The Trans-Pacific Partnership: free trade at what costs? – analysis

Mexico, Canada, and Japan are all looking to join the agreement (the TPP-12), which would make the TPP the largest trade bloc in the world

Πηγή: bilaterals
By Eric Stadius and Elizabeth Briggs
August 22 2012

In November 2011, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced Washington’s official pivot to Asia. Outlining a vision for an Asia-Pacific Century, Secretary Clinton described a desired symbiotic and unfettered relationship between the two regions that will provide “unprecedented opportunities for investment, trade, and access to cutting-edge technology.”[1] Washington hopes this engagement will help in “strengthening bilateral security alliances, deepening working relationships with emerging powers, engaging with relational multilateral institutions, expanding trade and investment, forging a broad-based military presence, and advancing democracy and human rights.” With the TPP as a first step, the ultimate goal is to “build a web of partnerships and institutions across the Pacific that is durable and consistent with American interests and values.”

At the center of this pivot has been the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), an enigmatic trade pact that has been hailed as a true “21st century agreement.”[2] In negotiation since 2008, the TPP would link the United States with Australia, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam (the TPP-9) across a variety of economic platforms. Mexico, Canada, and Japan are all looking to join the agreement (the TPP-12), which would make the TPP the largest trade bloc in the world, encompassing some 700 million people and about $26 trillion USD in various forms of economic activity.

But, for the most part, the member countries have conducted negotiations for the TTP under the mantle of utmost secrecy. The true scope of the agreement has only become apparent due to a few leaked texts and sporadic reports from the signatory countries. Evidently, trade is only the beginning of the TPP’s jurisdiction as it also contains chapters on customs, cross-border services, telecommunications, government procurement, competition policy, cooperation and capacity building, investment, financial services, environmental regulations, and intellectual property rights.[3] The very breadth of the agreement would require the rewriting of numerous domestic laws in every signatory country, threaten the sovereignty and autonomy of domestic legal systems, enable environmental degradation by transnational corporations, impose harsh patent regulations, and severely limit access to information across the globe. However, the most significant issue regarding the TPP is the very lack of transparency. Hailed as a new century trade agreement, the lack of information made available to the public, including the U.S. Congress, hardly embraces the realities of the twenty-first century. Ultimately, it is evident that the TPP has the power to transform the global economy and the Pacific community alike, with serious ramifications, both positive and negative, throughout the region.

Trade and Agriculture

Although the initial goal of the TPP was the promotion of free trade, only 2 out of 26 chapters concern this subject. The countries involved stand to benefit from lower prices resulting from fewer barriers to trade, but damage to the livelihoods of many workers appears to be inevitable. In 2011, the TPP-9 generated a GDP of $17.8 trillion USD, with the United States contributing 85 percent of this figure. Approximately 5 percent of U.S. trade flows are to its fellow TPP-9 countries; in 2011, U.S. exports totaled $105 billion USD to these countries while imports reached $91 billion USD.[4] The addition of Japan, Mexico, and Canada would bring both the combined GDP to $26.6 trillion USD and the TPP’s share of U.S. trade flows to 40 percent.[5] The TPP in its current form is estimated to augment the U.S. economy by $5 billion USD by 2015 and $14 billion USD by 2025, but this figure would drastically increase under the potential TPP-12.[6] These fiscal benefits would be far less for the U.S. than for other of its partners as Washington already has signed free trade agreements with Australia, Canada, Chile, Malaysia, Mexico, Peru, and Singapore. Nevertheless, the U.S. hopes that this agreement will help it pivot its focus toward Asia politically by means of this regional forum, as well as economically by tapping East Asia’s increasing large disposable income.

Agriculture primarily drives regional trade and governmental control over domestic agricultural sectors will be significantly impacted by the TPP. Canada, in particular, is concerned about the mandate that would force Ottawa to alter its supply management policy that presently protects approximately 15,000 dairy and egg farmers. This action would effectively neutralize the industry on the world market because they would not be able to compete against cheaper goods coming from Australia and New Zealand. The OECD estimates that Canadians spend an additional $3 billion USD on food products annually as a result of Canada’s supply management policies.[7] Despite these concerns, Canadian Prime Minister Steven Harper reiterated his eagerness to join negotiations at the June G20 summit in Los Cabos, declaring, “This is a further example of our determination to diversify our exports and to create jobs, growth and long-term prosperity for Canadian families,” especially because Canada lacks FTAs with East Asian countries.[8] Canada’s dairy supply management program is only one a number of policies practiced throughout the region that would detract from the benefits of free trade and manipulate the agreement to benefit domestic interests.

Nevertheless, there is no question that the TPP as it now stands would benefit regional trade. As Laura Dawson, an expert on Canadian trade relations explained, the number of regional alliances and FTAs complicates transactions and creates a “noodle bowl” of international trade, one that increases the cost of exportation by an average of 5 percent.[9] Consolidating the restrictions and regulations under one agreement would help cut down these costs, hopefully inducing further economic integration. With billions of dollars in potential gains, this integration is what truly generates interest in specific countries and points to what could be the most salient benefit from the TPP.

Transparency

The major concerns regarding the TPP surround the dearth of transparency provided by signatory countries. At the beginning of the negotiations, the United States Trade Representative (USTR) issued a statement declaring that the TPP is an “ambitious, next-generation, Asia-Pacific trade agreement that reflects U.S. priorities and values.”[10] President Obama’s own endorsement stated that the TPP will “boost our economies, lowering barriers to trade and creating more jobs for our people.”[11] But beyond these vague declarations, no one outside of the negotiators’ inner circles has been allocated detailed information regarding the treaty. Indeed, the public probably knows more about the defense budget and the aggregate deployment of U.S. nuclear warheads than it does about the U.S. position on the TPP.

In the recently concluded 13th round of negotiations in San Diego, the USTR invited 300 registered stakeholders to participate in a “Stakeholder Engagement Forum;” however, save for the cleared advisors—primarily industry representatives—few “had any clue what was really going on.”[12] As David Levine, an associate professor at Elon University School of Law and one of those invited to attend the forum, reflected, “The only thing that I knew with certainty was that I didn’t know much about what was happening in the TPP negotiations, and therefore I couldn’t offer much in the way of substantive questions and input.” Levine also signed an open letter from law professors around the world to USTR Ambassador Ron Kirk, which argued that the USTR must improve transparency in the negotiating process if indeed the goal is “to create balanced law that stands the test of modern democratic theories and practices of public transparency, accountability, and input.”[13]

