Moves (Page 59)

In my July 31 article in Asia Times, I discussed Central Asian regional dynamics, with a focus on the opposition between Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.

In that context, I mentioned Kazakhstan’s efforts to halt smuggling of dual-use goods into Russia and pointed out that as a result, “a clandestine corridor has been established, passing through Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, across Turkmenistan, and finally across the Caspian Sea before reaching Russia.”

When I wrote that, it had not been officially announced that Tajik President Emomali Rahmon, Turkmen President Serdar Berdimuhamedov, and Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev would hold a summit meeting in Ashgabat on August 4.

This is the first time such a summit has taken place with representation limited to these three countries. The absence of Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev and Kyrgyzstan’s Sadyr Japarov was likely due to their mutual differences over questions of regional development and cooperation. At the same time, their absence meant that the trilateral summit could not be comprehensive or make significant decisions.

None of the three participants in the summit has explained the reason for that, although the meeting did produce a joint declaration. That statement mentioned attempts to cooperate on problems in the areas of water, electricity and gas, but it remained vague concerning specific measures.

Regional transportation

However, it would be a severe omission if the three sides did not also discuss – in the context of cooperation in the political, trade and economic spheres – the construction of transport infrastructure.

For example, the trans-Afghan railway project was highly likely discussed, since all three countries border Afghanistan, where the ruling Taliban regime is a pariah to much of the international community. Railways from Uzbekistan could connect to Pakistan’s rail network through Afghanistan, although such a project would require participation by representatives not only from Afghanistan but also from Russia.

According to unofficial reports, the three countries did nevertheless discuss joint activities in logistics and transit, with special attention to the creation of a multimodal transportation route along the Tajikistan-Uzbekistan-Turkmenistan corridor. Such a corridor would facilitate circumvention of international sanctions imposed against Russia for its war against Ukraine.

Russia also continues to depend on Armenia in that connection. The European Union has recently included Armenian entities on the list of sanctions against entities “directly supporting Russia’s military and industrial complex in its war of aggression against Ukraine.”

According to data from the United Nations, in 2022 the US and the European Union exported 16 times the worth of integrated circuits to Armenia thaat they did in 2021. Armenia’s exports of ICs to Russia jumped to US$13 million in 2022 from less than $2,000 (two thousand dollars) in 2021.

Evading sanctions

A client state of Russia and an ally of Iran since independence in 1991, Armenia has, like the three Central Asian countries, in effect become a transport and logistics hub through which dual-use goods pass into Russia.

Unlike the three Central Asian countries, Armenia is a member of the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU). Besides Russia, the others are Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. Uzbekistan is an official observer and, like Tajikistan, has a free-trade-zone agreement with the EAEU.

Russia has been depending on other EAEU members and partners for re-export of goods prohibited by sanctions. Considering Kazakhstan’s moves to limit transit across its territory, Russia certainly welcomes the trilateral cooperation of the region’s “southern tier.”

Official Moscow appears ready to make decisions in their favor, as it has done in the case of Armenia, in exchange for maintenance of this Central Asian and trans-Caspian channel for delivery of sanctioned goods.

The Tajikistan-Uzbekistan-Turkmenistan route, which the Russian press has christened as the “Southern Transport Corridor” (STC), would avoid obstacles created by Kazakhstan’s new regime of customs verification on its border with Russia.

It would also increase the cargo (coming across the Caspian Sea from Turkmenistan) to Russia’s port at the city of Astrakhan, where Moscow has been augmenting the infrastructure over the last several years while also transferring some of its former capacity to Makhachkala in the Russian Federation’s Republic of Dagestan Republic, which is situated in the central section of the Caspian Sea’s western shore, immediately north of Azerbaijan.

Like Kyrgyzstan, with which it shares a border, Tajikistan also borders China. Dual-use goods could flow into the STC either directly from China or via Kyrgyzstan. The mountainous terrain in the region is broken by the fertile Fergana Valley, which is divided among Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

Goods could also flow from northwestern Tajikistan across southern Uzbekistan directly into Turkmenistan for transit to the Caspian Sea coast, whence again to Russia.

