Commentary: Why Taiwan’s defence priorities might need a rethink

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The conflict in Ukraine has taught us that asymmetrical actions are crucial in an effort to win over an even larger, more powerful adversary. Little drones, transportable missile systems, and electronic war have all proven useful against the powerful Russian troops.

Another compelling case is maritime helicopter warfare. The Soviet army in the Black Sea was surrounded by autonomous ships and innovative strategies. Taiwan insists on attempting to compete with a competitor who is far ahead of the competition despite the fact that symmetry at lake offers crucial rewards.

Taiwan unveiled its first homemade submarine on September 28. It was once thought to be” mission impossible ,” but it won’t go into service for another two years. Taiwan intends to construct eight of these ships, but also when they are all completed, China’s estimated 60 submarines will outnumber them.

Top defense researcher Michael Lostumbo at Washington-based think tank RAND Corporation thinks Taiwan needs to concentrate its security efforts more specifically. He contends that Taiwan must create a better purchasing record than the one it sent to the US in order to live an assault. & nbsp,

The 108 M1A2T Abrams tanks Taipei ordered in 2019 were a mistake, but the late requested Reaper robots imply that the country may be revising its military strategy. However, some people find it difficult to observe.

Taiwan’s military resources will be used for items that will either be destroyed or spent very fast today and for many years to come, according to Lostumbo in a report.

This is made worse by the fact that technology issues may delay the distribution of 66 US-made F-16 soldiers until 2026.

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Commentary: Breaking the vicious cycle of haze and climate change in Southeast Asia

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TO Alleviate HAZE, GET ON THE Earth

South Asian maritime haze pollution is recognized as a complex issue that necessitates multi-stakeholder engagement with local communities, municipal governments, corporations, and civil society.

Since the 1990s, ASEAN has been actively working to reduce haze, and in 2015, the Singaporean government passed a law prohibiting intergovernmental waste. Researchers have spent years carefully analyzing the haze’s underlying reasons, factors, impacts, and implications. But the issue keeps coming up every season.

It is now time to move beyond the realms of diplomacy and academia and engage the public to convince towns, businesses, and institutions that it is in their best interests to protect peat. Simply put, every effort we make to keep our coal reserves in our peatlands may contribute to the prevention of our climate and haze.

In this regard, the region’s current speed in using carbon prices tools and the creation of voluntary carbon emissions trading markets( as Indonesia has just done ) may provide a window of opportunity to encourage stakeholders to scale-up their conservation efforts and produce high-quality carbon credits that can be monetized.

For instance, the United Kingdom has developed the Peatland Code, a cutting-edge organic capital financing mechanism that uses an independent standard to provide independent validation and verification for projects involving the restoration of peatlands.

Through this, the UK has been using a combination of public and private funding to register about 200 peatland jobs in its nationwide registry and track the total amount of emissions reduced and the place restored. The need for individualized job reviews is replaced by the Code, which reassures investors of best practices.

Development toward these opportunities in the peatlands of Southeast Asia may be diverse. According to international standards, the results may be measurable, actionable, and factual.

In the current brass environment, this may be difficult, but the advantages are well worth it. For peatland populations, this might lead to better standard of living. The same could contribute to corporate conservation moves. They may improve national carbon products account for governments. It might eventually signify for the area the realization of the” Haze-Free ASEAN” perspective.

At the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute’s ASEAN Studies Centre, Sharon Seah serves as Senior Fellow and Coordinator. At the University of Malaya’s Department of International and Strategic Studies, Helena Varkkey teaches climate politics and leadership as an associate doctor. This article first appeared on the website Fulcrum of the ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute.

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Commentary: Online scams in Southeast Asia create double victims – those targeted and those forced to carry them out

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Local STRATEGY IS REQUIRED TO DISCLOSE SCAM OPERATIONS

Daring gets have been made by some patients. A group of 60 Taiwanese people left a game in Bavet city, in the province of Svay Rieng, Cambodia in September of last year. This came shortly after a group of 40 Vietnamese swam across the valley to Vietnam’s An Giang territory after breaking out of tainted Chinese-run game in the state of Kandal in Cambodia. The waters officially carried some of them away.

There are now many efforts at recovery. According to reports, Thailand intended to free up to 3, 000 Thais who were reportedly being held in Cambodia.

But, as businesses grow, gangs begin to draw people from countries other than Southeast Asia. 11 Indian citizens were rescued from the Golden Triangle in November of last year. Authorities in Lao were following an advice from the American embassy after victims were persuaded to operate as IT specialists in Dubai, Singapore, and Thailand by offers of well-paying jobs and pre-arranged flights, visas, or passports.