Not even Congress effectively has participated in the TPP negotiation process. On June 27, 132 members of Congress petitioned Ambassador Kirk to “provide [them] and the public with summaries of the proposals offered by the U.S. government.” They pushed the USTR to adopt a similar approach as during the Free Trade Area of Americas (FTAA) negotiations, when drafts of the text were released to Congress and the public.[14] In a largely symbolic move, Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) introduced a bill that would require the White House to distribute TPP documents. His calls have been mirrored by congressmen from both sides of the aisle; as Senator Richard Burr (R-N.C.) declared: “When our staff requested to review the TPP on behalf of the senator, even staff with what we consider to be appropriate clearance were denied.”[15]

Clearly, these closed-door negotiations do not resemble the White House’s vision of the TPP as a “21st century trade agreement.” Alarmingly, the President noted that the TPP was supposed to become “a high-level trade agreement that could potentially be a model, not just for countries in the Pacific region, but the world in general.”[16] However, the Obama Administration is not embracing the realities of the modern informative network, setting a detrimental precedence for such an important agreement. The USTR claims that this has been the most transparent FTA to date. Yet the USTR also argues that the TPP is not simply an FTA, but rather an international agreement in which trade is only one element involved in the negotiations. In this respect, the TPP has not lived up to the precedent set in such negotiations as the FTAA or in organizations such as the Asian Pacific Economic Community (APEC). Indeed, beyond any substantive concerns regarding the text of the TPP, the lack of transparency might be the most troubling aspect of the proposed pact.

Investment Chapter[17]

In a 2008 campaign speech, President Obama promised: “We will not negotiate trade agreements that stop the government from protecting the environment, food safety, or the health of its citizens; or give greater rights to foreign investors than to U.S. investors.”[18] Almost every provision promised in this speech has been violated by the TPP proposal, primarily in the recently leaked investment chapter. This chapter has become particularly contentious even within the sealed negotiations with Australia refusing to sign the provision. Using a broad definition of investment, provisions contained in the chapter will enact international laws that will protect anything from existing investments by domestic firms in foreign countries to shares and derivatives, public-private partnerships, mining and manufacturing licensing and permits, as well as expected future profits of other TPP investors. Therefore, the chapter defines investment far beyond the traditional bounds of real property.

The investment chapter threatens the national sovereignty of signatory nations due to the creation of an arbitrary international tribunal that could bypass domestic laws when it comes to ruling on investor-to-state disputes. This tribunal follows the trend of treaties subordinating the role of national legal systems in dispute resolutions. Thus, if an investor believes that a law, regulation, policy, or program in a foreign country has violated his or her rights—even if the foreign government implemented those laws for the welfare of its citizenry—the investor can sue the foreign government for compensation in an international tribunal.[19] As B.S. Chimini argues, “it is not the greater internationalization of interpretation and enforcement of rules that is problematic but its differential meaning for, and impact on, third world states and people.”[20] Over $350 million USD have been paid out by governments to corporations in these investor-state cases, such as the one between Renco and the Peru (detailed later), which attack anything from natural resource policy to health and safety measures.[21]

Because the TPP removes the host state of the foreign investors from litigation, investors would be capable of exploiting loopholes such as Most Favored Nation (MFN) status or utilizing the broad definition of indirect expropriation to pick advantageous standards and dispute settlement mechanisms.[22] These investor-to-state negotiations will enable transnational corporations to reap profits from foreign citizens over policy in the countries where the corporations operate, even when no international state-to-state disputes exist.

Intellectual Property Chapter[23]

The intellectual property chapter appears to carry with it the most substantive changes to international law to be found in the entire TPP. A leaked text, available via House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), details a harsh copyright law, mirroring that of the United States, which has the potential to alter domestic laws throughout the region. This chapter, driven primarily by the U.S., if adopted in its current state, would enact the strongest intellectual property protection and enforcement standards in any FTA to date. The proposed document embraces the controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) and recalls the rejected Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), pushed by the powerful pharmaceutical and Hollywood-funded lobbying firms in Washington, by altering the ability to access information and vital resources for developing countries. The primary issues in the intellectual property chapter surround the extension of copyright, restriction of parallel importation, the enforcement of new laws, and the ramifications for such products as textbooks and medicine. The intellectual property chapter best exemplifies the maximalist stance Washington has taken in these negotiations, which contradicts the development agenda proposed in more transparent, multilateral agreements such as the 1994 WTO Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights Agreement (TRIPS).

In terms of copyright, the TPP will dramatically expand its minimum international standards in scope and length, many of which do not even reflect settled U.S. law. The treaty proposes to lengthen copyrights on published works; under the treaty they would expire 70 years after the death of the author or no less than 95 years from the first authorized publication. This would extend the length of copyright in a significant portion of signatory countries as well as annul the TRIPS standard of 50 years after death or 50 years after publication. Although this copyright period mirrors U.S. law, the U.S. law sets 70 years post-mortem as a ceiling, while the TPP denotes this as a minimum length. These extended laws go against economic rationality, as the government cannot incentivize the creation of work that already exists under copyright, thus it draws no additional economic benefits. Rather, the extended laws would cut supply in the creative goods sector, particularly in developing countries where the public domain plays an increasingly important role in information dissemination.[24]

The intellectual property chapter further enables the patent or copyright holder to block parallel importation of copyrighted works. Parallel importation is the practice of importing a legitimate copyrighted good, not an illegal reproduction, at lower prices than what is available domestically without the permission of the copyright holder.[25] Many of the smaller TPP countries benefit from this practice because they lack the sufficient population or demand to attract a low market entry price. For example, with the TPP in effect, a school in Malaysia or Peru would be forced to purchase textbooks at higher domestic prices rather than contracting with a buyer who could purchase the textbooks at a lower price in a market such as the United States and then sell them to the school at the lower price. The restrictions on parallel imports remain unsettled or unenforced in every TPP signatory nation, including the United States. The current international laws surrounding this practice, denoted in TRIPS, leave countries free to adopt their own policies based on their domestic intellectual property laws.[26]

Another area where the proposed TPP text threatens domestic laws and the pre-existing international intellectual property framework involves the easing and expansion of patentability standards. The TRIPS provision only allows for additional patents on a product or process if the addition has industrial applicability or alters the function of the product.[27] The TPP, however, would allow additional patents for any new form, use, or method of utilizing an existing product, even if no applicability or efficiency measure exists.[28] Where this technique, known as evergreening, is most applicable is within the competing pharmaceutical and generic medicine industries. As Doctors Without Borders argued, evergreening allows major pharmaceutical companies to extend monopoly protection by making slight alterations to existing formulas, delaying the arrival of a more affordable generic version.[29] The first generation of HIV antiretroviral drugs, in 2000 shortly before the patent expired, cost an average of $10,000 to $15,000 USD per person per year—far outside the means of an average person living in a developing country. However, by 2011, the price of a similar generic drug combination had fallen to merely $60 USD per person annually.[30] Under the current intellectual property chapter of the TPP, such a devaluation process would take far longer, keeping these important innovations in health care out of developing countries in exchange for greater profits for the major pharmaceutical companies. This provision further contradicts President Obama’s position on refusing to negotiate trade agreements that “prevent developing country governments from adopting humanitarian licensing policies to improve access to lifesaving medications.”[31]

The final area of concern in the proposed intellectual property chapter is the enforcement aspect of copyright infringement. The U.S. has proposed a multi-faceted scheme for patent violations that allows for prosecution based upon pre-existing or statutory damages, a provision that appears in U.S. law, but not in that of any other signatory nation. This part of the TPP proposal takes the ability to punish infringers one step further by allowing for the prosecution of every infringer, rather than only willful ones.[32] This provision encourages a rent-seeking behavior on patent filing and deters innovation, both of which could prevent advances beneficial to social and economic development.

