further joint patrols is unlikely as Indonesia is only basically interested in peace and stability in the area, and concerned that joints as such could increase tensions with China .. still, it's in the news today ..
It's an 11 min. video of insightful comment. Guarantee there is content to tickle the fancy of anyone anywhere across the political spectrum.
The article below is one re the citizenship problems in the Australian parliament mentioned at the end of that video. The United States birther issue was a virulent right-wing conservative beat-up. The Australian dual citizenship problem is real.
President of Australia's Senate becomes the latest MP caught up in dual citizenship row
Photo: Stephen Parry, who was born in Tasmania, may hold British citizenship through his father Credit: Lukas Coch/AAP Image via AP
Jonathan Pearlman, Sydney 31 October 2017 • 9:44am
An Australian MP has revealed he may be a British citizen and has asked the Home Office to confirm his status, prompting concerns he could be the latest dual citizen to be forced out of parliament following a dramatic high court ruling which found five MPs were ineligible.
Stephen Parry, the president of the senate, or upper house, said the court ruling last week led him to check on whether he holds British citizenship via his British father. He said he wrote to the Home Office on Monday to “seek clarity” over his status.
[...]
The announcement follows a unanimous high court decision last week which threw Australian politics into turmoil and led to the disqualification of Barnaby Joyce, the deputy prime minister, who holds New Zealand citizenship.
The court’s decision followed a bizarre saga in Australian politics, in which a growing list of MPs were revealed to be dual citizens and potentially ineligible as MPs.
Section 44 of Australia’s constitution expressly bans MPs from being “a subject or citizen of a foreign power”.
Aside from Mr Joyce, four other MPs have been disqualified including two British citizens: Fiona Nash, a Nationals MP and government minister, and Malcolm Roberts, from the far-right One Nation party. Two Greens MPs were also disqualified: Scott Ludlam, a New Zealander, and Larissa Waters, a Canadian. .. more .. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/10/31/new-australian-mp-caught-dual-citizenship-row/
This is not a drill: 5 facts about the South China Sea
"The Dispute About the South China Sea Is Also a Dispute About History and America's Role"
The South China Sea has become one of the region’s biggest potential flashpoints – but, hypothetically, what could happen if Australia were dragged into a conflict between rival powers?
China Warns 2 American Warships in South China Sea
"The Dispute About the South China Sea Is Also a Dispute About History and America's Role"
17 years on
U.S. Navy sailors aboard the Antietam, a guided-missile cruiser in the Philippine Sea, in March.CreditMass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Sarah Myers/U.S. Navy, via Reuters
By Steven Lee Myers
May 27, 2018
BEIJING — China’s military announced on Sunday that it had dispatched warships to challenge two United States Navy vessels that sailed through waters in the South China Sea that China claims as its own.
The Chinese confronted the American ships and warned them to leave, the Ministry of National Defense said in a statement posted on its website, but other details of the encounter were not immediately clear.
The American vessels — the Higgins, a destroyer, and the Antietam, a cruiser — passed within 12 nautical miles of the Paracel Islands, an archipelago in the northern part of the disputed waters of the South China Sea off the coast of Vietnam.
"The Dispute About the South China Sea Is Also a Dispute About History and America's Role [...] South China Sea Dispute Timeline: A History Of Chinese And US Involvement In The Contested Region"
What happens if China fights the United States and Japan? A mutual disaster, wargame predicts.
By Michael Peck | August 7, 2020, 2:24 PM
An undated photo taken in April 2018 shows J15 fighter jets on China’s sole operational aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, during a drill at sea. AFP/Getty Images
The year is 2030. Chinese troops seize a Japanese island in the South China Sea. Japan dispatches an amphibious task force to retake the island. Soon, U.S. warships and aircraft arrive, accompanying a Japanese flotilla. Their orders are to support Japan while trying to avoid combat with Chinese forces.
That plan soon falls apart. According to a wargame run by the Washington-based Center for a New American Security (CNAS), it is impossible for the U.S. military to step in without American and Chinese troops firing on each other.
