Tag: World Affairs

Today, Australian Prime Minister Abbott and Japanese Prime Minister Abe meet in Canberra, and Prime Minister Abe presents an address to the Australian parliament. This is a historic occasion, and will be remembered as a pivotal point in Australia-Japan relations.

In their discussions, the two leaders are highlighting the crucial economic and security ties that bind Australia and Japan together, and emphasizing the vital role that both countries play as leading democracies in the Asia-Pacific region.

Like many others who have spent much of their lives trying to further the relationship between Japan and Australia, I applaud these sentiments, but ask: what sort of Australia-Japan relationship is being built in Canberra today, in whose name, and in whose interests?

An ABC news headline from 3 July 2014 reads, “Australia says it supports revision of Japanese constitution”. According to the first sentence of the article that follows, “Australia has welcomed Japan’s announcement to allow its military to fight overseas, saying it will enable Japan to further contribute to international peace and stability”.

There are two things wrong with this article. First, Japan has not revised its constitution. Rather, the Japanese government has issued a cabinet decision stating that it will “reinterpret” Article Nine of the constitution to mean something totally incompatible with the actual wording of the constitutional text. Second, it is not “Australia”, but rather an anonymous spokesperson from the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, who has welcomed the change.

A recent newspaper article by two respected ANU academics welcomes Japan’s constitutional change, while suggesting that the whole issue is “much ado about nothing”; for, as the article goes on to mention in passing, “the Japanese cabinet is entitled to modify its interpretation of Article 9 in light of the changing security environment the country faces”.

This casual statement is emblematic of the state of debate in Australia and Japan today, and is an alarming indication of how much we have forgotten and devalued the fundamental principles of constitutional democracy. In the succinct words of Wikipedia, these are that “the legislature makes the laws; the executive put the laws into operation; and the judiciary interprets the laws. The doctrine of the separation of powers is often assumed to be one of the cornerstones of fair government”. Or, as the Supreme Court of Hawaii put it in a major judgment “the courts, not the legislature, are the ultimate interpreters of the constitution”.

In the case of Japan, it is the executive that has pushed through the reinterpretation of the constitution, after extensive backdoor political horsetrading but no public consultation, and in the teeth of majority opposition from public opinion. If the Japanese cabinet can interpret Article Nine to mean the opposite of what it says, there is nothing to stop them doing exactly the same with the articles that protect basic human rights, sexual equality, freedom of speech etc.

Prime Minister Abbott and his government welcome this change because they believe it to be in Australia’s “national interest” (as defined by Abbott’s executive). But their lack of concern for democratic procedure in Japan also reflects the fact that the Abbott government has an equally cavalier approach to the fundamental principles of democracy: in particular to the principle that democratic governments do not take important actions which influence domestic society and foreign relations without informing parliament and the electorate.

Recent infringements of international law by the Abbott government in relation to asylum seekers have earned Australia the condemnation of global media and major international human rights organizations, and, worse still, have been carried out under a veil of secrecy which violates every principle of fair and open government.

These recent actions in Japan and Australia are not only undermining the precious democratic systems of both countries, but are also inflaming already rapidly deteriorating international relations in our region, and deepening social divisions within both countries.

Here in Australia, colleagues and I have found ourselves hosting an increasing number of Japanese visitors and second or third generation Korean denizens of Japan who no longer feel comfortable living in the country of their birth. Meanwhile, Australian media hysteria about asylum seekers heightens xenophobic stereotypes and stirs ghosts of Australian racism which have never been laid to rest, making life increasingly uncomfortable for many Australian citizens and residents.

It is true that, despite all these rapidly worsening problems, Australia and Japan remain among the most democratic countries in our region. This makes it easy for us to shrug our shoulders and dismiss the issues discussed here as “much ado about nothing”. After all, things are so much worse in so many other countries. But I would argue that it is precisely because Australia and Japan are among the leading democracies of our region that we should care profoundly about steps by our governments that usurp and undermine fundamental democratic rights.

Prime Minister Abe’s most recent election campaign was backed by a poster, displayed across the length and breadth of Japan, which depicted Abe and ruling party Secretary General Shigeru Ishiba, with the words “we are taking back Japan” (Nihon o torimodosu). Every time I saw one of those posters, I wondered who that small word “we” refered to. When I see Prime Minister Abe and Prime Minister Abbott cementing their relationship, I wonder which “we” they are speaking of and for.

Respect for the principles of democracy is vital to a healthy future relationship between Australia and Japan. Good relations between the countries of our region, including good relations between Japan and its neighbours and between Australia and it neighbours, are fundamental to the interests of the people of Australia and Japan. A relationship between Japan and Australia that truly values human rights and democracy is possible. Non-governmental actions between citizens, grassroots group, scholars, educators and others are essential to building that relationship.

It is time for ordinary Japanese, Australians and other concerned about our two countries’ relationship to make their voices heard, to share their concerns and to begin, in whatever ways we can, to take back the relationship between Australia and Japan.

Tessa Morris-Suzuki is an Australian National University College of Asia and the Pacific Japanese history professor and an Australian Research Council Laureate Fellow.

In the six years since Kevin Rudd’s speech, in Mandarin, to students at Beijing University appeared to signal a sudden shift in Australia’s foreign policy focus towards China, and away from Japan, much has happened. Some even believe that the replacement of Rudd by Julia Gillard (not linguistically so equipped and keen to distinguish her policies from his) followed by the election of Tony Abbott as prime minister (bringing an ideological as well as a political agenda to the issue) has caused Rudd’s ‘pro-China’ course to be reversed. But this is a misreading of the larger picture. When Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe arrives in Australia on Monday––the most important visit by a Japanese leader since that of his grandfather Nobusuke Kishi in 1957––it will signify a new phase in the bilateral relationship that began taking shape before Rudd, continued during his two administrations, and has solidified since the Abbott government gained office.

The deepening of the relationship has multiple strands: trade, strategic alignment, political engagement, and defence co-operation. On the Australian side, it has been driven by senior bureaucrats in the Department of Defence and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) rather than by individual politicians. Kevin Rudd’s facility in Mandarin excited the public imagination in 2008 without really impinging on the policy direction in Canberra, which always interpreted the United States’ ‘pivot to Asia’ as a pas de deux with Japan––and possibly a pas de trois (DFAT makes much of the fact that ‘Japan describes Australia as its second most important security partner’). While new forms of political and defence exchange with China are being pursued at the same time, they build upon a shallower institutional base.

Some major recent additions to the Japan-Australia framework include the Joint Declaration on Security Cooperation of 2007 (which set in train regular ‘2+2’ talks involving the defence and foreign ministers of both countries); the signing of the Acquisition and Cross-Serving Agreement (ACSA) in 2010 (which makes joint military exercises operate more smoothly and could lead to a joint submarine development project); and the conclusion of the Japan Australia Economic Partnership Agreement last April (which Abbott and Abe will sign in Canberra during his visit). Some Japanese commentators consider a bilateral security treaty to be the logical outcome of these developments, although such a step is not in immediate prospect.

If Australians have not being paying attention to the drift of affairs, now is the time to do so. Certainly it is past time to discard the ‘if not China, then Japan’ false dichotomy––a notion that pretends to offer a fail-safe choice without our having to properly articulate the national interest.

Australia embarked on the latest phase of relationship building with Japan before the sudden deterioration in Japan-China relations in 2012. But under the Abe and Abbott administrations it seems that that event has been more of a spur than a complication. Abe has set a furious pace of diplomacy in the past two years, shoring up support among like-minded maritime states, with emphasis on two principles: any attempt to change the territorial status quo in the region by force must be resisted; and law-abiding states must uphold international rules government freedom of movement at sea. China and the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands are the drivers of Tokyo’s preoccupation. China, on the other hand, considers the status quo, in which the United States asserts a leadership role in regional affairs, is itself an anachronism left over from an imperialist world order that Japan supposedly renounced in 1945.

In last month’s 2+2 talks in Tokyo, the Australian delegation was the first to be told of the latest incident in which a Chinese military fighter aircraft allegedly ‘buzzed’ a Japanese jet near the contested Senkaku-Diaoyu islands. The occasion enabled Japan to invite an expression of Australian solidarity in a moment of ‘danger’. It is not known if the Australian side resisted, but it is unlikely.

