China’s Global Strategy

Alanya Akademik Bakış/Turkey, 2020

China, who has put its economic might right at the center of its global influence, wants to consolidate its efforts in this regard with the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road Initiative. As this initiative shall increase the strength of China within the context, specific to South China Sea-Indian Ocean, it has also potential to make the states in the region economically dependent to Beijing. For an endeavor like this to succeed, China will need to prioritize the security of the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road. Right at this point, the new Chinese Naval Strategy that is predicated upon the expansion towards the high seas comes to the forefront. The investments and changing naval strategy that commence in parallel to the base and port facilities that would be obtained from various countries within the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road Initiative prove that China's trade oriented leaps and its military and political planning have a striking parallelism. This study, based on literature review, aims to analyze the relationship between the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road Initiative and Chinese Naval Strategy.

Occasional Paper No. 77, 2009

Taylor and Francis, 2019

ABSTRACT India and the US have crossed the proverbial Rubicon in their bilateral ties, with maritime cooperation being the mainstay. The US-India navy-to-navy cooperation has emerged as the “best performing area of bilateral relationship”. The maritime domain including the Indian Ocean and the Indo-Pacific area has emerged as the domain for the identification of commonly perceptible threats and goals in the larger Asian maritime expanse. A series of developments, agreements and understandings has gradually been cementing the rubric of US-India maritime cooperation. This paper proposes to justify the hypothesis that maritime cooperation between the US and India is one of the primary mainstays of their bilateral cooperation, and that the proposition will only get stronger going forward. By analysing various steps in maritime cooperation between the two countries, the paper seeks to highlight the rationales for such cooperation; growing Chinese presence in the region, non-traditional threats, HA/DR cooperation, domain awareness, reconnaissance, intelligence gathering, regional stability, and balance of power

Despite eight years of socio-political rapprochement and economic integration between the Kuomintang of Taiwan and Mainland China’s Chinese Communist Party, as of 2016 cross-straits relations are quite possibly descending into a nadir, as the victorious Democratic Progressive Party have vowed to put democracy at the heart of future relations with authoritarian Beijing. A survey of the situation show that this crisis is in many respects defined by clashing identities and norms. In trying to make sense of why, according to late Singaporean statesman Lee Kuan Yew, the CCP has “whatever the cost”, made Taiwan the regime’s “ultimate red line”, it would be refreshing to analyse social factors. Looking at how social and political discourses concerning norms such as sovereignty and national identity in China have become integral to the continued survival of the CCP, this paper aims at employing a constructivist analysis to discover how “social factors shape different aspects of national security policy” in the People’s Republic of China and its approach to the Taiwan issue. Through analysis of its national security policies and initiatives towards Taiwan, and the connection that these policies have with the legitimizing discourses employed by the party-state, this thesis will seek to demonstrate that China’s drive for Taiwanese unification is inspired in no small part to the CCP’s norms of national sovereignty and an authoritarian nationalist identity. It will seek to argue that Taiwan’s counter-project of popular sovereignty, democracy and human rights not only stalls the CCP’s national strategy for the island, but in the national security culture of the CCP, poses a political threat to the party’s legitimacy and thus the state’s national security. While domestic drivers are not the sole aspect of China’s Taiwan policy, the inclusion of China’s ‘national security culture’ (norms, identity and the discourses around them) is a helpful component to an overall dissection of the Taiwan Straits Crisis.

Proceedings international scientific conference strategies XXI the complex and dynamic nature of the security environment, November 27-28, 2018, 2018

The reality of the widening category of irregular warfare and the raising quantity of radical units all around the world arrived in an unprecedented pace in the 21st century’s security environment. The decisions on designating and labeling „terrorist groups” were always surrounded with terminological debates, diverse state interests, and different perception of security. Thereby handling and countering their attacks and secondary destabilizing effects are hardly-cooperative among larger alliances. Of course, we might not exclude the good examples of international peacekeeping and countermeasures, such as it is happening in the case of ISIS, Al-Qaeda, Al-Shabaab or other specific organizations. But in some cases, the methods of engagement, the continuously shaping security environment, shifts in ideology or other factors should influence the classification of a „terrorist group”, which might be questioned by individuals, ethnic groups, states or the international community itself. This was the situation with the Polisario Front group as well, which in some cases was labeled as terrorist organization, while other papers mentioned it as a separatist group or an organized crime unit. However, in the eyes of the world, the Front still is the legitimate representative of the Sahrawi’s people and a liberating organization responsible for its people. In this analysis, my main aim is to concentrate on these accusations against the Polisario Front, and its actual activity and connections with organized crime groups and highlight the facts, which exclude the Polisario Front from being a terrorist organization Keywords: Polisario Front, terrorist group, organized crime group, liberation movement, legal representative of Sahrawis, International law, Morocco, Mauritania, SADR, AQIM.

Strategies for the Indo-Pacific: Perceptions of the U.S. and Like-Minded Countries, 2019

Hudson Institute, 2019

Coming in from the Cold? Canada’s Indo-Pacific Possibilities & Conundrum

This article examines the relation between the revival of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QUAD) in the second decade of the 21st century and the formation of the Indo-Pacific as a geopolitical region. As a loose security association composed of Australia, Japan, the United States and India, the QUAD emphasizes the importance of rules-based order, connectivity ventures that are not fueled by predatory financing, and the principle that territorial disputes should be resolved peacefully and in accordance with international law. Its revival, in turn, gave rise to a new geopolitical region—the Indo-Pacific. The Indo-Pacific region covers all countries bordering the Indian and Pacific Oceans. Rather than be restricted by the old term Asia-Pacific region, the term underscores the geographic expansion of the ongoing geostrategic competition between China and the U.S. and the other members of the QUAD. In conclusion, the article analyzes how the revival of the QUAD and the emergence of the Indo-Pacific as a geopolitical region will affect the Philippines as it adopts a policy of appeasement on China.

Due to a U.S./EU arms embargo that was impo- sed on China in 1989, China remains excluded from tra- ding with any of the leading arms producers except for Russia and Ukraine. The previously existing military-industrial symbiosis between Ukraine and Russia, however, came to an abrupt end in 2014 with Russia‘s invasion and resulting occupation of Crimea. The sudden breaking off of defense-industrial ties between these two closely interwoven military-industrial complexes offers analysts the unusual chance to study the nature of transnational arms production arrangements and their strategic implications under crisis conditions. China is poised to benefit from this, while Western sanctions create incentives for China and Russia to enhance their mutual strategic co-operation.

Sasakawa Peace Foundation's Policy Recommendations by the Quadripartite Commission on the Indian Ocean Regional Security: Appendix, 2018

The purpose of this paper is to identify the range of primary security issues in the Indian Ocean region and serve as a reference for the Sasakawa Peace Foundation USA’s contribution to the Quadripartite Commission on Indian Ocean Regional Security. These issues will be divided for analysis into the categories of traditional and non-traditional security (NTS). The paper finds that traditional security threats in the Indian Ocean such as maritime boundary disputes are low compared with those in the Pacific Ocean. The potential for the territorial conflict between India and Pakistan to spill over into the Indian Ocean remains the greatest traditional security challenge. Meanwhile, NTS issues such as trafficking and illegal fishing will continue to pose challenges to the Indian Ocean region. Given the persistence of these threats, attention will need to be focused on addressing them because they generally fly under the radar compared with more widely recognized NTS challenges such as natural disasters and terrorism from Islamic extremist organizations.