pradesh, which China briefly invaded in a bloody border war in 1962 and over which it still claims sovereignty. Mr Modi was forthrightly patriotic: “I swear in the name of the soil that I will protect this country.” And sure enough, this week it was reported that India is to fortify 54 new border posts. In a foreign-policy speech last October, Mr Modi referred to “Self-Deception”, a book by his party colleague, Arun Shourie, which ridiculed Indian governments’ weak-kneed response to Chinese territorial encroachment, and called for India to “knit a network of alliances” to stand up to China.

China’s leaders were not invited to Mr Modi’s inauguration last month. But in a front seat was Lobsang Sangay, formal head of the exiled Tibetan government-in-exile, which is based in India, is loyal to the Dalai Lama and reviled by China as splittist. This suggests the new Indian government may be more willing to rile China than, for example, the one in 2008, when China paraded the Olympic torch in Delhi ahead of the games in Beijing.

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China Pushing its "New Security Concept for Asia"

If there was any doubt, last week’s Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore made it clear that China is unhappy with the behavior of the United States in Asia. Following speeches by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel that criticized Chinese actions, General Wang Guanzhong departed from his prepared speech to accuse the two countries of revealing a “taste of hegemony” and trying to “stir up trouble." But his scripted remarks highlighted something which may be an even more fundamental challenge to the U.S. role in the region: China’s “New Security Concept for Asia.” This concept appears to be an effort to redefine the idea of security on terms that cast China as a regional security provider and the United States as an over-assertive outsider that threatens to undermine regional security. Official Chinese interpretations of the argument largely accords with a headline from the online edition of the People’s Daily: “The Shangri-La Confrontation is a Clash Between Old and New Security Concepts.”

The core of the New Security Concept, introduced by Chinese President Xi Jinping in a May 21 speech at the Conference on Interactions and Confidence-Building in Asia, is the idea that “development is the greatest form of security.” As the largest trading partner of most countries in the region and a major contributor to infrastructure investment, China already has a good claim to be the chief driver of the region’s development. If security is development, China is therefore also the main provider of Asian security—killing two birds with one stone. But to make this argument persuasive, China must refute understandings of security that emphasize traditional concerns such as territory and national sovereignty. This means contesting international norms with the United States. Ultimately, like the earlier Five Principles for Peaceful Coexistence, the New Security Concept will “gradually become a universal norm of international relations.”

This concept is more than a bit of rhetorical slight of hand—it is both an application of the Deng-era verdict that the goal of security policy should be to “maintain a peaceful external environment for development,” and an effort to promote this understanding abroad. It most likely represents beliefs genuinely used in Chinese policy-making: A similar effort is simultaneously underway in China’s domestic security sphere. Xi has recently emphasized the concept of “overall national security,” a comprehensive view of security which has been defined to include both fairly conventional matters such as military and territorial security, and non-traditional fields such as economic, cultural and ecological security

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Foreign Policy's Opinion of Modi's Foreign Policy Positions

In short, Modi is likely to be a net negative for the West. But unless he picks a fight with Pakistan, that won't matter nearly as much as whether he can address India's sense of stagnation. Modi believes that he can spread the business-first, no-red-tape model he established in Gujarat across India. His stunning electoral victory (though with slightly under 32 percent of the popular vote) gives him a mandate to do so. Hundreds of millions of all-too-hopeful Indians are about to find out whether Modi can do what he said he would. Despite merited suspicions about Modi's commitment to democracy and secularism, Western leaders need to begin thinking about what they can do to help him succeed.

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China's Noninterference Foriegn Policy Takes Hits

IF THEY have said it once, they’ve said it a million times. Hardly a press briefing goes by at the foreign ministry in Beijing without a stern reminder of the importance China places on the principle of non-interference in other countries’ internal affairs. These days the phrase is trotted out whenever a spokesman is asked about China’s stance on Ukraine. Yet, oddly, the spokesman never goes on to criticise Vladimir Putin or Russia, which, in annexing Crimea, has interfered in Ukrainian internal affairs in the crudest way imaginable. Swift to pounce on any alleged hypocrisy in Western foreign policy, China now seems to be upholding double standards of its own. In truth, it always has. But the crisis in Ukraine has exposed the contradictions in China’s “principled” diplomacy with unusual starkness.

China has not explicitly taken Russia’s side. Rather, it calls on all parties to resolve their differences through dialogue and negotiation. It opposes the sanctions imposed by America and threatened by Europe. And it harps on about the “complexity” of the situation. But America has tried in vain to persuade China to be explicit in condemning Russia. A telephone conversation between Barack Obama and China’s president, Xi Jinping, yielded no change in the Chinese script. According to the Chinese press, Mr Xi said China hoped “that all parties concerned would tackle their differences through communication and co-ordination”. In the context of Russia’s bullying approach, Huang Jing of the Lee Kuan Yew School in Singapore says that China’s supposedly neutral stance amounts, in effect, to backing Mr Putin.

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