U.S.,Hanoi in NuclearTalks :China shaken by US move to sign nuclear deal with Vietnam

[SHASH2K2]

There's a channel CCTV-7 dedicated to defence in China.

Some conjectures are that the US's tactics are to force China into trade-offs over issues such as Iran, or N. Korea.

USA should have started this long back. Their laid back attitude has resulted in making Asia one of most dangerous region and almost every rogue country has a nukes to threaten its neighbor.

 

[SHASH2K2]

10 August 2010 Last updated at 11:34 GMT

US and Vietnam stage joint naval activities

The US and Vietnam are conducting joint naval exercises in the South China Sea, a sign of increasing military ties between the two former enemies.

The week-long activities focus mainly on non-combatant exercises and are part of the 15th anniversary of diplomatic ties between Washington and Hanoi.

But correspondents say they could anger China, which has been in a dispute with Vietnam over islands in the area.

Tensions over territories in the South China Sea have increased recently.

The US has described the exercises as a "series of naval engagement activities" which focus mainly on damage control and search and rescue.

The US Navy on Sunday hosted Vietnamese military and government officials on the USS George Washington, which is on its way back from naval exercises with South Korea in the Sea of Japan.

Its strike group of three destroyers are also in the South China Sea, while the USS John S McCain is due to call at the Vietnamese port of Danang later on Tuesday.

Nga Pham of the BBC's Vietnamese service says the training shows a remarkable warming of the relationship between the US and Vietnam.

It also shows Washington's determination to defend free navigation in the area contested by a number of south-east Asian countries and China, our correspondent adds.

The US has increased its presence in the region in recent months as part of a show of support for South Korea against North Korea, which has been blamed for the sinking of the South Korean vessel Cheonan in March.

Capt David Lausman, commanding officer of the George Washington, said on Sunday that the waters "belong to nobody, yet belong to everybody".

"China has a right to operate here, as do we and as do every other country of the world," he added.

Last week, the Vietnamese foreign ministry said that Chinese ships which were carrying out seismic studies in the Paracels zone - a disputed area - had breached Vietnam's sovereignty.

Beijing has always protested against the involvement of any other parties in the South China Sea dispute, saying it was a matter for "bilateral negotiation".
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-10925061

 

[neo29]

^^^ Now thats some crowdy South China Sea. US will want to make footprint using Vietnam. China in future will be more worried about South China Sea than having goals of getting into IOR.

 

[SHASH2K2]

^^^ Now thats some crowdy South China Sea. US will want to make footprint using Vietnam. China in future will be more worried about South China Sea than having goals of getting into IOR.

China want to become a major Global player and USA is hell bent on tieing them down in Asia and looks like USA is having upper hand now.

 

[ajtr]

China hits out at U.S. "double standards"​

Ananth Krishnan
Over discussions of a U.S.-Vietnam nuclear deal
Proposed deal involves sharing fuel and backing rights to enrich fuel

There are territorial disputes between China and Vietnam over South China Sea

BEIJING: Chinese strategic analysts have hit out at the United States' move to discuss a nuclear deal with Vietnam, which would reportedly involve sharing of nuclear fuel and technology and backing Vietnam's right to enrich its own fuel.

A leading Chinese strategic expert on nuclear policy and disarmament told The Hindu on Sunday that any move to allow Vietnam, which neighbours China, to enrich its own uranium would be "double standards" on the part of the U.S. and undermine U.S. efforts to strengthen the non-proliferation regime.

"If the U.S.-Vietnam nuclear deal is a copy of the U.S. deal with the United Arab Emirates, there is no fuss. But if it [involves] enrichment of spent fuel, that is the matter we worry about," Zhai Dequan, the deputy secretary general of the China Arms Control and Disarmament Association, told The Hindu in an interview.

"In theory, there is no abnormality for an NPT [Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty] member-country to make peaceful use of nuclear energy; what matters is the enrichment of the spent fuel," he said. "Yet, if another ASEAN country, Myanmar, does the same, there would be accusations and pressure. This is called double standards."

The U.S. is reportedly in "advanced discussions" with Vietnam on a deal that would facilitate the sharing of nuclear fuel and technologies, as well as preserve Hanoi's right to enrich its own fuel, the Wall Street Journal reported last week. The report has triggered concerns in China, coming against the backdrop of heightened tensions in relations between China and its Southeast Asian neighbours, including Vietnam, over long-pending territorial disputes over the South China Sea. At the ASEAN Regional Forum in Hanoi last month, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton angered Beijing by calling for a resolution of the dispute "without coercion", and saying it was in the "national interest" of the U.S.

U.S.' regional ambition

The Foreign Ministry here described her remarks as "an attack on China."

Mr. Zhai said the deal would likely be seen in China in the context of Ms. Clinton's remarks, which suggested a move by the U.S. to "internationalise" the South China Sea issue as well as expand its footprint in the region.

Like the U.S.-India civilian nuclear deal, this deal, too, has been perceived in China as part of a greater American "containment" strategy. "[The deal] means the U.S. is strengthening cooperation with Vietnam to contain China," said Fan Jishe, a researcher of the Institute of American Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, in an interview with the official China Daily. "To Washington, the geo-strategic consideration has surpassed nuclear non-proliferation."

The deal follows renewed debate over nuclear non-proliferation in recent months following China's announcement that it would set up two additional nuclear reactors in Chashma in Pakistan. The deal, analysts said, went against the mandated, but non-enforceable, guidelines of the Nuclear Suppliers Group, which bans the transfer of nuclear technology to non-NPT countries. Chinese analysts have, however, defended the deal, and denied that it would weaken the non-proliferation regime, arguing that the reactors would be placed under International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards.

 

[LETHALFORCE]

China want to become a major Global player and USA is hell bent on tieing them down in Asia and looks like USA is having upper hand now.

USA has China contained south korea,phillipines,japan,guam,vietnam,australia,will keep the Chinese from rising too much further. These disputes china has started with it's neighbors will bring their own downfall. USA has china contained in CAR thru Afghanistan/pakistan. Forget indian ocean china will never get there.

