Ladies and gentlemen, greetings from London. And thank you very much for joining us for today's webinar. This is the first webinar that we organized within the context of the Kings of Japan program at Kings College London. And I am particularly delighted today to welcome an old friend and a new friend. My name is Alessio Pachelana and I am the director of the Kings of Japan program at the Department of War Studies at Kings College London. Welcome everyone. I'm joined today by Professor Takako Kikutani, who is the Jelly Curtis professor in Japanese modern politics and foreign policy at Columbia University. And I'm very pleased also to be joined by Mr. Masashi Murano, who is the Japan chair fellow at the Hudson Institute. From DC, Murano-san and Takako Kusuyone in New York at the moment. Thank you both for joining me this afternoon. Before we start, allow me to make a couple of quick points. First of all, we are recording live on Facebook. We're streaming on Facebook. So for those of you who weren't able to catch the tickets, please do follow us there. And we're also making a recording of the webinar, which will then upload depending on any technical problems once this is all finished. And in so far as the dynamics of today's webinar are concerned, we're going to do as followed. I will make some brief introductory remarks on the regional security dynamics before giving the floor to Murano-san, who will more specifically focus on a perspective from Japan on the security dynamics in the region as they are evolving at the moment. And then of course, passing the baton on to Professor Hikotani, who will sort of give us further insights as to an insight how the politics in Japan are playing out around the coronavirus and foreign policy and security agendas. And after the remarks, which will be kept to about 10, 15 minutes each, we will open the floor to questions and you can all use the chat to let us know what would you are like to ask to the panelists and I will operate as a sort of chair in trying to organize and divide the questions from among the three of us. Without any further ado, let me start with an apology and on my hand, because yes, the Salinary's type of Japanization security, but if we're talking about regional landscape, I do prefer to use an Indo-Pacific as the main framework of analysis for the regional context. And that's because the centrality that the maritime space has to this region and in particular, how it reflects on the matter of connectivity and the sea is the fabric that brings together this wider space. And what I like about this idea of the Indo-Pacific as Rory Metcalf quite nicely points out in his latest book is this idea that connectivity is about defining the center of the space, the Indian Ocean and the Pacific oceans, but leaving the periphery of it if you want and study more nebulas because it's an inclusive space. Maritime spaces are about connecting spaces that can be far apart and that connection may not always be used, but it's always there. Also, I think what is very important in so far as the discussion, today's discussion is concerned is how this idea of the Indo-Pacific speaks to two questions, two issues if you want, that in security terms are essential to understand how in the context of COVID and post-COVID, the security landscape is evolving. One is the idea of order as not just a matter of material power, but a matter of legitimacy. And I'll talk a little bit more of what it is to meaning of power and legitimacy in the maritime centric regional landscape. And the second aspect is how connectivity also or our understanding of connectivity whether we use vocabulary that talks about globalization or interdependence also are changing and are likely to change or at least there is important question as we move forward. So let's start with the first one with the first point, the one that concerns the question of connectivity because it is very central to the sense of identity of the Indo-Pacific as it is. It is quite interesting that whilst COVID has highlighted how quickly world trade could shrunk due to the inability to operate ports and operate factories, production lines and so on and so forth, and cost code and shipping actually started in April in the middle of the situation where international trade and global shipping was down in very significant fashion, a point that we will return upon in a minute, it started a new cost, it started a new East Mediterranean and East, a coast of the United States connection route, one route that will link Italy, Spain, Turkey, Egypt, Greece, Israel to the East coast of the United States which raises an interesting sort of or puts a spot of highlights on a particular component of how important China has become in the context of international shipping and how in many ways the Indo-Pacific connectivity rests on trade routes that are operated today in a significant proportion by Chinese company cost code being certainly the most significant actor. Just to give you a couple of numbers, we're talking about 401 shipping routes operated in 2019 by Costco which 255 are providing international services of sorts. If this is an interesting story in the middle of a crisis that saw global shipping and connectivity being significantly reduced, cost code started operating a new trade routes and we've seen on the other hand some significant contractions and also if you want contractions with a significant implication in terms of how visions of the Indo-Pacific are coming together. Most notably, the significant reduction during the periods of January to the end of February, beginning of March in terms of Chinese industrial output, key projects in the sort of periphery of the Indo-Pacific would be part of the Belt and Road Initiative as the Chinese vision for the similar place and similar regional space has it. And I've seen considerable impact. Places like the mid-list where the majority of the investment projects are run by Chinese company on Chinese imported products and Chinese worker have seen the significance of today's contraction in their ability to sort of operate. And it is very unlikely that in the foreseeable future we'll see a return to a degree of normality providing that there are no guarantee that the spread of COVID is entirely under control. What is interesting to highlight how the sort of like the contrast between what we're mentioning earlier on, Costco launching a new trade route as opposed to the general contraction on the 24th of April, just a couple of weeks ago, a consortium of some of the most important portal operators led by Singapore signed a declaration that emphasized their commitment to keep shipping open notwithstanding the fact that an enormous amount of cargo shipping at the moment is sailing around almost a half empty. And that's a powerful reminder of the fact that things like food and energy requirements, medicine, about 80% of all of it that sort of goes around the world travels Etsy at any point in time. The combination of the tension between the continuous trend and certainly the Costco's starting operating a new trade group sticks to these continuous sort of upward trajectory of global trade expansion as opposed to the short-term significant contraction that we've seen under COVID has exposed a bigger problem that is intrinsic to the question of connectivity and that sees China at center of it. That is the question of supply chains. One of the things that has been highlighted during the COVID crisis is how the reduction of global trade has affected in particular Europe, the United States, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam in that order when it comes to dependency on China. It must be said that Chinese sort of exports are constituted about 20% of global trade in terms of manufacturing intermediate products. And that's a figure that has gone up since, if you compare it to 2002, when it constituted only 4%, it gives you a sense of how remarkable that increase has been. But during the crisis, whether it is a question of lack of supply with other countries needed it or the fact that that supply came with costs hidden or open has raised very important questions with matter of supply chains. There's been calls in places more than one around the world about increasing resilience of national economies or increasing their antifragility, as others have pointed out. In Japan, we've seen the government declaring incentives for companies coming out of China and redistributing in other parts and in particular receiving incentives to go back to Japan. Similar calls have been happening across Europe, the United States, and we've seen very recently with the new contract between Apple and the Indian government that Apple will progressively shift to some of its production in India, precisely to reduce the heavy dependency that the world global connectivity today has on China in itself. As a result of this, two questions, which I think are very relevant to the long-term trajectory of regional security come up. One is what is going to be the impact of a potential redistribution of supply chains the world over in terms of the sort of reduction in global trade. And there's a result of that, a shift to a world that will be less interdependent, still integrated, and certainly less globalized from a shipping perspective. What pressures will that bring about on shipping companies and overall trade? Raising in particular security terms, the question of whether it would extend in the future, if actually this redistribution of supply chains takes place, to what extent that will affect the way we think about the protection and the security of sea lanes, which today are untouchable because the integration of world economy makes it just not cost effective for anyone to disrupt such sea lanes of communication. What that question will look like once there is less sort of interdependence in terms of global shipping. And that's a very important question. Will the world therefore as a result of this, particularly in a context where connectivity as implicit in the concept of the Indo-Pacific speaks to inclusiveness, will that to a world that is less inclusive or in which national sort of priorities will de facto create a less inclusive world? Some indications that that might be the case have certainly occurred in the regional context over the last two months. If the COVID-19 has been a tragedy that has afflicted human beings and populations the world over, on the other hand, it has represented somewhat of an opportunity for those particularly in the case of China in the wider Indo-Pacific region to take action to impose their national claims whether in terms of projection of power or territorial maritime sovereignty claims and in a much more assertive fashion. Here, two examples I think of their importance