Hatoyama in troubled waters

The most prominent promise made by the leader of the Democratic Party of Japan Hatoyama in the country's most recent election campaign was to change the nation's political culture. The Liberal Democratic Party had been in office almost non-stop for 60 years, and as we all well know: absolute power corrupts absolutely.

International and Japanese experts sometimes raised the question during the campaign whether a change in governing party would lead to fundamental change in the political culture.

Now, Prime Minister Hatoyama has also found himself in trouble in connection with a party finance scandal. Mainichi shinbun reports Hatoyama failed to mention ¥ 1.26 billion (close to US$ 14 mln) in donations from his mother(!) on his tax form (funky family anyway). State-paid secretaries working under the responsibility of the Prime Minister, falsified the cheques and documents concerned to omit the donations from the relevant administration. Such forgery would lead to instantaneous resignation in most EU countries (in the US, you wouldn't even get to serve in the cabinet).

That is a shocking amount of money and from a shocking source as well: how would the Brits react if it were revealed that Gordon Brown received £110k per month from his mother?! He would get slaughtered in the House of Commons!

Don't expect something similar to happen in Japan anytime soon. Little mistakes like these are easily corrected in Tokyo. It goes to show that there's no change you can believe in in Tokyo when it comes to systems of accountability with the ascent of a new party to political power.


Full disclosure: I did a one-month internship with the current Japanese Minister of Interior Affairs Kazuhiro Haraguchi (then one of the DPJ MP's) back in 2007.

Modelling Israeli insignificance & Indian importance

Haaretz carried a very interesting article for all those political scientists with a thorough belief in modelling the real world. But, don't let it scare you, because all those Middle East junkies worldwide should pay attention as well: even India comes into the picture!

Tel Aviv University's Institute for National Security Studies hosted this elaborate wargame that saw participation from senior Israeli policymakers and experts acting as the major players. Unsurprisingly, they all stuck to their prior policy positions. Iran stood by its right to produce uranium for peaceful purposes as long as regime stability was unchallenged, the US in the end grudgingly accepted Tehran's ambitions without resorting to violence and the Israeli's felt ever more estranged from their American ally.

Even after an Israeli commando raid on one of the nuclear installations in Iran, the political dynamics didn't fundamentally change even though Haaretz reported "brief brinksmanship" after this attack. Israeli options were running out, it kept pressing its main ally in Washington to escalate the threat of violence against Iran. However, the US failed to deliver on these Israeli requests.

One of the final options Israel could explore in splendid isolation was the possibility of pressuring India to sever its business ties with Tehran. A measure that would surely shock Iran, potentially to such an extent that the Islamic Republic would reconsider its nuclear ambitions. As it happened, this option wouldn't work either. A nuclear Iran thus became an inevitability.

Model games like these are great thought experiments, but in the real world the MacMillan observation is still of unwavering importance.

What has this game involving Israel, Iran and the US taught us?

• Ceteris paribus (intransigent leadership in Iran and Israel) Iran will develop a nuclear capability.
• The Middle East extends as far as New Delhi today, even though most observers don't even list Iran as a Middle Eastern country. Fascinating stuff!

Question to readers: Is this actually proof that having a bomb does make for regional superpower status?

Osama Bin Laden's children are hiding in Iran!

Another proof of the fact that (some, definitely not all) UK newspapers rank among the best in world.

The Times of London reported that the family of Osama Bin Laden are in hiding near Tehran. I recently read Steve Coll's brilliant account of the bin Laden family history. Two things I learned from this book is that the bin Laden family is an extremely complex one to Western eyes and that Osama has been an outcast for years. Thus, it would be completely unjustified to say that Osama's sons should be on a "wanted dead or alive" billboard; don't judge the child by the sins of their father!

Now turning to the political dimension: What should we make of the fact that the Sunni sons of bin Laden have found refuge in Shi'a Iran?

Richard Beeston is offering some hypotheses for why Tehran would have granted the bin Ladens a refuge (albeit under virtual house arrest). The most plausible of these seems that the bin Ladens could serve as a bargaining chip in contacts with almost every relevant actor in the region.

An important point in the Times report is that AQ has not yet committed acts of terrorism against Iranian interests, whereas AQ doctrine doesn't seem too fond of Shi'a theology. This is in stark contrast to Sunni regimes who have become victim to AQ terrorism, like Jordan, Morocco and Saudi Arabia.

I just wonder how will this play out inside Iran? Will the orthodox Shi'a clerics scold the regime for harbouring Sunni troublemakers?

AfPak tales

More news from the borderlands between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The Guardian reports US military units have conducted raids accross the border from Afghanistan into Pakistan, without notifying the Islamabad government.

I have a number of questions in relation to this story.

1. Is this actually news? Should we be surprised by this report?
   US Forces and outsource partners like XE have been active within Pakistan for some years now in maintaining UAV's that execute kinetic operations against AQ leadership in Pakistan.
   The Guardian report makes a lot out of the fact that these were (a) "boots on the ground"-operations, and (b) that the Pakistani government was not informed of them.
   I've previously written about the lack of confidence of US leadership in the Pakistani goverment and senior military. In that sense, keeping the Pakistanis in the dark about these operations doesn't come as a surprise.
   