 

[neo29]

^^^^ Very True

Completely surrounded by US's pets, they will have a tough time reaching malaca straits let alone IOR. Seems everyone in that region is fed up with Chinese bullying and want to unite against it. US is using this opportunity as much as possible.

No wonder it sold us m777 howitzers easily since they know it will be facing Chinese borders . A sign of taunt to China that we have our weapons aimed at you.

India has no aim in South China sea. Seeing the scenario of being surrounded China will surely get into a too friendly stand with India in coming years.

 

[ajtr]

Rising Asia Sinks Non Proliferation Dreams​

By Harsh Pant
Two years ago when former US President George W. Bush helped end India's status as a nuclear pariah, opening the country for civilian nuclear technology sale, the long-term implications were obscure.

With Japan, a long-time critic of India's weapon bid, lining up for deals with India, and China proposing to offer similar technology to Pakistan, the geopolitical import of the 2008 Indo-US agreement is becoming clear: Japan, concerned by China's rise, wants to strengthen India while China counters the US-India partnership by helping India's nemesis Pakistan. In the process, protecting the nuclear non-proliferation regime has become more complex.

Since the signing of the Indo-US agreement and special dispensation granted to India by the International Atomic Energy Agency and the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), India has signed civilian nuclear energy pacts with states as diverse as Britain, France, Russia and Canada on the one hand, Argentina, Kazakhstan, Namibia and Mongolia on the other. The start of negotiations with Japan is the latest in a long line of such agreements. China announced its own civil nuclear pact with Pakistan earlier this year though it has yet to receive a waiver from the NSG for selling technology to a country not a member of the non-proliferation treaty.

Behind seemingly innocuous agreements of civilian nuclear cooperation, India, Japan, China and Pakistan engage in a strategic balancing game that could draw in other countries, complicate the global non-proliferation agenda and raise serious security concerns about Pakistan as a Wal-Mart of illicit nuclear technology.

The US-India nuclear pact virtually rewrote the rules of the global nuclear regime by underlining India's credentials as a responsible nuclear state that should be integrated into the global nuclear order with the Bush Administration deciding to "dehyphenate" US relations with India and Pakistan. The pact creates a major exception to the US prohibition of nuclear assistance to any country that does not accept international monitoring of all its nuclear facilities. The unspoken context of the deal was US concern about China's rapid ascendance in the Asia-Pacific. Both India and the US realized that, to prevent China from dominating the Asia-Pacific, a close partnership between the world's two largest democracies was essential. The nuclear deal became the most potent symbol of US-India rapprochement.

But the deal was not merely between India and the US. Successful approval by the NSG allowed India to engage other nuclear powers in civilian nuclear trade and provided new market opportunities to major nuclear powers. Even Japan, a strong critic of India's nuclear policy, decided to fast-track negotiations for a civilian nuclear deal, planning to sign the accord during the Indian prime minister's visit to Tokyo by year-end - the first such agreement between Japan and a country that isn't a signatory to the NPT.

Though Indian-Japanese ties have blossomed in recent years on a range of issues, the nuclear issue has been a major irritant in the relationship. The new understanding between the two nations underscores Tokyo's attempts to come to terms with India's new nuclear status. Japanese nuclear companies are eager for a share of the Indian market. Given involvement of Japanese firms such as Toshiba Corp, Hitachi Ltd and Mitsubishi in US and French nuclear industries, an Indo-Japanese pact is essential for US and French civilian nuclear cooperation with India.

Beyond the commercial dimensions of the deal, political symbolism is even more critical. Such a deal would underline Japan's determination to put Indo-Japanese ties in high gear. The rise of China is a major factor in the evolution of Indo-Japanese ties as is the US attempt to build India into a major balancer in the region. Both India and Japan chafe at China's not-so-subtle attempts at preventing their rise. An Indian-Japanese civil nuclear pact would signal an Asian partnership to bring stability to the region at a time when China goes all out to dispense civilian nuclear reactors to Pakistan, putting the entire non-proliferation regime in jeopardy.

The Sino-Pakistan nuclear relationship has been the major factor wrecking the foundations of the nuclear non-proliferation regime. China's nuclear test in 1964 propelled India's nuclear weaponization culminating in India's 'peaceful nuclear explosion' in 1974. Sino-Pakistan nuclear cooperation - involving the sharing of weapon design and missile technology in the 1990s - forced India to go overtly nuclear in 1998.

When the United States announced its civilian nuclear energy cooperation pact with India in 2005, China indicated displeasure by asking India to sign the NPT and dismantle its nuclear weapons. Beijing promptly moved to make that concern pointless by declaring its own intention to sell nuclear reactors to Pakistan. The not-so-subtle message was, if Washington decided to play favorites, China would do the same, confirming that China continues to view Pakistan as an asset in countering India.

Chinese authorities confirmed earlier this year that the China National Nuclear Cooperation signed an agreement with Pakistan for two new nuclear reactors at the Chashma site - Chashma III and Chashma IV - in addition to the two already under development in Pakistan. This action of China is in clear violation of the NSG guidelines that forbid nuclear transfers to countries not signatories to the NPT or not adhering to comprehensive international safeguards on their nuclear program.

With or without the NSG approval, nuclear cooperation between China and Pakistan will only intensify in the coming years as China becomes more assertive in pursuing its interests. China is concerned about deepening Indo-US relations and India's attempts to cultivate ties with states in China's periphery. The resulting priority of the Sino-Pakistani relationship is evident in Chinese polices toward South Asia.

Moreover, there's a sense in Beijing that the Obama administration would be reluctant to challenge the deal as it needs China's help on issues ranging from Iran and North Korea to the global economy. The US no longer seems to have the willingness and clout to enforce the rules requiring credible safeguards before civilian nuclear technology can be exported.

