John Kerry in Beijing: Can US and China set aside rivalry for climate action?

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U.S/ Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry arrives for an official dinner at the Presidential Elysee Palace, on the sidelines of the New Global Financial Pact Summit in Paris, France on June 22, 2023.Getty Images
By Tessa Wong
Asia Digital Reporter, BBC News

As John Kerry touches down in China, the main question will be whether the world’s biggest superpowers – and polluters – can dispel diplomatic tensions to focus on key climate goals.

Mr Kerry, the US special envoy on climate, is the latest top official to be dispatched from Washington following visits by Antony Blinken and Janet Yellen – as the US seeks to restart stalled relations with Beijing.

He will meet his Chinese counterpart Xie Zhenhua and other officials on his four-day trip. Mr Kerry’s office says he wants to engage with China on “increasing implementation and ambition”, and ensuring a successful COP28, the UN climate change conference scheduled for the end of the year.

While their meeting is not widely expected to yield any concrete decisions, it will be seen as a conversation starter. They are likely to discuss their common challenges of accelerating their switch to clean energy and reducing carbon emissions.

The two countries are the biggest investors in renewable energy, with China alone making up more than half of the world’s total renewable energy investment, according to one assessment.

But they are also the world’s two largest carbon emitters, making them the “G2 of energy consumption, energy use and pollution,” noted Dan Kammen, energy professor at the University of California, Berkeley.

“So both are making major steps, but neither are actually seeing emissions fall yet,” he told the BBC Newshour programme.

Contradictory moves

Both governments are evidently still struggling to balance the demands of economic growth and reducing emissions, leading to contradictory moves that have attracted criticism from environmentalists.

It wasn’t so long ago that China appeared keen on reducing its reliance on coal.

In 2020, President Xi Jinping announced key carbon neutrality goals after a steady ramp-up in previous years in clean energy infrastructure. Years of worsening smog in Beijing and other cities had triggered widespread public anxiety, prompting authorities to progressively shut down coal-fired power plants and curtail coal production.

But since then, blackouts have been plaguing the country, mainly attributed to either the coal power slowdown or severe droughts affecting hydropower output. The resurgent post-Covid economy, both domestically and globally, has seen a greater demand for power as China’s factories increase production. Extreme heatwaves – like the one seen this summer – and cold snaps have also led to higher electricity consumption.

China has now shifted to prioritising its energy security. That means moving back to coal power, because this is seen as more reliable when compared with the intermittency of wind and solar energy.

Coal is loaded onto trucks for delivery to power generation plants, after being unloaded from ships at the port in Lianyungang, in China's eastern Jiangsu province on July 12, 2023

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Last year, China approved a dramatic increase in its coal power output, the equivalent of approving two large coal power plants a week, according to one analysis.

Another found that while renewable energy now forms a greater share of China’s power output, coal-fired power was still rising in absolute terms because of the sheer demand.

Activists have criticised the return to coal as a lazy way of solving the problem, arguing that there are market policies and infrastructure solutions that can make clean energy supply more consistent.

As for the US, it has recently passed two pieces of legislation that would put billions of dollars into clean energy. But it has also just approved one of its largest oil and gas drilling projects in recent years in Alaska.

US carbon emissions also grew in 2022 as the country consumed more natural gas during extreme weather that year, according to the International Energy Agency.

“The US is no better… so each one has a long way to go, each one needs to egg the other on, and most importantly all the countries all around are watching to what degree the US and China absolutely are dead serious about the climate goals,” said Prof Kammen.

Laying out their wishlists

Analysts say Mr Kerry may try to persuade China to fully capitalise on its clean energy resources and achieve carbon neutrality more quickly.

China aims to peak its carbon emissions by 2030 and become carbon neutral by 2060 – goals which some say are too far off and give it too much leeway. Others have also taken issue with the fact that China is still considered a “developing country” by the UN, which means it is held to different standards than the US and other major powers.

Earlier this month Ms Yellen urged Beijing to donate to international climate funds set up by richer countries to help poorer economies struggling with climate change. China has rejected such requests in the past, citing its UN status.

China’s own wishlist may include the removal of a recently reinstated US tariff on Chinese-manufactured solar panels. It may also object to proposed US taxes on foreign steel and aluminium based on carbon emissions, which would hit Chinese exports hard.