Japan has come to expect solidarity from the Abbott government. (For the PM, Japan is a ‘best friend’; for Defence Minister David Johnston, Japan is ‘one of my favourite countries’.)  Australia has been quick to approve the Abe Cabinet’s controversial decision to embrace the ‘right of collective defence’ (the actual Japanese phrase shudanteki jieiken translates as ‘the right of collective self-defence’, but I would argue that this is oxymoronic and misleading), which till now was adjudged contrary to the letter and spirit of the Japanese postwar constitution. Australia has eagerly endorsed a policy with which most of the Japanese public disagrees. Canberra and Washington consider that fully-fledged defence co-operation with Japan requires this newly-declared freedom of action, which Abe insists will not be used to get Japan involved in a foreign war. How that assurance can and will be policed, now or under a future administration––the legal bulwark having been dismantled––he has not explained. It is a question Australian journalists might wish to ask this week.

When Tony Abbott was in Tokyo in April he was afforded the opportunity of attending a session of Japan’s new National Security Council. That favour will be returned in Canberra, with interest. Abe will join a meeting of the Cabinet-level National Security Committee, as well as address a joint sitting of Parliament, the first Japanese leader to be extended this privilege.

Australians will see a Japanese politician they are not used to. Abe can speak in clear English. His appearance will be very different from the archetypal bespectacled ‘transistor salesman’ of Charles De Gaulle’s infamous bon mot (a reference to Prime Minister Ikeda in 1960). On the contrary, Abe is handsome, energetic, direct and emotional. He will seem ‘more like us’, and this will please policy-makers on both sides. But will Australians believe him when he says Japan still stands for peace and stability? That will be the true test.

In the week before Abe’s Australian visit, around the foreign policy ‘ballroom’, that glittering and restless dance-floor where world leaders take and change partners, some strange moves have been observed. In Seoul, there was a presidential waltz between China’s Xi Jinping and South Korea’s Park Guen-hye. Unprecedentedly, Xi chose Park for his first dance on the peninsula ahead of North Korea’s Kim Jong-un. The fact that Tokyo currently has wretched relations with Seoul surely had something to do with it. Then, what do we see in Pyongyang, but a Japanese diplomatic mission persuading North Korea to undertake a ‘serious’ investigation into the fate of Japanese citizens kidnapped by the communist state in the 1970s and 1980 (an issue especially dear to Abe). As an up-front payment, the Abe government immediately eased sanctions against North Korea, previously at the top of its ‘hate’ list­––in the absence of any international agreement on the bigger issues of human rights abuses and Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program. Strange dance partners indeed.

The lesson to be learnt from Seoul and Pyongyang is that, in the absence of a sound and progressive relationship between China and Japan––Abe and Xi have not held one summit meeting, whereas Park and Xi have met five times––all other contingent relationships are subject to distortions, in substance or interpretation. The Korean peninsula is a dangerous venue in which to get out of step with the music; rising tensions in the East China and South China Seas over a grab bag of disputed reefs and atolls are also pulling diplomacy out of shape.

This rapidly shifting and unpredictable environment puts at risk––indeed could be inflamed by––any gains in Australia’s bilateral relationship with Japan. A closer relationship with a democratic Japan, a major trading partner and security interlocutor, is highly desirable, do not mistake me, but it cannot proceed indifferent to the multilateral regional outlook. The distorting effect of the serious falling-out between Tokyo and Beijing is already changing calculations and choices; ideological symmetries and short-term opportunism are not a sound basis for calculating national interest in the longer run.

The political theatre surrounding Abe’s appearance in Australia will play in a pre-determined way before other regional spectators. Australia will not control the reviews. That is, unless the government is brave enough to take the opportunity to raise its hand to the orchestra, bring the dance to a halt for a moment, and forthrightly address the subject that all in the throng are talking about behind their fans: the dangerous wrong-headedness harming relations between Japan and China. Somehow a new start must be made, and Australia will have few better opportunities than during this week to play the honest broker. If all the talk we hear is platitudes about shared values and interests, framing the deepening relationship between Australia and Japan exclusively within a narrow two-step of brinkmanship and Sinophobia, it will be an opportunity sadly missed.

Walter Hamilton reported from Japan for eleven years for the ABC.

     As far-fetched as this scenario was until recently, it is just possible that international governments may one day face an unprecedented dilemma: whether to recognise a caliphate as an independent country. The newly-declared Islamic State (IS) – formerly the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) – is indicating it is separate to the Baghdad and Damascus regimes. It is its own state, though the U.S. has scoffed at the very idea. Then again, there is growing indecision in Washington in how to deal with these unwelcome developments.   

The IS jihadists have overrun and carved out a sizable chunk of land straddling the Iraqi and Syrian border for themselves and scrapped the border itself. Welcome to IS. Both countries may decide they have enough problems as it is without trying to crush this act of geographical hijacking. More than three years on, President Bashar al-Assad of Syria is still fighting rebels elsewhere in his country, while Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Malaki is beset by jihadists running rampant in his disintegrating nation.

IS, of course, has no history in governance let alone a currency. The only law which concerns it is Sharia. Initially, its interpretation of the Islamic legal code has been harsh and brutal with beheadings, crucifixions and the mass execution of Iraqi soldiers. It has even banned smoking.

Curiously, no one has any idea where its leader is or really what he looks like apart from a fuzzy photo. Shades of Mullah Omar, the elusive Taliban leader in Afghanistan! The caliphate leader is Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, now renamed Caliph Ibrahim. He has been rumoured to be in either Syria or Iraq. He is said to lead his followers from the front on the battlefield and to be a smart tactician. With a $10 million bounty on his head, he will certainly be making sure he’s well out of sight of snooping U.S. drones.

We have had nothing in modern times to compare our relations with a caliphate. The last one – belatedly enshrined in the Ottoman Empire’s constitution – was abolished by Turkey’s Kemal Ataturk in 1924.

Caliph Ibrahim may have trouble explaining on what basis he was entitled to such a title. A caliph means ‘successor’ and for the Sunnis like him that is supposed to mean being chosen by the Moslem community. As far as we know, his only authority is as leader of a fearsome terrorist group – ISIS – which usurped the standing of al-Qaeda.

That aside, the fact is that IS is under the rule of an extreme Sunni fanatic who, like most religious zealots, probably has a closed mind and is beyond persuasion to look at life differently, especially towards Shiites. But at least he has tempered the actions of his followers in some areas under his control for fear of alienating all Sunnis.

Even so, daily life in the area which represents IS must be nerve-wracking for those residents who haven’t fled because of the draconian new Sharia rules. Tourek Masoud, an Islamic scholar at Harvard University’s Kennedy School, says the concept of a caliphate is not something most Moslems think about. ‘The majority of Moslems and the majority of Arabs generally accept the legitimacy of the nation-states they inhabit’, he says.

Caliph Ibrahim is surprisingly well set up. He has plundered military bases of equipment and looted banks of gold and cash. He already pumps oil to customers and is even reported to sell electricity to the Assad regime which his group is trying to overthrow. He gets income from taxes and is said to be running mafia-like activities in the areas under his control.

     He may find himself presiding over a rump state as Iraq and Syria are too preoccupied with other pressures and may care little about losing some desert territory even if it is festering with terrorists. As it is, IS jihadists have a foothold elsewhere in Iraq.

So what to do? Popular opinion is to start by getting rid of Prime Minister al-Maliki and replace him with a respected figure who will reach out to the Iraqi Sunnis. Al-Malaki, a Shiite, is loathed by them for neglecting their interests and ridding the government and military of their numbers. An IS spokesman once dismissed him as ‘an underwear merchant’. He is running for a third term as PM and showing no signs of wanting to step down for the good of his stricken country. Finding a suitable replacement is unlikely.

That may well lead to a wholesale conflict between the Sunnis and Shiites, even more refugees and the disintegration of Iraq as we know it. The Shiite majority would remain concentrated in the oil-rich southern half and the Sunni minority would share the northern half with the Kurds. Indeed the Kurds might want to exploit the chaos to form their long-sought independent homeland to supersede their current autonomous region. They and Turkey – unlikely partners not too long ago – might then form a buffer to protect the northern approaches to Iraq.

Viewing all this with alarmed interest will be not only the U.S., but also Iran, the most powerful of the Shiite states. Both countries might astonish themselves by realising they now share common interests just as Washington once did with Saddam Hussein in Iraq’s war against Iran.