According to the UNDOC report,” foreign NGOs have identified over 40 nationalities of smuggling victims in con compounds in Southeast Asia … targeted because of their English and Italian language skills, as well as their acquaintance with social media and bitcoin.”

The impact of local warriors in the area appears to have grown after the 2021 revolution in Myanmar, with little influence being held by the central government to combat crime. The pro-junta troops are frequently the ones who commit crimes.

A new town in Myawaddy, southeast Myanmar’s Kayin ( Karen) state, close to the Thai border, is called Shwe Kokko, which in the local dialect means” Chinatown.” The Karen Border Guard Force, which is affiliated with Myanmar’s Tatmadaw military, now controls it.

A local casino boss supports transboundary crimes in the Kokang Special Administrative Zone, which is governed by the Tatmadaw-allied Border Guard Forces( BGF ) and borders China’s Yunnan province, according to a US Institute of Peace report.

The onslaught work in the area have grown stronger. A gambling power was detained in Bangkok in June, and Thailand’s Electricity Authority turned off energy to a Shwe Kokko casino at its request. and a sizable group of Chinese citizens who were reportedly involved in crime just returned home.

But these are small ways. There is no established local plan to eliminate South Asian con operations.

Jitsiree & nbsp, Thongnoi is a freelance journalist based in Bangkok who focuses on China’s role in Southeast Asia, the Mekong region, and Thailand as well as political and economic development in Thailand. This remark first appeared on The Interpreter, a blog run by Lowy Institute.

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Commentary: Everything costs more, so why is Japan making beer cheaper?

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REASON FOR CHEER

The authorities decided it was done in 2017. It decided to combine the income bands of real beer, happoshu, and third beer into one after beer income had decreased by 30 % from a 1994 top. This three-stage process will be finished in 2026.

Happoshu and next beers range in quality from ordinary to awful, which is reason to celebrate. They could have happened to you while playing karaoke( the painful head is a giveaway), or you might have only been terrible enough to pick one up off the convenience store shelf.

I switched to Clear Asahi, a” next form” alternate made with fermented barley, when money was tight. You eventually convince yourself that you hardly notice the difference.

I was fortunate enough to be able to return to authentic beer after receiving a boost at my previous job. Perhaps that Clear Asahi you will now cost roughly 10 renminbi more this month. A brewers’ organization polled nearly 25 % of respondents last year, and they predict they’ll consume more real ale once the changes take effect.

Do most users, however, have the luxury of making more purchases? Even though the taxes on real ale will drop from 77 hankering before 2020 to almost 55 by 2026, it is still half as much as the 28 Yen levied on a can of third beer prior to the changes, which is worrying the central bank.

Over the past three years, alcohol consumption is far from the only segment of society that has succumbed to cutting corners and making the wrong investments. However, Japan has reached a turning point. Despite the backlash against former Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda’s remarks last year, businesses have suddenly begun to accept the idea of passing on expenses, and consumers appear to be adjusting to higher prices.

Give rates increased significantly earlier this year, and in October the minimum wage was raised to an average of 1, 000 renminbi, the largest increase since data started. In addition, & nbsp,

However, it’s not entirely clear if this is a long-lasting shift or merely an adjustment. The need for additional wage increases next spring may be lessened by the fact that inflation is already declining. Yet cash-rich businesses will be forced to wait by the impending possibility of a US recession.

Pay may be less important than retirement for the time being due to the rise of the” serious curious” children who consume less alcohol than previous years.

The brewers argue that the current price is 14 times higher in Germany than it is in the US, which is why they are calling for additional cuts to the beer tax. In a country where the topic of discussion right now is how to finance optimistic defense and child-rearing programs, that seems unlikely to carry much weight.

Japan needs to invest its resources in the correct places and get rid of the kinds of negative subsidies that contributed to happiness. It would be something to raise a glass to if these changes could help jolt the government out of its multi-decade economizing mood.

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Commentary: Malaysia PM Anwar’s reform credentials on the line in possible Cabinet reshuffle

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ANWAR’S BALANCING ACT

What is often not recognised is that Mr Anwar’s options may be limited.

First, he will have to decide if he wants a mini reshuffle, replacing new ministers in key portfolios and keeping the rest intact, or a major reshuffle where changes are not only made to the Cabinet, but also to the top layer of the civil service, government-linked companies and key statutory bodies.

Second, and this is the tricky bit, Mr Anwar will have to “balance” the representation in Cabinet. After a decades-long wait for the prime ministership, Mr Anwar was finally sworn into power on Nov 24 last year. There were many twists and turns, but a Pakatan Harapan (PH)-led ruling coalition finally came together comprising previous ruling coalition Barisan Nasional, Gabungan Parti Sarawak, Gabungan Rakyat Sabah and Parti Warisan.