China's special climate envoy, Xie Zhenhua, speaks during a joint China and US statement on a declaration enhancing climate action in the 2020s on November 10, 2021 in Glasgow, Scotland

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Both sides could also use climate issues as a bargaining chip in their wider trade and political negotiations.

China would be reluctant to be seen as giving in to the US given the current state of their relationship, warned Li Shuo, Greenpeace East Asia’s senior global policy advisor based in Beijing.

But there is an opportunity for Mr Kerry and Mr Xie to “capitalise on this relatively calm period… to separate their bilateral relationship from their climate conversation”, he told the BBC.

In other words, both countries need to urgently put aside their rivalry to address the climate crisis, say experts. There is a hope for a return to the amity seen at the 2021 COP meeting, where they announced a surprise joint agreement to accelerate emissions reductions.

“You could still make an argument to decouple your trade, as long as you are willing to bear the cost. But you can never make an argument to decouple climate engagement because… this issue will never be singlehandedly solved by the US or China. It is truly a global issue that requires all hands on deck,” said Mr Li.

Prof Kammen agreed. “Let’s recognise that if we don’t fix this, all our disputes about human rights and things are important – but they are truly rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic,” he said.

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China needs better and deeper bond markets

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As Chinese tech equities rally, tensions building up in the US$20 trillion bond market risk pulling the rug out from under the sudden rush of bullish stock market sentiment.

China’s Big Tech shares are surging after Premier Li Qiang signaled a sharper pivot away from regulatory crackdowns toward championing the private sector.

Just days after letting Jack Ma’s Ant Group off with a nearly US$1 billion fine, Beijing said it’s increasing support for Tencent and other top tech platforms to raise China’s innovative game.

On July 12, Li said President Xi Jinping’s government is stepping up efforts to normalize China’s regulatory environment. The goal, Li said, is to “reduce the costs of compliance and promote the healthy development of industry.”

Li said that “on the journey of building a modern socialist country, the platform economy has great potential.”

He told tech chieftains in the audience – including officials from Alibaba Group, TikTok owner ByteDance and food delivery group Meituan – to “push to increase their international competitiveness and dare to compete on the global stage.”

To analyst Kelvin Wong at OANDA, “the latest rhetoric from the top man of China’s State Council is likely to boost positive animal spirits, in the short term at least.”

But China faces a longer-term threat to positive sentiment now shining on Asia’s biggest economy: a bond market that’s still not ready for global prime time.

Credit market strains are spreading as two large property builders reneged on a combined US$608 million worth of bond payments. Meanwhile, top mainland banks are avoiding the purchase of local notes, including in the Shanghai free trade zone.

The inclusion of Chinese government bonds in top global bond indexes, including the FTSE Russell benchmark, has pulled giant tidal waves of capital China’s way.

This opening has been a game changer — offering myriad opportunities to build diversified and resilient portfolios via new asset classes to ride the nation’s development.

The trouble is, though, China’s bond market is underpinned by a developing economy with limited liquidity and hedging tools, a giant and opaque state sector, and a rudimentary credit-rating system that often obscures risk and enables the misallocation of capital.

For all of China’s promises, this makes it more of a buyer-beware market in 2023 than many investors expected. It was 10 years ago, after all, that Xi took power pledging to let market forces play the “decisive” role in financial reform decisions.

The split screens of the last two years tell the story. On one screen, China’s inclusion in major benchmarks is luring bond giants like BlackRock Inc.

On screen No 2, the crisis of confidence among creditors of China Evergrande Group offers a stark reminder of the mainland’s opacity and excesses.

The Evergrande Center building in Shanghai. Photo: Asia Times Files / AFP / Hector Retamal

The globe’s most indebted property developer owes them more than $120 billion, potentially posing system risks.

For the rest of 2023, analysts at HSBC Holdings and Goldman Sachs recently raised projections for defaults among junk-rated property bonds to about 30%.

“If property sales remain lackluster with a lack of stimulus from the authorities, we do not rule out the possibility of a further uplift in default rates,” says HSBC analyst Keith Chan.

Chairman Yu Liang at China Vanke Co, the nation’s second-largest developer by sales, says the real estate sector is looking “worse than expected.”

The property industry is “indeed seeing pressure in the short-term,” Yu says. The “real situation,” he concluded, “is a bit worse than what was expected.”

The magnitude of the risks has many economists perplexed about why the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) central bank isn’t acting more forcefully.

Recent “easing, which focused on developer financing, is far from enough to stabilize the sector,” says economist Larry Hu at Macquarie Group. “After all, credit risk for banks would remain elevated if the housing market stays weak.”