All this is not the fault of George W.Bush and his allies who invaded Iraq in 2003. We should blame Mark Sykes, a young British politician, and François Georges-Picot, a former French official in Beirut. Back in 1916, with the Ottoman Empire tottering, they agreed to break up the Levant to suit Western goals. They drew a diagonal line across the region and divided the empire between their countries, creating artificial states irrespective of religious, tribal and cultural differences.

As far as Australia is concerned, we might be relieved that our nearest Moslem nations, Indonesia and Malaysia, have never been under the influence of a caliphate. The closest has been the introduction of Sharia law in Indonesia’s Aceh province in Sumatra.

John Tulloh had a 40-year career in foreign news.  

The best article I have seen recently about the confused state of politics in Thailand was in the London Review of Books. It was written Richard Lloyd Parry. See link below.  John Menadue

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http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n12/richard-lloydparry/the-story-of-thaksin-shinawatra

A bespectacled, middle-aged man wearing a suit and tie climbed onto the steel rafters above a footbridge in Tokyo’s busy Shinjuku district and, using a megaphone, began to address passers-by below. According to witnesses, he spoke out against the Japanese Government’s impending decision to embrace the right of ‘collective defense’, which until now has been considered outside the bounds of the nation’s pacifist constitution.

After squatting on the steel girder speaking undisturbed for almost an hour, the man poured accelerant over his body and set himself alight.

In the aftermath of this horrific incident, Japanese police refused to release details about the protestor: his identity or his medical condition. Video evidence showing him falling, still fully alight, onto the walkway below suggests he would be unlikely to survive.

Despite street protests––the anonymous self-immolation being the most dramatic––and opinion polls showing more Japanese oppose than support the constitutional reinterpretation, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has got his way in Cabinet. After months of coaxing––and, according to one source, a little blackmail––Abe has convinced his coalition partner, the New Komeito, to support the Liberal Democratic Party’s agenda.

But consider this. As of today, according to the Defense Ministry’s official website, ‘It is…not permissible [for Japan] to use the right [of collective defense], that is, to stop armed attack on another country with armed strength, although Japan is not under direct attack, since it exceeds the limit of use of armed strength as permitted under Article 9 of the Constitution’. Tomorrow, or very soon, this statement will disappear and be replaced by one staying the exact opposite.

How can this be possible?

Normally, in advanced and orderly nations, a constitution is interpreted over time by administrative dialogue, the passage of new laws and associated court rulings, all of which must be supportable with reference to the original text. Should a state come to adopt attitudes or values unsupported by its basic law, a formal process allows for constitutional amendment.

In Japan’s case, an amendment requires two-thirds’ support in a vote of the combined houses of the Diet and majority support in a referendum. This has never happened since the present constitution was adopted in 1947. Instead, there has been something of a tradition for the executive branch of government to determine what the constitution does and does not allow, and Japanese courts­­––particularly the Supreme Court­­––have tended to defer to the political judgement of the Cabinet of the day. Hence, although the constitution states that Japan will ‘never’ maintain land, sea and air forces, it has reacquired all three; and now, even though the constitution disavows the use of force to settle international disputes, the Cabinet is preparing the way to send military forces into a conflict regardless of whether a direct threat to Japan exists.

The move is supported by the United States (that already has strategic plans and weapons systems in place in and around Japan that cannot be effectively engaged unilaterally) and, most recently, was applauded by the government of the Philippines, which is embroiled, like Japan, in a territorial dispute with China. From such indications, we can see where this business may be headed.

While it is likely that dissent groups in Japan will challenge Abe’s policy shift in the courts, precedent suggests the Supreme Court will not accept a case until after a concrete situation has arisen, i.e. after Japan has forces engaged in a conflict. The Supreme Court’s timid track record on constitutional issues does not inspire confidence that it would defy a government in the midst of a security ‘crisis’.

Prime Minister Abe has argued the need for Japan to embrace ‘collective defense’ because of a changed security environment in the region. Though this assuredly relates to the rise of China and a wish to support a continued military engagement by the United States in East Asia, Abe has devoted more effort to explaining the policy shift to his coalition partners than to the general public––having earlier decided that the public could not be trusted to pass a constitutional amendment. Abe has assumed the right of ‘final authority’ on this fundamental issue. He considers the notion that constitutions exist, in part, to restrict state power to be an obsolete one.

The New Komeito is the political arm of the lay Nichiren Buddhist movement Soka Gakkai, which has traditionally opposed military entanglements, especially anything that would risk spilling Japanese blood abroad. With nine million loyal members, Soka Gakkai is a powerful force at the ballot box in a country where voting is not compulsory. The importance of the New Komeito for the LDP-led governing coalition is greater than the party’s Diet representation alone might suggest.

Abe’s tactics in winning over the New Komeito have mimicked the line of argument used by the Supreme Court when acquiescing with past constitutional ‘re-interpretations’. Abe began by stating a general principle that the New Komeito could not dispute: that, like any sovereign nation, Japan had an obligation to defend its citizens. In an increasingly unstable world, he went on to argue, this required Japan to co-operate with like-minded nations to secure the peace. When he suggested this could be achieved by sending military forces into foreign conflicts, Abe met resistance; but his response then was to ‘salami-slice’ the principle of ‘self defense’ into a myriad of scenarios until he found some that the New Komeito could live with. For instance, might not Japanese naval vessels participate in U.N.-sponsored minesweeping operations? ‘OK’ says New Komeito. ‘And what if…’ says Abe. And so it went: constitutional change achieved through a maze of hypothetical scenarios that can, and surely will, themselves be reinterpreted to fit whatever real-life situation emerges down the track. (The Supreme Court similarly has started out by avowing a motherhood principle before going on to find reasons for granting politically convenient exceptions to it.) Abe’s promise to the nation that the government would use only the ‘minimal force’ necessary for collective defense rests on nothing more solid than political expediency.

According to an Asahi group magazine, the LDP used other methods of persuasion on New Komeito, including a little blackmail. The party was reminded that its links to Soka Gakkai could also be considered a breach of the constitution––the guarantee of separation of church and state––if a ‘black letter’ interpretation of the law were applied. ‘So, lighten up, why don’t you?’

On the eve of the Cabinet meeting expected to adopt Abe’s resolution, official reports said that the lone protestor in Shinjuku who set himself alight was still alive. Most probably he was being kept on a life-support system until after the Cabinet decision, as a confirmed fatality would not sit well with the politicians in Kasumigaseki. His desperate act will be explained away as an isolated moment of madness. Who will even remember his still-undisclosed name in coming days? Forgotten, like the click of the keyboard that will consign the Defense Ministry’s soon-to-be obsolete web document to oblivion.

Walter Hamilton reported from Japan for eleven years for the ABC.

On June 10^th, some 1,500 fighters from the Jihadist group ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria) seized Iraq’s second largest city, Mosul. Half a million citizens fled to the Kurdish areas. ISIS then moved further south, towards Baghdad, and took the cities of Tikrit and Samarra, a sacred Shia site.

On June 13^th, the leading Shia cleric in Iraq, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, called on all Iraqi Shia to fight the invaders, who are Sunni.

Internationally, Iran sent para- military forces to assist the Baghdad government, which like Iran is almost exclusively Shia.

Also on June 13^th, President Obama, having acknowledged the gravity of these events, stated: “The United States is not simply going to involve itself in a military action in the absence of a political plan by the Iraqis that gives us some assurance that they’re prepared to work together”.

The next day it was announced that a US carrier and two guided missile destroyers were being sent to the gulf. The Pentagon’s press secretary stated that this move “will provide the commander-in-chief additional flexibility should military options be required to protect American lives, citizens and interests in Iraq”. He did not say additional to what or what specifically would now be at the disposal of the commander-in-chief, but such a carrier based battle group would typically include cruise missile capability and airborne weapons systems.

The grave circumstances now being faced in Iraq are; complex, years in the making, involve an elemental confessional dispute between Shia and Sunni Muslims but have now taken on a dimension that has been shaped by external intervention in the region and seriously corrupt governments. On the origins of the current problems, the relentlessly historicist Tony Blair has stated: “You know we can rerun the debates about 2003 – there are perfectly legitimate points on either side – but where we are now in 2014, we have to understand this is a regional problem” and even without the eight-year occupation by the US and UK, “you would still have a major problem in Iraq”.

