US in bipartisan retreat from globalisation – Asian Media Report

Joe Biden’s dying-days decision to reject Nippon Steel’s $A 22 billion bid to buy US Steel highlights the extent of America’s rush to protectionism, even at the cost of harming a crucial alliance. 

The retreat is bipartisan: Donald Trump also opposed the deal.

A Bloomberg commentary published in The Japan Times says the decision highlights how sharply the US has turned away from the principles of globalisation.

In an extraordinary ruling, Biden earlier this month blocked a business bid by its most important military ally in Asia, allegedly on national security grounds. The Asahi Shimbun reported Nippon Steel as saying Biden offered no credible evidence of a national security problem.

Nippon Steel and US Steel have launched legal action, arguing they were denied due process and the transaction was blocked on political grounds. The Japan Times reported Nippon Steel chief Eiji Hashimoto as saying this was the best course of action. “There is no reason or need to give up,” he said.

The paper said in an editorial there was little explanation other than raw politics for Biden’s rejection of the takeover.

The editorial said: “Japan is an ally of the US. We are told regularly that we are the US’s most important partner in the Indo-Pacific. The idea that a major Japanese company… could pose a national security threat to the US renders those statements… meaningless.

“If serious, then the very notion of an alliance has been emptied of all significance.”

Global Times, an official Chinese newspaper, said Biden’s decision was a bitter pill for Japan.

“Washington fundamentally treats Japan as a subordinate,” the paper said. 

“The implications extend beyond Japan. The Biden administration’s move reinforces a growing perception that the US is prioritising its own economic security over the interests of its partners.”

Singapore’s The Straits Times published a Bloomberg analysis saying that in preparing the executive order to block the deal staffers seemed to have accidentally copied and pasted the title of an earlier order, this one concerning a Chinese company. 

“It sums up what many in Japan will be thinking of the administration’s baffling rejection of the deal – that as far as the US is concerned, Japan and China might be one and the same,” the article said.

“When it comes to naked political interests, it seems Japan is expendable. What national security risk could there possibly be from a country that houses more than 50,000 US troops?

“It’s an insult that won’t soon be forgotten.”

Global South group appoints first ASEAN member

Indonesia has become a full member of BRICS, the Global South economic grouping, in a sudden upgrade from its recently acquired partner status. It is the first Southeast Asian country to join the bloc.

Brazil, this year’s president of BRICS, said on Monday member states had approved Indonesia’s entry by consensus, making it the 10^th full member.

An Indonesian bid to join BRICS was approved in 2023 but then president Joko Widodo decided not to pursue membership. The Diplomat, the online Asian newsmagazine, reported that Jokowi wanted to weigh the pros and cons of the move. But his successor, Prabowo Subianto, decided to seek full membership.

On January 1, nine countries, including Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand, became BRICS partner countries. Indonesia was elevated to full membership on January 6. 

The Jakarta Post reported the Indonesian Foreign Ministry welcomed the official full membership. The ministry said admission to BRICS was a milestone for Jakarta’s growing role in global affairs.

“Indonesia believes that BRICS provides a valuable platform for fostering South-South co-operation and ensuring that the voices and aspirations of developing countries are heard and reflected in global decision-making processes,” the ministry said.

China’s official media welcomed the move. China Daily said in an editorial the group’s steady enlargement was a testimony to its having become the primary channel for strengthening solidarity among Global South nations and the vanguard for advancing global governance reform.

“However… it has to contend with opposition to its aims by the G7 countries, which fear it is moving their cheese,” the editorial said.

An opinion piece in Global Times, said Indonesia’s admission to BRICS served as an example to other Southeast Asian nations, offering opportunities in multilateral co-operation that align with their interests.

Plan B for China in Myanmar: talk to the rebels

Myanmar junta chief General Min Aung Hlaing has launched a verbal offensive against rebel forces even while his army is on the defensive on the battlefield. 

Hlaing declared in a January 4 Independence Day address his regime would not yield to demands from the gun from Myanmar’s resistance groups. But The Irrawaddy, a Myanmar exile news site, reported that the junta last month ceded control of three townships and its Western Command headquarters in Rakhine State.

The rebel Arakan Army has taken control of 14 of the 17 townships in the state, The Irrawaddy reported.

The civilian National Unity Government said on Saturday armed resistance forces had complete or partial control of 144 of Myanmar’s 330 townships.

Ucanews.com, the Asian Catholic news site, said that having cut a swathe through Rakhine State the Arakan Army offered to hold talks with the junta, with China as a possible broker. 

The Arakan Army extended an olive branch to China, praising Beijing for its leadership in promoting stability in Myanmar.

Beijing has a vital interest in Rakhine State, as it owns a 771-km oil and gas pipeline that runs from the capital of Sittwe, on the Bay of Bengal, through Rakhine and onto northern states before entering China.

Michael Martin, of Washington’s Centre for Strategic and International Studies, said it was reasonable to think the junta would be driven out of Rakhine State this year.