China is not only active in Pakistan. Iran has emerged as the second largest customer of China's defense industry after Pakistan, receiving critical defense technology from China, including some that violate the stated Chinese policy of adhering to the norms of the non-proliferation regime. As China becomes more assured of its rising global profile, it challenges US foreign-policy priorities, and the non-proliferation regime fast becomes the first casualty of the emerging great power politics.

It's safe to conclude that notwithstanding the hype surrounding the NPT Review Conference held in May, the nuclear non-proliferation regime as we have known it is on its last legs. And the reason is simple: the changing balance of power. The most dramatic changes in the global balance of power are taking place in Asia, and it's there that the epitaph of the non-proliferation regime is being written. International regimes merely reflect the extant distribution of power, and the non-proliferation regime is out of sync with the distribution of global power at the moment. Is it any surprise then that its credibility is rapidly eroding?

Harsh V. Pant teaches in King's College, London.

Reprinted with permission from YaleGlobal Online (http://yaleglobal.yale.edu). Copyright 2010(c) Yale Center for the Study of Globalization.

 

[SHASH2K2]

India moves to match China at border


China has furiously built up its military and civilian infrastructure on its side of the border


The name of this white-knuckle pass, one of the highest in the world, means 'pile of corpses' in the Tibetan language. Every year a few dozen people die trying to cross these spiky Himalayan peaks.

For six months the road is snowbound, putting at the mercy of the elements tens of thousands of Indian troops posted beyond it in this remote but strategically important region along India's long and disputed border with China.

In the past decade, as China has furiously built up its military and civilian infrastructure on its side of the border, the Rohtang Pass on the Indian side has stood as mute testimony to India's inability and unwillingness to master its far-flung and rugged outermost reaches.

But now, India is racing to match its rival for regional and global power, building and bolstering airstrips and army outposts, shoring up neglected roads and — finally, decades after it was first proposed — building a tunnel to bypass the deadly Rohtang Pass.

In June, work started on the ambitious project, which will take five years and require boring five miles through the Pir Panjal range. Several other tunnels, which would allow all-weather access to Ladakh, which abuts the Tibetan Plateau, are also in the works.

"What India is belatedly seeking to do is to improve its defences by upgrading its logistics," said Brahma Chellaney, an analyst who tracks the India-China relationship at the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi. "By building new railroads, airports and highways in Tibet, China is now in a position to rapidly move additional forces to the border to potentially strike at India at a time of its choosing."

As a result, he said, "The Sino-Indian border remains more unstable than the Pakistani-Indian frontier."

India and China are hardly enemies, but much of the 2,521-mile border they share is disputed or ill marked. The two countries fought a brief but bloody border war in 1962, and while these days they have, on the surface, a mostly cordial relationship, it is marked by tension over border disputes and the future of Tibet and its leader, the Dalai Lama, who lives in exile in India.

China's push to develop its infrastructure on its side of the border — including an all-weather railway to Tibet that includes the world's highest tunnel, at 16,000 feet — is viewed with considerable suspicion in India.

For much of its history, India has regarded the Himalayas as a form of protection, not a barrier to be overcome, said Rajeswari Rajagopalan, an expert in India-China relations at the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi.

"The Indian side has been very slow to develop the border areas," Rajeswari said. "They believed if you improved the infrastructure it would only allow the Chinese to walk into your territory. This was very foolish and naïve."

Three hundred miles of winding road lead from the town of Manali, through the verdant Kullu Valley, to Ladakh, an alpine desert that abuts the Tibetan plateau.

Stalemate

Tens of thousands of Indian Army troops are stationed among Ladakh's barren peaks, and the region borders several potential trouble spots, including Aksai Chin, a region that India claims as part of its territory but that China administers. North of Ladakh is the Siachen Glacier, a river of barren ice that India and Pakistan have fought over intermittently since the 1980s. Both countries maintain outposts on the glacier, which sits at an altitude of 20,000 feet.

During the summer, thousands of trucks, laden with supplies to last the harsh mountain winters, rumble up the two roads that lead to Ladakh, from Manali and Srinagar, the summer capital of Indian-administered Kashmir.

The road from Ladakh to Srinagar is also closed in the winter, and because of its proximity to the Line of Control that splits Kashmir between India and Pakistan, Indian officials worry that the road can easily be cut, as it was in 1999, when the two countries clashed at Kargil.

Gurmeet Kanwal, a retired brigadier who runs the Centre for Land Warfare Studies, a New Delhi research institution, said India could not afford to be cut off from its most vulnerable reaches half of the year.

"As long as we have these territorial disputes you cannot rule out another border conflict," Brigadier Kanwal said. "We would like to make sure that we can deploy our forces in the right quantities in the right places."

The tunnel has been on the drawing board for decades, said P K Mahajan, the chief engineer on the $320 million project. He first became involved as a young engineer in 1988, when he helped carry out a feasibility study, five years after the project was first proposed by Indira Gandhi, then the prime minister.

"It is only now that these projects are seeing the light of day," Mahajan said.
The challenges of building a long tunnel in the rough environment of the Pir Panjal are enormous. The Himalayas are the world's youngest mountain range. They shift and grind, still moving, expanding and shrinking.

That makes life tough for people like Thomas Riedel, a German contractor working at the north end of the tunnel. Because no one is sure what kind of rock will be found inside the mountain, the tunnel will be built using a painstaking method of blasting and digging, rather than the tunnel-boring machines that have revolutionised tunnel construction in recent years.

"Nobody can look inside the mountain," Riedel said. "That is where we will find problems."

Just weeks into what will be at least five years of digging, the workers encountered their first unexpected obstacle: a foot of snow. In June.

Ventilation

The tunnel will sit beneath more than a mile of snow-covered rock for much of its length. Ventilation will pose a huge problem.

People who live on the other side of the Rohtang Pass say the tunnel will transform their lives.

"For six months, we are prisoners," said Chetan Devi, a schoolteacher who lives in a town beyond the pass. "In the winter, you have to risk your life to go to Manali."
The tunnel will turn an ordeal of several hours, even in the summer, into a brisk 20-minute trip.