This is such tendentious nonsense. There is no longer any debate, even in strongly conservative circles, about the gravity of the error and the mendacious deceptions involved in the Bush/Blair decision to invade Iraq in 2003. The Economist, not remotely a pink paper, states in its current editorial: “No doubt his predecessor’s decision (G. W. Bush’s) to go to war – which we mistakenly backed at the time – was a disaster”.

Many things can be discerned, with clarity, about the present circumstances. Key ones are: the Maliki Government in Baghdad has put the very existence of Iraq at risk by its refusal to meet its obligation to ensure that Iraq is managed on a basis of inclusion of Shias and Sunnis; it is widely recognized as being corruptly managed and of deeply dubious competence; the US/UK invasion of 2003 is in good measure responsible for this situation but more particularly, for region wide disrespect for western motives, no matter what the west says about those, and determination by groups such as ISIS to establish islamist societies.

Then there are the interests of other powers external to the region: Iran’s support for Maliki in Baghdad and Assad in Damascus; Russia’s support for Assad; Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States’ support for Sunni and anti-Assad causes and groups.

It’s about as messy as international relations can be, with horrible human consequences, and the hard won principles of the Charter of the United Nations, such as the peaceful settlement of disputes, and the content of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights are nowhere to be seen.

What is visible is the determination of a fanatical, religion based group, ISIS, which is considered so extreme, so odious that its original source of motivation – Al Qaida – has disowned them. ISIS is seeking to establish a fundamentalist Islamist state incorporating eastern Syria and north western Iraq and the ultimately south west to Jordan and possibly Israel. A new Caliphate may be in prospect.

Notwithstanding their successes in the past week, they are relatively small in numbers, and should be able to be defeated – if there is a will to do so. This latter question is, yet, unanswered.

Think of the bitter irony involved in President Obama’s words on June 13^th about the relationship between military action and a political plan. The 2003 invasion was just that: a military action, contrary to international law, unaccompanied by any remotely, thoughtfully considered, political plan. This led, in good measure, to the circumstances now being faced, in addition of course, to the clearly bogus nature of the reasons given for the invasion and the access it gave to US companies to profit from the invasion, such as the Halliburton Company, over which Vice President Cheney had presided.

The possible dissolution of Iraq, which has been predicted for some time, and in some cases recommended, as the only viable means to avoid confessional conflict in Mesopotamia (and may also prove to be true for Syria), is something which cannot and should not be imposed from outside.

As the President noted in his June 13^th remarks; Iraq is, after all, the business of the Iraqis. But he faces powerful sources of pressure to take flawed decisions, to repeat the past.

In the domestic polity the Republicans, seem to be led on such matters by Senator John McCain. The Senator, defeated candidate for Obama’s job, seems never to have seen a war he didn’t want to join and if possible expand; never saw a US foreign policy problem that he believed could not be solved by US military action. He and his like seem determined to live out Lord Acton’s dictum that power corrupts.

The President must resist this. As he must the Israel lobby, which has been smart enough to keep its counsel on the Syrian events, at least publicly, but remains ever hawkish on anything Iranian.

One cannot know what level of apoplexy they will experience, or what pressure they will bring to bear on the White House when they see that one important step in containing the present Iraq crisis will be for Washington and Tehran to talk about it and, directly cooperate.

Richard Butler AC, formerly: Australian Ambassador to the United Nations, Chairman of the UN Special Commission to Disarm Iraq, now a Professor of International Relations at Penn State University.

Narendra Modi’s ascension to the prime ministership of India has sparked interest around the globe, including here in Australia.

The world is right to pay attention to Mr Modi’s rise. In the recent Lok Sahba (‘House of the People’) election, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) that he leads took 282 of the 543 seats in the Lok Sahba. The result gives the BJP a majority for the first time in its history, and India its first majority government since the 1984 election. The new government’s majority rises to a commanding 336 seats if those won by the BJP’s coalition partners in the National Democratic Alliance are included.

Mr Modi and the BJP were expected to perform well in the election – after all, Indian economic growth languishes between 4-5%, inflation is stuck around 9%, corruption is rife, and the former United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government appeared impotent to respond – but nobody expected a victory of this magnitude.

The electorate has given Mr Modi a resounding mandate to pursue his promised program of growth, governance and infrastructure, and savaged the once-dominant Congress Party that led the UPA. The Congress Party, which has long been controlled by the Gandhi dynasty, recorded easily its worst result, as its seats fell from 206 in 2009 to just 44.

It should surprise no one that Prime Minister Tony Abbott was quick to call and congratulate the new Indian leader on his victory. India represents a golden economic opportunity for Australia: it is enormous (with approximately 1.2 billion people), young (with a median age of 27), and on course to become the world’s most populous country by 2025 (leapfrogging China).

The India that Mr Modi has pledged to deliver – a resurgent India, growing again at 8%, building and benefiting from new and long-overdue infrastructure, investing in its relatively young population – will have an insatiable appetite for resources, commodities, education and agriculture from Australia, just as China has over the last decade. Mining services, infrastructure and project management, and healthcare present extraordinary opportunities as well if we can seize them.

India is also a key actor and potential strategic partner for Australia in our increasingly contested neighbourhood. Both countries have a clear interest in the stability and security of the Indian Ocean but our mutual interests extend further in the Indo-pacific region.

The new Indian PM may be singularly focused on growth at home but he has made clear that isolationism is not an option if this goal is to be achieved. India will continue to pursue its ‘Look East’ foreign policy under Mr Modi but the emphasis will be on investment and trade opportunities.

If Mr Modi’s approach as Chief Minister of Gujarat is anything to go by we should expect an assertive style of ‘economic diplomacy’ focusing on China, Japan, Singapore and other South East Asian nations, where the Indian government is not shy to promote its companies. Mr Modi courted these countries in his former role in Gujarat and developed good relations with leaders, especially with Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

India has long been seen as a logical counterweight to China, a country that, in recent months, has adopted a more aggressive approach towards territorial disputes with its neighbours. However, Mr Modi will however be loathe to antagonise China because of its importance to his growth mission. How effectively he manages this relationship could have grave implications for the region and Australia.

For Australia, a confident, regionally-engaged India is in our interest, particularly at a time when the US commitment to military engagement has diminished.

With so much on Mr Modi’s plate and so many other countries queuing up for his attention – President Obama was also quick to call after the election – what, if anything, can Mr Abbott do to advance the Australian relationship in the halls of Delhi and Mumbai?

A meeting with the new Indian PM is essential. Fortunately for Mr Abbott and Australia, Mr Modi is almost certain to attend the G20 Leaders Summit in Brisbane in November. This will be the first time an Indian PM has visited Australia since Rajiv Gandhi in 1986. Mr Abbott must make the most of this serendipitous opportunity by locking in a bilateral meeting during the visit.

The agenda for the meeting will be critical. The following topics must be discussed: finalisation of the uranium export agreement; a roadmap to resolve any outstanding issues in the Australia-India Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement negotiations; cooperation in the Indian Ocean; as well as specific Australian trade and investment proposals that will support Indian growth – for example, how Australian education providers can assist India to meet its goal to deliver vocational education to 500 million citizens by 2022 when its current capacity is only 5 million, or how our mining sector can help India to access more efficiently its substantial iron ore deposits.

Their meeting must not be a one-off. Prime Minister Abbott should follow former NSW Premier Barry O’Farrell’s example and lead annual or biennial trade delegations to India. These delegations create people-to-people links and put Australia front of mind for Indian businesses and diplomats.

Another way the Australian Government can promote these links is by including India in the new Colombo Plan, which funds student exchange and internships in Asia, and funding the Australia India Strategic Research Fund (funding was not renewed in the recent budget).

Having Australian students and researchers studying in India, or undertaking joint projects with Indian colleagues, will form life long friendships and academic and business partnerships which will serve Australia well in trade and security matters.

India’s young population means connections with Indian youth are especially important. The Government should foster these connections by supporting organisation like the Australia India Youth Dialogue, which brings together passionate and energetic young people from both countries to consider issues central to bilateral relations.

Prime Minister Abbott can also wield soft power by embracing the Indian diaspora in Australia. According to the 2011 census, there were 295,000 Indian migrants in Australia and 390,000 people who claimed Indian ancestry. At its best, the Indian diaspora can be a cheer-squad for Australia in Delhi and Mumbai, with better access to government and business than our diplomats can hope for.

Given Mr Modi will have his hands full trying to lift Indian growth, improve governance and kick-start infrastructure projects, Australia must be proactive in promoting this important relationship. Mr Modi’s second visit to Australia later this year is an opportunity that cannot be wasted.

