Over the past two weeks, Indian media has reported several border incursions along the two states’ disputed Himalayan border .  While the Indian government has downplayed the incidents, Indian strategic commentators have suggested that China is moving to leverage its logistical advantages in the region.

At nearly the same time, China has upped the ante with respect to the Senkaku/Diaoyus, deploying additional maritime and aerial patrols to the area and declaring the islands a “core interest” of Chinese foreign policy.

In both situations, China has a plausible case for legitimacy.  In the East China Sea, China is responding to provocative statements by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe . Border issues with India remain complex, but it is not immediately obvious that China is in the wrong by pressing its territorial claims.

Nevertheless, it is not clear why China has determined to assertively pursue both of these disputes at the same time. Historically, states with wide-ranging security problems are best advised to resolve those problems one at a time, hopefully in isolation with one another. In this case, it’s not completely clear that the same people are making decisions on policy in both the Himalayas and the East China Sea; the Chinese foreign and military policy-making process is sufficiently complicated that local authorities have some influence over border policy.  However, it hardly makes sense for China to antagonize both of its powerful neighbors at once, even if it is in the right in both cases.

It doesn’t take a genius to see the strategic logic of a strong India-Japan relationship. Tokyo and New Delhi have each other on speed dial, and in any case Washington is surely eager to connect the call . Some Indian commentators have already called for more robust responses, including calibrating Indian support for China’s maritime disputants in accordance to the situation on the border.  Japan’s moves to negotiate its long-running border disputes with Russia put the Chinese problem into stark relief. Whether or not Japan and Russia manage to finally secure a peace treaty, the effort indicates that Tokyo takes seriously the need to make its international crises manageable.

China is one of a very few countries for which “regional security” entails managing conflicts in widely dispersed parts of the globe.  While a Japan-India axis may form absent any direct Chinese provocation, Beijing is best advised to ensure that efforts to win local disputes don’t end up creating global problems. 

An odd historical fact: Japan and Russia at the end of the World War II never signed a formal peace treaty ending hostilities. With Tokyo and Moscow looking to strengthen ties, will old challenges get in the way?

Prime Minister Abe travelled to Moscow on Sunday. He was the first sitting Japanese Prime Minister to make the trip in ten years.

In a press conference at the conclusion of talks, Abe declared three goals for his visit: "to show or demonstrate future opportunities for Japanese-Russian relations; second, to renew talks on the peace treaty; and third, to establish better, trust-based relations with [the] President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin."

It seems some progress was made in many of these areas.

In terms of creating "future opportunities," or creating better relations between both countries, Tokyo and Moscow agreed to "to launch consultations between our foreign policy and defense agencies at the ministerial level employing the so-called ‘Two Plus Two’ formula." Abe also remarked that he hoped "this will greatly increase the level of cooperation between our two nations, Japan and Russia, in providing security and defense."

However, any talk of better relations is comical without the creation of a formal peace treaty ending World War II. It seems both sides understand this important point. President Putin explained that both men had "instructed our Foreign Ministries to step up contacts on reaching a mutually acceptable solution to this problem. The Joint Declaration on Developing Bilateral Partnership that we adopted at the end of our talks follows the same direction."

"The Abe visit to Russia was well timed coming as it does on the heels of some difficult weeks for Japanese diplomacy. The promise of the peace treaty finally coming to pass is also a welcome prospect," says Sheila Smith, a senior fellow for Japan studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.

"The lack of a postwar settlement between Moscow and Tokyo, frankly, has been unnatural and unwise for both countries. There is much to be gained economically, of course, but there is also the strategic benefit to both countries of having a deeper and more productive dialogue on the rapidly changing Asian region."

Prime Minister Abe also stressed the importance of negotiating a peace treaty and said that "a peace treaty between Japan and Russia not being signed 67 years after the end of the [World] War, is not normal."

"But during today’s talks, we were able to agree that we will renew negotiations, and we will accelerate this process. I believe this is a major result of our meetings."

However, peace treaty negotiations will prove a challenge if Russia and Japan are unable to solve contested islands that both have claimed for decades. Japan claims sovereignty over the Northern Territories (referred to as Southern Kurils by Russia).

In an interesting exchange during Abe's press conference, one reporter's question seemed to show the difficulty of the challenge ahead. The reporter asked:

"First, a question to Prime Minister Abe. So long as the territorial dispute over the northern territories remains unresolved, the Russian side is developing and setting up the infrastructure in these islands. For example, companies, including foreign companies or ones with foreign participation, are advancing projects in construction, as well as building geothermal stations and other facilities. In other words, the islands are still essentially governed by Russia. This reality is unacceptable for the Japanese side. How would you comment on this situation?