Virender Sharma, the chief government official in Kyelang, the main town of the Lahaul Valley, which sits between Manali and Ladakh, said that last winter 21 people died trying to cross the Rohtang Pass on foot. People were found frozen solid, he said, "sitting with rucksacks on their backs, water bottles at their sides, but they were dead."

Winters in the Lahaul Valley are a miserable affair, he said.

"During summer, it seems very pleasant," Sharma said. "In the winter, there is no light. No vegetables. No mail. Nothing to do in the evening. If there is an emergency, you are practically at the mercy of God."

For the engineers building the tunnel, it is not merely a matter of logistics, but also a matter of national pride.

"Once this tunnel is complete, it will be an engineering marvel for the whole nation," Mahajan said.

 

[SHASH2K2]

US Navy Destroyer Docks in Vietnam for Four-Day Visit


The guided-missile destroyer USS John S. McCain made a port call at the central Vietnamese city of Da Nang on Tuesday to mark the 15th anniversary of normalization of relations between the United States and Vietnam. The visit by the warship comes amid escalating tensions with China over a territorial dispute in the South China Sea.

The commanders and crew of 290 sailors of the USS John S. McCain were welcomed by local government officials and regional naval officers at the port in Da Nang. The commanding officer, Commander Jeffrey Kim, described the evolving relationship between the two countries.

"Over the last 15 years, we've established trust, a mutual respect, and I know that, in the coming years, our friendship and relationship will continue to become better," said Commander Kim.

During the four-day visit of the warship, many activities consisting of non-combat training such as damage control and search and rescue are due to take place, in addition to an exchange of skills in areas like cooking and maintenance. Captain David Lausman of the aircraft carrier USS George Washington discussed the significance of the event.

"Today, we are operating in international water demonstrating our work with specifically this partner, Vietnam, and this specific area," said Captain Lausman. "But, the same procedure goes throughout the entire world, whether it is us or any other navy that every country has the inherent right to operate peacefully in every international water space."

Territorial disputes in the South China Sea, a vital area for shipping and potentially rich in energy deposits, have been escalating for decades between China, Brunei, Malaysia, Taiwan, the Philippines and Vietnam. However, Beijing says the issue is one of its "core interests" and that its sovereignty over the more than 648,000 square miles of waters and more than 200 mostly-uninhabited small islands, rocks and reefs is incontrovertible. Captain Ross Myers, commander of Carrier Wing Five of USS George Washington, echoed the U.S. stance on the issue.

"With Vietnam here in the South China Sea, it is to promote the freedom of navigation that every country, every nation, and all peoples enjoy: the freedom of navigation and the support for international law to protect the freedom of navigation," said Captain Myers. "So, yes, there are strategic implications in the importance of the South China Sea, and the freedom of navigation is vital to both Vietnam and the United States.

Recently, since China adopted a harder line on its claims to the South China Sea, and the United States has entered into the debate, tensions in the area have escalated.

 

[SHASH2K2]

America's Nuclear Vietnam
The Obama administration has botched its atomic negotiations with Hanoi.

In Washington, government officials rarely (if ever) admit to making policy mistakes, even when they've clearly botched things up. Take Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's recent decision to bless a formal civilian nuclear-cooperation agreement with Vietnam.

Secretary Clinton endorsed the deal in Hanoi without demanding — as Washington recently did with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) — that Vietnam forswear making nuclear fuel, a process that can bring states within days or weeks of acquiring nuclear weapons.

This immediately raised eyebrows on Capitol Hill. Just months before, State Department officials had pitched the UAE agreement as the new "gold standard" for nuclear-cooperation pacts worldwide. After getting briefed on the Vietnam deal, Hill staffers on both sides of aisle feared Foggy Bottom was throwing in the towel on nonproliferation.

State could have taken its points and sent U.S. diplomats back quietly to get the tougher UAE conditions. Instead, supporters of the Vietnam accord dug in their heels.

First, they claimed that the deal in no way changed U.S. policy. Washington, they argued, never intended to push the UAE conditions outside of the Middle East.

In fact, the U.S. struck the UAE deal in pursuance of a country-neutral approach to sharing civilian nuclear technology that President Bush and Russia's Vladimir Putin announced back in July 2007. Their joint declaration aimed to promote civilian nuclear cooperation globally while trying to convince states lacking nuclear weapons to forgo making nuclear fuel.

Throughout 2008, U.S. diplomats offered nuclear-power deals and sought no-nuclear-fuel-making pledges, not only from the UAE, Bahrain, Egypt, Turkey, Morocco, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, but also from Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam. Taking this international approach helped address Arab concerns that the U.S. had one nonproliferation standard for them and another for everyone else.

Which brings us to the second official defense of treating Vietnam differently. "Given . . . the genuine threat of a nuclear arms race in the Middle East," a senior State Department official told the Wall Street Journal, "we believe the U.A.E. . . . agreement is a model for the region," but "these same concerns do not specifically apply in Asia."

How's that? Last month, Secretary Clinton blew the whistle on North Korea's possible assistance to a covert Burmese nuclear-weapons effort. Also, since 1990, the U.S. and its allies have pressed Pyongyang to give up its nuclear-weapons activities, lest those activities goad South Korea or Japan to go nuclear.

Seoul, which U.S. officials have caught covertly attempting to make nuclear weapons at least twice, now wants to produce its own nuclear fuel. Japan already does produce its own fuel and has stockpiled at least 1,000 bombs' worth of plutonium. Further south, Taiwan tried covertly to acquire nuclear weapons at least once and is now developing a missile than could hit Beijing. As for China, it keeps modernizing its nuclear-weapons forces under a dark cloak of secrecy.

All of this suggests that pushing one nonproliferation policy for the Middle East and another for a "quiescent" Asia is delusional. More important, no one's buying it: Middle Eastern officials resent the double standard, and the Chinese — who view Vietnam as a potentially hostile vassal state — are taking offense.