The simulation, titled “A Deadly Game: East China Sea Crisis 2030,” was run on July 20 (you can watch the video here .. https://conference.cnas.org/session/a-deadly-game-east-china-sea-crisis-2030/ ). And it had an unusual twist: It was crowdsourced through Zoom, with CNAS staff presenting options to the public participants who would then vote to decide which strategies the Chinese and U.S./Japanese teams would implement.
“The stakes are high,” said Susanna Blume, CNAS’s defense director, to about 400 members of the public who were participating, mostly from the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. “Whoever wins this standoff has the potential to shape the Asia-Pacific region for the next decade.”
==========
Almost like a Tom Clancy novel, the scenario ran as follows: In 2030, a Chinese flotilla lands 50 soldiers on Uotsuri Jima, an island in the East China Sea that is part of the Senkakus, an island chain owned by Japan but also claimed by China. Declaring a 50-mile exclusion zone around the Senkakus, Beijing deploys a ring of surface ships, submarines, warplanes, and drones—backed by ballistic missiles based on the Chinese mainland.
The Japanese invasion force (or liberation force, depending on your team) consists of amphibious assault ships, surface escorts, submarines, and special forces and marines, backed by aircraft in Okinawa. Steaming nearby are two U.S. carrier strike groups, as well as submarines, stealth fighters, and bombers.
The initial rules of engagement are almost suffocating. The American rules are to support Japan—with which the United States has a defense pact—while avoiding combat with Chinese forces. For Chinese commanders, the orders are to attack any Japanese forces entering the exclusion zone without hitting American targets.
What ensued over several game turns—each simulating about four hours of real time—was a series of moves and countermoves fought over a virtual game map, as both sides warily navigated the fine line between deterrence and belligerence. Both the Red (China) and Blue (United States and Japan) sides staked out their goals: Red would send a forceful message that Blue should back off, while Blue aimed to compel a Red withdrawal.
But how to balance goals and rules of engagement that are almost contradictory? The first choice for Blue was how to prepare for a likely mass salvo of Chinese anti-ship missiles when the Japanese fleet enters the exclusion zone: Should U.S. Aegis air defense ships hug the Japanese fleet to shield it from anti-ship missiles, or should the United States use cyberwarfare and jamming to disrupt Chinese command and control links? By a 60-40 percent vote, the public opts to disrupt command links.
China mirrors this cautious approach: Given a choice between a missile strike on the Japanese fleet and using cyberwarfare to disrupt Japanese command links, 54 percent of the public vote for cyberwarfare. The umpire rules that Blue forces suffer more from the gambit than their Red counterparts, because the multinational team is more dependent on smoothly functioning communications.
In an all-too familiar pattern of history, escalation takes on a life of its own. When Japanese destroyers enter the exclusion zone, Chinese warships begin hostilities by sinking many of them with cruise missiles. Japanese destroyers retaliate by destroying a Chinese sub, while other subs play hide-and-seek. “The Chinese submarine is trying to find the Japanese submarine, and the U.S. submarine is trying to find the Chinese submarine,” quipped umpire Ed McGrady.
Rather than closing for a surface battle with the Red fleet, Blue opts for airpower with U.S. F-22 and F-35 stealth fighters, joining Japanese F-35s and F-15s, to destroy Chinese aircraft flying near the Senkakus, including Chinese drones relaying targeting data to land-based “carrier killer” anti-ship ballistic missiles.
With their ships and aircraft taking heavy losses, Chinese leaders eventually opt to attack the two U.S. carriers with missiles, badly damaging one of them. Then on the last turn, China makes a decisive move. Throughout the game, the airfields on Okinawa—an island that is a part of the Japanese homeland—were packed with American and Japanese aircraft. Beijing could no longer resist the temptation: Salvoes of missiles devastate the runways, severely damaging Blue airpower.
At that point, the game was called for time.