One reason: the yuan’s nearly 4% drop this year makes it harder for higher-indebted developers to make payments on US dollar-denominated debt.

The PBOC’s restraint also could mean government steps to stabilize the property sector are soon on the way.

“Looking ahead,” Hu notes, “expect to see more easing on the demand side, such as lowering the down payment ratio and easing purchase restrictions.”

The real challenge, though, is fixing the property sector, which can generate as much as one-third of gross domestic product (GDP) in good times.

Kate Jaquet, a portfolio manager at Seafarer Capital Partners, says that “beyond the importance of this sector to the overall health of the Chinese economy, another motivation for orderly restructurings of the many troubled property developers is the extensive and opaque web of their liabilities.

“Stakeholders in the restructuring process – roughly in order of payment preference – include contractors and suppliers, banks, homebuyers, wealth management product investors and, finally, bondholders.”

Jaquet adds that “there are also off-balance sheet liabilities and other hidden debts to consider. Investors, rightly concerned over the lack of disclosures, struggle to understand some of these off-balance sheet – and largely heretofore hidden – debts. These concerns are further compounded by property developers’ failure to file audited annual results with the relevant authorities.”

The bottom line, Jaquet says, is that “hasty or ham-fisted restructurings might require write-downs by holders of these lesser-understood obligations, which could have unforeseen consequences in other parts of the Chinese economy. It seems that China’s regulators know this and are taking a careful and measured approach to property sector restructurings, particularly the big ones.”

China’s property market is a drag on the economy. Image: Twitter

Considering the large role that property plays in China’s economy, “a great deal hangs in the balance with respect to restructuring in the property sector,” Jaquet says. “The details of how onshore and offshore creditors fare – in absolute terms, and relative to one another – matters a lot for the future health of China’s bond markets”

Jaquet says that “hopefully the restructurings will consider corporate governance and the rights of creditors. Lack of ready access to international capital markets will take a toll on this sector. While it is increasingly clear that the days of housing driving the Chinese economy are likely over, the big question is: where do the funds come from to keep the economy on an even keel?”

One ever-present time bomb: China’s $9 trillion-plus market in local-government financing vehicles (LGFVs) that opaquely finance everything from airports to power grids to roads and rarely raise enough to cover their obligations.

That requires bigger capital injections from municipalities that should be using the funds to build bigger social safety nets and invest in human capital.

China’s ongoing real estate crisis made matters worse. Cash flow pressures weighing on local governments have state-owned banking giants struggling to stave off a credit crunch. If China’s bond markets were more developed and robust, authorities would have more options to defuse blowups in credit markets.

The dearth of alternatives means that when, say, state pension entities sell off weaker bond holdings, it destabilizes the broader market. That, in turn, adds to the headwinds faced by LGFVs and property developers, causing new sentiment-killing feedback effects.

While offloading weaker bonds may help the state pension protect the value of its investments, it risks heightening market concerns about the health of LGFVs and developers at a time when Beijing is trying to restore confidence in the world’s second-largest economy.

Now, both LGFVs and developers are shortening the time intervals for extending credit and demanding higher borrowing costs.

“The most important variables impacting China’s economic growth over the next two years will be the success or failure of local government debt restructuring, and Beijing’s approach to the role of local government investment within China’s economy in the future,” analysts at Rhodium Group write in a new report. “A collapse in local government investment would be comparable to the economic impact of the crisis in the property market.”

All this has Beijing mulling fresh moves to support cash-strapped cities and counties around the nation. According to local press reports, this could entail green-lighting municipalities to boost bond issuance programs to finance the clearing away of hidden debt.

Reducing the prevalence of new LGFVs has never been more important. At the start of 2023, S&P Global Ratings estimated these schemes amounted to 40% of China’s non-financial corporate bond market.

The prevalence of LGFVs can be a major turnoff for foreign bond funds. Not only are they opaque and difficult to analyze, their fingerprints touch the operations of everything from commercial banks’ wealth management units to mutual funds to hedge funds to insurers to the gamut of securities companies.

Hence the urgent need for deeper bond markets. And, of course, for regulators in Beijing to avoid steps that spook global markets anew. Among recent missteps by Xi’s Community Party: this year’s clampdown on foreign consultancy firms on which global investors and multinational firms rely to navigate their way through China’s opaque companies and systems.