That brings us to Foggy Bottom's final defense of the deal: Washington, our diplomats argue, must work with the world as it is, not as it wishes it to be. Vietnam wants nuclear-power reactors. France, Russia, Japan, and China are vying to build them. If America wants to influence Vietnam and secure reactor sales, it must bend to reality and drop the UAE conditions.

This pitch, however, ignores an embarrassing truth: Vietnam is unlikely to buy American. In fact, to do so, it would have to forswear suing U.S. firms for damages a nuclear accident might inflict off-site — a demand that America's government-backed nuclear competitors do not make. In any case, the key reason for cutting the deal wasn't to generate U.S. jobs, but rather to tighten our strategic ties with Hanoi by formally authorizing it to receive sensitive nuclear goods. America's commercial losses if Washington demanded that Vietnam adhere to the UAE conditions, therefore, would be essentially zero.

As for the contention that the U.S. has no effective leverage over the behavior of its nuclear competitors, just the opposite is the case. That leverage is actually substantial, and it's also increasing, as foreign companies such as Rosatom, KEPCO, Hitachi, Toshiba, and AREVA seek to expand their business with the U.S. In fact, these government-backed firms are not just trying to sell America more, but (as I have detailed elsewhere) are pleading for billions in U.S.-taxpayer-backed loan guarantees to expand their business in the U.S.

Meanwhile, Congress, ever eager to promote the UAE conditions, is planning on tightening America's nonproliferation laws. Some on Capitol Hill are already toying with the idea of cutting off foreign firms that refuse to make the UAE conditions a requirement of the nuclear assistance they offer overseas. The House is expected to take up these matters in the fall, around the time U.S. negotiators are scheduled to meet their Vietnamese counterparts to finalize the proposed nuclear deal.

One would like to think that the discussion will focus on more than just minor details, and that Washington will do what it can to avoid any further Vietnam-style blunders in the area of nuclear diplomacy, whether inside or outside of Asia. What this will first require, though, is an admission of the obvious: that someone in the executive branch made a mistake.

 

[ajtr]

Clinton headed back to Hanoi as State Department steps up its Southeast Asia engagement​

Posted By Josh Rogin Friday, September 17, 2010 - 6:40 PM Share
Dozens of Indonesian officials are walking the halls of the State Department today, as the Obama administration's most comprehensive set of U.S.-Indonesia discussions take place.

These discussions are part of what the administration bills as its increased engagement with Southeast Asia. "We're not only deepening and broadening our relationship, but what we're doing together has implications for everyone else," said Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, as she stood alongside Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa. The leaders inaugurated the Joint U.S.-Indonesian Commission, the next step in the comprehensive partnership announced by President Obama and Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono last year.

On Thursday, six sets of U.S.-Indonesia working groups hammered out plans to cooperate on a range of issues including education, climate and the environment, and democracy.

Meanwhile, the Obama team is ramping up its presence in Southeast Asia, following high-level visits recently by Clinton to the ASEAN Regional Forum in Hanoi and Defense Secretary Robert Gates' trip to the Shangri-la conference in Singapore in May. Several more senior-level visits are planned this autumn.

Obama will attend the ASEAN summit in Jakarta next year, Clinton said. She also announced Thursday in remarks with Australian Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd that she will travel to Hanoi in October to attend the East Asia Summit, a new multilateral structure that the United States plans to join.

"I was influenced by Kevin Rudd's very strong argument on behalf of an Asian-Pacific community," Clinton said. "So in addition to deepening our commitment to ASEAN, we began the process of exploring the opportunity for the United States to join the East Asia Summit."

Clinton also announced that she and Gates will go to Australia in November to participate in the ministerial-level dialogue they had to cancel in January due to the Haiti earthquake. We're also told by multiple administration sources that Obama is considering adding Indonesia to his November trip to India, but as of yet no final decision has been made. (Obama has cancelled two planned trips to Indonesia so far.)

The next important step in Obama's diplomatic outreach will come when he meets with leaders from all ten ASEAN countries at the U.S.-ASEAN summit next week in New York, on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly. The Obama administration can be expected to tackle two premier regional issues in those meetings: how to handle Chinese claims of ownership of the South China Sea, and how to deal with the Burmese regime in the lead up to the country's November elections.

Clinton shocked the Chinese by announcing during her last visit to Hanoi that the United States will stand up for the principle of resolving disputes in the South China Sea through multilateral mechanisms and that no one country could set maritime policy.

That issue is not formally on the agenda at next week's summit, but everybody expects it to come up.

"This is an issue that concerns freedom of navigation, this is an issue that concerns lawful exploitation of maritime resources," said a State Department official, speaking on background basis. "I think it might very well be [a topic at the summit]."

The other main issue at the upcoming summit is what to do about Burma. The military junta is sending its foreign minister amid grave concerns by the U.S. administration that the regime is preparing to hold an election that does not meet basic standards of fairness and legitimacy.

"What we have seen to date leads us to believe that these elections will lack international legitimacy," Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell said in May. The State Department official said that there has been no attempt to rethink the Burma engagement policy the administration rolled out last year, and that the search for a Special Envoy for Burma continues.

The U.S. has been calling for ASEAN to get tougher with Burma, but don't expect strong criticism to come from Indonesia.

"It's how you want to see it, half empty or half full," Natalegawa said about the Burmese elections Friday morning at the Center for International Studies in Washington. He said the Indonesian government was still waiting to see if the junta will live up to its commitment to hold free and fair elections.

"We hope that the election in Myanmar [the name for Burma the regime has used since 1989]... can be part of a process of change in Myanmar toward democratization as they themselves have committed to."

 

[SHASH2K2]

In Vietnam, Gates Faces Balancing Act With Assertive China

HANOI, Vietnam — Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates landed on Sunday in Vietnam, where the narrative of a past war with the United States has faded as the leadership here openly seeks American support to counter an increasingly assertive China.
Mr. Gates has scheduled private talks with his Vietnamese counterpart during a conference of defense ministers from across the region, where a key issue will be how to manage Beijing's expanded claims of maritime rights in the South China Sea. China has backed those claims with threats of economic retaliation against some nations in the region.