and we've seen it generally speaking notwithstanding the COVID crisis and increased military activities and maritime activities in particular or matter-related activities, certainly the sinking of the Vietnamese ships inside the EEZ of Vietnam were seen survey vessels also creating the problems within the same sort of space and the creation of new administrative in sort of initiatives in the Xixian, Changsha islands in the South China Sea and we've seen also increased activity in the East China Sea inside the territorial waters of the Senkak Islands known in China as Diao Yu we've seen a lot of activity that would speak to a greater attempt at asserting national ambitions and certainly in a broader state we've seen also an increase in military action that speaks to more directly problems of material power and regional order in particular in this context it comes to mind the increase in military activities around Taiwan and the sort of matter-and-air spaces that directly relate to cross-strait relations whether it is the extended period of exercises conducted by the Liaoning Task Group from sort of like East China Sea down to the South China Sea whether it is the two months long exercises started today in China, in the North Eastern region of China and we're talking about things that seem or the night exercise and the much-air exercise in Southwestern parts of the airspace close to Taiwan was certainly seen as sort of a degree of increase in military activities that speaks perhaps to the fact that Taiwan in the context of the global pandemic crisis has been a military positive after it has shown how to deal with the problem it has shown a certain degree of collegiality with the rest of the world where they sort of engage the WHO about it and certainly that did not please sort of the Chinese leadership. So when we're talking about the second point that I had in mind the one about the inclusivity and in particular the question of order as a matter of legitimacy and power COVID-19 it's suggesting that power in particular material power in order to advance claims of regional leadership or extending long-term issues it's unlikely to go out of fashion and at the same time legitimacy does not come as an automatic sort of result of a certain situation and in particular the reactions across the region and it is particularly significant that in Southeast Asia there is a sense of displeased worth of Chinese behavior over the last month and a half particularly because it took place during COVID in a way undermining Chinese attempts to create a narrative of saving up the world of a country showing leadership in a context where the United States had failed to do so. So the conclusions are at least three points at the region level that I think it's worth keeping in mind what it comes out of all of this particularly for sort of the broader in the Pacific and on the first point the question of leadership and how order is changing I don't think that it is fair to suggest as it has been the case lately that lack of US global leadership automatically translate into an opportunity for China. I think the reality in the Pacific particularly the mismatch between narrative and behavior suggests that the lack of leadership does not create automatic opportunities and in fact that this is a much more complicated question. One perhaps that has highlighted that whereas the leadership problem in the United States is perhaps personal around the personality of President Trump in China the problem of leadership is more institutional. It's not about Xi Jinping being someone that we cannot entirely trust but the way the dynamics of COVID and how it was COVID up at the beginning came about suggests that there's much more deeply ingrained institutional problem there. The second point is that in a context whereby problem of order and sort of like if you want stability in terms of leadership are unclear the role that actors other than major powers will have is likely to increase. After all, if we're moving towards a question where everybody is going to be looking at supply chains is looking at sort of how to retain and regain a degree of stability in a world that remains integrated will fall upon other actors from South Korea to Japan to one, two, and South East Asian actors and European actors all to come together in this respect and step up to the plate to take up this part of the slug that is left and if you want an address to buy the major players. Lastly, the last point really is about military power. COVID-19 has brought under the spotlight the importance of pandemic, natural disasters, main disasters, transnational security challenges as we look forward. But in surprise the Indo-Pacific is concerned it has also highlighted that military power is not going to go out of fashion anytime soon. As a matter of fact, it is likely to remain very important and the question really is going to be for those countries particularly affected in economic terms by the current pandemic how to balance increased requirement to address transnational challenges such as pandemics in a context whereby the requirements for a world that is less inclusive and perhaps less sort of interconnected, still integrated, but less sort of interdependent will continue to emerge and rise. Within this context, certainly reconsidering the defense of sea lanes and how to address maritime disputes is unlikely to go away in the region. And as a result of that, deterrents with conventional and to an extent strategic will remain very much a central issue to engage with in months and years ahead. On these happy notes, I'll leave it up, stop it here. My 10 minutes are gone. Murano-sensei, please, and the floor is yours. All right, at first thank you very much for inviting me to this web public event. I'm a Masashi Murano, Japan chair fellow of the Hudson Institute. Basically I'm dealing with the hardware security issues like deterrence, the nuclear strategy and the plastic missile defense usually. But today I'd like to address a little bit more broader perspective related on the coronavirus situation and the security issues facing Japan from three contexts, but which related each other. First, responding to coronavirus is about public health issues itself. Historically in the post-Cold War security studies there was a glowing argument that not only traditional security issues such as the deterrence of armed conflict, but also issue of transnational or trans-regional security agenda such as energy security, human security, as well as how to deal with pandemics. There are these that should be discussed as a security issues. Is there a broader sense? In this long, someone so-called securitization debate. Expanding the definition of the security has the advantages and disadvantages. But at least in the short term we need to see the public health as a part of security issues. Actually some governments doing so by declaring the national emergencies and so on. However, from the long-term perspective the coronavirus problem should not be viewed as a single public health problems. But as one of that affect all affairs. The coronavirus has a huge impact of all of things including politics, economies and daily based operation of military forces that is which Alessio mentioned. Therefore, there are less than considering the coronaviruses as a standalone problem. They should be considered as an embedded problem in the consideration of all security issues. Now, the some number of political leaders sometimes use as using the analogy of armed conflict to discuss the coronavirus issues. For example, in one interview, the Prime Minister Abe described the coronavirus problem as recognizing it as a World War III in terms of the crisis the world in facing the same time. In addition to President Trump, a few days ago they expressed that this damage from the coronavirus is worse than the power harbour. This is worse than this damage worse than the World Trade Center which made a 1911 situation. The context of the President Trump's remarks is so unclear, but in any case, I do not think it is appropriate to express about the coronavirus issue with the analogy of the largest scale of conflict. In security studies, when we analyzing the slits, we think of the mix of intent and the capabilities. And also, the coronavirus has the capability to kill or injure the peoples, but it is impossible to know their intent. It will not deter the virus that is unable to communicate. So that is a point with how to distinguish of the armed conflict or the fight with the coronavirus. So if we dare to discuss to the coronavirus in a war analogy, I think that to the fight against the coronavirus is the closer to the war on terror than the armed conflict with the major powers. For instance that in the post-911 security debate, what was discussed was that we cannot deter the terrorists who are not afraid of death. So we can do the only things that it is limiting damage in the society. So in other words, the strategy that countries will pursue that from now on will be similar to coexisting with the extremism under the acceptable risk. Or in other words, it's about defining the virus in the community and the classing it. The virus will not be zelled out, but if the number of the infected peoples can be kept within the medical capacity and the infected cluster groups that can be kept truck off, that the damage can be limited. Or if a certain vaccine is developed, it will be helped with this operation. However, how to detect the infected person across the groups can be problematic. So what I mean by this is, the China or even South Korea truck personal activities records from the smartphones or GPS records and other devices in a fairly meticulous manner which has led to some success in the contains the virus. So this is similar to the debate over the Patriot Act in the U.S. which expanded the scope of the intelligence gasoline after the 9-11. So in other words, the argument is that individual freedom and the lights of the individual lights, they should be somewhat restricted if it is the interest of the public safety or public security. However, this also means a temporary given up the political system that the liberal democracies that have pride of themselves on and the use of the advantages and embracing that in totalitarian or authoritarian aspect. So which means that this is the political ideological contradiction. So I think that this point also affected to the second point which I started to talk about this point. The second context or second point is of these issues that is related on the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the strategic competition or long-term competition between U.S. and China from the current U.S.-China relationship or U.S.