The STC is not necessarily altogether a negative geopolitical development, however, if shippers shift its destination from Astrakhan to Azerbaijan’s port of Alat, just south of Baku.

Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan have been working for some time, and not without success, to develop such a trans-Caspian “Middle Corridor” for onward shipment of goods to European countries. China has not yet substantially supported this Middle Corridor, which is sometimes in the West mistakenly assumed to be part of Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

China may yet choose to weaken Russian influence in Central Asia further, by sponsoring or at least by utilizing such a route. Large quantities of Chinese goods already pass through Kazakhstan.

An STC terminus at Azerbaijan’s Port of Alat rather than at Russia’s Astrakhan would redistribute that traffic. It would also contribute to the stabilization of peace in the South Caucasus, especially if Armenia could be persuaded to participate in the cooperation.

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Dear readers: Like it or not, it’s time for us to resume the exclusive, occasional coverage of politics in the US state of Georgia that Asia Times was offering in election year 2020.

Georgia is a long way from Asia, you might say – but try telling that to the enormous Asian diaspora communities in the Atlanta suburbs. Asia Times is an Asia-based and Asia-focused digital newspaper, yes, but we do not neglect the farther reaches of the planet.

Which brings me to one fascinating sidelight of the latest round of criminal charges against Donald Trump by the Fulton County, Georgia, prosecutor: If Trump is convicted, not only can he not pardon himself but he can’t demand that the Republican governor pardon him.

What’s the background of that? Here’s part of what the website of the state’s Board of Pardons and Paroles has to say, very gingerly:

In the early 1940s there were serious questions raised about the handling of pardons by some governors’ offices.

Careful readers of Asia Times may recall that you know something about those 1940s “serious questions.”

As I reported for Asia Times on December 11, 2020, in an article entitled “The Devil went down to Georgia: From Judge Hawkins’s Sunday School class to a purple, less Trumpish Georgia”:

When I was growing up in the 1950s in my home town, Marietta, there were still hardly any signs of Republicans.

Local Democrats were said to be divided, though, between the regular Democrats – the Talmadge faction – and a more moderate faction centered on State Supreme Court Justice J Harold Hawkins.

The Hawkins dislike of the Talmadge faction was cemented in the early 1940s when Governor Eugene Talmadge pardoned a convicted murderer at whose lengthy Superior Court trial Hawkins as a Superior Court judge had presided. 

Like others, Hawkins believed that Talmadge, who was unabashedly corrupt, had taken a bribe from the killer’s influential father. In a biography, Hawkins is quoted as having complained about “the amount of effort to bring murderers to justice only to have them pardoned by a corrupt governor.”

Helping to establish its upright, straight-arrow image, the Hawkins faction in Marietta was better known, at least to some of us who attended the church, as the First Baptist Party. Hawkins was himself the church’s Sunday school superintendent and conducted a men’s “class” just across Church Street on the premises of a gas station, closed on Sundays, where the guys stood around, drank Cokes and smoked cigars while they plotted political moves.

My dad, a church deacon and cigar smoker, could sometimes be found among the group. I encountered them myself whenever a couple of friends and I left Sunday school and sneaked over to the Marietta Square to emulate them by buying our own cigars at Dunaway Drug Store.

Judge Hawkins died in June 1961 as I finished my freshman year away in college. Some part, at least, of the First Baptist faction came under the sway of an extreme social conservative, kitchen cabinet company owner Barney P Nunn.

But the judge and his forces long since had backed and seen to completion a major (and some of us would say positive) change in state law. Here’s more from the Board of Pardons and Paroles:

Public concern led the General Assembly to enact legislation, signed into law in February 1943, which created the State Board of Pardons and Paroles as an independent agency to administer executive clemency.