And my question for President Putin. Does Russia intend to continue such a policy in those territories? If so, then how, in your opinion, this may influence the peace treaty negotiation process with Japan?

Abe's response was polite and quite textbook:

"Yes, as far as the current situation is concerned, it does not align with the Japanese side’s position. But our joint statement with President Putin includes language about how the sides will strive to overcome the disputes in our two nations’ positions.

In order to fundamentally resolve the situation, the only thing we should do is resolve the issues pertaining to the northern territories. President Putin and I agreed today that we will accelerate this negotiation process. This means that we will speed up the peace treaty negotiation process."

President Putin, on the other hand, does not appear to have liked the question:

"I noticed that you conscientiously read your question from a piece of paper. I would like to request that you say the following to those who dictated this question to you: we did not create this problem. We have inherited it from the past and it is nearly 100 years ago. We genuinely want to resolve it in a way that is acceptable to both sides.

If you want to help us, you can: you must create conditions of good will toward one another and a trusting environment.

But if you want to get in the way, which is also possible, then you can ask harsh, direct questions to which you will always receive equally harsh, direct answers. How else can it be? In this case, I would like to say that the residents of these territories are Russian citizens just like all our other citizens living anywhere else. We are obligated to think about them, to think about their living standards.

The Russian Federation’s official position on signing a peace treaty is well-known, but we did not gather here to discuss it today. Instead, we gathered to renew peace treaty negotiations and find ways to solve this problem."

Despite this tense exchange, could a deal be signed that would lead to strong relations between Tokyo and Moscow and a resolution to outstanding territorial claims?

"The Cabinet Secretary's announcement that Vice Ministerial level consultations on the peace treaty will be initiated immediately suggests that there is some momentum coming out of the summit, and this should produce the contours of a broad vision for Japan-Russian cooperation, including the disposition of the Northern Territories," noted Smith.

"While I do not anticipate an immediate resolution of the sovereignty question, I do think there is ample room for a new way of managing their differences that could lead to resolution in the longer term."

Hackers from the Chinese military appear to have shifted the focus of their attacks against Taiwan from government institutions to the civilian sector, including think tanks, telecommunications, Internet nodes, and traffic signal control systems, the island’s top civilian spy agency said in a new report.

The report, submitted by the National Security Bureau (NSB) to the Legislative Yuan prior to a briefing on countermeasures on April 29, did not venture reasons why the PLA’s General Staff Department was now turning its sights on civilian infrastructure, nor did it indicate whether this alleged shift was part of a larger trend or was specific to Taiwan.

Rather than focus on government facilities and diplomatic missions abroad, think tanks, firms in the information technology sector or outsourced factories and businesses, network nodes — primarily industrial computers that are not protected by firewalls or invasion detection systems — broadband routers, factory-grade microcomputer controllers, cloud storage and traffic signal switches, were identified as the probable principal targets of Chinese hackers.

The report added that social media, which have grown immensely popular in Taiwan, could also be used to approach personnel in sensitive sectors or key positions via “massive social engineering” to gain access to their computers and thereby further penetrate the nation’s Internet defenses.

The bureau said that the extremely heavy dependence of Taiwanese on technology meant that society was increasingly vulnerable to this type of attack. It said an estimated 100,000 people are now involved in Chinese cyber warfare.

Taiwan, which Beijing claims as part of its territory, became the target of cyber attacks from China well before the U.S. and the rest of the world started paying attention to the threat (China denies engaging in offensive cyber warfare). As a result, from very early on the Taiwanese government had to implement various measures to ensure information security, and in the process has developed top-of-the-line expertise in identifying, tracking, and countering attempted hostile intrusions.

The NSB’s external web sites alone were the target of about 3.34 million confirmed hits from Chinese hackers in 2012, the bureau said, adding that the majority were “reconnaissance” operations rather than actual intrusions. Still, 70,000 contacts, or an average of 209 per day, were malignant attacks, it said, adding that all were successfully countered. The bureau’s intelligence network is closed and therefore inaccessible from external attacks.

Chang Kuan-yuan, deputy director of the NSB, said on April 29 an investigation had determined that 38 percent of the cyber attacks were launched from “zombie computers” that had been infected by viruses or Trojan horses.