-China rivalry as a Cold War. That because of the definition and the context of the concept of the Cold War, very sensitive and pointed out the similarity and the differences. The however, in the period of recovery from this situation, the competition between the U.S. and China over political, economic, even military and the medical or SMR advanced technologies as well as the sphere of influence that they provided to other countries will become more intense. So what is particularly difficult is sometimes the totalitarian or authoritarian systems that constraints of the freedom of the peoples such as China maybe better suit for the contain the control of the coronavirus pandemics. So it is not wonder to some countries to find these methods of attractive. So the question of the United States or its allies is how to recover from this pandemic, the crisis, the while maintaining the freedom and the economic prosperity. United States and its allies, including Japan that also deferred in their response to coronavirus. For example, the United States, where I live in now, do not track infected cluster group using the detail of the personal information. But it does not have the lockdown as a considerably limited of the freedom. However, in case of Japan, which has literally a few fatalities and that does not have the stricter as a lockdown as a Europe and the United States and tried to limited the damage to the socioeconomic through the lose of the self-delegation. So even if the United States and its allies recover from this situation, that it does not mean that the liberal or democratic groups that has shown in the regime advantages, it is the dealt with the differences because of our countermeasures against violence is a slightly different. So that is a little bit of complexity to share of the our knowledge to recovering from this shocks. So how quickly we recover from this coronavirus shock? And leave it to our economy and security will remarks that we make that competition between the US models and the Chinese models even more the plan house. So this is the unmistakable inter-regime competition and it's there has to be said that it is a cold war. So that is my short conclusion that the complexity of the context the current international situation is the dual structure of the dealing with the coronavirus while fighting with the strategic competition between US and China that laid behind it. So that is one of the major problems. The dual structure is the one of the major complexity of this situation. At last, I'd like to talk about the more operational perspective. This is the third context. It's already a little bit mentioned about as noted earlier, the US advantages is in the competing with China has been its network of allies and partners. So in other words, the strengths of the United States and allies was that they are connected to both the kinetic physically or non-physically. However, it has been difficult to continue the physical connection. For example, the United States has canceled or post-formed a number of joint exercise with Japan, South Korea and others. So there are also a number of infection within the US air traffic carrier, SELDA laws built, that lead under to its temporary inactive. In addition, it's also already, the Arrestio mentions that from May 8th, the Chinese Coast Guard vessels they have invaded, intruded to the territorial waters along Japan's Senkaku Islands in attempt to enforce the law, a Chinese law, by the trucking Japanese fishing boats. These actions and the behaviors have been taking place in the South China Sea, but it was unusual for them to take place in the East China Sea. So while dealing with the coronavirus, the Japan's Coast Guard, the Japan's self-defense forces and the US forces needed to maintain their readiness. The readiness so as not to overreact Chinese, the opportunistic craving expansion to challenge a status quo. Or that is my current perspective or to see the current security situation under the coronavirus. I stop here. Thank you very much, Moran Asan. I think both of the points that you were making, how do we, what kind of framework that we cast over our understanding of COVID as a security issues, how sort of that relates to the long-term ongoing competition between China and the United States also will affect us. And again, the last point I hear you loud and clear, the question of capabilities not just in terms of materiel, but also the ability of alliances which are key to the United States as an actor in the Asia Pacific and the border in the Pacific will continue to operate. So the sort of issues that we will have to think more about will remain with us more. Takako, would you like to jump in and now sort of bring everything together? Thank you. Thanks so much, Alessio, for this opportunity. A webinar is a new thing that came out. One of the silver linings of all this is that we've discovered new ways to connect and to exchange intellectually across borders. And so I think this is one of our new things that we've been doing at Columbia too and I'm really happy to take part in yours today. So the question posed to me from Alessio was to examine the political context in Japan and how the current situation affects the Abe administration, its plans and Abe's own quest for legacy. In particular, how and if COVID-19 has shifted the balance in Japanese politics and what possible repercussions on security and foreign policy and that's a really tall order and I'm not gonna be able to cover everything. But my short answer is that maybe it's useful to think in terms of the policy and the process and the politics sort of separately to sort of evaluate what we've been seeing so far and to see what implication that may have for security and foreign policy. But what I will not do is to talk about what exactly Japanese government response was but to instead point you to an excellent article written by my friend Kazuto Suzuki and the diplomat about the Japan model which describes what the Japanese government has been doing. As Masashi said, I think Japan's government approach is slightly different from other countries that is making people wonder what's going on. And this I think his article as well as his press conference, one of the things that we discovered so we can see other countries press conferences to the foreign press club is actually very useful. So if you wanna hear that, I'm not gonna take that but go check out what Kazuto Suzuki has to say. And I think I wouldn't do is evaluate what Japanese government policy is to other countries response. For this, I'd like to point to Philip Lipsey's excellent piece in the foreign policy magazine about the difficulty of picking winners and losers to the response of government because of the different social economic conditions and whatnot. So that I like to just point to my friends and not do it myself but instead talk about how I view what's going on in Japan as an outside of server. I'm actually in New York City and the epicenter of all things, not to take pride in it but it's just that I've been more of an outside observer kind of puzzled by what's going on in Japan rather than being part of the Japanese public. My family's there so I do talk to them a lot but I'm sort of looking at it more like an outsizer. So I guess the question is what has COVID-19 revealed about Japanese politics? Whether it has changed and what are the unexpected and how it's relevant to what we're talking about today, security and foreign policy, especially with regards to what Masashi said right now about Japan's role in the region and what it can do as an ally. And finally, I'd like to add one word on the self-defense force because I used to teach at the National Defense Academy in my area of research is civil relations, how they fit them. So what has COVID-19 revealed about the Japanese politics? I think what the interesting thing to start with is the point that Japan's death per capita is comparatively low, it's very low. But despite the fact that in terms in that figure, from that point of view, Japan has done fairly well, the public has not attributed the low death to the actions of government. That is to say there was an article in the columnist on May 9th about looking at different countries approval rating and whether there was a rally around the flag effect in other countries, obvious ranking was, I think the lowest at 28% and Trump is 44. And from somebody being in the US, being lower than Trump is quite something. And that for me, it's rather shocking. So why is there a discrepancy between what we see like an international sort of report part and how Japan's been doing in terms of low death per capita? And one way to say is it may be it's different if you look at domestic polls and that's not really true. If I've been looking at the NHK, which is like BBC, the mix of polls and the most recent that I've seen is one of April 14th, but approval rating of the cabinet has been going down on 44 to 39%. Disapproval, it has been around 38. So it's like half and half. And also why do they approve? The answer is not that encouraging in the sense that it's because they're better than other options. And part of it is they support the LDP and why disapprove is that either the government is not trustworthy or there's no hope in policy, which they say to 28%. And at the same time, the public seems to be very worried about infection. So it's not that they don't care about this issue. 