In August 1943 Georgia voters ratified, by a ratio of four and a half to one, a landmark amendment to the State Constitution. It established in that document the Parole Board’s authority to grant paroles, pardons, and reprieves, to commute sentences, including death sentences, to remit sentences, and to remove disabilities imposed by law. It was given a staff of parole officers to investigate cases and supervise persons granted parole.

The Constitution provided that the Governor would appoint the Board members to seven-year terms subject to confirmation by the State Senate. Once confirmed, members would be insulated from political pressures by the fact that no one official could remove them from office until they completed their terms. Their autonomy was enhanced by their right to elect their own chairman annually.

Now you know about that. Stay tuned for more news, background and analysis from the Peach State.

Asia Times Associate Editor Bradley Martin grew up in Marietta, Georgia. While attending Atlanta’s Emory University Law School in the 1960s, he worked in the election campaigns of US Representative James A Mackay and Atlanta Mayor Maynard Jackson.

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MANILA – In the latest sign of escalating tensions in the disputed South China Sea, the Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) has suspended a “hotline” with its Chinese counterpart. The move comes amid China’s de facto blockage of a Philippine marine detachment at the disputed Second Thomas Shoal, the latest flash point between the two rival claimants.  

“We’re no longer using the PCG-CCG (Chinese Coast Guard) hotline…It no longer exists…It hasn’t provided so much benefits for us. We didn’t gain anything from this,” declared Commodore Jay Tarriela, spokesperson of the PCG. 

“I would say that for all maritime incidents [with China] that happened in the past six years even in the past [Duterte] administration, this hotline was attempted to be used. Unfortunately, it never really gave us a positive chance to talk” he added in a mixture of Filipino and English. 

The bilateral coast guard hotline was established under a memorandum of understanding signed during former President Rodrigo Duterte’s much-vaunted visit to Beijing in 2016. 

Despite welcoming a “new golden age” of bilateral ties with China, the Ferdinand Marcos Jr administration has flipped the script on Duterte’s accommodative stance by taking an increasingly defiant position on the sea disputes amid warming defense ties with the United States and its allies. 

Encouraged by Marcos’ tough stance, Philippine officials and experts are now contemplating even more radical moves to fortify the Southeast Asian nation’s South China Sea claims. 

In particular, Marcos Jr is coming under growing pressure to greenlight the full refurbishment of the grounded World War II-era vessel BRP Sierra Madre in the contested Second Thomas Shoal, where a detachment of Philippine marines has been asserting de facto control since 1999. 

There are growing calls on allies, especially the US, to either escort resupply missions that China has harassed, if not directly help construction activities in the area. 

Meanwhile, some Philippine officials have gone so far as to suggest that Marcos Jr offer its key bases in the area, particularly on Thitu Island, as a potential site for American troops under an expanded Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA). 

Meet halfway 

At the heart of rising tensions in recent days is the Chinese Coast Guard’s use of water cannons to disrupt Philippine resupply missions on the Second Thomas Shoal, also known as Ayungin Shoal. 

“The [Department of Foreign Affairs] also expressed our disappointment that the Department was unable to reach its counterpart through the maritime communication mechanism for several hours while the incident was occurring,” Philippine Foreign Affairs spokesperson Teresita Daza said.

During a recent forum in Manila organized by Beijing-friendly elements in the Philippines, the Chinese Embassy’s deputy chief of mission Zhou Zhiyong called on the Marcos administration to “meet [China] half-way” and honor an alleged past promise to withdraw the grounded vessel from the shoal.

The Chinese official claimed that his country “has repeatedly expressed its willingness to resolve differences with the Philippines through bilateral dialogues. We hope that the Philippines side will abide by the existing consensus and cherish the hard-won situation in our bilateral relations. Meet the Chinese side halfway and find an effective way of managing the situation on the sea through diplomatic consultations.” 

“The Philippine side… made explicit commitments to do so. The representations were put on record and well documented…It’s been 24 years and the Philippines side has yet to honor its commitment,” Zhou claimed without providing any evidence of such a bilateral agreement.