Each party in his unity government must get their share or it will lead to political instability. There is already unhappiness among the Chinese that PH component party Democratic Action Party, with the largest number of seats in Parliament on the government side, is under-represented. UMNO and the East Malaysians, on the other hand, are over-represented.

On top of that, Mr Anwar must consider the status of those he wishes to appoint. Obviously, they must hold senior positions in their respective parties or have some special skill set.

Mr Anwar must also carve up the work in “overlap” areas to avoid perceptions of conflict. For example, sections of the business community are not happy with the way the Ministry of Economy under Rafizi Ramli and the Ministry of Investment, Trade and Industry under Tengku Zafrul Aziz are creating additional red tape and approvals because two ministries are involved.

Many in the business community would prefer the Economy Ministry, which was first established in 2018, to be scrapped and its core functions returned to the finance ministry.

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Commentary: Shooting of police inspector at dinner party exposes corruption underbelly in Thai police

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POLICE REFORM A PIPE DREAM

Little has changed since Thai economist Pasuk Phongpaichit’s iconic book Guns, Girls, Gambling, Ganja on police graft 25 years ago. The book examined how gambling, prostitution, drugs, arms trading, oil smuggling and human trafficking funded Thailand’s corrosive “money politics” and sustained corruption in the police.

In 2018, the police topped the list of defendants in corruption and malfeasance cases heard in graft court.

Last month, a National Anti-Corruption Commission report revealed that 86 per cent of police stations nationwide failed integrity and transparency tests – four times higher than the average across all state agencies.

And in a nationwide survey earlier this month, 86 per cent of respondents said they believe some police and state officials serve and protect mafia-style influential figures in Thailand.

In response to the killing of the inspector, Thailand’s new Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin promised that he would purge the force of “mafia-type infiltration”.

But the government’s response so far suggests it is not serious about eliminating police criminality, focusing instead on compiling a list of “mafia-like gangs and politicians”.

Pheu Thai and its precursor parties have, collectively, been in power for more than nine years – ample time to have acted on corruption in the police, if they had wished.

Ex-premier (and former police lieutenant colonel) Thaksin Shinawatra – widely held to be Pheu Thai’s real leader – is unlikely to help. During his three-month “war on drugs” in 2003, 2,873 Thais were killed, including whole families, women, children and old people. According to the US State Department, Thaksin “told the governors and provincial police that those who failed to eliminate a prescribed percentage of the names from their “blacklists”, would be fired.

Nor will Thaksin’s erstwhile political opponents – now key coalition allies. When in power, they dallied in enacting laws on police administration. It was only after the 2021 murder of a suspect at police hands that they rushed through a police ethics code requiring officers not to associate with, or support, wrongdoers – which has only too obviously proved ineffective.

It’s hard to see how Thailand’s new administration will clean up the police. It is not a priority for Srettha’s Pheu Thai Party.

Instead, Pheu Thai is prioritising policies to regain some of the support it lost by breaking a pre-election promise not to coalesce with parties backed by the 2014 junta leaders. Its stimulus policies, such as debt moratoriums and a 10,000 baht cash handout to those aged 16 and over will likely resonate with many of the party’s poorer rural backers.

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Commentary: Will ASEAN’s first joint military exercise prepare it for future crises?

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A SIGNAL TO MAJOR POWERS

What objective does the ASEAN Solidarity Exercise 2023 serve?

First, the exercise could be interpreted as a signal to major powers that ASEAN has a stake in the security of regional waters and the agency to secure them. Given the tension between China and the United States, there have been concerns among ASEAN defence officials that any China-US military conflict will affect regional waters.

In addition, the exercise was held at a time of increasing Chinese assertiveness in the South China Sea, from harassing several ASEAN members’ maritime activities within their exclusive economic zones to releasing a new map claiming nearly the entire South China Sea as its own.

In fact, the initial exercise location in the South China Sea suggests a signal by Indonesia to China that the latter’s claim to the entire South China Sea is contested.

Second, the exercise enabled ASEAN military forces to build trust with each other without the involvement of external forces. Trust leads to better communication, critical if ASEAN needs to harness the region’s military forces to deal quickly with a major crisis.

Currently, there are several regional multilateral arrangements to enhance maritime security. These include coordinated patrols between Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines to deal with security issues in the Sulu Sea, and the Malacca Straits Patrol Framework involving Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand to ensure the security of the Straits of Malacca and Singapore.

But these are limited to specific geographical parts of the region and do not involve all ASEAN members.