A senior Defense Department official traveling aboard Mr. Gates's airplane to Hanoi chose careful phrasing to describe how defense ministers from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations are expected to discuss issues of counter-terrorism, peacekeeping and, with China in attendance, how to respond to Beijing's push for increased sovereignty over international waters.

The question before the ministers, said the senior Pentagon official, is, "how we can build multilateral capacity to address some of these key challenges in region."

It is clear Mr. Gates faces a delicate balancing act.

He must reassure Asian partners and allies that the United States will remain engaged in the region and will work for a peaceful resolution of an intense clash of claims over islands, undersea mineral wealth and fishing rights. But Mr. Gates must deliver that message in a way that does not hinder his equally important efforts to restore a healthy military-to-military dialogue with China.

The defense secretary's expected arguments to China are clear: Beijing's dash to become a global economic power requires it to honor accepted standards for sharing oceans and airspace, and harassment of ships and airplanes in international lanes off its shores benefits none and will only harm Beijing's long-term interests.

China is expected to offer Mr. Gates an invitation to visit Beijing, which would be a significant change in tone. China froze military relations with the United States earlier this year when the Obama administration announced $6.4 billion in arms sales to Taiwan, which China considers a renegade province.

Mr. Gates arrived in Vietnam 15 years after normalization of relations between the two countries, but the streets were overflowing with revelers for another celebration -- the 1,000th anniversary of the founding of Hanoi. Over that millennium, China and Vietnam have a long history of bloody competition, one that was buried for the years that Vietnam was aided by China in pushing back American military involvement here.

Vietnam's worries over Chinese encroachment can be seen in its recent choices for weapons purchases. Last year, Vietnam signed deals with Russia to buy six Kilo-class diesel-powered hunter-killer submarines for $1.8 billion and eight Sukhoi jet-fighters for another $500 million, according to the Congressional Research Service.

Both weapons are designed for protecting territorial waters and air space, and the arms deals illustrate Russia's desires to support nations trying to curb China's power.

The United States, while seeking to constantly improve diplomatic and military relations with Vietnam, has offered little in the way of weapons, mostly focusing its assistance on military training and officer education. Washington has continuing human rights concerns with Vietnam, mostly about ensuring freedom of religion here.

 

[SHASH2K2]

Shared Concern About China Aligns U.S. and Vietnam

HANOI — A visit to Vietnam this week by the secretary of defense, Robert M. Gates, is the latest step in a bilateral relationship that is at its warmest since diplomatic ties were established 15 years ago.
A steady progression of careful gestures has eroded the enmities of the Vietnam War, built a basis of increasing trust and turned the two nations' attention, in large part, from issues of the past to the present.

It is the second cabinet-level visit to Vietnam in four months; Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton came in July. Exchanges at this level have become almost routine.

"I would say that relations are at their highest point in 15 years," said Nguyen Manh Hung, director of the Indochina Institute at George Mason University in Virginia. "We have basically removed the major hurdles of suspicion in military to military relations, and I would expect things to proceed quite fast."

Mr. Gates was expected to meet with General Phung Quang Thanh, the Vietnamese defense minister, at a gathering of defense chiefs from the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations and partner countries.

The main concern shared by the two nations underscores the shifts in alliances in the 35 years since the war came to an end: Chinese claims in the South China Sea.

It is an issue with some irony. Where the United States sought during the war to contain an expansion of Chinese communism into Vietnam, it is aligned with Vietnam today in concern over an escalation of China's maritime claims.

China was an ally of North Vietnam in its war against the United States in the 1960s and 1970s and is now a partner of a unified Vietnam in an uneasy relationship between Communist nations of vastly different size.

"Vietnam worries about Chinese in the South China Sea and America worries about interference in freedom of navigation," Mr. Hung said. "Because of this, the strategic interests of Vietnam and the United States converge."

Last week, Vietnam demanded the release of a fishing boat and nine crew members arrested a month ago near disputed islands. China has said that the crew must pay a fine, and Vietnam has asserted that the crew members have been mistreated.

In March, at least one senior China official raised the level of its territorial claim, asserting to two senior White House officials visiting Beijing that the South China Sea was a "core interest," a phrase that placed it on a par with Taiwan and Tibet, its most sensitive territorial interests.

In response, during a visit to Hanoi in July, Mrs. Clinton hardened Washington's stance by saying the United States has a "national interest" in freedom of navigation in the area.

In balancing its relations between the two major powers, Vietnam has been at pains to reassure China, the giant on its doorstep, that it would have no alliances, military bases or military coalitions that threaten it.

While Vietnam marked the 15th anniversary of diplomatic ties with the United States this year, it also celebrated a much longer diplomatic relationship of 60 years with China.

Hanoi's warming toward Washington has been slowed by suspicions of American motives and commitment to a Vietnam policy.

Hanoi understands that for Washington, relations with Vietnam have always been part of larger international interests, analysts say, and that they could shift as those interests change.

Once again, as it was during the war, the United States stance toward Vietnam is one piece in a broader China policy.

But step by step, the two former wartime enemies have grown steadily closer. Trade relations were normalized in 2006. Port calls by American Navy ships have become more frequent since the first one in 2003.

"It's a very deliberate pace that's being kept here," said Carlyle Thayer, an expert on Vietnam at the Australian Defense Force Academy at the University of New South Wales in Sydney. "Neither side wants to be used by the other, but both want to advance the relationship."

Mrs. Clinton took an exuberant tone last month when she said, "The progress between Vietnam and the United States has been breathtaking."

Vietnamese officials have been less effusive, but they seem to agree.

"Vietnam and the United States are enjoying an excellent period of bilateral relations," the Vietnamese ambassador to the United States, Le Cong Phung, said in remarks quoted by the official Vietnam News Agency last month.

Warming relations continue to be slowed by American concerns over human rights abuses in Vietnam and by Hanoi's suspicion that Washington is using the issue to undermine the communist government.