Euro falls in Asia after France, Greece elections

Πηγή: EUbusiness
By AFP
May 7 2012

(TOKYO) - The Euro fell Monday in Asian markets after the defeat of ruling parties in French and Greek elections, as investors worried about a knock-on effect on European austerity measures.

At 7:25 am in Tokyo (2225 GMT Sunday), the euro was at $1.2982, down from $1.3082 on Friday at 2100 GMT in New York.

In France, Socialist challenger Francois Hollande was set to be confirmed as France's president-elect, after his predecessor President Nicolas Sarkozy conceded defeat, according to nearly complete results issued on Sunday.

With 91 percent of the ballots counted, the Socialist winner had 51.56 percent of the ballots while Sarkozy had 48.44 percent.


Analysts said the victory underscored the politically difficult task of selling austerity measures ushered in to tackle eurozone nations' huge debts, with Hollande advocating economic growth over deep public spending cuts.

"The Hollande win in France is not necessarily a surprise. However it brings home the reality that incumbents following the (European Union's) prescribed austerity measures are going to find it difficult to remain elected," National Australia Bank said in a note.

"What happens to these austerity measures now are what are weighing on (the euro)."

Greek voters meanwhile showed their lack of enthusiasm for belt tightening, dousing hopes that Athens will stick to its austerity pledges as parties opposing more cuts won almost 60.0 percent support in an election Sunday.

The two main parties suffered heavy losses, with the conservative New Democracy and the left-wing Pasok getting just 32.0 to 34.5 percent between them, down from 77.4 percent at the last polls in 2009.

New Democracy, led by Antonis Samaras, remained the largest party but it fell short of an absolute majority in parliament.

"Greece's elections may prove the more unstable, with the possibility of another in the near future," the bank said in its research note.

"As it stands there is no clear winner, but there are likely to be calls to ease up on the austerity reforms," it added.

Focus of Russia's resource diplomacy may shift to Far East

Πηγή: Asia News Network
By The Yomiuri Shimbun

Jan 28 2012

The Republic of Sakha, also known as Yakutia, in eastern Siberia is the coldest inhabited area on Earth, with the mercury sometimes dropping to minus 50 deg C.

It also is home to the gigantic Chayanda gas field, located within the taiga biome of coniferous forests. The field has an estimated 1.24 trillion cubic metres of recoverable gas reserves, equal to 13 years of Japan's imports of natural gas.

A project will get under way this year to lay a 3,000-kilometer pipeline from the Chayanda field to Vladivostok in the Russian Far East.

"When the pipeline is completed, we'll be able to meet any supply requirements for gas from Japan, China and South Korea," Vladimir Vasilyev, deputy executive director of a subsidiary of state-run gas corporation Gazprom, said proudly.

In preparation for the full-scale start of gas exports from Siberia to Asian countries, a Japan-Russia joint project is under way to construct a liquefied natural gas plant in Vladivostok.

Following feasibility studies scheduled to be completed this month, work will begin on basic design of the plant, with an eye to beginning operations around 2020.

A senior Gazprom official said the plant will "serve as an LNG supply center for not only Japan but all of Asia".

Construction of the huge pipeline extending to Vladivostok from the gas field is a national project promoted by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin as an embodiment of his Asian strategy. Putin is considered certain to win Russia's upcoming presidential election in March, returning him to his former post.

Putin will try to maintain economic growth, an indispensable element in achieving a stable administration. So there is a strong possibility he will shift the focus of his diplomacy to Asia, a growth center of the world. The best weapon in this regard is natural resources.

"It sounds like an interesting idea," Putin reportedly said last August when he was briefed by an executive of the country's oil and gas industry about a plan to build a pipeline linking Sakhalin in the Russian Far East with Japan, where there were concerns about energy shortages in the aftermath of the Great East Japan Earthquake.

The president of a Japanese development company involved in the pipeline plan said, "We think Russia will surely go ahead with the project if arrangements are made by the Japanese side."

Putin is calling for Japan to also participate in the Chayanda development project.

Russia has been edging into the Japanese energy market in recent years. Russia accounted for 4.3 per cent of Japan's gas imports in 2009, but this percentage doubled to 8.6 per cent in 2010. Russia also provided 7 per cent of Japan's crude oil imports in 2010.

Putin will pursue natural resource diplomacy toward Tokyo. Joining Russian projects would provide a good chance for Japan to acquire resources and development rights, but there is also the danger that its energy security will be influenced by Russia.

Many in Japan have a strong aversion to relying too much on Russia, as the two countries have long been at odds over four Russian-held islands off Hokkaido.

According to diplomatic sources, opinions are divided on the matter within the Japanese government, with some favouring more cooperation with Russia to break away from its heavy reliance on the Middle East. Others feel Japan should not rely on Russia for more than 15 percent of its energy imports. Hence Japan's stance on the matter has not been decided.

Gazprom's head office in Moscow has a control centre to supervise all its pipelines. On a map of the Eurasian continent displayed on a huge screen, the European portion glitters with brilliant fluorescent colours indicating its extensive network of pipelines. The Far East and Siberian side remains dark.

Putin's ambition is to brighten the entire map.

Israel's 'Arrow' anti-missile system In Asia Anonymously

Πηγή: Strategy Page
Jan 22 2012

Israel has announced the sale of a $1.6 billion anti-missile system. All that was said about the customer was that it was not India and was Asian. The system in question is Arrow 2, and its Green Pine radar. The Arrow anti-missile system has been in service for 12 years and has racked up an impressive string of successes in test launches. Designed to deal with short and medium range ballistic missiles, it protects Israel from Syrian and Iranian missiles. That said, the most likely "Asian customer" is Taiwan, Japan or South Korea. All three could afford a $1.6 billion anti-missile system and all three might need one (against Chinese, North Korean and North Korean missiles respectively).