   The "boots on the ground"-element as a news item, contradicts the bit at the end of the article where The Guardian reveals that British SAS troops have been active in the restless Pakistani province of Balochistan back in 2002-2003 - "attacking drug traffickers". That actually is news!! (at least to me..)
   Attacking drug traffickers in 2002-2003 in Balochistan?
   - I find that difficult to believe. Why would the British government assign scarce resources in 2002-03 to go after druglords? And why there?
   Of course, drugs form a significant source of income to the OMF in Afghanistan. Back in those days however, Downing St 10 would have been better of ordering the SAS to fight the OMF head on: the coalition in those days was not focused on stopping the flows of income to the Taliban. Particularly because large swaths of Southern Afghanistan were not yet part of the ISAF operations, and were thus genuine uncontrolled territories where drugs and weapons could flow freely.
   Moreover, Balochistan is another one of those difficult Pakistani provinces where nationalistic tendencies and violence are all too common and where now most of the senior Afghan Taliban have found their hiding place in provincial capital Quetta. Back in 2002-2003 Musharraf was still very much in power. He certainly would have vocally disapproved of operations like these, in part to ascertain ethnic Balochi leadership that Pakistan extended beyond Punjab.
   
   
2. Is there anything wrong with ops like these?
   If this is a blackhole in terms of international law (Pakistan doesn't exercise effective control in large parts of FATA and NWFP and assuming that illicit acts are contrived there), then why should we worry about the US taking matters into its own hands?
   In the domain of the Law of the Seas, hot pursuits on the high seas beyond territorial waters can be permitted. Why should this not be the case in combating transnational terrorists operating on the high seas of terra firma: failed states, or other territories where a credible state authority is completely absent.
   
   
3. How come a NATO source tells us about this?
   That's another item that makes me curious. Generally ops like these are planned and executed by one nation may be two, in order to keep others in the dark so as to reduce the risk of details leaking out.
   What's NATO's part here?
   
   
4. What's changed?
   Back in the Bush-era, operations like these were approached with a large degree of reluctance. Does the Obama-era herald a new age of new realism in the AfPak region? During the election campaign Obama already indicated he would authorize more US operations inside Pakistan to protect US interests. He clearly stands by his promise on this topic.
   Obviously, the Obama adminsitration seems to have a better understanding of the fact that Afghanistan and Pakistan both do not begin and end at the Durand line.

Is North Korea about to implode?

This question must be on the minds of senior policymakers and politicians from Washington to Tokyo to Moscow. Two weeks ago, news emerged from Pyongyang indicating that spontaneous rallies and demonstrations were held throughout the DPRK. The Pyongyang regime isn't too fond of civic creativity and spontaneity on the side of the populace; they resent it.

The terse reports that emerged from the country also mention that the armed forces have been put on alert to quell any serious uprising. Turmoil in the country is said to be the result of a significant devaluation of the country's currency, the won. The currency devaluation means even more hardship for the North Korean population; the monetary value of any savings they may have had is reduced as a consequence.

Meanwhile, Kim Jung-Il's minister of security affairs Ju Sang-song, has been dispatched to Beijing. The Chinese authorities may be able to teach him a lesson, or two about crowd control.

A new fight in Pakistan: intragovernmental turmoil

Two significant developments in the Pakistani cabinet over the last week or two were hardly reported by the Western press.

1. The control over the nation's nuclear arsenal was transferred from President Zardari to Prime Minister Gilani. Official statements from the Pakistani government describe this move as 'yet another' reparation of some of the usurpations of presidential power of the former president Musharraf (who rose to the position after a military coup).
   
   Other observers of Pakistani politics however note, that this transfer is part of an intricate set of political moves by Zardari, desperate to remain in power by staving off military or judicial interference. His position seems to have come under significant pressure from both the judicial branch and the Armed Forces generals in Rawalpindi. The Supreme Court is currently reviewing Zardari's (and other senior officials') amnesty in corruption cases. Mohammad Chaudhry, the Court's president still has a score to settle with Zardari and may be poised to do so.
   
   The Pakistani generals are also increasingly restless, there are so many developments yet so little transparency that it is hard to judge whether they may reach for political power soon. In a way, it doesn't help if a top general of your most important ally (?) has to come out to say a coup d'etat will not happen. In politics, if a player is forced to say there is trust in another actor, one can assume there is actually a lack of confidence.
   
   
2. The other big development I wanted to write about for a little bit is the travel ban that's been imposed on a large slice of the Pakistan political and bureaucratic leadership. It's quite impressive news if some of a country's senior leadership is not allowed to cross the border and can even lead to embarassing situations. And because of these embarassements towards Pakistan's "all-time friend China", the Minister of the Interior has now been given the sack.
   

If all the above developments indicate anything it's just that Pakistan's internal politics are very much in turmoil. Now, that may not exactly be news to most of the followers of the region. The wider point here in my view is however the fact that most of the political disputes used to take place between the different branches of government (i.e. civilian government vs. the army, central government vs. state governments, government vs. the judiciary) but now a verocious and very public fight has erupted within the government.

It doesn't make for a nice picture at all...