The Vietnamese often use the phrases "peaceful evolution" and the "color revolutions," expressions that refer to its view that the collapse of the Soviet Union and other European communist governments were brought about at least partly by outside support for democracy and human rights.

The competing concerns involving human rights renew themselves in something of a vicious circle. Vietnam's fear of American motives leads to the arrests of dissidents it sees as connected with the West. And those arrests in turn intensify Washington's concerns over human rights abuses.

The two nations' alignment on the issue of the South China Sea illustrates the emergence of a more forward-looking relationship, said Kim Ninh, the country representative in Vietnam for the Asia Foundation, which is based in California.

For the United States, the chief issue from the past continues to be a full accounting for servicemen still missing from the war, though that concern no longer carries the power that it once did.

For Vietnam, the chief remaining postwar issue is a demand for greater United States assistance in addressing the effects of agent orange, a chemical defoliant that was sprayed in parts of the country, causing widespread birth defects.

 

[SHASH2K2]

Asean defence talks in Hanoi focus on South China Sea

The defence ministers of South East Asian nations, China, Japan and the United States are meeting today in Vietnam for the first time.

The talks in the Vietnamese capital, Hanoi, follow months of tensions over China's claim to the South China Sea.

China has also been in a tense standoff with Japan over disputed islands.

The US supports Asian countries in seeking multilateral solutions to the growing range of disputes, a stance China has criticised as interference.

Continue reading the main story
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Analysts say that Hanoi, current Asean chair, will be trying to ease tensions and avoid conflict in the first formal gathering of defence ministers from around the region.

Recent stresses
Carl Thayer, an Australia-based expert on Vietnam and regional security, said the meeting's success would be measured by the fact that "the ministers met and no one country gets singled out".

Vietnam's Deputy Defence Minister Nguyen Chi Vinh said the meeting would try to identify common interests and avoid becoming "a place for a war of words".

The US defence secretary, Robert Gates, will be meeting with his Chinese counterpart Liang Guanglie after months of subtle change in the relationship between the two powers.

China broke off direct military contacts with the US eight months ago in protest at US arms sales to Taiwan. Tentative moves to re-start military contacts began in the past week.

Alongside the regional talks in Hanoi, Mr Liang and the Japanese defence minister, Toshimi Kitazawa, are scheduled to hold their first direct talks since a heated maritime dispute last month.

Meanwhile, China is mounting a large military exercise involving more than 30,000 soldiers and the deployment of transport planes, fighter jets and attack helicopters.

The exercise is part of China's response to a series of joint military exercises held between South Korea and the US in recent months which had angered China.

Vietnam's own concerns focus on China's frequent detention of Vietnamese fishermen; it has accused China of detaining nine of its fishermen last month in the South China Sea near the Paracel Islands that are claimed by both countries.

China claims sovereignty over the entire South China Sea, including the Paracel and Spratly islands, which are also claimed in whole or in part by Vietnam, Taiwan, Malaysia, Brunei and the Philippines.

 

[mattster]

India is a country that is very slow to make strategic decisions. Lets hope that the Vietnamese are much more effective in decision making.

If Vietnam and the US form an informal Naval alliance , then the Chinese equation will have turned very quickly.

India should take advantage of the wariness of the Vietnamese and develop strong military ties with Vietnam and supply the with cutting edge missile and nuclear technology. Screw the NPT.

 

[SHASH2K2]

India is a country that is very slow to make strategic decisions. Lets hope that the Vietnamese are much more effective in decision making.

If Vietnam and the US form an informal Naval alliance , then the Chinese equation will have turned very quickly.

India should take advantage of the wariness of the Vietnamese and develop strong military ties with Vietnam and supply the with cutting edge missile and nuclear technology. Screw the NPT.

I dont think that we will have any problem whatsoever in supplying Vietnam with missile technology. Only problem is with America.Uncle Sam will not accept it and that will threaten our relationship with them.

 

[SHASH2K2]

Asian military ties warm at Hanoi defence meeting

US Defence Secretary Robert Gates has accepted an invitation to visit China and Australian officials said military ties with Vietnam have improved.

The progress in regional defence links is taking place as part of a major Asian security meeting under way in the Vietnamese capital, Hanoi.

Tensions have risen this year around China's claims to seas in the north and south of the region.
Transnational crime and natural disasters are also on the agenda.

"This meeting is a new and important step forward in Asean's defence cooperation," said Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung, whose country holds the current chairmanship of the grouping.

"China's defence development is not aimed to challenge or threaten anyone, but to ensure its security and promote international and regional peace and stability," China's Defence Minister General Liang Guanglie said.

"China pursues a defence policy that is defensive in nature," he said, endorsing the aims of the new defence ministers' forum.

The BBC's South East Asia correspondent Rachel Harvey says China in particularly has been increasingly willing to flex its muscles in ways that many other delegates find distinctly unnerving.

But even before the formal meeting got underway in Hanoi, bilateral discussions appeared to have eased some tensions.
Progress

Both the US and Japan sought to improve fractious ties with China on Monday, the first day of talks.
Military ties between China and the US had been broken off by Beijing eight months ago in protest at US arms sales to Taiwan, and since then, the US had aligned itself with Asean efforts to find a multilateral solution to competing maritime claims.

Mr Gates said that a military dialogue between the two powers was too important to be derailed by political issues.

"The dialogue between the two militaries ought to be sustainable regardless of the ups and downs in the relationship," Mr Gates told reporters travelling with him.

"Having greater clarity and understanding of each other is essential to preventing mistrust, miscalculations and mistakes," he said.

He hinted the fraught topic of China's claim to the South China Sea could be discussed today: "I think that it's clearly on everybody's mind and falls within the rubric of maritime security," he said.

Some Asean ministers have said sensitive topics should be avoided at this first ever meeting of the region's defence ministers, although analysts say this approach is too limited.

"Its utility will be called into question if it doesn't address some of the hard security issues in Asia-Pacific, like the Korean peninsula, like the South China Sea," said Ian Storey, a regional security analyst at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore.