Nicholas Carney is a Senior Associate at Herbert Smith Freehills and he sits on the Council of the University of New South Wales. In 2014, he was a participant in the Australia India Youth Dialogue. The views set out in this article are his own.  

It was reported on May 29^th, that Sir John Chilcot, the head of the UK inquiry into the decision to invade Iraq in 2003, had reached a “breakthrough” on the issue of how much of the official records of the decision to invade can be published. The publication of the Chilcot report is some two years late. It is now thought that it may be published before the end of 2014.

Chilcot stated that the contents of the key documents at issue, mainly relating to communications between Prime Minister Blair and President George W Bush (some 25 of Blair’s notes to Bush) are “vital to public understanding of the enquiry’s conclusions”.

If this is true, then Sir John, and all of us, may yet be disappointed, because UK Cabinet office officials are now insisting that he may only publish the “gist” of such documents and information only “in relation to” relevant cabinet meetings. Hardly a “breakthrough”!

UK government sources have indicated that this outcome has been the result of negotiations between them and Washington. And, Tony Blair claimed this week, that he has had nothing to do with what has become widely regarded as the insupportable delay in the Chilcot report.

Oddly in these circumstances, US Secretary of State, John Kerry, in an interview broadcast on Public Television in the US, yesterday, in answer to a criticism voiced by former Vice President Dick Cheney of the handling by the Obama Administration’s of the Iraq intervention, stated: “Dick Cheney was completely wrong about Iraq and we are still struggling with the aftermath of what Dick Cheney and his crew thought was the right policy; to go in and start a war of choice for the wrong reasons and they turned tops turkey the entire region with respect to Sunni and Shia and the relationships there. The fact is they have been deeply, deeply wrong in the policy they pursued.”

Three points of interest for Australia: While John Howard and Alexander Downer were not directly hired members of Cheney’s “crew”, they offered them and us as willing recruits; there has been no comparable enquiry in Australia to the Chilcot enquiry; has Canberra also made representations to Chilcot or the UK to bury communications between Blair and Howard or any other relevant Australian input? Why did John Howard think,we Australians,as the Americans sometimes,so crisply say.”have a dog in this fight”?

On John Kerry’s “wrong reasons”, he is clearly referring to the weapons of mass destruction rationale for the invasion. In my final report to the UN Security Council as Head of the UN Special Commission to Disarm Iraq, in 1999, I indicated that we had accounted for virtually all of Saddam’s  WMD. My successor, Hans Blix, four years later, on the eve of the invasion did the same. It was for this reason, among others, that the Security Council refused to authorize the invasion, thus rendering it contrary to international law.

In an informal submission to the Chilcot enquiry, some three years ago, I called its attention to the fact that the Bush Administration’s claims on Saddam’s alleged WMD involved rejecting these two UN Security Council authorized reports. I have no idea what, if anything, the Chilcot report will make of this fact. What is clear, however, is that no WMD were found after the invasion. That was because there were none.

For at least the last three years, with increasing intensity and horrific consequences, the region bound by Lebanon in the West, Syria in the center and Iraq to the East has been engaged in war.  And, it has external participants, from the region and beyond.

Why this is occurring, what is elementally at issue, and when and how it might end, continues to be the subject of much agonized and uncertain analysis.

Such an analysis, which deserves attention, was given by Borzou Daragahi (Middle East: Three nations, one conflict: Financial Times May 27^th). He mentions the possibility that what we are witnessing is nothing less than the revision of the arbitrary boundaries laid down by the British and the French (the Sykes/Picot Accord) following the end of WWI and the defeat of the Ottoman Empire.

More pertinently, he observes that: “the outlines of the war now raging across the Levant and Mesopotamia became clearer after the 2003 US invasion of Iraq. The election of the Shia-dominated government in Baghdad gave Iran influence, in its former rival, while enraged Sunnis took up arms, first against the American occupiers, then against Baghdad. The largely Sunni 2011 uprising against Mr. Assad’s heterodox Shia Alawite regime and the Damascus government’s harsh response engulfed the region in a still expanding war.”

He asks whether this is comparable to the 30 years’ war in 17^th Century Europe. It can’t be; the weapons being used today are far more devastating, and great power rivalries are more deeply involved than in the battle over the Holy Roman Empire.

But it is clear that there is no end in sight and the conflict may continue for years.

A thought for the centenary of Gallipoli!

Richard Butler a former Australian Ambassador to the United Nations, and Executive Chairman of the UN Special Commission to Disarm Iraq, is a Professor of International Relations at Penn State University.

The headline in The Australian was stark and brutal: SISI VOWS TO ERADICATE BROTHERHOOD. Eradicate? This is a word you associate with efforts to get rid of a disease or an agricultural pest. But in this case it was meant as a kind of cleansing of religious adherents and caused barely a ripple of protest outsider Egypt.

The story, of course, referred to Egypt’s new strongman, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who has won this week’s presidential election. He says one of his first tasks will be to suppress the Moslem Brotherhood out of existence. His interim government has already declared it a terrorist group.

The Moslem Brotherhood has been an organisation long feared by Egypt’s leaders because of its shadowy presence like an underground movement and yet having enough support for effective political influence. It demonstrated that in 2011 when it won almost a majority of seats in parliament and in 2012 when its candidate, Mohamed Morsi, won the presidential election with 51% of the vote. This was a stunning result given that the Moslem Brotherhood had virtual illegal status for six decades.

All that came to an end last July when al-Sisi staged a military coup and ousted Morsi, who has been under arrest ever since. Huge protests in support of Morsi followed which the military ruthlessly put down. More than 600 people died, said to be the worst mass killing in modern Egyptian history.

The Moslem Brotherhood was founded in 1928. It favoured Sharia law and wanted Egypt to be governed according to the teachings of the Koran. Within 20 years it had an estimated two million members.

But it was long regarded as a pest to Egyptian authority. It has been accused over the decades of murders, assassinations, bombings, arson attacks and plots, which is why it has been for so long been treated as a threat from within. Yet it also has been associated with charity work in a country with endemic poverty.

Al-Sisi in an interview earlier this month said the Moslem Brotherhood was ‘finished’. Asked if it would cease to exist if he were elected president, he was quoted as saying ‘Yes, just like that’. Eradicated! Most of the Brotherhood’s political leadership has been imprisoned or fled the country. Any sign of support, real or imagined, is harshly dealt with as Australian journalist Peter Greste and two Al-Jazeera colleagues have discovered. They have been locked up for five months without a shred of evidence against them.

Many Egyptians are hoping al-Sisi can provide some welcome stability. Egypt has become a dystopia. The once booming tourist industry has collapsed because of unrest. The enormous bureaucracy still toils in a pre-computer era.  Essential and social services are in disarray. Unemployment is rampant and the outlook is not only grim, but ripe for unrest.

According to the Egyptian author, Thanassis Cambanis, al-Sisi wants to restore Egypt’s standing as the most powerful country in the Arab world. He (al-Sisi) thinks only one institution can do this: the military. This recalls the 50s and 60s when another former army officer, Gamal Abdel Nasser, ruled the country and was the most powerful of all Arab leaders.

Cambanis, writing in Time magazine, says: ‘According to advisers who’ve heard his private comments, al-Sisi wants Egypt to project power in the region, rather than be seen as a basket case that can be manipulated by the oil sheikhs in the Gulf’.

If al-Sisi really does want Egypt to assert its former military muscle, he might have an opportunity beyond the country’s borders. Ethiopia is building a dam on the Blue Nile – part of Egypt’s lifeblood – and, if al-Sisi sees this as a threat to his citizens’ fresh water supply, he may see that as a just cause for military action.

What of the Moslem Brotherhood? Ashraf Khalil, a Cairo journalist and author, says if it has any hope of playing a future political role, ‘it needs to acknowledge – to itself and the rest of Egypt – that its downfall was partially its own fault. Through a combination of arrogance, incompetence and ham-fisted politics, Morsi and the Brotherhood managed to systematically alienate every potential ally they had’.

Whatever displeasure the West has felt at a democratically-elected government being overthrown has been muted. Under the Foreign Assistance Act, the U.S. is supposed to reduce or suspend aid to guilty regimes. But little has happened apart from delaying the delivery of some Apache helicopters. No doubt this is because Egypt can be counted on to curb terrorism and has been a steadfast supporter of Western interests, thanks in part to its military and economy relying so much on Washington’s aid.

