Geopolitics of Asia in 2017 – A YoungDiplomats overview !

Nowadays, international relations and diplomacy seem to be focusing on Donald Trump. The President of the United States, well known for his dangerous rhetoric, shook the entire planet. The world seems to be obsessed by the White House resident. But despite this situation, world politics hasn’t come to a halt. This article will deal with […]

Nowadays, international relations and diplomacy seem to be focusing on Donald Trump. The President of the United States, well known for his dangerous rhetoric, shook the entire planet. The world seems to be obsessed by the White House resident. But despite this situation, world politics hasn’t come to a halt.

This article will deal with everything you didn’t know about the East.

      Since January 2017, important milestones have been reached in the Pacific-Asian Region, that have not really been highlighted by mainstream media.

Here we will put you in the position of a Young Diplomat: in order to understand the world, we ask what is going on in other countries.

CHINA

Let’s move now more to the East, to China. If this country has been worried about the election of Donald Trump, the American president had virulent words against China and the phone call of the White House to Taiwan was not very appreciated by Beijing even the Trump administration admitted to support the One China Policy after. In fact the regional context worry Chinese leaders. On February the 6th, China respond to US verbal attack by an important military drill and test nuclear capable missile that could reach Japan, Taiwan and South Korea.

Added to that the situation in the East China Sea sea is very complicated too; multiple Chinese ships entered Japanese sovereign waters. The situation is very hard in this area. On February the 2nd, China was in opposition with the US because this country supports Japan for the claim of Diaoyus Islands. But if in geostrategic point of view, we foresee a lot of tensions in the case of economy everything is done in order to have better relations.

In February, China and the US agreed to have better economical relations according to newspaper Global Times. Added to that, Beijing is worried about the deployment of missiles in South Korea. Everything is unstable in this region.

South Korea

   Regarding the missiles, we saw recently a protest in South Korea against the installation of these weapons. In fact, since the beginning of the year, the country has seen many demonstrations because of the political situation. in South Korea we have a lack of leadership and this for this reason, we hadn’t seen many protests by the Korean government during North Korean provocations. In fact the country is very divided between pro and anti actual president who has been implied in different scandals ; but without verdict from the justice the president stayed in power, bringing the anger of koreans afflicted by the fact she stays in power.

Australia

     In Australia one of the most major event was indirectly the election of Donald Trump, in fact Canberra see Washington as an important partner, “the deputy officer of the Pacific” hasn’t got the same problem with China like Japan. In that way Australia wanted to preserve this balance of power between China and United States in this area. In fact Australia is really linked to China with some agreements, for the export of raw material from Australia to China, so provocation against China is not the best way for Australia. But in any case about security if some analysts are worried about the position of Canberra, Australia always followed United States in its war since the Korean war to Iraq. The country is one of the closest allies in the region.

The country of smile, Thailand

      Neighbour of the South Korea, the country of smile, Thailand seems to not laugh these days. In fact the most important political event is of course the funeral year of the king. But the policy is focused on the military dictatorship, defense minister said on February the 20th, protests will not be tolerated in order to protect the order inside the country. This warning followed the intention of dictators to delay general election which initially should have be done this year, but on January Thai leaders declared the delay of these elections. This dictatorship is very bad for the reputation of country where one of the most important economic sector is tourism. Because of the explosion of corruption since 2014, according to Amnesty International the country fall to the 101 country most corrupted when in 2015 the country was 76th.

Vietnam

           In Vietnam, the beginning of the year highlighted difficult tensions of Vietnam in the area, in fact Vietnam seeked for more cooperations with other countries « Courrier du Vietnam » on February the 16th reported that Laos and Vietnam wanted to have better cooperation against the criminality. Few days after two meetings took place with Thailand and Indonesia in order to have a better defense cooperation. All these meetings showed that Vietnam, threatening by the Chinese foreign policy, searched more allies in the area in order to prevent a chinese domination in the area.

Philippine    

 In Philippine, the controversial president Duterte, warned the rebellion of airstrike in February after 6 soldiers has been killed by the New People’s army. Despite his tough speaking, Duterte wanted peace. Also with the war on drugs, Duterte militarized the conflict called in February the intervention of the army. On the global affairs Duterte signed the Paris agreement on the climate, is an important step too.

Myanmar    

About Myanmar, country which try to have reach a political agreement, the army is accused of ethnic against Roghynia minority. In order to respond at such accusation, the army spoke during a press conference defending the institution against these accusations. One of the major problem of this country is despite the important advance on the political side to reach an agreement with minorities the illegitimate regime coupled with offensive by the army did not permit to recover peace in the country.

 

 As you could see, all of these was only major events, but that permit to keep in mind that the world is not centered on the western diplomacy, the world is not westernized and we have to deal with a lot of issues most of the time without the western interventions.

 

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