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Commentary: Indonesia needs soft power to advance its global clout

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Japan, South Korea, Singapore, even Thailand have fared much better than Indonesia in this respect. In the Global Soft Power Index 2023, they all sit above Indonesia, which sits in 45th place. Much remains to be learnt about how these countries manage their soft power potential.

Take neighbouring Thailand, for example. Through government-led gastro-diplomacy initiatives, the country has successfully boosted the presence of Thai restaurants overseas from around 5,000 in the early 2000s to 15,000 by 2018, according to one study.

A recent report by the Pew Research Center shows that Thai restaurants make up 11 per cent of all Asian restaurants in the United States – the third most common after Chinese and Japanese. Export of Thai agricultural products and tourism have increased accordingly. These have helped boost Thailand’s cultural influence.

PARADIGM SHIFT NEEDED

To incorporate soft power into Indonesia’s geostrategic projection, a change of paradigm by its policymakers is a necessity. A conventional paradigm conceives Indonesia’s main source of strength as lying in numbers: Population, natural resources, or territory. Defence Minister Prabowo Subianto exemplifies such a view – as evident in his most recent book Paradoks Indonesia.

Mainstreaming soft power as a policy paradigm requires Indonesian policymakers to start seeing its pristine nature, biodiversity, culture and human talent as the primary capital of geostrategic influence.

Learning from Thailand’s experience, for instance, Indonesia should design a comprehensive policy to help its culinary heritage go global. Such policy would reinforce existing initiatives by civil society actors and the Indonesian diaspora to promote Indonesian culinary heritage (like tempeh) abroad and provide incentives for those wishing to partake in such endeavours.

While Indonesia has recently launched the Indonesia Spice Up The World programme to help promote local food and restaurants abroad, it remains to be seen whether it will end up merely as a slogan or fall prey to sectoral egos among the agencies involved, for which the Indonesian government is infamous.

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Commentary: Why the next decade is not simply about getting rich for Indonesia

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As a country’s population ages, economic growth starts to decline. The rate and the extent of the decline will depend on the foundation that the earlier, younger high-growth economy was able to lay, including for human capital, physical infrastructure and governance.

Although an imploding working age population may be attenuated by a higher labour force participation rate, especially of elder workers (that is, those aged 65 or above), on average, older workers are not as productive and innovative as younger ones. This usually translates to lower labour productivity growth and a slower rate of innovation.

The natural growth rate of a country’s economy, which is the rate of economic growth that could be sustained over the long term and is determined by demographic changes and technical progress, will also decline. This results in a lower appetite for corporate investment and consequently, lower firm productivity.

GET DEVELOPMENT ON TRACK, THEN GET RICH

What seems to be preoccupying policymakers now is how to “get rich before getting old”, as touted in the Grand Strategy for Indonesia’s 2045 Vision. This mindset must change: Indonesia should close its development gap by getting its foundations right, then get rich, not vice versa. The sequence of reforms matters.

President Joko Widodo, popularly known as Jokowi, in his two terms has made tremendous progress in building certain structural foundations for the country – including in transportation, electricity generation, irrigation systems, regulatory reforms aiding investment, the financial and health sectors, and tax harmonisation.

This is his legacy in improving the welfare of Indonesians. However, there are big development gaps that Indonesia’s next president still needs to close in the next critical 10 to 15 years, primarily laggard human capital and the eroding quality of governance.

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Commentary: Malaysia opposition party PAS needs more than a Mahathir

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In a speech delivered in Terengganu, Abdul Hadi had declared PAS’ struggle as jihad (holy war), and criticised UMNO for upholding a colonial Constitution, laws of unbelievers and pre-Islamic legislation. Conversely, PAS leaders were upset with Mahathir’s government for not uplifting the poorer east coast states of Kelantan and Terengganu. PAS deemed UMNO to be secular.

As recently as 2019, Mahathir requested that PAS withdraw from Amanat Haji Hadi.

BURYING THE HATCHET

Now Mahathir and Abdul Hadi (and PAS) appear to have buried the hatchet, for political reasons.

On the one hand, Mahathir has joined the PAS bandwagon to revive his statesman image. As the father of Malaysia’s industrialisation, and the man who turned the country into an Asian Tiger economy in the 1990s, Mahathir does not want to end up in Malaysia’s annals of history as a downed political juggernaut.

At 97, Mahathir continues to garner respect from the international community, particularly in Japan and South Korea, and is regularly invited to speak at international forums. Moreover, the Islamic world remembers Mahathir for speaking up for the Muslims during the Bosnian war and the Palestinian issue.

It is on the domestic front that respect for him has waned significantly. With PAS’ strong electoral performance in the recent general and state elections, Mahathir is now trying to be on the winning side again, easing the memories of his 2022 defeat.

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