89% who respond to say they are very worried about the infection. But the evaluation of government policy is not that high. Why? So I think one answer is in the process that it's hard to sort of think about how things have evolved because I think all of us went through this whole storm in a way, it's hard to remember where it started. But I think for like us in the US, it kind of started in early March. And that's where our reference point is. In Japan, the first infection was found January 16th. So Japan has been going through this for a very, very long time and that they chartered evacuation of flights to Wuhan at the end of January. The Diamond Princess incident, if anybody remembers the Diamond Princess incident, is February, like the South Defense Force operation started February 6th. And schools were closed on February 27th. And at that point for us in the US, we're wondering why is that an overreaction in the US? So anyway, my point is that the Special Measures Act was done in March 13th. And the state of emergency finally came on April 7th after there was a decision made to postpone the Olympics on March 24th. But Japan has been going through this for a very long time. So in a way, there's a lot of fatigue about dealing with this, of course, among the public. And I'm sure because on the government side, to this world we are right now, we said there was a state of emergency declared. And now they extended the state of emergency on May 4th. But I think today or yesterday, as of Japan's time, they lifted the state of emergency in 39 out of 47 prefectures. So they're kind of going back, going into the restart, which has sort of been parallel to what's happening in New York right now. But overall, so is it just because it was too long? And that's the only reason why that they are not that popular. I don't think that's true. And I think there's some indecisiveness that may worry those who are looking at Japan's response to these kind of crises. I do think that what's interesting in terms of the process is that despite the fact, unless you mentioned leadership, it's easy to talk about other leadership and sort of talk about the person. But I think what's also important is that in the past 20 years, we saw more concentration of power in the prime minister. That the prime minister does have more staff around him. There's a national security secretary at it. It's supposedly more centralized and effective in the crisis. And that's not exactly how we saw it. Maybe it's because of different type of issue being a pandemic. There's other ministries as well, but it's not exactly what we thought, what we have in the system that we're going to see in Japan, and that I think is somewhat surprising and maybe disappointing and may cause some worries. But I do think that a lot of this has to do with the timing and the nature of the policy being relatively new and they're trying to sort of muddle through. The other thing is that since the process is so prolonged and they got to see other countries doing what they do, there was more of a balancing between what are the economic costs versus the public health worries in a way that it wasn't the case, probably in London, probably in New York where the pandemic just hit so strongly that we didn't really have that discussion for a long time. We just had to deal to save people's lives. And I think the sense of urgency might have been lacking in Japan for that reason. So how about policy? So I think in terms of the lack of testing, which is often cited in Japan to be different. And I think I go back to this later, which I think might be sort of a liability for Japan going forward, having taken this approach in terms of international accountability when they start reopening to the other countries, this might be a different approach might hurt them. But I think that and also more economic measures, I looked at the polls and it's also relatively split. And also people are not that grateful for the government to send them masks, like the Japanese public received two masks per family. And according to my family, they haven't received it yet. And that's like, it's one thing to distribute masks, it's another to not be able to have it there yet, but it doesn't seem to be that popular. So my point is that maybe they were saved by the politics of it, which is that it's not that there's a credible alternative. The LDP support has been going down now, it's 33%, but it's not like the biggest opposition parties support, approval rating is 4% and that, or like among the Japanese public, what party do you select? And the first, the top is LDP by 33%. The second up is constitutional democratic party of 4%. And what's increasing is number of those who are not affiliated with any party or do not have some specific party support, which is 45%. So going forward, we had to see where the non, no particular party affiliation people go in terms of policy because they are the largest voting walk. And that hasn't been the case for a long time, but it's actually more clear for that. So the balance has shifted because there's no balance to where it shifts. That currently, I think there is no alternative by well or totally into the LDP. I think what is question now is whether Prime Minister Abe would be able to extend once again by changing the internal party rules for a fourth term. Currently, his third term expires September, 2020, 2021. And I don't think many think it's likely that he would extend beyond, but one thing to note that he doesn't, like as long as he doesn't call for election voluntarily and lose, he does have a longer term than President Trump. So like I get to that point, but he's looking for a longer term. The other big question is the Olympics. Whether or not we can have the Olympics at all next year, and that I think might have a lot to do with legacy. You asked about the legacy. I'm not too sure if it is as strongly as constitutional reform as other people might say. I think the Japanese public is less excited about it right now. So I don't really know if that's what he wants to say, what his legacy is meant to be, but the Olympics is the very question. And the other final possibility to point out is that one thing that was interesting looking at the whole process in Japan is the rise of local leaders. Japan is not a federal system, but there were some governors and mayors who sort of went against the government, the central government directives, or against or did something different, like the policy process is different, whether they will capture the momentum. We don't see that as a national effort, but that I thought was very interesting looking at what's happening in Japan. So what's the relevance to security and foreign policy? As I said, interest in the process, we thought there's more to the centralization of power to the Prime Minister. We didn't exactly see that this time. And is that just because of this, or do we have to kind of look at how Japan operates in a crisis? Well, more review that in a way that we kind of assume that things are gonna be more smooth, or is it really just to the pandemic? I don't know. But I think the bigger question is what happens more, why the bigger questions that Masashi said, with regards to two things. One is it's a heightened tension between US and China and how that's gonna affect Japan's going forward. Just to reflect on what was happening prior to, Japan was planning to have Xi Jinping visit Japan. And some right-wing people were critical of Prime Minister Abe being reluctant to impose more stronger measures for each China because of the anticipation of Xi coming to Japan when the cherry blossoms bloom. And that did not happen obviously, but in a way, I think Japan may have to show its flag of in terms of who they support, whether if the relationship between US and China is more contentious. I think that they might be in a more difficult position of not trying to play it both ways. And I'm not really in the camp who think it's a good thing for US to be confrontational with China, which I don't think that's necessarily a good thing for Japan at all. But I think it's just that it might be hard to do both ways. The other is changes in US policy. Some of it is Trump factor and some of it is not. I think that even if we have a change of president in November, US is not gonna be that willing to spend more on defense, US is not willing to have allies free ride in a way that Trump may describe it. There will probably less emphasis on having allies pay for something as in a Trump administration, which if he continues, I think there might be a lot of discussion about how much Japan is supposed to pay for the US forces in Japan, but still even with the Biden administration in place, the allies might be asked to do more and how exactly that's going to factor into Japan's internal discussion I think is important. Just one note about self-defense force. Their role in the pandemic response was actually very unnotable. And I'm saying this not because we are having, if I can plug something as LSEO or Defense Minister Kono is going to do a webinar with us at Columbia next week on Thursday, 21st. In London, it will be 1 p.m. I think, but it's gonna be on Facebook live. So please log into Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia.edu. But so you can ask questions to Defense Minister Kono. But I think what was interesting about self-defense forces, they were the first line of defense for the Diamond Princess outbreak. They actually went to pick up people in Wuhan and the doctors that are self-defense force doctors were actually in the front lines and the effects. And also they helped out with the airport and insurance or caratine. But what I think is most interesting is that although a lot of expectation, there's a lot of expectation from the public for the role that self-defense force ever since the earthquake hit them for 11. But I think it was good that the Defense Minister was able to not just let the mission drag, that they actually handed over to the private sector. But it does raise a question going forward. To what extent is the self-defense force is gonna balance the expectation that they play these kind of relatively non-traditional roles? Of course, this time around, the U.S. military did play a role in the pandemic response. But there is a wider range of things that the Japanese self-defense forces tend to do in these kinds of crises that in the U.S., partly for public relations purposes, because that's what the Japanese public expect. But also their missions tend to creep in a way in these kinds of crises. How to go about doing meeting that expectations as they go forward is important. I think there's two things to consider. One is the possibility of expanding a reserve component and what they have right now, especially on special permission professions and two, having like a FEMA type of organization. So that's two things. So finally to go back to what you mentioned about the connectivity inclusiveness and what Masashi said about I'm going forward. I'm trying to bring back the leadership question. I think right now Japan is sort of off cycle in many ways with other countries because of the different cycle of the pandemic. Also they're off in some ways because they've dealt with the crisis in a different way. And I don't really hear about Japan in New York. You hear about China, you hear about South Korea. But Japan is kind of absent in the discussion here because it's so different in terms of what they do. But I do think that if, but Japan does benefit a lot from the connectivity of the region, they cannot live without the allies. So going forward, I think the question for Japan is how to step up to fill the void or fill the vacuum and what exactly it should do for the region militarily but also in terms of what they can do at the level of international institutions. And finally, Japan has been trying to look at security issues comprehensively. The bottom line is hard security. I think that's what is a media's concern is and I think that's very important. At the same time, they've always looked at issues like human security or comprehensive security. And I think in terms of looking at what