What is Russia's Strategy in SE Asia?

To great fanfare, in May 2016, Russia hosted the third ASEAN-Russia Summit at the Black Sea resort of Sochi. Commemorating the 20th anniversary of Russia’s acceptance as an ASEAN dialog partner, this summit was intended to give new impetus to longstanding efforts by Russia and Southeast Asia to forge closer economic and security ties. Defying efforts by the West to isolate Russia, leaders from all ten ASEAN member states attended the summit.[1]Despite having recently skipped several high-level ASEAN summits, this time President Putin led the Russian delegation himself. He also met separately with the leaders of all ten ASEAN states. After the summit, Putin proclaimed that the two sides had reached agreement “on building a strategic partnership over the long term.” Demonstrating that this was not just mere rhetoric, the two sides also announced a raft of new measures during the summit, on topics ranging from security relations to closer political and economic ties. However, Russia’s ongoing Sino-centric focus, ASEAN’s limited ability to act collectively, and Moscow’s preference for bilateral relations will continue to predominate in its overall relations with the region.

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Angkor Wat had an Ancient Urban Network

n Australian archaeologist says he and colleagues have found evidence of previously undiscovered medieval urban and agricultural networks surrounding the ancient city of Angkor Wat.

Using high-tech lasers to scan the Cambodian jungle, Damian Evans and colleagues say they found traces of extensive networks surrounding the monumental stone temple complex at Angkor Wat. Evans said their findings could further our understanding of Khmer culture and throw into question traditional assumptions about the 15th-century decline of the empire.

Evans said a laser technology known as lidar was used to create precise maps of ancient networks that left only vague traces — invisible to the naked eye — in the landscape surrounding the temples.

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The Forces Reacting to China's South China Sea Ambitions

Few can deny that China has had a particularly challenging year. In an effort to augment its sovereignty claims over what it considers as its national “blue soil,” China has inadvertently encouraged a growing number of nations to coalesce against it. One could argue that China has overplayed its hand, unleashing a dangerous strategic dynamic that threatens the whole region.

Throughout the early years of this decade, China rapidly and inexorably altered the maritime status quo in East Asia, wresting control of Philippine-claimed Scarborough Shoal and deploying a giant oil rig into Vietnamese-claimed waters in the South China Sea.

In possession of cutting-edge technology, and confidently overseeing decades of relentless military modernization as well as paramilitary mobilization, China has transformed a whole host of contested low-tide elevations (LTEs), atolls, shoals and rocks into full-fledged islands. Within 20 months, it has reclaimed 17 times more land than the other claimants combined over the past four decades.

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Angkor Wat was Bigger Than Previous Thought

The team has discovered that the Angkor Wat complex was far larger than expected, had more components than previously envisaged, and was bounded on its south side by a unique and massive structure.

"This structure, which has dimensions of more than 1500m×600m, is the most striking discovery associated with Angkor Wat to date. Its function remains unknown and, as yet, it has no known equivalent in the Angkorian world," said Professor Fletcher, from the University's Department of Archaeology.

The team also discovered Angkor Wat includes an entire ensemble of buried 'towers' built and demolished during the construction and initial use of the main temple, remains of what is thought might be a shrine used during the construction period.

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Late Pleistocene Mammalian Assemblages of Southeast Asia

Late Pleistocene Mammalian Assemblages of Southeast Asia: New Dating, Mortality Profiles and Evolution of the Predator-Prey Relationships in an Environmental Context

Authors:

Bacon et al

Abstract:

Karstic sites have great potential for yielding data regarding changes in faunal communities in the Pleistocene of Southeast Asia. In this region, the majority of fossil-bearing deposits are karstic breccias, which generally demonstrate a complicated sedimentary history. While most of the mammalian assemblages recovered in these deposits are only composed of isolated teeth, their study remains essential for reconstructing palaeoecology and palaeoclimatology of the region. We analysed the assemblages recovered in three mainland and two insular karstic sites: Tam Hang South and Nam Lot in northern Laos, Duoi U’Oi in northern Vietnam, Punung in central Java and Sibrambang in western Sumatra and obtained new chronologies for three of these sites so that their significance could be discussed within their correct chronological context. The resulting age ranges place the sites in MIS5 and MIS4. The comparative analysis of the faunas, in terms of taphonomy, taxonomic diversity and abundance, and mortality profiles (Cervus unicolor, Sus scrofa, Sus vittatus, rhinocerotids and Tapirus indicus), reveals marked differences in prey-predators (carnivores and/or humans) relationships in relation to habitat. The study of hominines-bearing sites (Punung, Nam Lot, Duoi U’Oi) allows us to emphasize different interactions with large carnivores (felids, hyaenids, canids).