The move, supposedly part of a nationwide anti-espionage campaign, reduced the appetite for investment from overseas firms. When US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen recently visited Beijing, the consultancy policy was among the examples of “non-market” practices and “coercive actions” against American firms her team highlighted.

Deeper debt markets would help sort out the cart-before-the-horse problem that afflicts China’s economy.

During the Xi era and before it, China too often believed that pulling in more foreign capital was a reform all its own. However, it’s been slower to strengthen China’s financial system to efficiently absorb those waves of overseas capital.

For example, China’s inclusion in the World Trade Organization in 2001 did less to recalibrate its growth engines than to remake the global economic system to its advantage.

The 2016 inclusion of the yuan in the International Monetary Fund’s “special drawing rights” didn’t stop Beijing from imposing capital controls or accelerate capital liberalization nearly as much as hoped.

China still applies capital controls. Photo: Asia Times Files / AFP / Nicolas Asfouri

In 2019, A-share stocks’ addition to the MSCI index didn’t suddenly make China’s financial system sounder, the government more transparent, companies more shareholder-friendly or the ginormous shadow-banking world any less of a menace.

Strengthening China Inc. requires significant heavy lifting to curb the dominance of state-owned enterprises, increase economic space for the private sector and eliminate the risk of dueling bubbles in debt, credit and assets.

The key now, says Li Yunze, head of the National Financial Regulatory Administration, is for vibrant debt capital markets to help catalyze growth of all sectors, but particularly those in the high-tech space — the realm Premier Li has been at least rhetorically elevating in recent months.

While it’s important Beijing ends the regulatory volatility of recent years, he adds, more efficient capital markets would accelerate China’s move upmarket.

One priority should be building a big and liquid mortgage-backed securities (MBS) market. The good news is that interest in securitized mortgage loans used to finance residential and commercial buildings is growing, particularly in the green space, says Fitch Ratings analyst Jingwei Jia.

This comes, Jia says, “as the Chinese government prioritizes construction of environmentally friendly buildings to meet its climate targets.”

As Jian Chen, an analyst at MSCI, notes, China’s residential MBS market is growing as global investors eye its relatively high yields and seek diversification options for fixed-income portfolios.

However, he adds, “attracting new foreign investment to Chinese RMBS may depend on improving credit ratings and transparency in data and pricing.”

Another positive sign could be the ways in which LGFVs may be pivoting to issuing more infrastructure real estate investment trusts (REITs). This, says analyst Sherry Zhao, also at Fitch, follows “the authorities’ latest reiteration of the significance of selling infrastructure assets to improve capital efficiency and reduce public-sector leverage.”

Zhao notes that “this is especially for infrastructure assets closely aligned with LGFVs’ public policy roles, such as transportation, public rental housing, urban utilities, and industrial parks, among others.”

When it comes to the direction of reform, the need for a deeper bond market must be goal No 1. The financial opening that Xi and Li claim to be pursuing suggests they are scaling back China’s command economy. This alone should reassure foreign investors.

But the opening China really needs is deeper capital markets, in particular more transparent debt markets. Boosting support for – and loans to – the property sector are fine for today. China coming into its own as a top and productive economy, though, requires a serious bonding experience.

Follow William Pesek on Twitter at @WilliamPesek

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Cross-border data flows improving in ASEAN as countries embrace open data transfer policies: Salesforce

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Indonesia moves up two spots to 13th since 2021
Singapore retains the third spot behind Japan and the UK

Salesforce released Data Beyond Borders 3.0, its third report analysing the state of G20 economies and Singapore’s openness to cross-border data flows. “Cross-border data transfers drive economic success. In ASEAN, economies like Singapore are reaping the…Continue Reading

Dark Pink, Ocean Buffalo: Hackers and cyber-espionage in SEA

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A lack of bloodshed doesn’t mean an absence of war. 

For the past two years, a cyber conflict has quietly boiled across the Asia Pacific region. At the centre of the virtual fighting is a shadowy figure: known to some as Ocean Buffalo or to others as Dark Pink. Not to be mistaken for the K-pop group with a similar name, the enigmatic hacker group has been targeting government and military agencies mainly in Southeast Asia but also as far away as eastern Europe. 

“Every attack starts from a human,” said Dmitry Volkov, CEO and co-founder of the global cybersecurity provider Group-IB, a private firm that works with national authorities and groups such as Interpol. 