In the months and years ahead, you can be sure that Egypt’s formidable security apparatus will be closely monitoring sermons in the mosques for any sign of dissent. As it is even today, the clerics are supposed to follow official government advice of what sermon topics are acceptable.

John Tulloh had a 40-year career in foreign news.

​As a young man, Tony Abbott backpacked across India in 1981, and spent six weeks at the Australian Jesuit mission in Bihar state. He was fascinated by the country’s many contrasts, from its bullock carts to its nuclear power stations.

His Indian exposure since then has been limited, but the Australian Prime Minister says he has always taken India seriously and has made it clear in his speeches and his interaction with the Indian community in Australia that he wants a much closer and deeper relationship.

With Narendra Modi as India’s new leader, he has chance to do just that. Abbott was quick to call Modi and congratulate him when his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) scored a decisive electoral victory earlier this month, saying on May 17 that he looked forward to strengthening ties between the two countries.

Modi’s priorities, of course, are not the same as Abbott’s. Modi lives in a much more volatile world, where relations with Pakistan, China, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Nepal and Afghanistan take precedence, and where domestic terrorism, social stability, food and energy security, job creation, infrastructure development and health issues are of overwhelming importance.

Still, like Abbott, Modi is conservative, pragmatic and pro-business, with a mandate to get things done. Abbott and Modi may not otherwise be natural soul mates, but Abbott is eager to turn what he calls a “neglected” Australia-India relationship into something much more substantial and balance it against the other Asian heavyweight, China, in the areas of trade, strategic cooperation and people to people ties.

India’s GDP of $1.8 trillion lags well behind China’s $10 trillion, but with an economic pick-up on the cards and a growing middle class of several hundred million out of a total population of 1.25 billion, India is a target market of considerable size.

For Australia, there is potentially much more trade in energy and resources (including ultimately, uranium) and agribusiness, and in services such as education, engineering and finance. For India, there are opportunities in manufactures such as medicines, jewellery and motor vehicles and in services such as tourism and information technology. In terms of direct foreign investment, India already has built stakes in Australian coal mines, other metals and food.

The raw statistics show just how much work remains.  Australia’s total two-way trade in goods and services runs at about $625 billion a year, but India accounts for only about $17 billion of this, or less than 3 per cent. That is roughly the same amount of business Australia does with Malaysia, but is way behind trade with the big four of China ($150 billion), Japan ($70 billion), the United States ($54 billion) and South Korea ($30 billion). Even Singapore ($27 billion), New Zealand ($21 billion) and the UK ($19 billion) rank ahead of India among Australia’s main trading partners.

In his first major foreign policy speech in Melbourne last year, Abbott ascribed the relatively modest trade flows partly to “India’s long preoccupation with the non-aligned movement and statist economics; and partly because of Australia’s historical amnesia and fascination with China.”

Certainly Australia’s economic relationship with China has rocketed ahead in the past two decades and it would be fair to say that while Abbott is a little more wary of China than his recent predecessors Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd were, he has continued the fascination. In April Abbott led a large trade delegation to China, Japan and South Korea; at the Boao Forum on the Chinese island of Hainan, he told his hosts: “Australia is not in China to do a deal, but to be a friend. We don’t just visit because we need to, but because we want to.”

His avowed goal is to add a China free trade agreement as quickly as possible to those already signed with Australia’s two other big North Asian trade partners. So far, we haven’t seen much sense of urgency about a free trade agreement with India, though in 2011 Australia and India did begin negotiations for an FTA-style “comprehensive economic cooperation agreement.”

But it’s not an “either-or” thing with China and India. There is ample opportunity for Australia to grow its business ties with India without threatening anything it has with China. The first step is for Abbott to build some personal rapport with Modi and to take any residual heat out of the relationship left by past kerfuffles over perceived discrimination and the attacks on students in Melbourne.

Unless Abbott can shuffle his packed schedule to squeeze in a visit to India in the next few months, it is likely his first chance to meet Modi as Prime Minister will be at the G20 leaders’ summit in Brisbane in November. Before that, Australia will host the G20 trade ministers’ meeting in Sydney in July, with India’s new Trade Minister likely to attend. At both these events, the focus will be global rather than bilateral.

In Melbourne last December, Abbott observed that “no one should underestimate India now, nor its potential to be a global superpower in this century.” His challenge – and to a lesser extent that for Modi – is to expand trade, investment and defence ties, and nurture some new areas of mutual interest that go beyond the old staples of democracy, rule of law, the English language, and a love of cricket.

Geoff Hiscock writes on international business and is the author of several books, including “Earth Wars: The Battle for Global Resources” and “India’s Global Wealth Club,” both published by Wiley

Tony Abbott is shortly to visit Japan. He should be aware of the serious ultra-nationalist trend in Japan. That ultra-nationalism in the past has brought tragedy to the Japanese people and our region. The chief exponent of this ultra-nationalism in Japan is Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe,who will be his host.

I believe that Japan is at a tipping point in its domestic politics and in its relations particularly with China and the Republic of Korea – countries that it has invaded and colonised in the past. 

I am presently in Japan and my friends express to me increasing concern about the rising trend of ultra-nationalism. The nature of that ultra-nationalism is set out in my earlier post, which is below. My friends grew up in Japan where the majority was clearly influenced by the tragedies of the past and wanted to maintain a pacifist approach to the future. That approach has served Japan well since 1945. There is now concern however that generations of young people in Japan have never experienced the tragedy that war brought to their parents and grandparents. 

There are encouraging signs that elements within Prime Minister Abe’s government and also Coalition partners, Komeito, are concerned about what Prime Minister Abe proposes. Hopefully they will prevail. Tony Abbott would be wise to urge caution on his host when he visits Japan. But I wonder if he understands what is at stake.      John Menadue

Tony Abbott has told us that Japan is Australia’s best friend in the region. I don’t think the relationship with Japan should be expressed that way, but if we take what Tony Abbott says literally, a good friend should tell the Prime Minister of Japan Shinzo Abe that there is disquiet in the region and amongst Japan’s many friends about the ultra-nationalist course that Prime Minister Abe is pursuing.  His actions and those of his colleagues including the Foreign Minister are causing particular concern in China and in the Republic of Korea who suffered from Japanese occupation. This is not just a silly cultural war that PM Abe is conducting over words and with few consequences. With Japan’s history this is serious. Germany has gone to great pains to purge so much of its past. But Japan’s past keeps coming to the surface when it is bidden.

Prime Minister Abe upped the ante in a visit to Yasukuni Shrine, the core of the discredited State Shinto of earlier years that brought tragedy to Japan and the countries of the Pacific. Prime Minister Abe says it was a private visit but it was a public denial of Japan’s wartime atrocities. Yasukuni honours the souls of 2 million war dead but also fourteen Class A war criminals. It features a museum that attempts to whitewash Japan’s war record. The US Embassy in Tokyo objected immediately to Prime Minister Abe’s visit to Yasukuni.  Julie Bishop took a month to respond and in a very lame way. “Such events (as the visit to Yasukuni Shrine) escalate the already tense regional environment”she said.

Prime Minister Abe has clearly set out to rewrite history and provoke both China and the ROK. His actions also offend the memories of Australian service people who suffered at the hands of the Japanese Imperial Army. It is remarkable that he attacks the ROK which is led by a conservative Korean President. His ultra-nationalism blots out any affinity with a fellow conservative. In his plans to rewrite Japanese history he continues to apply pressure to the Education Ministry and teachers to ensure that their textbooks are rewritten to be more “patriotic”.

Prime Minister Abe has made it clear that he wants to amend Article 9 of Japan’s war renouncing constitution and develop a significant counter-strike military capability. I have not yet heard any suggestion that he will discuss this with Japan’s neighbours or Australia.

With his symbolic visit to Yasukini Shrine PM Abe can rely on a coterie of acolytes to carry on his revision of history.  He has appointed five new members out of twelve to NHK, Japan’s public broadcaster which is similar to our ABC. All the five new members are close to the Prime Minister. That is not so surprising, but one of the appointees, Naoki Hyakuta, described the Tokyo War Crimes Trials as designed to ‘fool people’. Hyakuta went on to add that the 1937 Nanjing massacre of possibly 300,000 Chinese by the Japanese Imperial Army was a fiction.