Israel itself has three batteries of Arrow anti-missile missiles. The latest battery to enter service (two years ago) has the new Oren Adir (Magnificent Pine) radar, which has a longer range and is better able to identify potential targets than the existing Green Pine radar. An Arrow battery has 4-8 launchers and each launcher carries six missiles in containers. The Arrow was developed to knock down Scud type missiles fired from Syria, Saudi Arabia, or Iraq. The two ton Arrow 1 is being replaced with the 1.3 ton Arrow 2, which can shoot down ballistic missiles fired from Iran. Israel is currently developing and testing an upgraded Arrow 2, which can take down longer range Iranian missiles. The even more effective Arrow 3 is not expected to be ready for use for 2-3 years.

The United States has long shared the expense of developing the Israeli Arrow anti-missile missile system. This includes contributing over a hundred million dollars for work on the Arrow 3. More than half the nearly three billion dollar cost of developing and building Arrow has come from the United States. In addition, American firms have done some of the development work or contributed technology. The U.S. has also provided Israel with a mobile X-band radar that enables it to detect incoming ballistic missiles farther away. Currently, the Israeli Green Pine radar can only detect a ballistic missile fired from Iran when the missile warhead is about two minutes from hitting a target in Israel. The X-band radar allows the Iranian missile to be spotted when it is 5-6 minutes away, enabling the Israeli Arrow anti-missile missile to hit the Iranian warhead farther away and with greater certainty. The Arrow 3 is expected to need something like the X-band radar to take advantage of the longer missile range. The Arrow 3 could also use satellite or UAV warnings of distant ballistic missile launches. Arrow 3 weighs about half as much as Arrow 2 and costs about a third less. First tests of Arrow 3 are to take place next year.

In 2010 Israel began increasing the production of its Arrow anti-missile missiles. Costing over three million dollars each, and partly constructed in the United States (by Boeing), the Arrow missiles are one of the few proven anti-missile systems available. Since Arrow entered service ten years ago, only about 120 missiles have been built. Currently, Israel has over a hundred Arrow missiles available and would like to increase that to 200 in the next few years.

China warns U.S. over new Asia-focused defense strategy

A colour guard of U.S. and Chinese flags awaits the plane of China's President Hu Jintao at Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland in this April 12, 2010 file photo. U.S. President Barack Obama unveiled a defense strategy on January 5, 2012 that would expand the U.S. military presence in Asia but shrink the overall size of the force as the Pentagon seeks to reduce spending by nearly half a trillion dollars after a decade of war.

Πηγή: National Post
By Chris Buckley (Reuters)
Jan 9 2012

BEIJING — China’s Ministry of Defence warned the United States on Monday to be “careful in its words and actions” after announcing a defence rethink that stresses responding to China’s rise by shoring up U.S. alliances and bases across Asia.

The statement from the ministry spokesman Geng Yansheng was Beijing’s fullest reaction so far to the new U.S. strategy unveiled last week. It echoed the mix of wariness and outward restraint that has marked China’s response to the Obama administration’s “pivot” to Asia since late last year.

“We have noted that the United States issued this guide to its defence strategy, and we will closely observe the impact that U.S. military strategic adjustment has on the Asia-Pacific region and on global security developments,” Geng said in a statement issued on the ministry’s website.

“The accusations leveled at China by the U.S. side in this document are totally baseless,” said Geng.

“We hope that the United States will flow with the tide of the era, and deal with China and the Chinese military in an objective and rational way, will be careful in its words and actions, and do more that is beneficial to the development of relations between the two countries and their militaries.”

The new U.S. strategy promises to boost strength in Asia in an attempt to counter China’s growing ability to check U.S. power in the region, even as U.S. forces draw back elsewhere across the globe.

Under the new strategy, the United States will maintain large bases in Japan and South Korea and deploy U.S. Marines, navy ships and aircraft to Australia’s Northern Territory.

The strategy calls for countering potential attempts by China and Iran to block U.S. capabilities in areas like the South China Sea and the Strait of Hormuz.

China has sought to balance voicing its wariness about the U.S. moves with its desire for steady relations with Washington, especially as both sides grapple with domestic politics this year, when President Barack Obama faces a re-election fight and China’s ruling Communist Party undergoes a leadership handover.

So far, Beijing officials have avoided the usual high-pitched assertions that Washington is bent on encircling China, a view widely echoed by popular Chinese newspapers and websites.

GROWING CONCERN

The expanded U.S. military presence in Asia is based on a miscalculation of Beijing’s intent to modernize its military defenses, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said on Monday.

“The accusation targeting China in the document has no basis, and is fundamentally unrealistic,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Weimin said at a regular news conference, in response to a question from state media about whether China poses a threat to U.S. security.

“China adheres to the path of peaceful development, an independent and peaceful foreign policy and a defensive national defence policy,” Liu added.

Still, there is growing concern in the United States and Asia about China’s military developments in recent years.

China has been expanding its naval might, with submarines and a maiden aircraft carrier, and has also increased its missile and surveillance capabilities, extending its offensive reach in the region and unnerving its neighbours.

The disputed ownership of oil-rich reefs and islands in the South China Sea, through which US$5-trillion dollars in trade sails annually, is one of the biggest security threats in Asia.

China is seen by many neighbours as increasingly assertive on the high seas, with several incidents in the past year in the South China Sea, waters claimed wholly or in part by China, Taiwan, the Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam and Brunei.

But Chinese President Hu Jintao has made clear he wants to avoid repeating the rifts that soured ties with Washington in the first half of 2011. Hu retires from power late in 2012 and his almost-certain successor, Vice President Xi Jinping, is likely to visit the United States in coming months.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Rise of China

Obama’s Trade Representative Ron Kirk informed U.S. Congress on December 14th, 2009, that the President “intends to enter into negotiations of a regional, Asia-Pacific trade agreement, known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Agreement with the objective of shaping a high-standard, broad-based regional pact.”

Πηγή: Foreign Affairs
By Bernard K. Gordon

Nov 7 2011

On October 14, in a speech to the Economic Club of New York, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton heralded the United States’ so-called pivot toward Asia, announcing, “The world’s strategic and economic center of gravity is shifting east.” Her remarks were part of a recent U.S. effort to reaffirm the United States’ role as a Pacific power, a response to worries among Asia-Pacific states about the rise of China and the United States’ long-term commitment to the region. U.S. President Barack Obama will reinforce this message later this month when he visits several Asian capitals and hosts the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Hawaii. Central to this regional policy is trade: with Congressional approval of the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement now behind him, Obama seeks to cement the United States’ economic role in Asia by finalizing the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement, a free trade pact currently being negotiated by Australia, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United States, and Vietnam.

When the negotiations are completed, the TPP agreement will bring most import tariffs on trade within the group to zero over a ten-year period. In addition to the merchandise traditionally included in previous such pacts, the TPP will cover services, intellectual property, investments, and state-owned enterprises, among other areas. Given its expansiveness, U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk has touted it as a “twenty-first century” agreement that will lead to a flourishing of regional trade.