==========
By end of the game, the situation seemed stalemated: China had sustained heavy losses, but still retained control of Uotsori Jima. And at any rate, focusing on who won isn’t the main purpose of these Pentagon-esque defense planning games.
For one, there are too many subjective or arbitrary factors in these simulations to simply declare that Nation X using Strategy Y would win in real life. For example, in the interests of simplicity and playability the CNAS wargame omitted factors such as logistics, information operations to shape public opinion, and political tensions within the Chinese leadership and the U.S.-Japanese alliance. Oddly absent were China’s growing fleet of aircraft carriers, as well as Japanese pseudo-carriers armed with F-35 fighters. And, of course, there is the fact that real-life leaders would be acutely aware of the possibility of nuclear involvement.
Instead, the value of these simulations is more about process and insight: How did events flow, why did players make the decisions they did, and what weaknesses and capabilities were revealed?
In terms of weaponry, “both sides have aces in the hole,” Blue Team leader Chris Dougherty told me. “For China, it’s their land-based bombers and missiles. For the United States, it’s their subs and bombers.” China enjoys the home field advantage: It can fire massive salvoes of missiles, and then rearm its bombers and land-based missile launchers from bases conveniently located on the mainland.
For U.S. aircraft operating from bases as distant as Guam—1,600 miles from the Senkakus—or flying from crowded and vulnerable Okinawan airbases, when to expend their ordnance was a tricky decision: Once a B-52 or F-35 fired its missiles, it would take hours to return to base, rearm, and get back to the combat zone. That’s one reason U.S. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper advocates building additional American bases .. https://www.defensenews.com/pentagon/2019/08/27/esper-calls-for-new-basing-investments-in-the-pacific/ .. in the Pacific.
“The United States can pulse striking power from its bombers, but without reliable airbases in the region, which would be under threat from Chinese aircraft and missiles, timing becomes a big issue,” Dougherty noted. “You saw that in this game—pretty much every big strike package for Blue was a one-shot deal.”
Further, a key aspect of modern combat is that what can be seen be destroyed, and what remains undetected can survive. Even the most sophisticated anti-ship missiles can’t locate ships on the immense ocean without targeting data relayed from satellites, drones, and surveillance aircraft. “This critical path creates an enormous incentive to conduct major counter-C4ISRK [command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance] attacks as early as possible in the conflict, which both teams did here,” Dougherty says. “In past run-throughs of this game, if one team doesn’t pick ‘attack command and information’ in their first move, things usually go quite poorly for them.”
What was most significant about the CNAS East China Sea wargame was how hostilities steadily escalated. China and the United States entered the conflict intent on not attacking each other: By game’s end, they were destroying each other’s ships and planes. Both sides started wanting to localize the conflict to a few barren rocks in the ocean. But after a few turns, China felt compelled to lob missiles at Okinawa.
“We used the Rules of Engagement to control this in the game to some degree,” says Dougherty. “It’s questionable how well that would hold when push comes to shove.”
This raises troubling questions for whoever occupies the White House next year. The Trump administration has pledged U.S. support to Japan over the Senkaku Islands dispute, and it’s more than likely a new administration would also opt to support one of America’s most important allies. Yet as the CNAS wargame illustrates, backing Japan in a Sino-Japanese conflict risks the dangerous possibility of combat between American and Chinese forces. And once hostilities between the United States and China begin, they may be difficult to stop.
Michael Peck is a defense writer. Twitter: @Mipeck1
Western Countries Send Ships to South China Sea in Pushback Against Beijing
"The Dispute About the South China Sea Is Also a Dispute About History and America's Role"
By Ralph Jennings February 22, 2021 04:56 AM
A French navy worker looks at screens in the navigation and operations center in the new French nuclear-powered submarine "Suffren" in Cherbourg, north-western France, July 12, 2019.
TAIPEI - Leaders as far away as Canada and Western Europe are sending navy ships to the contested South China Sea this year as pushback against Beijing, which they feel has gone too far and begun alarming their citizens, analysts in the region say.