The company has been tracking the hacks and came up with the Dark Pink codename. The use of such names is a common practice in the cybersecurity sector, where analysts caution there’s seldom any true certainty in nailing down organisations that exist only as digital shadows. 

Since the hacker organisation’s attacks gained public attention in June 2021, the perpetrators have infiltrated 13 entities, mostly in Southeast Asia. This spree targeted government agencies in Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia and Bosnia and Herzegovina; military bodies in Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand; and religious groups, non-profit organisations and educational institutions in Vietnam and Belgium.

The latest moves triggered major concerns among international cybersecurity experts who say the scope of the attacks might be much broader than they originally thought. 

But analysts also say the group is just one of many engaged in constant, simmering cyber-espionage campaigns across the region and beyond. As the world increasingly goes digital, both criminal groups and national intelligence organisations alike have pushed fast-developing techniques to more efficiently break down defences, steal information and carry out attacks of real-world significance. Sometimes, as with Dark Pink or Ocean Buffalo, the line between rogue groups and officially sanctioned activities is blurry as can be.

“There’s a lot of sensationalising around it,” Aaron Ng, senior systems engineer at CrowdStrike, another global cybersecurity firm that came up with the Ocean Buffalo name. “At the core, it is really just an extension of spycraft evolving with the times. Like a business adopting digital technologies, spying organisations across the world also have to follow the trend.” 

According to Group-IB, Dark Pink seems to follow that pattern. The entity’s latest intrusion was detected in May, showing no sign of an end to its espionage campaign.

“Dark Pink has a strong focus on military organisations,” Volkov said. “They want to get military secrets and we need to think a few steps ahead if we want to catch who’s behind these attacks.”

They started off primarily as an instrument of the state.

Aaron Ng, CrowdStrike

But while the group gained publicity as Dark Pink only two years ago, there are hints that suggest its true origins could extend much further back. Threat intelligence at CrowdStrike reported the group’s attacks bear a very close similarity to the activities of what they’ve been referring to as Ocean Buffalo, a hacker entity that has likely been working since 2012. CrowdStrike believes the earlier-detected group is likely connected to the Vietnamese government – and maybe only recently turned outwards into the rest of the world.

“We have been tracking these intrusion activities for so many years, but we attribute the intrusions to the group Ocean Buffalo,” said Ng. “Ocean Buffalo has been around for more than a decade now and they started off primarily as an instrument of the state to perform domestic surveillance.”

According to Ng’s experience researching the group’s activities, Ocean Buffalo’s modus operandi matches with that of what Group-IB is tracking as Dark Pink. As earlier research already confirmed that Ocean Buffalo was Vietnam-originated, CrowdStrike has strong reasons to believe that so is Dark Pink.

The inherently secretive nature of digital espionage helps give cover to such organisations as they evolve and expand their reach. Even if groups such as CrowdStrike are confident about the origins of Ocean Buffalo, national cybersecurity authorities in Southeast Asia are still investigating the nature of Dark Pink. The group’s attacks were mostly carried out through sophisticated custom malware and “spear-phishing” emails aimed at specific users. 

Both experts explained that cyberattacks almost always begin with gathering information on the data potential and internal procedures of the targeted organisation.

While Ocean Buffalo may have Vietnamese roots, Ng believes the vast majority of today’s cyberattacks across Southeast Asia are carried out by groups from China for the purposes of intelligence gathering and economic espionage.

“That often means collecting information that would help them with better foreign policy decision-making and that fits the Chinese communist regime’s agenda,” he said. “For example, gathering information about dissidents who live abroad.”

Ng added that he saw a correlation between the Chinese governments five-year policy plan and the nature of the intellectual property threats happening in the cyber-realm. He also pointed to the conflicting interests of China and Vietnam in the disputed South China Sea as another thread carrying over into the digital world.

“Intelligence is inherently political,” Ng said. “The countries would collect information that would help them with better foreign policy decision-making.”

While sharing similar perspectives on the reasons behind cyberattacks, Group-IB refrained from calling out any specific country. However, they linked the early intrusions by Dark Pink to a sequence of attacks in Vietnam and Indonesia in mid-2021. 

The hacking group was seemingly inactive throughout the second half of last year. But Group-IB was later able to link several attacks on government institutions in Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand to Dark Pink using digital evidence gathered through the analysis of past infection chains.

“We identified Dark Pink attackers in their early stage, information gathering,” Volkov said. “That’s why we are motivated to follow their steps and find them before they get a command to disrupt some kind of military operations in the Asia Pacific region.”