“The Chinese side, however, has always exerted the utmost restraint, with a view to maintaining the relations with the Philippines and safeguarding regional peace and stability,” he added, flanked by Beijing-friendly journalists in a high-profile forum in Manila. 

But China’s claims were roundly dismissed by Philippine officials. Last week, Marcos Jr categorically denied that the Philippine government had ever made such promises to China, reiterating his opposition to any compromise on the disputed feature, which falls within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone. 

China and its impresarios have claimed that the former Joseph Estrada administration (1998-2001) offered to withdraw the vessel not long after grounding it to assert the Philippines’ claim in the area. Just a few years earlier, China forcibly seized the nearby Mischief Reef, sparking panic and fury in Manila. 

Estrada’s two sons in the Philippine Senate, however, emphatically denied the existence of any such agreement. 

“During my phone conversation today with former senator and former defense secretary Orly Mercado, who held the position of defense secretary during my father’s tenure, he confirmed that there was no agreement or promise whatsoever made to the Chinese government,” Senator Joseph “Jingoy” Estrada Jr said when asked about his father’s policy.

The senator, who heads the national defense committee in the upper chamber, dismissed Beijing’s claims as “hearsay” in the absence of any clear evidence. 

“This is only hearsay. The Chinese government had made press releases that was made verbally – this will not stand even in court because these are all hearsay. Name names, because we’re also at a loss on who really made the promise,” he added in a mixture of Filipino and English. 

Raising the stakes

With the rusty, dilapidated vessel expected to give way in the near future, there is growing pressure on the Marcos Jr administration to make more assertive moves in tandem with allies. 

“We can have joint patrols with the US at the same time [as the next resupply mission to the Second Thomas Shoal]. We can calibrate it,” former senior associate justice Antonio Carpio said in a forum. 

“They sent their Navy together with the survey ship and the drilling ship, and, at the same time, the US and Australia conducted naval drills in the same area – that’s for Malaysia. For Indonesia, the US aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan happened to pass by,” he said, referring to joint US-Australian patrols when Malaysia began challenging China’s unilateral oil exploration activities in contested sea areas. 

Earlier, Carpio also suggested that Manila take the ongoing disputes to the United Nations General Assembly in order to rally global pressure on China. 

Dindo Manhit, a leading Filipino policy analyst, echoed a similar line, arguing that the Philippines should “maximize joint patrols and be shepherded by allies and friends during the resupply. Not to cause war but simply to exercise our own rights based on international law. Our military facility is within our exclusive economic zone.”

Others, however, have gone further by suggesting the Marcos Jr administration place its occupied islands in the South China Sea under America’s security umbrella. 

Earlier this year, Cagayan de Oro City Representative Rufus Rodriguez publicly called for the inclusion of the Thitu Island, the second-biggest naturally-formed land feature in the Spratlys under full Philippine control since the 1970s, on the list of EDCA sites where US troops have rotational access rights. 

“It is in our national interest to pursue and expand our defense partnership with the US to deter further aggression from China in the West Philippine Sea and possible Chinese seizure of islets that belong to us under international law,” he said in a statement.

“The expanded EDCA should be further broadened. More sites along our western seaboard, where Chinese aggression and harassment of our fishermen have been taking place, should be covered,” he added.

Although the Marcos Jr administration will likely shun such radical proposals since even the US might have second thoughts about directly assisting Philippine control over contested features, many in Manila are hoping that stronger military ties with allies would enhance the country’s deterrence vis-à-vis China. 

With or without that US commitment, a moment of reckoning appears to be approaching in the disputed waters. 

Follow Richard Javad Heydarian on Twitter at @Richeydarian

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Last weekend, Saudi Arabia hosted a two-day summit in Jeddah dedicated to ending the war in Ukraine. Nearly 40 countries attended, including the United States, India, and dozens across Europe. But it was the presence of one nation that raised expectations for a breakthrough – China.