China's Plans for Yunnan Province

EVERY day hundreds of trucks rumble across the border between China and Laos, carrying wood, textiles and agricultural goods to China, and home appliances, small machinery and building materials back. The Laotian frontier town of Boten is largely empty, apart from a few dusty shops selling snacks or machine parts, a row of rusting cars, vacant buildings and some geese; an advertisement for a Thai ladyboys’ performance hall is a rare sign of passing trade.

Over the Chinese border the roads are smoother: palm trees line the main street of Mohan, which is flanked by logistics firms, translation companies, express-delivery services, mechanics and stores selling Thai bags, cosmetics and coffee; few buildings are more than ten years old (a spiffy-looking customs post, pictured above, is among the newest). Many residents are newcomers, too. Yet the Chinese town is no metropolis. Chickens walk the streets. Firms shut for several hours after lunch. Money-changers sit at the base of a banana tree accosting visitors.

Both frontier towns aspire to something better. A deserted marketing suite just inside Laos features plans for a cross-border golf course. In Mohan work has already started on “Fortune Plaza”, a 22,000-square-metre (237,000-square foot) site with bars, shops, hotels and offices. Regional and national leaders have even grander visions for the south-western province of Yunnan, of which Mohan is part, because it shares 4,000km (2,500 miles) of borders with Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam. They want it to be the hub of an economic take-off in South-East Asia. The challenge is great: an underdeveloped part of China will need to lift some of Asia’s poorest and most unstable countries with it.

Yunnan has a prosperous past.

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Australia's Strategic Decisions

In World War II, this country served the allied cause as a giant aircraft carrier and port, providing planes, men and materiel to deploy throughout the Pacific. Allied aircraft flew from the northeastern town of Cairns during the Battle of the Coral Sea — known by some as the “battle that saved Australia.”

The Battle of Milne Bay on the eastern tip of New Guinea, little known to Americans, marked the first time allied troops turned back what had been the unstoppable Japanese. Australians fought that battle, aided by allied aircraft flying from an airstrip inland of the port of Townsville, which played crucial roles in virtually every battle of the Pacific.

Today, the strategic situation is very different. The greatest threats to peace in the region are North Korea and an increasingly assertive China. Indonesia has replaced Japan as the central threat faced by the Australia, although relations between the two states have improved considerably over the last two decades. Defense policymakers still consider the Aussie military’s ability to defeat Indonesia a primary benchmark.

What does all this translate into? Defend Australia from the north (hence the carefully circumscribed agreement to allow US Marines to operate from Darwin but not to be based there) and ensure Australian submarines can avoid its enormous shoal waters and deploy undetected from the deep water ports in the south to help protect the country.

That has been the essential model for a long time but some basic strategic facts have recently changed.

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China to World: The Spratly Islands are Ours. Fsck off.

China can build whatever it wants on its islands in the South China Sea, a senior Chinese official said on Monday, rejecting proposals ahead of a key regional meeting to freeze any activity that may raise tensions in disputed waters there.

Southeast Asian foreign ministers this week hold security talks with counterparts, including those from the United States and China, in Myanmar, with escalating tensions over maritime disputes in Asia likely to be a major issue.

The Philippines will propose a freeze on all activity that raises tension in disputed waters in the South China Sea as part of a three-part plan at the ASEAN Regional Forum meeting, Manila's foreign minister said last week.

The United States, a close ally and former colonial power in the Philippines, has also called on all parties to halt activity in the disputed sea to ease tension.

Manila has accused China of carrying out reclamation work on at least three shoals in the Spratly Islands, where most of the overlapping claims lie, especially between China and the Philippines.

Yi Xianliang, deputy head of the Chinese Foreign Ministry's Boundary and Ocean Affairs Departments, told reporters that China had every right to build on its islands as a way of improving basic living conditions there.

"The Spratly Islands are China's intrinsic territory, and what China does or doesn't do is up to the Chinese government. Nobody can change the government's position," Yi said.

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Indonesian Air Force Take Delivery of First Three F-16C/D

The Indonesian Air Force (Tentara Nasional Indonesia - Angkatan Udara, TNI-AU) received the first three of 24 Lockheed Martin F-16C/D aircraft on 25 July.

The F-16s, which are being upgraded from Block 25 to Block 52 standard by the US Air Force (USAF) at Hill Air Force Base's (AFB) Ogden Air Logistics Complex (ALC) in Utah, are former USAF and Air National Guard units that were transferred to Indonesia as excess defence articles under a contract signed in January 2012.

The Indonesian government is paying about USD670 million to upgrade the aircraft with new avionics, engines, wings, landing gear and other components. According to official US Air Force media the USAF handed over one F-16C and two F-16Ds on 14 July. The remaining 21 aircraft are scheduled to be delivered to the Indonesian government by Ogden ALC by the end of 2015.