What is most concerning, according to Group-IB, is that once the threat group gains access to its target, it can remain undetected and control the conquered cyberspace.

Threats are similar everywhere, but the devil is in the details

Dmitry Volkov, Group-IB

Whoever is behind Dark Pink is clearly skilled in keeping their activities original enough to remain active while getting away with their crimes. 

According to malware analysts at Group-IB, Dark Pink uses spear-phishing to gain initial access and tricks users into opening a file that looks like it’s from Microsoft Word but is really a virus. 

The group also uses the off-the-shelf commercial programme Microsoft Build to launch a highly advanced form of malware called KamiKakaBot, which can control devices and steal sensitive information while evading detection by anti-virus software. Through commands from a Telegram channel, hackers can use this tool to intercept key data by placing their attack between an infected system and the targeted institution. 

The use of the well-known Microsoft Build and a popular communication platform such as Telegram makes it even more difficult to diagnose and prevent these attacks. 

Speaking generally, Volkov said organisations should take measures to protect their systems and users from such attacks, such as educating employees on the risks of spear-phishing. He also said countries should invest more on a national level to train experts who can stay up-to-date on the rapidly evolving cybersecurity landscape.

“Threats are similar everywhere, but the devil is in the details,” he said. “We need to understand how exactly these threat factors are able to bypass different security control systems. Without this knowledge, it is impossible to develop the right protection technologies and respond effectively to cyber threats.”

Given the persistent, international threat posed by groups such as Dark Pink and Ocean Buffalo, the analysts who spoke to Globe said it was crucial for governments and international organisations to stay ahead of the curve in the digital arms race.

“This is the reason why threat intelligence exists,” said Volkov. “We try to understand what happens in one region, then structure the collected information and share it with the rest of the world so other regions can be prepared in advance.” 

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Biden belatedly relents on cluster bombs for Ukraine

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Washington’s delayed decision to provide Ukraine with cluster munitions, a controversial weapon banned by many US allies, is exposing the risks of depending on a distant and sometime slow-acting power with its own interests primarily at heart.

Since the Ukraine war’s beginning 18 months ago, the US has spearheaded a massive Western campaign of military aid to Kiev, yet it often makes decisions in reaction to Russia’s largely predictable moves on the battlefield.

Advanced air defense weaponry, for instance, was supplied only after Russian planes and drones had bombarded Ukrainian military positions and towns.

Supplies of advanced, longer-range artillery like the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) only came after Russia began to hit Ukrainian positions from further and further distances.

Ukraine is now lobbying heavily for fighter jets, but so far to no avail due to concerns it would escalate the conflict in unpredictable ways. Moscow has repeatedly threatened to use tactical nuclear weapons in the conflict.

Over the weekend, US President Joe Biden decided to supply Ukraine with cluster bombs, which are launched in flocks over a wide area from a single shell. Ukrainian officials had requested them more than seven months ago for use in a planned counteroffensive campaign.

The Biden administration refused the request and the Ukrainians launched the broad counterattacks on Russian forces anyway without them. Progress on the ground has been slow and Ukrainians are beginning to publicly complain.

The delayed cluster munitions supply decision reflects the sometimes frustrating disconnect between Washington’s decision-makers and Kiev’s commanders on the ground over how best to prosecute the war.

Critics say the US, by far the main supplier of weapons to Ukraine, is sometimes slow in anticipating shifting battlefield necessities for fear of seeming the aggressor in a war Russia instigated.

In this case, Ukraine wanted the cluster bombs as part of an arsenal to use in its current campaign to help drive Russian troops eastward and out of the country.

Ukraine says it needs cluster bombs for its counteroffensive to succeed. Image: Twitter

Under pressure to show military progress to impress its allies, Kiev launched the offensive not only without the cluster munitions but also in the face of dwindling artillery ammunition and the lack of air power support it desires.

Biden seemed apologetic when he announced the cluster bomb decision over the weekend. He suggested it is meant not to become a permanent part of Ukraine’s military kit, but rather a temporary supplement to its dwindling supplies of artillery shells.

“It was a very difficult decision on my part,” Biden said. “The Ukrainians are running out of ammunition. And so, what I finally did – I took the recommendation of the Defense Department to not permanently but to allow for this transition period.”

Biden’s stated reluctance apparently aimed to mitigate both domestic and foreign concerns about the weapons’ deployment. In February 2022, Biden officials decried reports of Russia’s use of cluster munitions. “We have seen the reports. If that were true, it would potentially be a war crime,” said then-spokesperson Jen Psaki.