Katsuto Momii, with the strong backing from Prime Minister Abe, has been appointed Director-General of NHK. At his first press conference Momii said that the recruitment of ‘comfort women’ was not a problem. He has refused to retract that comment. He endorsed Abe’s visit to the Yasukuni Shrine.

The Asahi Shimbun reported this week that “books and periodicals highly critical of China and South Korea are flying off the bookshelves”. At the Tokyo Municipal election last weekend Toshio Tamogami an ultra-nationalist candidate ran fourth with 611 000 votes or 12% of total votes. He was a former Air Self-Defence chief who said during the election as reported by Asahi Shimbun that “the war of aggression, the 1937 Nanking Massacre and comfort women were all fabricated”. The Secretary General of PM Abe’s LDP party said that “Tamogawa was in complete agreement with LDP policies.” The public mood is moving to the nationalist right.  More and more people including officials will bend with the prevailing wind that PM Abe is generating.

To show his friendship to Japan, Tony Abbott sided with Japan over the disputed islands in the East China Sea. Australia should stay out of that dispute. In respect of the dispute over the islands with China, Prime Minister Abe has suggested that war between Japan and China is possible as he made clear by likening the situation to 1914.

One cannot visit the sins of the grandfather on the son or the grandson, but Prime Minister Abe  is pursuing the same hostile and ultra-nationalistic attitudes to the region as shown earlier by his grandfather, former Prime Minister Nobusuki Kishi. In 1935 Kishi became a top official in the industrial development of Manchuko, where he was subsequently accused of exploiting Chinese labour.  He was appointed Minister of Munitions by Prime Minister Hideki Tojo. After the war, Kishi was held at Sugamo prison as a Class A war crimes suspect.  Unlike Tojo, he was released from Sugamo prison in 1948 and was never indicted or tried. Kishi’s relationship with grandson Abe may seem unimportant but they both share similar ultra-nationalist aspirations.

When Tony Abbott visits Japan in April he should tell Prime Minister Abe that neighbours and many friends of Japan are worried about the course on which he is set. He is the most belligerent leader that we have seen in Japan for decades. He foolishly attempts to conduct diplomacy with the US and Australia over the heads of his neighbours. Their hostile response is not surprising. We have an interest in telling the Japanese Prime Minister and being frank with him that we are concerned.

Many countries and many people have put great effort into reconciliation with Japan and its people. I have tried to do my part. We must ensure that that reconciliation is not undermined by a reckless Japanese Prime Minister.

John Menadue was Australian Ambassador to Japan 1977-1980. He was instrumental in the establishment of the Australia Japan Foundation and was subsequently Chair of the Foundation. He was also instrumental in establishment of the Working Holiday Agreement with Japan, the first between Australia and a country in the Asian Region. He was awarded the Grand Cordon of the Order of the Sacred Treasure by the Japanese Emperor in 1997 for services to Australia-Japan relations.

Thaksin undoubtedly engaged in some corrupt activities. Whether he was more corrupt than the other mob is hard to say but he did get the numbers by actually doing something for the poor peasants especially in the depressed areas of the north and northeast. His critics accuse him of pork barreling but that is a well established democratic procedure. Whatever his motives, he did actually do something to improve the lives of the poor and they voted for him in droves.

The Bangkok establishment takes the view that democracy is mob rule and the unwashed masses really need their betters to look after them. No doubt theBangkok elite is better educated and more sophisticated than the rural masses but essentially what they are arguing for is oligarchy. They believe that peasants with dung between their toes should not be allowed to decide who runs the country. So if you want to point the finger, the blame must surely be put squarely on the yellow shirts who refused to accept the election result. Their claim to represent the king is nonsense because the king is just as revered in the countryside by the red shirts.

The army is a vehicle for the poor to get an education and rise in status so there would be many in the lower ranks who sympathise with the peasants. The top echelons tend to identify with the conservatives but there is at least some potential for differences of opinion within the army. It is probably too early to be sure what the army is going to do. Ideally, they should supervise free elections soon and support whoever wins. This could happen but may not. We just have to wait and see. To be fair, the armed forces did stay out of things for a long time while the civilian politicians and their supporters squabbled.

The role of the King is unclear. The army says he has given them a mandate but we have only their word for that. It is obvious that the King is sick but it is not clear just how much he is able to exercise control over events as he has done in the past.

In short, we should not jump to firm conclusions just yet. Coups are nothing new to Thais but there does seem to be more public opposition to this one than in the past. There is the potential for major clashes between the army and demonstrators which could lead to deaths but full scale civil war is unlikely. Compromise is much more in the Thai character.

There is not much Australia can do except keep our options open and watch developments. Public denunciations and sanctions are not helpful. If we have anything to say it should be done privately. The Government has so far been careful to avoid public comment and this is wise.

Gavan Hogue is a former Australian Ambassador to Thailand.

​Narendra Modi comes to office in India with two big advantages: the economic cycle is starting to turn up at last, and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has a clear majority in parliament that frees him from the coalition-style shackles that plagued his predecessor, Manmohan Singh.

The timing is right for Modi. After two years of sub-5 per cent growth, it looks like India’s economy will grow 5.2 per this year and 6.0 per cent in 2015, according to the latest outlook from regional analysis firm IMA Asia.

While that is still a long way from the 8 to 9 per cent boom days of 2010 and 2005-07, it offers hope of better times ahead for India’s 1.25 billion people, particularly for lower income earners who are eager to join the spending class.

One caveat is that the livelihoods of many of India’s 800 million rural dwellers will depend on how much rain this year’s southwest monsoon brings. The first monsoon rain is expected in Kerala in the south around June 5, but there is also a 60 per cent chance of a strong El Nino this year, according to the Indian Meteorological Department. That could bring drought conditions, which would have a big impact on rural incomes.

Whatever the weather, the new government’s policy settings will play a big role in how the economy performs.  Indian ratings and research agency CRISIL says the election result has created “the best environment in a long time to bite the bullet on government finances.” It says an agenda that improves India’s competitive stance by tackling inflation, introducing the long-awaited GST, reducing subsidies, recapitalising banks, fostering corporate debt markets and giving a “booster shot” to manufacturing will pave the way for a shot at 6.5 to 7 per cent annual GDP growth.

More broadly, Modi’s decisive win and pro-business outlook should encourage multinationals and domestic companies alike to dust off their investment expansion plans. The one area where this won’t happen is in the modern retail sector, where Modi and the BJP remain opposed to foreign direct investment in multi-brand retailing.

That is a pity, because retailing is a job-intensive business of the type India desperately needs. The services sector, along with manufacturing and construction, is where growth must occur if Modi is to make any headway against one of India’s biggest challenges: providing jobs for the 13 to 15 million young people who seek to enter the labour market every year. International retailers such as Tesco want to expand their operations in India and would bring new skills, technology and job opportunities to the table if allowed. But for now, Modi and the BJP are more concerned about protecting the livelihoods of the 13 million “kirana,” or family-owned corner stores, that are the backbone of India’s retail scene.

Consulting firm McKinsey estimates that India needs to add 115 million new non-farm jobs over the next decade to cater for a growing population and to reduce agriculture’s overall share in employment. Labor market flexibility and more vocational training for the poor and uneducated are among the steps it says are required.

One of India’s biggest handicaps remains its poor performance in infrastructure development. It has hundreds of road, rail, port and power projects on its books, but they seem forever mired in red tape, corruption and disputes about land zoning, jurisdiction, relocation and environmental factors. Modi brings to the table the model of his home state Gujarat, where the electricity always runs – courtesy of profitable private power stations — and where businesses such as automotive plants have been encouraged to set up. The central government’s role in state-based infrastructure development is limited, but Modi’s mantra of “minimum government, maximum governance,” should at least encourage some movement on the national infrastructure front.

Internationally, Modi will find the existing policy settings do not require too much fiddling. Pakistan, as always, is the key security challenge, but at least Modi is amenable to a dialogue with his counterpart Nawaz Sharif, who has already invited him to visit Islamabad. Modi talks tough on China over territorial issues, yet is pragmatic enough to want expanded business ties. Likewise, China says it wants to take relations with India to a “new height.” Modi likes Vladimir Putin and got a congratulatory call from Barack Obama, so he may be able to improve India’s energy security outlook in the way he deals with Russia and the United States over oil and gas supplies and nuclear technology, though the nuclear civil liability issue is not fully resolved. He also likes Japan’s assertive leader Shinzo Abe – the pair follow each other on Twitter – with Abe tweeting this week: “Great talking to you, Mr Modi. I look forward to welcoming you in Tokyo and deepening our friendly ties.”

