There is no doubt that Australian Prime Minister John Howard was very quick to grasp the enormity of the tsunami disaster and the opportunities it presented for boosting Australia's stature in Asia.
At a time when the world was being told more than 20,000 people were dead, a team of advisors told Howard that the death toll would exceed 100,000. In the space of a week before the recent Tsunami Aid Summit in Jakarta, Howard and his team worked intensively with the Indonesian administration on a "partnership for reconstruction and redevelopment," which caught other nations and the UN by surprise.
Within days, unarmed Australian soldiers were landing in Indonesia's previously "forbidden" province of Aceh to take guidance from the local authorities grappling with the extent of the destruction that has obliterated life along a sprawling coastal strip.
Aceh has been in a state of civil war in recent years. Resentment at the alleged excesses of the central government has turned it into a hot bed for Islamic extremist groups driven by the twin goals of establishing the rule of religious law and striking against perceived western interests or decadent influences.
Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono -- known as SBY -- took every opportunity publicly to express his deep gratitude to Howard for making Australia "first on the ground" in a death zone where more than 130,000 people are now known to have perished.
This was a marked departure on Jakarta's stance toward Australia immediately before the disaster, when Yudhoyono had instructed his officials to brief foreign correspondents on his displeasure at Howard's continued commitment to a policy of striking first at anti-Australian terrorists in "neighboring countries" and declaring maritime security zones that included about 40 percent of Indonesian waters.
Now all this bad feeling seems to have been buried under mountains of Australian cash and aid.
In one startling no-nonsense gesture for which no advance warning was sent to Washington, London, Beijing or Tokyo, Howard pledged far more than a down payment of A$1 billion in cash to assist in the recovery and rebuilding of Indonesia alone when he attended last week's aid summit. That response eclipsed those of Germany (US$650 million), Japan (US$500 million) and the US (US$350 million), and making China's donation of US$63 million seem trivial.
The Australian prime minister waved off questions about monetary value, saying: "This is all about pragmatism. Something had to be done immediately. We are a rich nation, we can afford to be generous, and we will stay the distance with our neighbors in their time of dire need."
While it took UN Secretary General Kofi Annan 14 days to reach the stricken zones the government in Canberra had people on the ground within hours. By the time Annan was in Jakarta, Australia had bypassed the aid apparatus of the UN with a bilateral assistance commission working 24 hours a day out of a Spartan office in the nation's Bappenas planning agency.
"We don't think it necessary to engage the efforts of the UN when we are dealing with a terrible disaster on our doorstep," Howard said.
In his blunt style, Howard said there were dangers of wastefulness and delays in "unnecessarily bureaucratizing the relief effort" and said he would not allow a situation where Australian taxpayers' dollars were put into the hands of others.
The Howard government is well known for characterizing the UN as a bloated bureaucracy with a blemished record in dealing with atrocities committed by developing nations against their own ethnic minorities.
But keeping the UN out of frame was not top of the government's aid response agenda. Briefing the parliamentary press gallery, an official said: "Out of this appalling tragedy there may be a real opportunity to take the relationship with Jakarta to a higher level if we get this right."
These benefits included Australian business participation in reconstruction and the rise toward prosperity of Indonesia, the world's most populous predominantly Muslim nation, and Australia's nearest neighbor. Howard and Foreign Minister Alexander Downer also spoke of the benefits the aid program could have in strengthening the resolve of Asian nations against terrorist groups based on their soil days before outgoing US Secretary of State Colin Powell began to say the same thing.
Until the tsunami struck, relations between Canberra and Jakarta were strained and had been so for many years. On Oct. 16, 1975 in the first phase of Jakarta's invasion of the former Portuguese colony of East Timor, four Australian and one New Zealand newsmen -- the so-called "Balibo five" -- were butchered by Indonesian Special Forces.
Relations soured further when in 1999 Australian forces led a UN mission to secure its transition to independence from Jakarta.
Today though, those events are considered off-limits by spokespeople for both governments.
As officials have said in Canberra this week, Jakarta has its own reasons for embracing the Australian aid initiatives, hoping tensions over East Timor can be "diluted" by the common cause presented by an overwhelming natural disaster.
Recently, China launched another diplomatic offensive against Taiwan, improperly linking its “one China principle” with UN General Assembly Resolution 2758 to constrain Taiwan’s diplomatic space. After Taiwan’s presidential election on Jan. 13, China persuaded Nauru to sever diplomatic ties with Taiwan. Nauru cited Resolution 2758 in its declaration of the diplomatic break. Subsequently, during the WHO Executive Board meeting that month, Beijing rallied countries including Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Belarus, Egypt, Nicaragua, Sri Lanka, Laos, Russia, Syria and Pakistan to reiterate the “one China principle” in their statements, and assert that “Resolution 2758 has settled the status of Taiwan” to hinder Taiwan’s
Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s (李顯龍) decision to step down after 19 years and hand power to his deputy, Lawrence Wong (黃循財), on May 15 was expected — though, perhaps, not so soon. Most political analysts had been eyeing an end-of-year handover, to ensure more time for Wong to study and shadow the role, ahead of general elections that must be called by November next year. Wong — who is currently both deputy prime minister and minister of finance — would need a combination of fresh ideas, wisdom and experience as he writes the nation’s next chapter. The world that
Can US dialogue and cooperation with the communist dictatorship in Beijing help avert a Taiwan Strait crisis? Or is US President Joe Biden playing into Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) hands? With America preoccupied with the wars in Europe and the Middle East, Biden is seeking better relations with Xi’s regime. The goal is to responsibly manage US-China competition and prevent unintended conflict, thereby hoping to create greater space for the two countries to work together in areas where their interests align. The existing wars have already stretched US military resources thin, and the last thing Biden wants is yet another war.
Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, people have been asking if Taiwan is the next Ukraine. At a G7 meeting of national leaders in January, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida warned that Taiwan “could be the next Ukraine” if Chinese aggression is not checked. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has said that if Russia is not defeated, then “today, it’s Ukraine, tomorrow it can be Taiwan.” China does not like this rhetoric. Its diplomats ask people to stop saying “Ukraine today, Taiwan tomorrow.” However, the rhetoric and stated ambition of Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Taiwan shows strong parallels with