But if the TPP were to remain as it is presently constituted -- without Japan’s inclusion -- the agreement would not be the economic boon many hoped it would. The TPP group accounts for only six percent of U.S. trade, about the same fraction as U.S. trade with Japan alone. Japan is a major importer of U.S. goods and services, and particularly of expensive advanced-technology products, such as jet engines, numerically controlled machine tools, and biotechnology products. And in contrast to the U.S. trade deficit with China, which is rising sharply, the trade imbalance with Japan is declining steadily. Washington understands all this, and has called for broadening the TPP to include Japan. Clayton Yeutter, a former U.S. trade representative, and the international trade lawyer Jonathan Stoel recently wrote in the Wall Street Journal that with Japanese participation, “trade in the Asia-Pacific region will explode. It could easily triple or quadruple.”

The United States was not always so bullish on trade with Japan. The idea of a U.S.-Japanese free trade agreement was first proposed by U.S. ambassador to Japan Mike Mansfield in the late 1980s, but, given fears about Japanese economic supremacy, few in the United States gave the idea serious consideration. Tokyo dismissed it as well, mainly because its economic outlook at the time centered on global multilateral trade rather than on regional trade agreements.

All that has now started to change. U.S. Deputy Secretary of State William Burns said in Tokyo in October that the United States would “welcome Japan’s interest in the TPP, recognizing of course that Japan’s decision to pursue joining will be made based on its own careful considerations of its priorities and interests.” For its part, Tokyo seems ready to join the talks. Japanese entry has been on the table since October 2010, when then Prime Minister Naoto Kan and his foreign minister, Seiji Maehara, both endorsed it. Of course, all trade issues were put on hold in March 2011 by the triple disasters of earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown. But Tokyo spent recent months testing the waters, and Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda is expected to announce this week that Japan will join the negotiations.

Japan’s new interest in the TPP stems from three factors. First is the fear generated by the U.S. free trade agreement with South Korea. Japan’s export industry has long been worried about near-identical Korean products in foreign markets, and Seoul’s access to U.S. consumers will only grow once the pact is implemented.

The second element is the declining political clout of Japanese agricultural interests. This group was long opposed to a free trade agreement with the United States because it feared that Japan’s small-scale and highly protected farmers would be overrun by lower-priced imports. But agriculture now accounts for less than 1.5 percent of Japan’s GDP, which has also meant a sharp decline in farm-related employment. The need to rebuild the economy in the wake of the March disasters amplified calls for reform of Japan’s outdated farming sector. This has eased the way for Japan’s exporters, led by the business federation Keidanren, to step up their pro-trade agenda.

The final factor is China’s new foreign policy assertiveness. An early sign was Beijing’s revival, in 2010, of claims to islands in the South China Sea, an issue that has roiled relations between China and its neighbors since the mid-1990s. In 2002, China and its neighbors in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations agreed to resolve the claims multilaterally, but China later insisted on dealing bilaterally with each neighbor. China’s foreign minister argued at the time, “China is a big country and other countries are small countries, and that’s just a fact.”

Japan bore the brunt of Chinese belligerence in September 2010, when a Chinese fishing trawler rammed one of its coast guard boats. When Japan arrested the trawler’s captain, Beijing demanded that Japan apologize and release him, and it stopped exports to Japan of crucial rare-earth minerals. Maehara, then foreign minister, called China’s reaction “hysterical”; now a central player in the Noda government, he is among Japan’s most popular politicians. In a recent speech in Washington, reflecting Tokyo’s assessment, he expressed worries about how China’s rise “alters the power balance of the game in the region.”

Such statements show that Japan has come a long way from where it was in 2009, when former Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama urged Japan to integrate more with Asia and to adopt a policy of “equidistance” between Beijing and Washington. The Noda government has instead reinforced its already close ties with Washington, and many Japanese now argue that Japan must join in the booming transpacific trade to escape the economic doldrums of the past two decades. “Japan should harness the energy of the Asia-Pacific region,” Noda said at a Democratic Party of Japan meeting in August, “and use it for economic recovery.”

The U.S. ambassador in Tokyo, John Roos, recently remarked that Japan’s inclusion in the TPP would be a “game changer.” He is right. A transpacific trade agreement with Japan on board would be a victory for the principle of an open international system. Moreover, as an adviser to Prime Minister Noda stated earlier this month, Tokyo joining the TPP talks would help it “consolidate a strategic environment that gives China the impression that Japan is a formidable country that can’t be intimidated.” Nations of the region need not succumb to the inevitability of a Pacific dominated by China. A Trans-Pacific Partnership composed of Japan, the United States, Australia, and the group’s smaller economies represents a healthier alternative -- one that realists would recognize as a step toward a classic balance of power.

Eastern promise - in harsh economic times, European submarine manufacturers look to South-East Asia

Πηγή: iQ
By Robert Knapp Nov 7 2011

Evening news broadcasts across the world are currently dominated by pictures of a smoke clouded Parthenon, and images of Athens engulfed in rioting and protest – these are off-course the most visible signs of the economic crisis that is currently wracking not only Greece, but Europe as a whole.

Within the austerity measures being implemented in Greece, there is also a microcosm of the European market for submarine platforms. A long-standing procurement program in Athens for purchasing six German Type 215 submarines has run out of money for investment, with the two most recently ordered subs cancelled, and concerns that it may need to sell off a further two.

Indeed, across Europe there are likely to be few new submarine procurement programs over the coming decade, with the major buyers of Italy, Germany, France and Britain fulfilling their needs for the foreseeable future. European submarine manufacturers are now hunting for new markets, and the largest of these is in South-East Asia, where a climate of increasing tension is leading to a heightening naval arms race.

The great submarine race

During the past years three of the main naval power of South-Asia have purchased or are in the process of purchasing diesel electric submarines. The most recent of these has been the Thai Navy’s move to purchase 6 ex-German Navy Type 206 subs. Whilst pending Parliamentary approval, Thailand’s attempts to procure are being mirrored in the Philippines, where they are looking to purchase a submarine by 2020 as part of a major naval modernisation program. One step ahead of Thailand and the Philippines are the Vietnamese Navy, who are awaiting delivery of six Kilo class submarines from Russia. These highly capable platforms will greatly expand the potential of the Vietnamese Navy, placing it at the front rank of Indo-Chinese naval powers.

Other nations with submarine fleets in the region include Malaysia, who purchased two Scorpene class boats from France in 2002. This move follows previous sale to Singapore in 1995 and Indonesia in the 1980’s, which had begun the trend in the region towards procuring submarines. Australia has also recently committed itself to a highly ambitious program to replace its current fleet of six Collins class boats with twelve highly advanced, cruise missile equipped attack submarines. Moving further afield, Japan, South Korea and India are also all engaged in significantly expanding their fleets of submarines.

What has spurred this recent rush towards the procurement of submarines? The answer clearly lies in the expansion of another powers naval capability – The Peoples Republic of China.