institutions and what role Japan can play, it might be kind of useful to sort of go back to that too. And try, if Japan is going to feel relatively better than other countries in terms of death toll. And if we do still believe that Japan is quite good at technology, there might be things Japan can do for one thing. If Japan can step up and try to curb the effort of other countries to try to keep the vaccines and whatnot if there is a cure to themselves, how to counter the nationalistic tendencies of other countries to be less transparent and very inclusive, that's good. And also other things in terms of trying to bring together countries while US is going to be preoccupied with its own damage with the presidential election, if there's something Japan can do even with the UN General Assembly meeting not happening in New York, like not happening the way it does in September, if there's a way Japan can step up, I think that's something that we would like to see and we don't currently see right now. So sorry, I went too long, but hopefully I can respond to your questions and so forth. Thanks. You're muted. Yes, I muted myself. Thank you very much, Takago. I mean, this was exactly the sort of comprehensive bringing things together that I was really looking forward to hearing from me. So thank you very much for this. We already have quite a few questions. So what I'll do, I will sort of collect them and direct the fire as it were. I'll start with a couple of questions that came in for Moralesan. And the first one was about the war narrative chosen by Abe and to what extent you think has been appealing to Japanese society, given also the sort of the sensitivity that that brings about whether that was just a passing reference and that has not really sort of taken up within the broader sort of public space. The other question raised to Moralesan goes directly to the point you were making about the operational implication of COVID. With the operational context of network of allies and partners in the region, had you built South Korea and jointly building the readiness to face China's creeping expansion within Japan's context? So to what extent COVID might push the United States to have allies like Japan and South Korea to work more closely together, knowing that the last couple of years haven't been very generous in terms of Japan-South Korea relations. So a couple of questions to begin with. And then I'll come back to Takako for a couple of other questions. Moralesan. All right. Thank you so much to the same two questions. I'd like to address the from the later question, second question related to the somehow do we react and how do we respond to the Japan-South Korea relationship? I think that it is not, it may not be the different direct answer the through the coronavirus crisis that two countries that are looking for the opportunity to improve the relationship and the strengthening our corporations. The four instance that the other days that the five years old South Korean girls who had the suddenly for acute leukemia in India was transported to Seoul on the Japanese flight. That it is because that India to Korean flight is already to counsel that. So it's not as one of the alternative options. This was the result of the cooperation of the Japanese embassies in India and the allocates the ministerial foreign affairs. So it is not a direct contribution of the how do we deal with the Chinese creeping expansion in this legion. But it is those kind of the fundamental diplomatic or the some to improvise the correlation with Japan and South Korea is one of the important things to improve our relationship with the deteriorated during these recent couple of years. So that is the one of the typical one of good example to improve our relationship. It is not that the elected even it's not directed on the security of leaders. The other things, another question, the first question is the why the Prime Minister Abe to express us as a World War three and the current the coronavirus situation. Personally, from my perspective, I don't think that it is not much to do with article nine of the constitution and the Prime Minister Abe is linking to the coronavirus situation and war. Lesser this crisis is not related on the article nine issues, but the Japan has the can not hers, but it may be able to the more bigger roles in the international community, international society to deal with this situation to the more the broader perspective, not only the JSDF operation. So I think that of course that I'm not expert of this wrongs, but the Japanese government should think about the more broader perspective, how do we Japan contribute for this situation. That one of the one of the related issues is the Japan's current, the first of all, Japan has the two or three important the strategic document is the design. One is the national security strategy is they established on the 2013. That is the latest version of the national security strategy. On the other hand, the some national defense program guideline, it's so called an NDPG is the purely focused on the defense strategy that is the comparison of the U.S. the national defense strategy. But there's sometimes those kinds of strategic documents that are sometimes overwrapped each other. So the next time the current national defense program guideline has reviewed on the end of the 2018. But at the same time, national security strategy has not reviewed at the same time. But during the, maybe that the two years later or three years later, the Japanese government may, I think that Japanese government needed to review of the national security strategies. In this context, the 2013 version national security strategy had just mentioned about the dealing with the pandemics in just one time in the whole document. But it is the one of the opportunity to distinguish to the law of the strategic document of the national security strategy it has the focus on the more broader context of the global affairs and the security strategy. Not a focus on the defense strategy. So that is the one of the opportunity to reviewing of the national security strategy document in the next time to deal with the pandemic or more broader perspective, connect context of the in the specific strategy. Let me stop here. Perfect, thank you very much. I'm conscious of the time and what I'll do I'll try to sort of keep it short but perhaps we could extend for another five minutes our conversation and try to sort of bring in all the questions that are left. There's quite few of them, but if we try to keep the answers relatively short let me try to group them together. And I think there's a couple of ones that really sort of speak to some of the points that Takako is making. We have a question here from James about the Abe government decision to include relocation funding for Japanese firms to leave China as part of the COVID stimulus package. To what extent do you think that also perhaps relate to the point you were making about the fact that CGP, before CGP was supposed to come to Japan the Japanese government was holding their cards very close to their chest in a way without trying to look too much confrontational. But now that that is off the table for the time being and given also what is happening with the supply chain particularly with this question of the relocation funding for Japanese firm to move out of China and any thought about this. So that's point number one. Related to the other point you mentioned on the SDF I've got quite a few questions coming up. I will try to summarize it. Broadly speaking, Simon is asking are we looking at a context where the armed forces in general and certainly the self-defence forces will be asked to diversify more the spectrum of missions they are supposed to undertake and going beyond war fighting. And within this context, Aidan asks do you have any sort of awareness that financial resources being allocated to military laboratories for R and D in terms of the development of vaccine? And Monika is asking how do you think the self-defence forces can do better in non-traditional crisis like COVID-19? Is there a resource and asset? And it kind of ties in with the point that Murano-San has just made in terms of international documents in Japan. There is at the moment a bit of a separation between traditional if you want understanding of security and the broadening. Are we looking at the broadening? I mean, I think the broader sort of like an underpinning question linking all these excellent questions together really is to the extent that we're looking at the self-defence forces as changing in terms of what they can provide as an asset, as a tool of statecraft for the Japanese foreign policy, particularly in pandemics, we'll be looking at a widening of experience in that sense. And more specifically, on the matter of the relocation, any thoughts about the epic government's sort of a decision to allocate funding to move out of China? Somehow you were muted. I will try to be short. Thanks for the great excellent questions. The first point about China and the initiative by the government to encourage firms to supply a domestic layer to come back off doubt of China. I think there's an immediate concern in the long-term strategy, but I don't really know exactly how this is going to pan out. And one thing to might be no interest, you know that there is going to be a subset or a component that looks like economic issues within the national security set up and establishment. I haven't really seen the organized social chart, but there's going to be people who are going to be from economic ministries looking at the strategic issues within the Cabinet Secretary. So that might drive policies to certain directions, but it's just that it's not really clear which way it'll go. But I think right now, I think what we see is more in line with what we see in the US in terms of being a little more cautious about being dependent on China. And that there might be more thinking or economic parts of thinking in the strategy going forward. I'm actually curious to know what Masashi thinks about that, but we don't have time, so I'm just going to move on to the next question. As for the diversification, just to briefly note that as is the case in many other militaries, the self-defense force has a medical component and they have a defense medical college and there's the doctors and nurses within the self-defense force and they were in the front lines of Diamond Prince's outbreak and the knowledge from what the very pretty detailed analysis of what happened on the Diamond Prince has actually helped a lot of countries in dealing with each crisis. So that is something that Defense Minister is very conscious of and they do, I think in terms of spending, they might try to spend a little bit more on what they already