The next month, Linda Greenfield-Thomas, the US ambassador to the United Nations, told the General Assembly that she had seen reports of Russia moving cluster bombs, “which are banned under the Geneva Convention” into Ukraine.

In reality, neither the US, Ukraine nor Russia prohibits the use of cluster munitions. Eastern European NATO allies along Russia’s border also embrace the weapon, while several NATO allies to the West prohibit them – hence Biden’s message that the shipment is a temporary decision to fill a logistical hole.

More than 120 countries have banned cluster bomb use. Last week, Human Rights Watch, the international rights monitor, decried the use of cluster bombs by both Ukrainians and Russians.

“Ukrainian forces have used cluster munitions that caused deaths and serious injury to civilians. Russian forces have extensively used cluster munitions, causing many civilian deaths,” HRW said in its report.

“Both countries should stop using these inherently indiscriminate weapons, and no country should supply cluster munitions because of their foreseeable danger to civilians,” HRW concluded.

However, Ukraine views the Biden administration’s decision as more than a temporary fix, said Ryan Brobst, a research analyst for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington-based lobbying outfit.

“Cluster munitions are more effective than unitary artillery shells because they inflict damage over a wider area,” said Brobst. “This is important for Ukraine as they try to clear heavily-fortified Russian positions.”

Ukrainian officials, hoping to soothe allied concerns, pledged to only use them on military targets and not to drop them on Russia.

The US military possesses as many as three million cluster munitions, according to reports. The Ukrainians will fire them via 155-millimeter artillery shells that are already widely in use rather than dropping them from jet bombers, the more advanced method.

That’s because the US and its allies have supplied artillery pieces in the hundreds to Ukraine but not provided F-16 fighter jets, which are atop Ukraine’s current weaponry wish list.

The Ukrainians also desire new air defense systems and more advanced tanks, which have been promised but not yet delivered, according to reports

Biden’s cluster bomb decision coincided with a sudden outburst of pessimism from Ukrainian officials about the course of the war.

Ukraine’s usually upbeat President Volodymyr Zelensky sourly told reporters that allied help was welcome but the tardiness of actual weaponry shipments has done harm to the war effort.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky wants faster and greater deliveries of Western weapons. Photo: NDTV / Screengrab

“I’m grateful to the US as the leaders of our support,” Zelensky said. “But I told them that we would like to start our counteroffensive earlier, and we need all the weapons and materiel for that. Why? Simply because if we start later, it will go slower.”

The delays reportedly allowed Russia more time to prepare its defenses. “Everyone understood that if the counteroffensive unfolds later, then a bigger part of our territory will be mined,” Zelensky said. “We give our enemy the time and possibility to place more mines and prepare their defensive lines.”

General Valerii Zaluzhnyi, Ukraine’s top military commander, meanwhile said Ukraine’s allies have not supplied him with enough advanced weapons to effectively push the offensive.

“Without being fully supplied, these plans are not feasible at all,” he told the Washington Post last month. “But they are being carried out. Yes, maybe not as fast as the participants in the show, the observers, would like, but that is their problem.”

Ukrainian journalist Mykhailo Podolyak delivered an unusually bitter critique of the slow Western response to his country’s military needs. “Every decision has to be literally gnawed out with teeth, wasting months of empty talk,” he wrote on Twitter.

Russia, meanwhile, was critical of Biden’s decision to supply cluster munitions — without, of course, mentioning its own rampant use of the weapon.

“It is an act of desperation and shows weakness against the backdrop of the failure of the much-touted Ukrainian counteroffensive,” Russia’s foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in a written statement.

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Japan’s macho cheerleaders fight to save a tradition

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TOKYO: They are drenched in sweat, their hands bloodied from clapping, and their voices hoarse from shouting – meet Japan’s predominantly male and unashamedly macho “leadership section” cheerleaders. The cheerleaders are part of a century-old tradition that some fear faces an existential crisis, with fewer students showing an interest inContinue Reading

Japan sea sludge tells story of human impact on Earth

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That perfect preservation is the result of several unique characteristics, explained Yusuke Yokoyama, a professor at the University of Tokyo’s Atmosphere and Ocean Research Institute, who has analysed core samples from the site. The bay floor dips down quickly from the shoreline, creating a basin that traps material in theContinue Reading