The Threat of the Dragon

Ever since the acute embarrassment of the 1996 Taiwan Crisis - in which United States Navy carrier battlegroups were able to operate with impunity off the Chinese coast - China has been committed to a program of naval modernisation and expansion. This wish to keep the US Navy away from China’s coastline is directed by a desire to ensure that Chinese policy makers cannot be so easily bullied by the US. There is also the increasingly Mahanian view of naval power which has permeated through the Chinese military high command, which has led to belief that as China expands to become one of the world’s top two economic powers she should have a navy to match. This economic expansion has also led to an increasing reliance upon the foreign import of many raw materials and Chinese Navy has increasingly ambitious plans to protect the movement of this flow of resources.

The physical manifestation of these varying ambitions has been an incredibly ambitious program of ship building – the most talked about of these being the hope to deploy several carrier battlegroups by 2020. Other areas of expansion include building large numbers of new destroyers and frigates, as well as one of the most ambitious submarine construction program in the world.

China has also adopted an increasingly muscular foreign policy that has seen it restating claims to the Spratly Islands and other off shore islands chains. This has led to increasingly heightened tensions in the region. In May 2011 Chinese Naval vessels opened fire on Vietnamese fishing trawlers, in just the latest in a series of increasingly heated clashes between vessels from the various powers competing for the sovereignty of the islands. There is the increasing concern that China intends to use its developing naval capacity to push its claims for the islands.

Regional powers with limited defence budgets, such as Vietnam, Thailand and Singapore, know that they cannot hope to challenge the Chinese navy in terms of quantity of vessels. So, they’re best hope to protect their interests or deter aggression is through purchasing capabilities which China will find hard to deal with – the most effective of these being the submarine.

In the shallow, crowded waters of the South-China Sea it is very easy for skilled captains of small, diesel electric submarines (the main type being procured) to keep themselves concealed and operate with little threat of detection. As North Korea showed with its attack on the South Korean corvette Cheonan in 2011, even small submarines can be incredibly dangerous to surface vessels, particularly those operating in the crowded and sheltered waters just described.

Moreover, as David Axe has argued on many occasions, the Chinese Navies great weakness is its lack of operational skill and know-how. This is a force that is far from skilled in the ways of anti-submarine warfare, as illustrated by US Navy attack submarines that are regularly believed to operate a matter of miles off the Chinese coast, with little or no threat of detection from the Chinese surface fleet.

Regional tension, growing market

These times of heightening tension in the region provide an opportunity for European ship makers to secure valuable orders, particularly at a time when indigenous spending is declining . The major submarine building nations – Germany, France and Sweden - are pursuing vigorous attempts to win the contracts that are available. Germany is pushing for Thailand to complete its order for the six Type 206s, India is currently building French DCNS Scorpene boats and Singapore is in the process of acquiring two new vessels from Sweden.

Even in Australia, who has committed itself to a well funded indigenous naval program, there are increasingly vocal debates about buying off the shelf European submarines that would be a cheaper and more proven means of regenerating their submarine capability. The appeal of European submarines are that they are of a high level of technological quality, and unlike Russian built subs – Vietnam and Indonesia’s Kilos – they are not models operated and know by the Chinese navy. The potential market runs into the hundreds of millions with the Australian program alone being worth up to $35 billion; while Indonesia (who has a possible requirement for up to 12 boats) is expected to have a budget of roughly $1.2 billion.

With tensions only likely to rise over the coming decade, European ship builders are thus likely to be seeing an increasing number of orders from this region.

Make wealth not war in Asia

Πηγή: FP
By Clyde Prestowitz
Oct 28 2011

President Barack Obama ought to call Defense Secretary Leon Panetta immediately and tell him to start talking like he's living in the 21st century -- rather than the 1950s of his youth.

In Tokyo yesterday, Panetta announced that the United States is going to strengthen the U.S. military presence in Asia. Although he didn't say whether Washington would add to the six aircraft carriers it already maintains in the Pacific or increase the number of troops permanently stationed in the region, he emphasized that the Pentagon would be increasing the number of its training exercises in Asia. This would be as part of what defense officials describe as a "rebalancing" of U.S. interests as the United States refocuses more of its attention on the Pacific while winding down the war in Iraq and beginning to withdraw troops from Afghanistan.

So I guess there will be no "peace dividend" from the winding down of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We'll just shift what we were going to spend there to the Pacific. According to Panetta, the objective is to expand U.S. influence in the area. This comes in the wake of Secretary of State Clinton'srecent statements about America being "back" during her own recent swing through Asia.

But wait a minute, I never heard that we had left. I mean with six of our twelve carriers stationed in the Pacific and with close to the 100,000 troops that we have had in the Asia-Pacific region for the past forty years still stationed there, how can anyone think that we need to be "back" or that we lack influence, at least of the military variety?

Is there a threat to the United States here? Of course, Panetta added to the growing volume of commentary about China's military modernization and "troubling lack of transparency." But does anyone believe that putting more U.S. forces or the same number of forces more frequently in Asia is going to persuade China that it should halt its modernization? And anyhow, what threat is posed by China's military modernization? Yesterday's Financial Times reports foreign military advisers who have participated in exchanges with the PLA as saying that " they could never do what we are used to doing."

But even if they could, so what? No one is arguing that China is preparing to attack the United States. None of America's oil comes from the Asia-Pacific region and China is not threatening to stop selling its products into the U.S market. Washington does not seem to think that China should be in any way concerned about the presence of advanced U.S. military capabilities in its back yard, so why should Washington be concerned about China deploying similar capabilities in the same place?

Maybe some U.S. allies have concerns about how to deal with China on some issues of territorial conflict, but allies like Japan and South Korea are very big boys and quite capable of contributing a lot more to their own defense than they presently do. Assuming more responsibility in the region simply allows them to continue free riding on the U.S. security commitment while only further irritating China and spurring it to greater modernization. Moreover, deeper entanglement in Asia doesn't seem like a smart way to react to the commitment fatigue that Americans have felt toward Iraq and Afghanistan, especially at a moment when U.S. police forces are being reduced, classrooms shut, and essential infrastructure investment neglected because of rising debt and budget deficits.

In fact, the reason for the plans for an increased military presence have nothing to do with any military threat emanating from China or anywhere else in Asia. The use of the terms "increase U.S. influence in the region" is a tipoff. It's true that U.S. influence in the Asia-Pacific area has fallen dramatically over the past decade. But that is not for lack of troops or aircraft carriers in the region. It is because of the erosion of U.S. economic competitiveness. America makes little that Asians want to buy and is now also buying relatively less of what Asians make as well as providing less of the cutting edge technology they are focused on obtaining.

What Panetta, Clinton, and the White House are trying to do is to use military power (the only area in which the United States remains unquestionably competitive) to compensate for rapidly declining economic power.