have in terms of the medical component of the self-defense force. So there might be more international awareness of awareness that this might be something Japan can contribute internationally more so than it did prior to the crisis. Having said that, it comes down to matter of money and prioritization because I do not think that for domestic economic reasons that the Japanese defense budget is going to be like growing rapidly after COVID-19. I think there's going to be more pressure downwards or it's not going to like expand. So given what we are spending right now and what kind of demands there's going to be in the regional maritime front, how are you going to justify spending more? Like what are going to be the ways in which we shift around resources? Like because in the end, a lot of the efforts that took place aside from the professional doctor nurse part is the ground self-defense forces. In a way, they are benefiting in a way from the fact that they can be very useful in these kinds of non-traditional crises. But I think if you're a Navy person, you would think like, why do we spend so much on ground self-defense forces? If it's just going to be for non-traditional commissions, don't we need to spend more maritime stuff if we really forget the hard security issues or the issues in the region going forward? So I think it's going to be hard choices and I think one key is probably, as Anmasashi said, that there should be more integration between what we try to do in the national security strategy and what we actually purchase in the national defense program guidelines and what are the choices Japan is going to be making probably within the context of not hugely raising or expanding the defense budget, what are going to be our prioritization and that right now I think the current way things are being spent, I don't think is the most effective or efficient going forward for the Japanese defense establishment or it's better used domestically and internationally. Wonderful, I think we're running out of time so I'll be very quickly asking Muranazan, if you could, you talked about the Koskert incident around the Senkakujiyo Islands, what do you think the implication of this particular instance? As you say, you made a very good point. It is quite unusual and there's been unusual over the last three years since 2015 to see a situation like that occur. Why now, what does that mean? And a couple of thoughts and there was also another question about as the perception of Japan towards the quads and the potential of the quads in terms of regional security, changing after COVID-19 or are we going to be looking at a Japan that will be continuously engaged through FOI with quads and other sort of multilateral security initiatives across the region? A few words on both aspects, would be very much appreciated. Thank you very much. That I think that the one is the situation of the East China Sea and the Chinese coast guard of the cells to tracking the Japanese fishing boat. That this behavior is, I think that I saw that this behavior is the one of the Chinese, the typical but probing behavior to checking to our reaction, how do we deal with this situation? And some changes happen to this kind of our means that Japanese coast guard or the maritime self defense forces that routine or regularly the operational postures. So in that context that we do not that are showing our lack of the capabilities of the routine operations. So that in that context that the Japanese coast guard has to be regularly to operate in this area. So that is one of the typical measures of the conventional or deterrent cell. So those kind of the probing or limited probing action is the too difficult to deter comparing with the major power military aggressions. So it's kind of the Chinese style, the hybrid warfare war being so-called the Grey Zone situations to taking some making the new normal. So in that context that we need to operate regularly of the coast guard and the maritime self defense forces and the air self defense forces. I don't have some specific perspective now that about the question of the quad cooperation of these issues. So of course that this is important things to the one that is the how do we deal with the global pandemic is the maybe that maybe become or the next major agenda to deal with the four countries. But at the same time I've already mentioned about the difficulty is the actually our countermeasures of this situation are slightly different in case of Japan and in case of the US and Australia and India. So in that rounds that one of the challenges how do we making the new narratives or stories to collaborate with and what is the how do we identify our advantages of the cooperation of willingness to share the barrier of our interests. So that is my point. Wonderful, thank you very much. I'm afraid that we're definitely running out of time and what I'll do I'll just take half a minute to answer a couple of questions that had been raised to me at the beginning of one concerning the question of quite similar in a way and they're talking about the implications of diversification in supply chains and reduce dependency on China. But in terms of what does that entail in terms of relationship that their individual countries have with China but also with us that entail in terms of the business model of the shipping industry will reduce the capacity and certainly a different type of distribution of how shipping goes around. What does that mean for connectivity and the protection of sea lanes? And I think both questions are very important. And I think it was emerging from the discussion that we're all having. It seems to me that it's kind of like we can certainly see that there is an option there that the world would be very different in a few years time. But if the sort of consequences from an economic point of view are sort of short leaps in terms of economic impact we might actually defer that decision further down the road and wait because rethinking your supply chains in a considerable fashion and requires considerable changes to national economies. And in a situation whereby over the next 18 months we will probably be all occupied in trying to recover from the impact of the current situation. I think it is quite interesting to see what decisions will be made over the next 18 months will be made adjusted to find a solution to the lack to the economic downturn and recession that we've seen happening at the moment or will be made in a way to build a different future in which integration is still on the table but dependency and interdependency is a very different context. If that happens I think within 18 months we'll have a much clearer idea of the wider implication of world connectivity and in that sense sort of regional and international stability. Certainly a less integrated, a less interconnected world which remains integrated but in which we have more resilience and anti-fragility in our economy we're likely to bring about greater political weakness to challenge others matters that matters to us in ways that we haven't seen so far. Even within the European Union there is a great question sort of set of questions coming up regarding the relationship with China and certainly in the UK that's been a main topic of discussion among political elites not just within government. So there is a lot more to come but we'll see sort of how that will all pan out and will take time to understand that. Thank you very much to my guests today for all their thoughts and their insights and sharing with us their experience and thank you all of you who've been patiently listening and for all the very good question again, bid you farewell and we'll see you soon next week hopefully for our next webinar with Rory Medical for Conversation Tunehen and Sir Lawrence Friedman shortly after taking place shortly before the very interesting seminar with the Minister of Defense at Columbia which also I would suggest everybody to attend. Thank you, Moran Nassan. Thank you, Takapasensei and you all have a good evening. Thank you.


We have crossed the one year mark of the war in Ukraine, and this has been a war that has changed the world in so many ways, politics, economics, military science, diplomacy. In any country, wherever you are, the impact has been felt in various ways. And one of the ways in which it might continue to be felt came with President Vladimir Putin's announcement last week that Russia would suspend participation in the New START Treaty. Now on mapping fault lines and news click, we have talked about many of these treaties multiple times before. The important role they play in keeping us relatively safe from the threat of nuclear annihilation. In today's episode, we'll be talking more about what this announcement means, what generally is happening with disarmament, with the war, and how it's impacting the whole of Eurasia. So President Putin's announcement once again bringing the focus back to the New START Treaty. Now we've talked about each of these treaties multiple times on the show, but their relevance and importance seems all the more significant now. We have a war going on, you know, there's a lot of this threat of escalation has been a serious concern for an entire year now. So let's first maybe go through why this treaty is especially relevant now, and you know, in the absence of New START, what happens for instance? Well, Putin has said that this will be somehow frozen, stopped, but he hasn't suspended participation. But he hasn't said withdrawn from the treaty. And there is no really clause of a suspended animation for a treaty like this. So what it means is essentially the two sides have the right to inspect each other, each other's facilities. Already Russia was finding it difficult post-COVID, when it had all stopped anyway, to do inspections in the United States because of sanctions by US and its allies. So therefore getting to the United States for a team to do inspection itself was proving a problem. And therefore the inspection in the United States is still hamstrung. So in that context, Russia has said, we will not also let you inspect. Now that's a tit for tat. Is it escalation? That's something else. But what is important is the announcement that we will not increase the numbers till 2026, when the new start actually has to be renewed. Biden just came into power when it was about to end. So he extended it. The extension was almost without any changes. So no change, extension up to 2026, which might come to an end, in which case you might get a renewed arms race of increasing both the launch vehicles and the warrants. Both of these could be involved. And also new kinds of viziles already have been put into operation. The ABM treaty has, as you know, expired long back. It was supposed to have been