Week: Partner Insights

Posts from the ISN Partner Network

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Regional Stability

China as a Major Arms Exporter: Implications for Southeast Asia

Chinese Type 99 Battle Tank on Display at the Beijing Military Museum, August 2007, courtesy of Max Smith/Wikimedia Commons

An article in the New York Times on 20 October 2013 highlighted China’s emergence as a major exporter of advanced weapons systems. The global arms market has traditionally been dominated by a handful of mostly Western suppliers: the United States, Britain, France, Russia, and, increasingly, Israel.

Now, however, China appears to be mounting some serious competition to this cabal, with its ability to offer increasingly sophisticated weaponry at rock-bottom prices. According to the NYT, this catalogue includes Predator-like armed drones, air-defence systems similar in capabilities to the Patriot missile, and perhaps even stealth fighter jets.

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Upcoming Presidential Elections in Georgia: More Uncertainty and Economic Slowdown to Come?

Opposition protests in Tbilisi. Image: Wikimedia Commons

Georgia braces for more political and economic uncertainty as it prepares for the upcoming October 27th Presidential election. This just a year after the October 2012 parliamentary elections which left the powerful Rose Revolution government of Mikheil (Misha) Saakashvili and his United National Movement (UNM, now in opposition) defeated.

The political developments during the past few years in Georgia have been a lot more turbulent and unpredictable than during the “golden years” from 2004 up until November of 2007 when police and security forces dispersed opposition protests in the capital Tbilisi using excessive force—to include reports of the police physically clashing with the media. On a broader scale this was the first important incident since the UNM came to power in 2004, displaying just how far the government had gone in order to maintain its power.

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Military Assistance for Myanmar: Need for Balance

US President Obama with Myanmar President Thein Sein. Image: Wikimedia Commons.

Since 2012 the United States, followed by Australia, has extended military assistance and relaxed restrictions on defence cooperation to Myanmar. Then Secretary of Defence Leon Panetta announced that the US would extend military assistance to Myanmar if the leadership continued to implement democratic reforms and improve human rights conditions.

Within a year the then Australian prime minister Julia Gillard announced a relaxation of restrictions on defence co-operation with Myanmar in recognition of its “critical reforms”. Australia wanted to encourage the development of a modern, professional defence force in Myanmar which continued to support democratisation and reform, she said.

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UN Leaving Liberia: What’s Next?

Nigerian ECMOG soldier in Liberia.

The United Nations military mission in Liberia (UNMIL) is no small endeavor. It is one of longest UN missions in sub-Saharan Africa, one of the largest, and one of the most widely supported—with 42 countries contributing military forces and 35 contributing police personnel.

After ten years, though, the need for armed troops has decreased, and the number of foreign soldiers has shrunk to around 5,000. By 2015, the end of the current drawdown phase, there will still be about 3,700 military personnel. In contrast, while the current police presence holds at 1000, there are plans to increase the number of officers to 1700.

The questions to be asked are: why, after ten years with no significant outbreaks of violence, do so many troops need to remain? And,why is the number of international police increasing?

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Russian Politics Towards Ukraine are Illogically Consistent

The European Parliament on September 12 called on Russia to respect the right of EU Eastern Partnership members such as Ukraine to enter Association Agreements. The resolution, which received overwhelming support across the parliament’s political groups, called on Russia to not use trade sanctions to force Ukraine to choose the Eurasian over the European Union.

It is doubtful whether the resolution will have any impact in Moscow because Russian policies have been consistently heavy handed and counter-productive over the last quarter of a century. Besides predicting dire consequences of an economic collapse when Ukraine no longer has access to the CIS market following entry into an Association Agreement, Russian leaders are also claiming that Russian-speaking eastern Ukraine will split away. Sergei Glazyev, one of President Vladimir Putin’s senior advisers, said that Russia would be legally entitled to support eastern Ukraine in such a split, comparing this to Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia in the 1990s.

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