Because China had rejected a similar meeting in Copenhagen in late June, many interpreted its participation this time as evidence Beijing was ready to play a more active role. But an examination of the context surrounding the Jeddah summit suggests a different motivation for China’s involvement. Simply put, peace wasn’t Beijing’s primary concern.

Since the beginning of the Ukraine war in February 2022, Beijing has avoided anything that would compromise its neutrality or force it explicitly to take a side. This principle of neutrality made it impossible for China to attend the June meeting, given that Denmark is a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. 

Also read: The reality of China’s influence in the Middle East

Although NATO isn’t directly at war with Russia, its military support to Ukraine gives the Kremlin ammunition to claim NATO involvement. For China, attending the Copenhagen meeting without Russian participation would have tarnished Beijing’s image of objectivity.

By comparison, Saudi Arabia, one of the leading middle powers in the Global South, was a more acceptable host from the Chinese perspective.

Saudi Arabia has voted in favor of several UN General Assembly resolutions condemning Russia and demanding an end to the war. But it also abstained from a 2022 vote to suspend Russia from the UN Human Rights Council, and the two countries have been on a more coordinated path recently over oil production and global crude-oil supply.

This more nuanced position has made the kingdom a more natural partner for Beijing. 

But image concerns aside, what’s driving China’s involvement now? 

Importance of China-Saudi ties

For starters, participating in the Jeddah summit was more about China’s desire to continue sweetening ties with Saudi Arabia than any intention to condemn or force Russia’s hand in Ukraine.

China and Saudi Arabia have an important bilateral relationship driven by politics, energy and trade. Thus Chinese leaders believe they can endear themselves to the kingdom by supporting Riyadh’s diplomatic efforts on Ukraine.

Even if that calculation is wrong, attending talks costs China nothing. A summit is only an agreement to discuss, not a pact to act. Even if a consensus among participating countries had been reached – it wasn’t – neither Saudi Arabia nor its guests could have imposed their will on Russia (which was excluded from the discussion).

In that sense, the Jeddah summit positions Saudi Arabia as a peace mediator but doesn’t bring fundamental damage to China’s bottom line. 

For Beijing, any “neutral” efforts to pursue peace and stability must be honored. This month’s summit could be framed as one such effort given the diverse participation and views represented. Now that China has lent its support to the Saudi endeavor, it wouldn’t be surprising for Beijing to demand reciprocity from Riyadh for its own peace initiative down the road.

Second, China’s participation in peace talks was facilitated by a recent thaw in the US-China relationship. Chinese President Xi Jinping is expected to visit San Francisco in November, which would be one of his most important foreign-policy activities of the year. The two countries are trying to rebuild bilateral relations before expected turbulence in 2024, when presidential elections will be held in both Taiwan and the US. 

Finally, Beijing has been a bit more cooperative with the West’s efforts to squeeze Russia over its conduct in Ukraine. Recent moves in this regard are subtle but clear. In July, Beijing imposed new export control measures on Chinese drones, parts and technologies, dual-use supplies that Russia had been receiving from China directly or via subsidiaries in Iran. 

In a thinly veiled criticism of Russia, China also urged the resumption of grain exports from Ukraine after Moscow backed out of the Black Sea grain deal, which had allowed Ukraine to export wheat, barley, and other staples.

Most recently, in a rare public display of displeasure, the Chinese Embassy in Russia criticized local authorities for mistreating Chinese citizens. 

The key question in all of this is whether China has fundamentally changed its position on the war. The answer, so far, is no. None of the actions China has taken in recent months have imposed critical damage on Russia’s war capability or induced meaningful changes to Russian behavior. 

In fact, given the long-term nature of US-China competition, Beijing is unlikely to abandon Moscow as a strategic partner, even if Russia is weakened in Ukraine. For China, Ukraine – and even Saudi Arabia – is part of a grand political chess match that Beijing has no intention of losing.

This article was provided by Syndication Bureau, which holds copyright.

Yun Sun is director of the China program and co-director of the East Asia program at the Stimson Center in Washington, DC. 

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