really ratified and so on. It should have happened. So it sort of died in 2002 when Bush said, that's it. And then of course we had the Intermediate Rage Ballistic Vizile Treaty, what's called the INF Treaty. That also trump withdrew from that. So that was the Intermediate Rage Viziles, which was the one which Trump withdrew from. And then this is the last treaty. This was signed in 1972. So that has been extended a number of times. This is also ending. And if this ends in 2026, then there is no nuclear arms treaty that will be there between Russia and the United States, which are the two pre-eminent nuclear powers in the world. They have many more warheads than everybody else put together. So that is the threat that we'll see, therefore, new weapons coming up, numbers as well as new types of weapons coming up. And what does it really portend, particularly when already we have a war scenario going on. Absolutely. It's actually paint quite a really scary picture, it's about 10,000 odd missiles actually. So these are the warheads that both sides have. So roughly about five and a half to 6,000, each of them have that, that is a number. So you can see about 6,000 for Russia and about five and a half thousand for US, really about five to 6,000. But the other part of it, I think which is what is important, is there are two types of issues involved in the expiry of the new start, which is that there are launchers on which there are restrictions and the number of warheads on which also there are restrictions. Now what we see, we have is if we look at roughly the parity is between the warheads and also the launchers. You can see, roughly there is a parity which is there and at the moment, so roughly about 1,600 and if you take the launchers also about 600 or so. Now the launchers will not increase by that much. But if you look at what the warheads are, then you will see the possibility of a huge increase of the warheads on both sides, the US even more than Russia because they have more multiple warheads mounted on the same launcher. They also have the what is called the strategic bomber force, which is quite a large number of bombers, which of course can carry nuclear weapons. So if you take the warheads, number of warheads and the number of warms put together, then you will see almost, well almost a doubling in the case of the United States and adding from 1600 warheads, 1700 warheads, another thousand. So not doubling, but about 70-75% of what the current number of warheads is. Now you know all this is also taken in the context that they have a large number of already nuclear warhead inventory. So the inventory also can be brought out and then activated, which means we are going back to something like 10,000 nuclear warheads each. So those are the kind of things. It's not just what we can see immediately in the near future, three, four, five years, this is what's likely to happen. But if the inventories are brought back, we're looking at 10,000 nuclear warheads each. So that's a very frightening scenario as you have said because even with the current number of nuclear warheads, if you take the current inventory into account, 1600 odd nuclear warheads, you can really blow up the whole world four times, five times over. So this is already overkill. Now if all of that happens, then the question is, we may have a nuclear by design, but we can also have a nuclear war by accident. Because both sides go on hair trigger alert and we have a number of cases where by accident a nuclear war could have been triggered, we're lucky that it has not happened. So we're going to go back to those kind of days again. And that is the risk when the last nuclear agreement falls in 2026. It's now in de-freeze and we have to see what happens over the next three years. Absolutely. And Prabir, actually we have seen some of the possibilities of what could have happened even with the existing strength that is because there's all these missile developments and military developments that have taken place around Russia over the years. And this was actually one of the factors that led to this current conflict. There was this slow creeping deployment and mobilization that took place, ABM missiles for instances. So we already have an example with a limited number what the possibilities are. This is an interesting map because it shows also how the missiles were positioned initially. It started really with the smaller range missiles, battlefield weapons will not be used and so on, which actually would have meant that you would have had at the time Western Europe and then you have of course Eastern Europe and Russia. This was the battle that could have taken place. And at that time, if you remember, the idea was that smaller range missiles should not be used. Therefore, battlefield nuclear weapons should not be used. And then after the ABM treaty, the difference that happened is that we should not use intermediate range missiles. If you take the intermediate nuclear missiles, range missiles, that is what is called the INF treaty that had a range of 1,000 to 5,500 kilometers and banning that that this should not be used meant that both sides in Europe would then not have a exchange over Europe. The idea was that let's leave Europe out of it. Interestingly, over naval, there was no such restriction. You could go to intermediate range in the naval missiles, but in land-based missiles this should not be used. This coupled with the ABM meant that Europe would not become the battlefield. What happened after the fall of Soviet Union when first the ABM treaty was discontinued George Bush would do out of it? And what happened is, as you can see, this is the parts which then joined the NATO. And once they joined the NATO, then not only are there military missiles put all over, but you have these two centers, which have essentially the capability to also use anti-ballistic missile as well as use what would be called intermediate range missiles, which even before withdrawing of Trump withdrawing from the INF treaty, both of these Russia had objected to. Of course, Russia had certain missiles, which also had the possibility of being used both on the naval side as well as on land. So the argument was, you are developing missiles which can be used both on your ships as well as used on the ground. And in fact, these are called what is called AGES ashore batteries. They can be used for anti-ballistic missile purposes, but also can launch with just a change of cartridge. They can also launch essentially intermediate range missiles. So that has been the issue. But what happened is, instead of the battlefield becoming Western Europe and Eastern Central Europe, now the battlefield is really moving over to Russia and Ukraine. If you see it, parts of Poland, I'm not going to count Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, really small countries. They are like tail trying to wag their larger dog. So if you leave that out, what's happening increasingly is the battle is shifting to this area. And therefore, an intermediate range ballistic missile, ABM shields, all of these means you come closer to war. And that means that you think a first strike against Russia, for example, followed by ABM missiles which you have will therefore take out the missiles that Russia might launch, which will be much less because the first attack would have taken most of their missiles out. Therefore instead of being shields, they all in fact become more likely to be in fact building up to war. So this is the whole reason that anti-ballistic missiles were given up, that if you start building shields, then the one way to counter this shield is that more missiles saturated. So that is still the possibility in Russia sees that is why this whole battlefield, particularly now centering on Ukraine, has all these issues which is coming up. And of course, as we know, the two most important issue for Russia has been the missile bases in Poland and Romania, where these kind of dual-purpose ages, what's called ages of shore batteries are there, which can do both. They can fire ABM missiles, they can anti-ballistic missiles, but they can also launch intermediate range missiles. Therefore, take out the whole of, what shall we say, whole of western Russia out. And that is the reason why Ukraine was such a red flag for Russia, because it means these missiles could come to Ukraine and therefore shorten the distance to, say, Moscow. And this is something that meant that it puts directly the most industrialized central parts of their economy under the gun of the United States of NATO. And in fact, that is one of the reasons that Ukraine has been such a red line for Russia. Absolutely. And Praveen, of course, finally, the last week also marked one year of the war. And it's profoundly changed the world in so many ways. And I think its echoes are felt in multiple conflicts that have already been going on for years. So it's not just, like you said, just about Ukraine over here. But I mean, one year down the line, we see NATO continuing its expansionist surge, which has proved the Russian allegations right along with especially Finland and Sweden. But we also see that generally many of the conflicts have had this impact from the war. So could you maybe also just go through what's happening there as well? A lot of people are saying the world has changed. This war is not a war between Russia and Ukraine. It's really a war between NATO and Russia. We've been saying that for quite some time, but it's also a part of other wars. What are the other wars we are talking about? One is, of course, that apart from what we've already seen, which is really this is a war zone already. This is really Western Europe, Russia on centering around Ukraine, where NATO forces, let us put it, they are if not directly participating but indirectly participating in the war. We have now reports from Ukrainians saying all the guided bombing, missiles, Haimar or other such shelling is being done with the coordinates being given by NATO. And if they give the coordinates, we just press a trigger. That's all. But all the acquisition of the target, two firing of the target apart from pressing the button through Ukraine has no role. This is what we seem to find also in what's emanating from the newspaper reports, which have started becoming a little more less one-sided than it was earlier. But that was a battlefield that is still active. But what are the new battlefields sharing about? One is, of course, China. If you take China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan. This is obviously what the US is now slowly ratcheting up. And there is a possibility that at the moment it is only a technology and an economic war, so war of sanctions. And we want to discuss sanctions today. We are really looking at the