And what of the man Modi is replacing, the long-serving Manmohan Singh?  Widely regarded as a good and decent man, Singh was brought low by the dynastic politics of the Congress Party, and the sheer complication of heading a fractious agglomeration of self-interested parties. His best legacy goes back to the early 1990s; as finance minister he brought in a series of reforms that allowed India to slough off the Raj-era mindset and embark on a more vigorous growth path. Sadly, too many of his colleagues at the state and federal level still believe in the “pay to play” approach to governing the world’s biggest democracy. Let’s hope Modi’s mandate cuts corruption and gives India the boost it so desperately needs.

Geoff Hiscock writes on international business and is the author of several books, including “Earth Wars: The Battle for Global Resources,” and “India’s Global Wealth Club,” both published by Wiley.  

In a process that shows no sign of ending soon, Thailand’s unstable governance has reached another crisis.

The Acting Prime Minister has been tipped out only to be replaced by an Acting Acting Prime Minister who is himself to face judgment for his part in the failed scheme to stabilize the price of rice.

These judicial decisions – seen by many to be actions of courts tainted by their association with the anti – Shinawatra, Royal establishment – are now the trigger needed to bring the opposition back onto the streets of Bangkok. However, more prosecutions to come will now follow these latest incidents. Ousted Acting Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra is to face proceedings over up to another dozen alleged misdeeds.

But a situation that supplies ample opportunity for a Thai version of an operetta worthy of Gilbert and Sullivan’s satire of the British in the 19^th Century could turn darkly unamusing over the next week. It is now time for the long–frustrated forces of the two sides – those loyal to Thaksin Shinawatra and his sister Yingluck arrayed against those claimed by the leader of the opposition parties, Suthep Thaugsuban – go on the streets. They may engage and the whole situation could descend into anarchy. That will trigger military intervention to prevent what would become a civil war.

In the meantime, the big cloud handing over the current government is its next meeting with destiny when there is a court assessment of the failed rice purchasing scheme. In what looked like a masterstroke in the use of public funds to sustain the loyalty of rice farmers who are mostly supporters of the Shinawatra family, the government agreed to pay a fixed price to the farmers for their produce irrespective of the global market price  for the commodity.

The Government has not only sluggishly complied with this deal. Its full honoring jeopardizes the country’s economic viability. It could send the government into bankruptcy.

The numbing reality is that both sides of the contest are riddled with what is part of doing business in Thailand – corruption. Both parties are incredible; neither proposes anything approaching a sustainable vision for Thailand’s future; neither has leadership that offer comfort to investors that the rule of law and the practice of honest politics will be followed; the courts seem the plaything of interest tied to one side of politics.

Without the Royal intervention that is unlikely, a divided society and paralyzed political processes look seem set to get worse. In the past, Royal intervention has brought an end to civil disturbance through the imposition of martial law. But in the King’s physical state, with advanced if undeclared diseases in his old age, such magic solutions that resolved conflicts that would only recur later appear to be too fantastic to expect.

Three words for Shinzo Abe––and for history. Three words: ‘…including Senkaku islands’ (was Obama’s omission of the definite article ‘the’, one wonders, part of a subconscious hesitation?). Thus a US president for the first time explicitly committed his country to defend Japan if it should come to blows with China in their territorial dispute.

Barack Obama affirmed that the islands were covered by Article V of the Japan-US Security Treaty which states: ‘Each Party recognizes that an armed attack against either Party in the territories under the administration of Japan would be dangerous to its own peace and safety and declares that it would act to meet the common danger in accordance with its constitutional provisions and processes.’

While no different from the position enunciated previously by other members of his administration, in its language and setting––a joint news conference with Abe standing alongside him during a state visit to Japan––Obama’s endorsement of the status quo in the East China Sea was significant. It is exactly what Abe wanted to hear, after months of anguished commentary in the Japanese media suggesting the US might be turning into a fair weather ally. But the comparatively muted official response from China is also interesting: a sign that Beijing heard the president when he said he was not stating a new position. The words might be on the record, but was there is any greater will behind them?

A visit by a US president to Japan as a state guest (the most elaborate form of diplomatic visitation) is uncommon. The last one was 16 years ago. Reportedly the Americans took some persuading to set aside the minimum three days required. Such occasions can serve to elevate a bilateral relationship to a new level, and they can draw attention to areas of disagreement as well as agreement. On the territorial dispute, for instance, the main focus was on the US commitment to fight alongside Japan. Obama, however, also stressed the importance of ‘dialogue’ to resolve the dispute, and avoiding ‘escalation’, which implicitly binds Japan to keep its power dry.

As for the other big-ticket item on the agenda, trade liberalisation, Japan had hoped the impetus of a state visit would deliver an agreement. The strategy came up well short. Instead of sweetness and light, the impression gained in Tokyo was that the Americans were intent on extracting the highest price, in economic terms, for those three choice words on security. (Having said that, insiders already knew that Obama lacked the clearance from Congress to strike a deal with Japan, and nothing less than a trade coup would allow him to presume on Congress’s approval.)

Abe took a gamble early in his second administration when he went against the protectionists in his governing Liberal Democratic Party and led Japan into the Trans-Pacific Partnership. While trade liberalisation is necessary for his program of economic revitalisation, the disruptive risks of increased import competition, particularly in the agricultural sector, are not inconsiderable. Japan’s farming communities are the most exposed to the effects of an aging society, and there are far fewer employment alternatives in regional and rural areas than in the big cities. Farmers are a well-organised lobby group in a country where all politics is local.

In the TPP negotiations, the Americans are seeking a better deal on beef than was recently obtained by Australia, and they want a broader agreement to include various other farm goods, automobiles and intellectual property.

Japan’s TPP Minister, Akira Amari, is showing signs of wear and tear, admitting publically that if he were ever asked to do the job again, he would refuse. Amari and his US counterpart Michael Froman have held 25 hours of face-to-face negotiations, continuing even as Abe and Obama were tucking into their Ginza sushi––but without result. At one point it seemed Obama’s visit would end with no joint communiqué, which certainly would have left a bad taste. Officials eventually managed to cobble together a communiqué that reiterated the president’s statement on the Senkaku dispute and supported Abe’s drive to reinterpret the Japanese constitution to embrace the right of collective self-defence (hardly surprising, since this is already assumed in the bilateral security treaty quoted above). But when it came to the TPP talks, the document turned to fairy floss: ‘Today we have identified a path forward on important bilateral TPP issues. This marks a key milestone in the TPP negotiations and will inject fresh momentum into the broader talks.’ It takes some cheek just to write that down. Japanese sources claim the Americans held the communiqué hostage, delaying its release in an effort to wring extra trade concessions from Japan––if so, all that resulted was sweet talk.

Without a substantial trade deal soon the Obama administration risks a loss of domestic support for his much touted ‘rebalance’ to Asia. Likewise some of the gloss will come off Abe’s can-do image, particularly the credibility of his claim to want to break down structural rigidities in the Japanese economy. For all the pomp and ceremony, and three-star sushi, the two nations only managed to reaffirm the old––military––basis for their relationship rather than define the new.

For the Japanese, an unwanted byproduct of the state visit has been to draw attention in the US and elsewhere, through media commentaries and analysis, to Abe’s pivot to the right since he returned to office in 2012. Some observers are discovering this issue for the first time, while others have looked for fresh evidence from Obama’s visit with which to refine their sense of where events might be headed.

For the first group, it is always possible to overstate the situation––it is worth reiterating that Japan is not ‘rearming’, muzzling its news media or abandoning its democratic institutions. Nevertheless there are signs of a nationalistic revival, amid a period of heightened regional tensions. Against this background, the take out from Obama’s visit, I think, is disappointing. Having gone to Tokyo, he could not have said less than he did on the territorial issue––though he might have said more, for instance, on the mechanism by which the disputing parties might enter a dialogue. He came across more like a tourist than a statesman willing and able to engage Abe on fundamentals. If President Obama once seemed to represent a fresh, inclusive and future-oriented style of leader, he brought little or nothing of that to Tokyo. Which is more the pity, since he came at a time, without doubt, when Japanese are questioning whether what has served them well for almost 70 years can see them safe and strong into the future.

Walter Hamilton reported from Japan for the ABC for 11 years.