China would prefer to see the military maintain power – and stability – to protect its interests. “If the junta falls, [China] will go to Plan B and talk to the Arakan Army about how to keep the pipeline working,” Martin said.

It seems Beijing wants to remain aloof from the junta. The Irrawaddy said China on January 4 continued its post-coup practice of not sending a congratulatory message on Independence Day.

China and Russia are the main arms suppliers to the Myanmar military. Russia did send a message. 

Australia anchors US Pacific defence game plan

The Pentagon’s Indo-Pacific strategy has been called “agile combat employment”, “expanded manoeuvre” and “scatter and survive”.

Asian affairs commentator Huw Watkin finds the latter label to be the most telling.

“The goal is to spread out US forces across a wide geographical area to withstand a potential first strike,” Watkin says in an analytical article published in Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post.

He quotes the Lowy Institute’s Sam Roggeveen as saying the US is spreading its forces widely because big bases are vulnerable to missile attacks.

“America is not building a presence in Asia that is designed to win a war against China,” Roggeveen says. “Its strategy is designed merely to survive one.”

Watkin, an Australian journalist with extensive Asian experience, says the US recognises that China’s PLA combined military force is a worthy adversary. He quotes from the Pentagon’s latest report to Congress: “The PLA’s evolving capabilities and concepts continue to strengthen [China’s] ability to fight and win wars against a ‘strong enemy’.”

The US has revived an “island chain” strategy developed during the Korean War, Watkin says, placing military assets along three north-south island chains – from Japan through Taiwan to the Philippines; from Iwo Jima to Guam, Palau and Papua New Guinea; and from the Aleutian Islands to Hawaii, Oceania and New Zealand.

“Australia plays a key role in this strategy, anchoring the southern end of these island chains,” Watkin says.

“Plans are also afoot to establish more bases west of Darwin, reaching as far as the Cocos Islands and the US-UK military facility on Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.”

Washington aims to build up military infrastructure west of the International Date Line. The budget for 2025 is $US 9.9 billion ($A 15.5 billion)

“There hasn’t been a substantial upgrade of American military power in Asia since the end of the Cold War,” Watkin says.

Lawyers call impeached president ‘guardian of the law’ 

Beleaguered South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, hiding in his home behind a barricade of buses and barbed wire and protected by a military unit, insists through his lawyers he will abide by the Constitutional Court’s ruling on the National Assembly’s decision to impeach him.

But he cannot accept the warrant issued for his detention as it was executed illegally, his lawyers said. He could not accept illegal judicial procedures, they said, calling the man who last month imposed martial law in the country “the guardian of the law”.

Yoon imposed and then withdrew martial law on December 3-4. Korea’s parliament impeached him on December 14 and the Constitutional Court must rule on its decision within six months.

The Korea Times reported the lawyers as saying Yoon was committed to attending future court hearings but only after resolution of issues they had raised.

While the legal wrangling continues, so do the protests. Rallies near the presidential compound are becoming bigger, The Korea Herald said. Demonstrators included pro- and anti-Yoon groupings, the paper said.

Yoon refused to appear before a court to answer charges of insurrection and then defied initial attempts to serve the warrant for his detention. Authorities have obtained a second warrant and police are working on a strategy to enter his residence, deploying maximum personnel and equipment, the Herald said.

An opinion article published in The Korea Times said Yoon modelled his December 3 self-coup on Donald Trump, as had former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro after he lost the 2022 election.

The article, by international commentator Gwynne Dyer, said Yoon supporters waved American flags to show they were emulating Trump supporters’ January 6, 2021 attack on Congress.

“Like Trump,” Dyer wrote, “both men justified their illegal actions with the false claim that the previous election had been rigged against their side. But there was one big difference: unlike Trump, they didn’t chicken out at the last moment.

“Stupid, but brave.”

Prabowo’s plan to reduce stunting

From Monday of this week, kitchens throughout Indonesia began preparing meals and distributing them to tens of millions of children, pregnant women and breastfeeding mothers – the start of a free meal program aimed at fighting stunting caused by malnutrition.

Stunting affects more than 20 per cent of Indonesian children and the government says it aims to reduce the rate to 5 per cent within 20 years.

The program has a budget of $A 6.9 billion for the first six months of this year, with $A 1 allocated for each meal. The Jakarta Post says the target is to deliver meals to almost 83 million people by 2029. 

Providing free meals was a key election promise of President Prabowo Subianto, the paper says.

But the program was met with scepticism when it was announced. The paper quotes nutritionist Tan Shot Yen as saying the scheme needed robust management to ensure it did not include such unhealthy foods as instant noodles and sausages.

The Post published an academic commentary that named food waste as a critical issue. TV news stories this week had shown children refusing to eat their meals.

“Whatever their reason, the phenomenon signals the potential for food waste on a large scale,” the article said.

David Armstrong has worked in Asia for more than 20 years. He is a former chief editor of The Bulletin, the Canberra Times, The Australian and the South China Morning Post. He is a former president of the Bangkok Post company and lives in Bangkok. 

This article first appeared in Pearls and Irritations.