geo-strategic aspects. This is another war, which is not caught into a shooting war, but you have vessels going, aircraft flying, and you also are trying to, you are seeing the Japanese budget, military budget being ramped up. And of course, what will be the missiles, what will be posted there, Aegis ashore is also being talked about in Japan. So all of these are happening. Taiwan, of course, is a big open question. How much of the US would invest militarily into Taiwan or use it essentially to put pressure on China? So this is one center that is heating up. But there is others. We have seen, for instance, this region, I'm not counting Syria as yet, I'll come to that later, but Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, all these are also in the crosshairs. Of course, oil is a key issue. But we know Iran has been under sanctions. It's still under the military sanctions, no chance of lifting those anyway. I don't think there's any chance of reviving the nuclear agreement. There's 84% now purity of the uranium that this is fissile material, they seem to have already done. So they're pretty much close to what the bomb grade, weapons grade, which is really 90%, but 84% also you get fission. So that's really not too far away. And as we know, this is just one or two more cycles and from 84, you get to 90%. So this is another area, Saudi Arabia is now going to buy and sell, looks like sell to China in Reminbi. So which means that their link to dollar might still stay for other exports, but for a large number of exports they seem to be getting off the dollar. What will happen with India, Saudi Arabia, oil we don't know, but we already know that for instance, between Russia and India, they have been doing the trade in dirhams, which is United Arab Emirates currency. So all this is slowly going off the dollar. Iraq of course is a known battle point. Saudi Arabia as I said, it shifts all its oil trade with China into Reminbi, that's a huge blow to the United States. But we also have other areas, for instance, you have Syria over here, there's already a battle going on between Syria in Syria with Israel. And Israel regularly bombs Syria recently, even bombed it very recently, bombed the capital very recently. So this is another area where already conflicts are there, in which Israel is a major party. So Israel, United States is the axis over there. And then of course you have also North Africa and here as we know Libya is something that we have seen battles going on. Libya was destabilized by NATO, it's removed Qaddafi, but after that there is no really no government in Libya, we have only opposing factions, the battle still goes on. But if we take the other big issue over there, there is this whole area of Central Asia which is there and not including Afghanistan, Afghanistan is a special case, I'm not talking about South Asia, but if you see the Central Asia, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, all of these, Mongolia over here, all of these are in a three-way play. You have Turkey, there's an old relationship between Turkey and this region because a lot of the tribes and the language is spoken are Turkic tribes and Turkic language, Turkic ethnicity, the tribe is the wrong word in this context. And then of course China is also a player over here and of course Russia is very much a player in Central Asia. So all these players are there and the United States of course has a stake in Central Asia if nothing else to see that Russia and China and Turkey do not dominate over this area that they are also able to put their foot in. The problem is they don't seem to have any countries bordering this anymore and Iran is not a fendery country. Turk is not exactly under the umbrella though they're trying to bring it. Syria is not with them. So there is no really player. India is, as you know, South Asia, this side of the Himalayas, they're not a player there. So what happens over here is that they can square the pitch, but there is not much that they can do to play over there. So their play over there might be just a spoiler, but it also means entire the Eurasian landmass, including North Africa, which is not really Eurasia in this sense, are all now open to more geo-strategic players and multiple players than what was seen post-1990 when the US dominated over the whole world, even if they couldn't break up Russia or make Syria's indoors into China. But all this area, they had far more influence. So it is not just Europe that is changing. We focus too much on Europe because then the world sort of tends to take it as the much more shall be seen important place in the world. If you take the area with this an equal area projection, then you'll find Western Europe is not that important. Even the whole of the Europe is not that important. But if you take, for instance, Africa, yes, it's emerging. North Africa is not very far away from this field. So and of course, West Asia, Central Asia, all important. So if we move our eyes away from just Europe and Ukraine, you will see much more is in play, including of course, what's already in the news, East Asia. So I think we are seeing really the emergence of a multipolar world far more strongly today than we ever did. And the Ukraine war is at the moment, if we don't end up in a nuclear exchange is only accelerating the creation of this multipolar world. And lot more players will actually have a play here, including India. As you can see with the G20 summit, India is trying to become a player in this. But I think what we are likely to see is that you are going to see multiple what shall we say, multiple arenas over which the struggle who is going to influence, who is going to control and what will be its economic relationships with different countries. I think that's all coming to play, particularly those is not the topic today. The economic power of the United States and Europe is now weakening. All that we can say is one thing we can say as a net loss in this war is of Western Europe, because I think they are going to lose far more than any other country because they more or less have hitched their wagon to the United States, which whose ability today to support Europe may be there militarily. But when it sells oil, as you can see, it has made really huge profits. So Western Europe's dominant position as an industrial power in Europe and even large parts of the world is going to weaken. And I think not only the rise of China, but the weakening of Europe it also means that you are going to see a geo-strategic balance in the world changing. And I think that is what the Ukraine war is heralding, that it is not just about Europe, it's not just about Ukraine. It's really over a global change that it's going to bring about. And unfortunately, we have, of course, nuclear weapons in the background and given the way it's moving doesn't seem to be between Russia, China and the United States or other European powers. There is a possibility of a reapproach to at least keep peace and move away from war. And we do not think there is any other country in the world today which can take that kind of position, which for instance even the Korean War, India and others could do. So I think that is the downside of it. Yes, good if hegemon's power breaks, but if it is accompanied by more wars, more failed countries, which also may happen, then we are in for a much harder time for the world. Absolutely. Thank you so much for being here. And that's all we have time for today. We will be covering more of the war, more of similar issues, more of the issues we talked about regarding Eurasia, the various conflicts in future episodes of Mapping Fault Lines. Until then, keep watching NewsClick.


Hey guys, before we get into the video, I just wanted to let you know that I forgot to change the settings for my camera back to normal. So, the effect looks very bright and I look very pale, so I'm sorry about that. Hey guys, it's me, Nioh, and today we're going to be doing another reaction video. And man, oh man, am I excited for today's video because we're going to be reacting to SF9's pre-debut group, Nioh's, and we're going to be reacting to the freaking song, step by step. And oh man, I just can't wait to watch this because I absolutely love SF9's choreography. I just love SF9 and Duneville. They're my favorite group out there. And I just can't wait to see what they have in stock for us today. Now, it has been a while since I have done SF9 video and I am absolutely sorry about that, but I will try and get back into them because there's actually not that many SF9 videos left that I know of for me to react to. So if you guys know any other SF9 videos that you want me to react to that I haven't yet, please comment them down below. But yeah, out of the net, let's get straight into this. Ooh, it's starting. Okay, let's go, let's go. I'm getting pretty excited. Ooh. Okay, he's having a solo dance. Slow walk, let's go. Ooh, ooh, spicy. Okay, let's go. Ooh, ooh, ooh, there are people behind that couch. I had no idea. Hey, let's go. Yo, this is catchy, yes. Ooh, I can't do that, but you know, they were doing that. Oh, cheese. I love this even though, man. Ooh, it's spicy. Spicy dancing right now. Oh, this is actually a really, really nice song. Little bit of kind of like Michael Jackson. Oh, whoa. I can't even do that. Well, of course I can't do that because I'm not talented at these guys, but they're like 45 degree ankle fan. It's my boy. It's my boy, Zuto.  Yeah, I'm actually loving this. The song is actually really catchy as well.  Look how joyful he is when he's dancing. Oh, they seem so joyful, man. Let's go. Can you guys please come down, please? Yeah, guys, please. Please come down. My heart rate is like, whoo, going up. Oh, he did the peace sign. Peace. God damn it, Isif man. You guys are amazing. You never fail to impress me, man. I am just speechless, man. Isif 9, all the choreographies are just amazing. And the song was just awesome as well. Their take on the song from No Kids on the blog was actually really good. Like, I absolutely love that take so much.  Like, oh, I want these guys to come to New Zealand. Like, come on, Isif 9, come to New Zealand. Make me so freaking happy. Please do it, please do it. But legit, all I want to do is experience one of the concerts because that would be absolutely amazing. But yeah, guys, that's basically going to be all for this video. I hope you guys did enjoy it. If you guys did, definitely show some support by leaving a like and also comment down below your favorite Isif 9 video out there. And also subscribe if you guys are new to the channel because there's going to be more reactions coming to you guys in the near future. And yeah, that's basically it. So I hope you guys have a great day and just keep on smiling. And adios, amigos.