Commentary from the office desk: 2 cents worth of political events (Part V)

This is a late entry compared to the previous 4 posts, but I will try to restore the regular balance back…in return, allow me to summarise and comment on some of major political developments for the past few weeks…

Hilary Clinton’s visit to Asia esp the 4 countries is of heavy political significance – by visiting Japan and Indonesia before PRC and Korea means that Washington is going to hopefully concentrate more on the ‘forgotten part’ of Asia – that being Southeast Asia. After all, any politically informed person in this region would know that Condolezza Rice snubbed the last 2 US-ASEAN summits in favour of trying to ‘fix’ the damage in Iraq and Iran. Somehow Obama’s intelligence has alerted him that building a good relationship with ASEAN will make his GWOT much smoother so that he can look to Afghanistan and Pakistan alone. Hopefully that helps.

The Tamil Tigers and their fight for a homeland amidst Sinhalese-dominated Sri Lanka is probably going to have a bloody ending. It is now obvious that the Sri Lanka armies will defeat them convincingly – but one has to ask if they can comprehensively wipe them out… I will not think that that is possible so long as they retreat back to the jungles, and their leader Villapulai Prabhakan cannot be found, this struggle may become another mini-Taliban with Osama…so this story will not close not in the short run.

Now of course the other thing comes with the G20 summit going on right now – Obama will have to realize that it is not just a PR exercise to look good – but he has to sound good and be truthful as well. There has been much furore over the agenda of the summit itself – that of which I think is not an easy thing for any new President of the USA to look at – it is worse when one has a global crisis, domestic confidence to rebuild as well.

On the ongoing saga of the DPRK missile testing (or they so claim it as a satellite), my guess is that a military confrontation might happen soon – the only question is how big it will be. Personally my own opinion of it is that it is dependent on how both sides will react. For Japan, the US and South Korea it will be clear – they will react accordingly. Especially for the Japanese, their interceptors are ready to shoot any missile that is launched – and that the US and South Korea will table it to the UNSC. DPRK vows to issue a military response – not sure what that means – but to me it is simple – it sure wants to declare war – something it never thought of – it might happen as soon as this weekend. However, with the launch yesterday, and Japan choosing not to intercept, it might be seen as a sign of weakness from the Japanese and Americans – and give DPRK the impression that they hold the cards in this struggle. Yet as one analyst from Beijing University correctly commented, this is the only way Kim Jong Il will get the attention it seeks – as the world would not pay attention otherwise to a country that is going to ruins anyway anyone looks at it.