 

[SHASH2K2]

U.S. Alarmed by Harsh Tone of China's Military


BEIJING — Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates met his Chinese counterpart, Liang Guanglie, in Vietnam on Monday for the first time since the two militaries suspended talks with each other last winter, calling for the two countries to prevent "mistrust, miscalculations and mistakes."

His message seemed directed mainly at officers like Lt. Cmdr. Tony Cao of the Chinese Navy.

Days before Mr. Gates arrived in Asia, Commander Cao was aboard a frigate in the Yellow Sea, conducting China's first war games with the Australian Navy, exercises to which, he noted pointedly, the Americans were not invited.

Nor are they likely to be, he told Australian journalists in slightly bent English, until "the United States stops selling the weapons to Taiwan and stopping spying us with the air or the surface."

The Pentagon is worried that its increasingly tense relationship with the Chinese military owes itself in part to the rising leaders of Commander Cao's generation, who, much more than the country's military elders, view the United States as the enemy. Older Chinese officers remember a time, before the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989 set relations back, when American and Chinese forces made common cause against the Soviet Union.

The younger officers have known only an anti-American ideology, which casts the United States as bent on thwarting China's rise.

"All militaries need a straw man, a perceived enemy, for solidarity," said Huang Jing, a scholar of China's military and leadership at the National University of Singapore. "And as a young officer or soldier, you always take the strongest of straw men to maximize the effect. Chinese military men, from the soldiers and platoon captains all the way up to the army commanders, were always taught that America would be their enemy."

The stakes have increased as China's armed forces, once a fairly ragtag group, have become more capable and have taken on bigger tasks. The navy, the centerpiece of China's military expansion, has added dozens of surface ships and submarines, and is widely reported to be building its first aircraft carrier. Last month's Yellow Sea maneuvers with the Australian Navy are but the most recent in a series of Chinese military excursions to places as diverse as New Zealand, Britain and Spain.

China is also reported to be building an antiship ballistic missile base in southern China's Guangdong Province, with missiles capable of reaching the Philippines and Vietnam. The base is regarded as an effort to enforce China's territorial claims to vast areas of the South China Sea claimed by other nations, and to confront American aircraft carriers that now patrol the area unmolested.

Even improved Chinese forces do not have capacity or, analysts say, the intention, to fight a more able United States military. But their increasing range and ability, and the certainty that they will only become stronger, have prompted China to assert itself regionally and challenge American dominance in the Pacific.

That makes it crucial to help lower-level Chinese officers become more familiar with the Americans, experts say, before a chance encounter blossoms into a crisis.

"The P.L.A. combines an odd combination of deep admiration for the U.S. armed forces as a military, but equally harbors a deep suspicion of U.S. military deployments and intentions towards China," David Shambaugh, a leading expert on the Chinese military at George Washington University, said in an e-mail exchange, referring to the People's Liberation Army.

"Unfortunately, the two militaries are locked in a classic security dilemma, whereby each side's supposedly defensive measures are taken as aggressive action by the other, triggering similar countermeasures in an inexorable cycle," he wrote. "This is very dangerous, and unnecessary."

From the Chinese military's view, this year has offered ample evidence of American ill will.

The Chinese effectively suspended official military relations early this year after President Obama met with the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan religious leader, and approved a $6.7 billion arms sale to Taiwan, which China regards as its territory.

Since then, the Chinese military has bristled as the State Department has offered to mediate disputes between China and its neighbors over ownership of Pacific islands and valuable seabed mineral rights. And when the American Navy conducted war games with South Korea last month in the Yellow Sea, less than 400 miles from Beijing, younger Chinese officers detected an encroaching threat.

The United States "is engaging in an increasingly tight encirclement of China and constantly challenging China's core interests," Rear Adm. Yang Yi, former head of strategic studies at the Chinese Army's National Defense University, wrote in August in the People's Liberation Army Daily, the military newspaper. "Washington will inevitably pay a costly price for its muddled decision."

In truth, little in the American actions is new. Mr. Obama's predecessors also hosted the Dalai Lama. American arms sales to Taiwan were mandated by Congress in 1979, and have occurred regularly since then. American warships regularly ply the waters off China's coast and practice with South Korean ships.

But Chinese military leaders seem less inclined to tolerate such old practices now that they have the resources and the confidence to say no.

"Why do you sell arms to Taiwan? We don't sell arms to Hawaii," said Col. Liu Mingfu, a China National Defense University professor and author of "The China Dream," a nationalistic call to succeed the United States as the world's leading power.

That official military relations are resuming despite the sharp language from Chinese Army officials is most likely a function of international diplomacy. President Hu Jintao is scheduled to visit Washington soon, and American experts had predicted that China would resume military ties as part of an effort to smooth over rough spots before the state visit.

Some experts see increased contact as critical. A leading Chinese expert on international security, Zhu Feng of Peking University, says that the Chinese military's hostility toward the United States is not new, just more open. And that, he says, is not only the result of China's new assertiveness, but its military's inexperience on the world stage.

"Chinese officers' international exposure remains very limited," Mr. Zhu said. "Over time, things will improve very, very significantly. Unfortunately, right now they are less skillful."

Greater international exposure is precisely what American officials would like to see. Americans hope renewed cooperation will lead to more exchanges of young officers and joint exercises.

"It's time for both militaries to reconsider their tactics and strategy to boost their friendship," Mr. Zhu said. "The P.L.A. is increasing its exposure internationally. So what sort of new rule of law can we figure out to fit the P.L.A. to such new exposure? It's a challenge not just for China, but also for the U.S."

 

[Tshering22]

^^ This will not go down well with Vietnamese and Philippine governments. The PLA is doing everything opposite of what its CCP leaders claim to be doing that involves the word "peace". Claiming entire South China Sea, claiming dozens of island and continental shelf provinces of other countries, threatening the use of force to another country, aggressively meddling in another country's internal matters etc is not a good idea.