It won't work. Japan's pre war Finance Minister Korekiyo Takahashi was correct when he long ago emphasized that "the consequences of an economic defeat are far more difficult to reverse than those of a military defeat." America's asian allies and friends want the United States to balance their growing economic reliance on China with U.S. military power. But military power will not for long offset economic power. Indeed, perversely, the effort to use U.S. military power to balance China's economic power will only serve more rapidly to erode U.S. economic power which ultimately is the only power that counts.

Rather than promising to enhance the U.S. military presence in the Asia-Pacific region, Panetta ought to be talking about reducing it and investing the savings in making America economically competitive. America's new slogan should be: "make wealth not war."

Gazprom Unit Eyes Power Generation Assets in Europe, Asia

Gazprom's power unit has expressed interest in setting up gas-fired power plants in Germany, the UK, and the Benelux countries

Πηγή: novinite
Oct 7 2011

Russian energy giant Gazprom is interested in acquiring power generation assets in Great Britain, Germany and Benelux, according to Denis Fyodorov, CEO of GazpromEnergoHolding.

Fyodorov told reporters Wednesday that Gazprom considered buying existing plants or buying new ones.

He underscored that the company was ready to acquire full control of the business and pay for the assets in cash.

The head of Gazprom's power unit specified talks on a joint venture in power generation were underway only with Germany's RWE.

Exclusive RWE-Gazprom talks about setting up a joint venture to build and operate gas-fired power plants in Germany, the UK, and the Benelux countries started in July and were initially set to end on October 14, but the end-date was postponed by a year.

Fyodorov further said that the Russian firm was interested in setting foot on the electricity markets in Japan, South Korea and China, mainly through building gas-fired power stations.

He revealed that Gazprom had also planned to take part in the first stage of the liberalization of Turkey's market, but later decided to wait and see how the process unfolds.

On the domestic market, Gazprom EnergoHolding and the Renova Group have applied to the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) for clearance for a merger of power assets.

Gazprom is to hold up to 75% minus one share and Renova from 25% plus one share.

The deal could create a company controlling a quarter of all domestic power generation.

Gazprom and a number of its main eastern European customers were last week raided by EU competition authorities.

The antitrust probes were said to have had no impact on RWE's joint-venture negotiations with Gazprom.

Asia's Fab 50

Πηγή: Forbes
By Scott DeCarlo and John Koppisch
Sep. 11 2011

The story of Asia is increasingly the story of China and this year’s list of the 50 best publicly traded companies in Asia-Pacific certainly reflects that. Virtually half of the companies–23, to be exact–hail from China. 

No country has ever boasted close to that number–including China–since we started spotlighting the region’s most fabulous companies in 2005. 

Last year China claimed 16 places among the elite but as the country’s real estate, construction, auto-making, appliance manufacturing and gold-mining industries continue to boom, an additional company from each of those sectors barged itself into the top ranks. 

The most notable newcomer: Qingdao Haier, the world’s No. 1 white goods brand. A Chinese bank and, in a first, a chain of car dealerships–Zhongsheng Group Holdings–also won Fab 50 spots. In a mark of how quickly China’s companies have arrived on the world stage, the country had only five members in 2005 and two in 2006. Click here for the full list of Asia’s Fab 50 Companies 

China’s gain was largely India’s loss. After tying the mainland for the most companies last year, India could muster only seven entries this year. Japan, which led the pack with 13 companies when we started analyzing corporate Asia six years ago, had no companies this year for the first time, partly a result of the Mar. 11 earthquake. 

The strong South Korean economy produced eight Fab 50 companies, the most it’s had since 2005, when it also had eight. The chaebols are going like gangbusters and seven of the companies are chaebol affiliates; the eighth is hot Internet company NHN. The changing lineup each year is a window on the region’s dynamism, and this year was no exception. 

Some 20 companies are new to the list; five others returned after falling off. That means many excellent outfits didn’t make the cut and none were more notable than Hong Kong’s Li & Fung and India’sInfosys. Both had graced the Fab 50 every year–until this year. It’s not that they had bad years, just that they weren’t good enough. Now Hong Kong’s Noble Group sports the longest streak–it’s made the list the last six years. In terms of industry, technology companies once again dominated our list this year with 8 representatives, down from 11 last year. 

The consumer durables industry has the second most representatives with 7 companies followed by food companies with 6 members. For the second year in a row on our Fab 50 list, we did not have any representative from the oil/gas industry. How do we pick these companies? We started with 1,073 that had at least $3 billion in revenue or market capitalization. We looked at the five-year track records for revenue, operating earnings and return on capital, and then the recent results and share-price movements, and finally the outlook. If it had too much debt, or the government owned at least half the shares, it was out. 

The result is an honor roll of the region’s best. Our Billionaires list is littered with executives and founders of Asia Fab 50 companies, including Tang Yiu and family, Sze Man Bok and Uday Kotak. See our recently released 2011 China Rich List to find more Fab 50 company executives and founders. This year’s number one, Liang Wengen, 54, is chairman of Fab 50 construction equipment manufacturer, Sany Heavy Industry,with a net worth of $9.3 billion. Click here for full coverage of the Fab 50, including an interactive list, slide show and additional data. See our features on India’sTata Consultancy Services, Indonesia’s Adaro Energy and Australia’sWesfarmers. Readers, please let us know where we are off or if we are missing good companies.

US eyes Asia from secret Australian base

Πηγή: AFP
By Amy Coopes

Sep. 18 2011

SYDNEY — Deep in the silence of Australia's Outback desert an imposing American spy post set up at the height of the Cold War is now turning its attention to Asia's growing armies and arsenals.

Officially designated United States territory and manned by agents from some of America's most sensitive intelligence agencies, the Pine Gap satellite station has been involved in some of the biggest conflicts in modern times.

But its role in the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Balkans, and in the hunt for Osama bin Laden, had been little recognised until one of its most senior spies broke ranks recently to pen a tell-all account.

Intelligence analyst David Rosenberg spent 18 years at the base, 20 kilometres (12.4 miles) south of Alice Springs, working with top-secret clearance for the National Security Agency (NSA), home to America's code-cracking elite.

Formally known as the "Joint Defence Space Research Facility", Pine Gap is one of Washington's biggest intelligence collection posts, intercepting weapons and communications signals via a series of satellites orbiting Earth.

Australia has had joint leadership at the post and access to all intercepted material since 1980, but the base's history is not without controversy.

Former prime minister Gough Whitlam was sensationally sacked by the British monarchy -- allegedly at American urging -- not long after he threatened to close Pine Gap in 1975, although other domestic political issues were also involved in his removal.

Its futuristic domes were originally built as a weapon in America's spy war with Russia, officially starting operations in 1970, but Rosenberg says it is now targeting the US-led "war on terror" and Asia's military boom.