The three aircraft landed at Iswahjudi Airbase in Madiun, East Java, after flying from Alaska via Guam. In August, six Indonesian Air Force instructors will begin F-16C/D conversion training under the tutelage of a four-man USAF Mobile Training Team. The 24 aircraft will be split between Squadron 3 at Madiun and Squadron 16 at Pekanbaru.

Local Indonesian media have reported that the refurbishment includes service life extensions, including the overhaul of the wings, landing gear, and engines, as well as capability enhancements to avionics. These include an upgraded AN/APG-68 (V) fire control radar and Block 52 Link 16 datalink, AN/ALQ-213 Electronic Warfare Management System, ALR-69 Class IV Radar Warning Receiver, and ALE-47 Countermeasures Dispenser Set.

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Vietnam and China's Confrontation Over Oil at Sea is Rigged to Clash

VIETNAM and China share a long history of enmity—and of managing to patch things up when they go wrong. But their latest dispute is not running true to form.

Vietnam was taken aback in early May when China parked an oil rig on its doorstep. The behemoth, which cost $1 billion, lies 17 nautical miles (32 km) from the Paracel islands, which China seized from the American-backed South Vietnamese regime in 1974, and about 150 nautical miles from the Vietnamese coast. Vietnam’s leaders say the rig is inside their 200-mile exclusive economic zone as defined by international law. They wanted to settle the dispute quickly through negotiations. But China is said to have rebuffed requests for a summit and talks between lower-ranking officials went nowhere.

Now, the prospect of a quiet resolution looks increasingly remote.

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ASEAN Dances Around Confronting China

THE ten-member Association of South-East Asian Nations is proud of how it does things. “The ASEAN way” favours consensus over confrontation, conviviality over candour and process over substance. It is credited with keeping the peace in what was once a strife-torn region. And co-operation within ASEAN not only enhances its economic coherence and attractiveness to outsiders, but also gives it a diplomatic clout its individual members could never attain. Yet as its leaders met on May 10th and 11th for a summit in Naypyidaw, the capital of Myanmar, ASEAN’s achievements seemed under threat on all fronts.

The meeting was overshadowed by a confrontation in the South China Sea between Vietnam, an ASEAN member, and China.

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Impacts of Glaciation on "Tropical" Indonesian Archipelago/Sunda Peninsula During the Pleistocene

Scientists look at past climates to learn about climate change and the ability to simulate it with computer models. One region that has received a great deal of attention is the Indo-Pacific warm pool, the vast pool of warm water stretching along the equator from Africa to the western Pacific Ocean.

In a new study, Pedro DiNezio of the International Pacific Research Center, University of Hawaii at Manoa, and Jessica Tierney of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution investigated preserved geological clues (called "proxies") of rainfall patterns during the last ice age when the planet was dramatically colder than today. They compared these patterns with computer model simulations in order to find a physical explanation for the patterns inferred from the proxies.

Their study, which appears in the May 19, online edition of Nature Geoscience, not only reveals unique patterns of rainfall change over the Indo-Pacific warm pool, but also shows that they were caused by the effect of lowered sea level on the configuration of the Indonesian archipelago.

"For our research," explains lead-author Pedro DiNezio at the International Pacific Research Center, "we compared the climate of the ice age with our recent warmer climate. We analyzed about 100 proxy records of rainfall and salinity stretching from the tropical western Pacific to the western Indian Ocean and eastern Africa. Rainfall and salinity signals recorded in geological sediments can tell us much about past changes in atmospheric circulation over land and the ocean respectively."

"Our comparisons show that, as many scientists expected, much of the Indo-Pacific warm pool was drier during this glacial period compared with today. But, counter to some theories, several regions, such as the western Pacific and the western Indian Ocean, especially eastern Africa, were wetter," adds co-author Jessica Tierney from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute.

In the second step, the scientists matched these rainfall and salinity patterns with simulations from 12 state-of-the-art climate models that are used to also predict future climate change. For this matching they applied a method of categorical data comparison called the 'Cohen's kappa' statistic. Though widely used in the medical field, this method has not yet been used to match geological climate signals with climate model simulations.

"We were taken aback that only one model out of the 12 showed statistical agreement with the proxy-inferred patterns of the rainfall changes. This model, though, agrees well with both the rainfall and salinity indicators – two entirely independent sets of proxy data covering distinct areas of the tropics," says DiNezio.

The model reveals that the dry climate during the glacial period was driven by reduced convection over a region of the warm pool called the Sunda Shelf. Today the shelf is submerged beneath the Gulf of Thailand, but was above sea level during the glacial period, when sea level was about 120 m lower.

"The exposure of the Sunda Shelf greatly weakened convection over the warm pool, with far-reaching impacts on the large-scale circulation and on rainfall patterns from Africa to the western Pacific and northern Australia," explains DiNezio.