French Defense Minister Florence Parly said in early February that France had dispatched an attack submarine to the sea this month. A British defense official said last month the U.K.’s flagship aircraft carrier strike group was ready to enter the waterway.
A Royal Canadian Navy warship sailed near the sea in January with a passage through the Taiwan Strait on its way to join exercises nearby with Australian, Japanese and U.S. navies.
The Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruiser USS Chancellorsville (CG 62) transits the Taiwan Strait, Nov. 12, 2019, in this photo made available by U.S. Navy.
These Western countries claim no sovereignty over the 3.5 million-square-kilometer sea, which lies more than a continent away from their own territorial waters. But they want to support the United States in resisting unilateral expansion by China, which has sparred with former European colonies and alarmed people in Western countries, scholars say.
"I think there's pretty much unanimity in terms of the French, the Dutch, the U.K. and other countries that what we're seeing from China is an attempt to revise the order so that power, not a rules-based approach to the region, is the way the region will be governed or managed going forward,” said Stephen Nagy, senior associate professor of politics and international studies at International Christian University in Tokyo.
Western countries would resent that management of the sea if it goes against their former colonies or current economic interests in Asia such as access to the sea’s busy cargo shipping lanes, analysts add.
The U.K., for example, is bound by its 1971 Five Power Defense Arrangements to help defend former protectorate Malaysia. Malaysia disputes part of the Chinese claim to about 90% of the South China Sea. The sea stretches from Hong Kong south to the island of Borneo.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson eventually wants his country to take a stronger role in Asia due to economic and trade links in the region, University of New South Wales Emeritus Professor Carl Thayer said in an e-mailed briefing on Monday.
Former French colony Vietnam contests China’s maritime claim including the sea’s Paracel Islands. China controls the Paracel chain today. France still maintains “cultural” and “economic” ties with its former Southeast Asian colonies, Nagy said.
FILE - A Vietnamese sinking boat (L) which was rammed and then sunk by Chinese vessels near disputed Paracels Islands, is seen near a Marine Guard ship (R) at Ly Son island of Vietnam's central Quang Ngai province.
A Chinese survey vessel entered into standoffs in April 2020 with Malaysia and Vietnam. All three countries drill aggressively for oil and value the sea’s 11 billion barrels of oil and 190 trillion cubic feet of natural gas reserves estimated by the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
French armed forces Minister Florence Parly tweeted on February 9 that the submarine made its voyage to “enrich our knowledge of this area and affirm that international law is the only rule that is valid, regardless of the sea where we sail.”
It further showed “striking proof of the capacity of our French Navy to deploy far away and for a long time in connection with our Australian, American and Japanese strategic partners,” she said.
Brunei, the Philippines and Taiwan dispute parts of the sea too. Asian governments prize the waterway for its fisheries and undersea fossil fuel reserves. China has taken a lead in the dispute over the past decade by landfilling some of the tiny islets for military infrastructure.
Western countries with no claims in the sea have passed ships through as far back as the 1970s as the sovereignty dispute first came into focus. China cites historic usage records to back its activity in the sea despite a 2016 world arbitration court ruling that negated a legal basis for its claims.
Canada, Australia and Western European countries send ships as well to show support for the United States, which has dispatched destroyers to the sea twice this month following regular sailings in 2020, experts believe.
In France’s case, "they just might have notified the U.S. side, and that would be equal to using the submarine passage to indicate indirect support for the United States," said Huang Kwei-bo, vice dean of the international affairs college at National Chengchi University in Taipei.
Citizens of countries far from Asia would support their missions in the Asian sea because they began paying more attention last year to China as the source of COVID-19, Nagy said. They’re noticing Chinese pressure on India and Taiwan as well as the militarily weaker South China Sea claimants, he said.
Western leaders hope to “create leverage” against China, said Alan Chong, associate professor at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore.
“One way of reading leverage is to ensure that Beijing takes European values and principles of sustaining free and open transit through international waters seriously,” Chong said.
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