"There's a large segment of the world that are weapons-producing countries who have programmes that the United States and Australia are interested in, and obviously a lot of Asia encompasses that area," Rosenberg told AFP.

The career spy is under a lifetime secrecy agreement with the NSA, meaning he cannot reveal classified information and is limited in what he can say about his time at Pine Gap, but said North Korea and China were among its targets.

"I think any country that has a large military, is a large weapons producer, is always going to be a focus for the intelligence community and China of course is growing and it's growing rapidly," he said.

"There are developments there that we are looking at."

India and Pakistan were also "very much of a concern", he added, with a surprise nuclear test by New Delhi in 1998 catching Pine Gap's analysts "blind".

The latter half of his time at the mysterious station known to locals as the "Space Base" was dominated by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and an intense focus on Al-Qaeda following the September 11 attacks in 2001.

Rosenberg recalls that day as his most sombre in the job, with analysts scouring the region for clues on what was going to happen next, knowing instantly that Al-Qaeda was responsible and fearing they would strike again.

"While these attacks were happening we of course were thinking how many other simultaneous or near-simultaneous actions are going to happen?" he said.

"We didn't know how many other attacks had been planned that day."

It was also a huge wake-up call to the fragmented spy community, he added, who soon realised all the signs had been there of an impending attack but they had failed to piece them together to perhaps prevent 9/11.

Delays also allowed Bin Laden and other Al-Qaeda leaders to escape into hiding, a "significant intelligence failure" which left agents with a 10-year hunt Rosenberg was not around to see completed -- one of his few regrets.

It was "certainly possible" that Pine Gap was involved in the US mission which ultimately saw Bin Laden killed in Pakistan in May, he added.

He sees "cyber-warfare" such as state-endorsed hacking and increasingly portable technology allowing, for example, the remote detonation of a bomb with a mobile phone, as the next big front for the intelligence community.

Rosenberg's book offers a rare insight into the mysterious world of military espionage, discussing widespread doubts amongst spies about the since-debunked claims of weapons of mass destruction that presaged the invasion of Iraq.

It was screened 16 times before publication by four intelligence agencies -- three American and one Australian -- and has been altered or blacked out in sections through an arduous censorship process which saw him, at one point, taken into a vault in Canberra for interrogation.

Defence officials were also due to seize and destroy his computer hard-drive to ensure classified elements of the original manuscript were wiped out.

But the self-confessed "Mission: Impossible" fan said he had no regrets about telling his story.

"Imagine being in a job where secrecy surrounds everything you did for 23 years -- it's kind of like letting the cork out of a champagne bottle, all the secrets come flowing out," he said.

"It was quite a liberating experience for me."

Clinton praises TAPI, ignores Iran’s ‘peace pipeline’

Clinton believes TAPI pipeline will lead to increased energy security

Πηγή: Central Asia Newswire


Thursday, July 21, 2011 - U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Tuesday promoted the planned Turkmenistan-to-India natural gas pipeline while in the Indian capital New Delhi, but did not speak about the proposed ‘peace’ pipeline from Iran to India, The Hindu news agency noted Thursday.

Participating countries should continue with efforts to lay the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline “both for improved energy security in the subcontinent and the relatively clean energy natural gas that it would provide,” Clinton told an energy security meeting.

Iran and Pakistan announced plans to begin work on laying the Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) pipeline before the end of this year. Iran has already completed 679 miles of pipeline on its territory, according to Pakistan’s petroleum and natural resources minister.

Washington sees its policy of containing the Tehran government as a way of stabilizing Iraq and Afghanistan, as it blames Iran for the uptick in violence in both states.

Clinton also encouraged Asian countries to work together on creating a new Silk Road of transnational networks of transit and economic connections to boost development in the volatile region.

"That means building more rail lines, highways, energy infrastructure, like the proposed (natural gas) pipeline to run from Turkmenistan, through Afghanistan, through Pakistan into India," the United Press International (UPI) news agency reported Clinton as saying.

Ex-CIA lawyer’s arrest sought for approving drone attacks in Pakistan

(Photo from stealthops.blogspot.com)

Πηγή: RT

Published: 20 July, 2011, 03:57

Human rights lawyers and victims’ relatives are seeking an arrest warrant against a former CIA legal director who allegedly approved drone attacks in Pakistan that killed hundreds.

­The attempt to seek an international arrest warrant for former CIA acting general counsel John Rizzo, 63, is being led by British human rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith of the advocacy group Reprieve, as well as lawyers in Pakistan.

On Monday, relatives of victims of a covert US drone war against Al Qaeda and Taliban in Pakistan filed a complaint with police in the capital.

Rizzo is being pursued after he admitted in an interview with Newsweek magazine that under a practice started by the Bush administration, he had approved one drone attack order a month on targets in Pakistan since 2004.

A study by the New America Foundation, a Washington-based think tank, says that the amount of strikes has quadrupled since US President Barack Obama took office, and estimates that about 2,500 people have been killed in attacks on targets in Pakistan since 2004.

Last year there were 118 attacks after Obama expanded the use of drones in 2009, while 2011 has already seen at least 42.

­“Age of videogame killing”

Using armed drones enables the US to strike targets inside Pakistan, which they legally could not do with piloted military aircraft, says former CIA officer Philip Giraldi.

“Striking a country with which America is not at war means that the whole process is something that is very dubious,” he stated.

The man who approved the attacks is unlikely to stand trial, argues Giraldi.

“This is one of those interesting cases that can go in several directions,” he said. “The US doesn’t cooperate with the International Criminal Court on this kind of case precisely for this reason, so John Rizzo is unlikely to be turned over to a court to face charges against him. But on the other hand, there are some jurisdictions in Europe – Spain, for example – where anyone can walk in and make a case against virtually anyone, claiming that they’ve committed war crimes. And if Mr. Rizzo ever has the misfortune of passing through Spain, he can well be arrested.”
"Drone strikes quadruple the Pakistani Taliban in numbers”

“They acknowledge that they are killing people and they do not even know their names,” claimed US anti-war activist Fred Branfman, who exposed the CIA Secret War in Laos and today writes extensively on US military and foreign policy.

Activists state that those drone strikes have quadrupled the ranks of the Pakistani Taliban because of the anger they have caused. Furthermore, they argue, Pakistani officials are no longer certain about the security of the country’s nuclear weapons, which are already considered to be the least secure in the world.

“The result of this drone strike campaign is vastly increasing the danger in the US of a conventional or a nuclear terrorist attack,” said Branfman.

“By carrying out those drone strike in Pakistan or Somalia, the US is operating extra-legally,” stated Tara Murray, a staff attorney at Reprieve, the advocacy group.

“We have numbers coming from Pakistan that indicate that for every suspected militant that is being killed, 140 innocent civilians die as a result of these strikes,” she added.