The NSB report said that only the Executive Yuan and, somewhat more surprisingly, the Council of Agriculture, had passed general the Information Security Management System tests, with other agencies only partially doing so.

To help address the threat of cyber espionage from China, Minister of National Defense Kao Hua-chu told the legislature on April 29 that the Communications, Electronics and Information Division under the military would soon set up a fourth unit and increase its budget for Internet security. (Before his arrest in January 2011 on espionage charges, Major General Lo Hsien-che was in charge of the communications, electronics and information division at Army Command Headquarters. The high-profile case, for which Lo is now serving a life sentence, was regarded as the worst espionage case to hit the island in a half century.)

The shift does not mean that Chinese hackers have completely abandoned more traditional targets, however. On March 27, one day after the Ministry of National Defense held a press briefing about the upcoming Han Kuang military exercises, members of the armed forces received e-mails in their private accounts with subject lines related to the drills. Analysis demonstrated that the e-mails contained viruses, which prompted the ministry’s information security unit to take preventive action, David Lo, the military spokesman, said on April 28. Lo said that no sensitive information had been leaked as a result of the attacks, but added that the ministry had had difficulty identifying the source.

Despite being the principal target of the Chinese military and the persistent nature of cyber attacks, Taiwan’s regulations on the use of social media for armed forces personnel are surprisingly lax. Unlike the PLA, which strictly enforces a no-use regulation, a number of active Taiwanese soldiers, for example, have Facebook pages, which could make them ideal targets of social engineering efforts by Chinese cyber warriors.

Even as tensions with North Korea remain unresolved, East's Asia other flashpoint is once again in the headlines: the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands.

Over the last several weeks, several incidents have increased tensions between China and Japan.

Recently, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe sent a cypress tree branch to the Yasukuni shrine. Members of his cabinet have also visited the shrine, as recently as Administrative reform minister Tomomi Inada on Sunday.

The visits have increased tensions with Beijing as well Seoul. Both nations view the shrine as a symbol of the pain and anguish both suffered during a time of Japanese aggression and imperial conquest.

Last Tuesday, various outlets reported that Chinese military aircraft made more than 40 flights near the Senkakus. This is on top of eight Chinese maritime surveillance vessels also travelling close to the islands the same day.  Japanese F-15s scrambled to meet the Chinese planes in what a Japanese official was quoted as saying was "an unprecedented threat."

On Friday, according to The Japan Times, Chinese foreign ministry spokeswomen Hua Chunying explained at a press conference that “The Diaoyu Islands are about sovereignty and territorial integrity. Of course, it’s China’s core interest.”

China declaring the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands a core interest is of major importance and could very well make efforts at easing tensions a greater challenge. The phrase "core interest" is usually reserved for sensitive Chinese concerns such as Taiwan, Tibet and Xinjiang. Core interests usually note areas of great importance for Beijing considered vital to national survival, and not up for negotiation.

Such a declaration could make it harder for both sides to negotiate a compromise on the islands, or at least return to the status quo. Japan, for its part, has staked out a position that declares that no controversy exists, and thus no need for compromise.

The islands are a highly sought piece of real estate by both sides, as well as Taiwan. The islands are near important sea based shipping lanes where large amounts of international trade transit through. There are also fishing areas both sides view as important, as well as possible natural resources like oil, gas and mineral deposits.

Recently, Japan and Taiwan signed a deal allowing Taiwanese fishing vessels access to the disputed territory.

There does seem to be some hope though that a future clash can be avoided. Japanese and Chinese military officials met last Friday in Beijing. The goal was to find ways to prevent accidental clashes in the East China Sea. While word of what was actually said in the talks is unknown, the Japanese delegation is believed to have urged Beijing "to build a bilateral maritime communications mechanism for crisis management, at an early date." One possibility would be a hotline where both sides could communicate quickly in case tensions on the high seas or in the air reached a tipping point.

Every Friday, The Diplomat’s Harry Kazianis looks out across the net to find the best articles and analysis involving defense, strategic affairs, and foreign policy. From America’s pivot to Asia, China’s growing military power, North Korea’s seemingly daily threats to the various territorial spats across the region, The Diplomat has you covered with what you need to know going into the weekend.

Here is our top five this Friday. Have we missed something you think should be included? Want to share an important article with other readers? Please submit your links in the comment box below! Happy Friday!

White House Says it Believes Syria Has Used Chemical Arms (New York Times) - "The assessment could test President Obama’s repeated warnings that the use of chemical weapons by President Bashar al-Assad might precipitate American intervention in Syria."

Shipbuilding Plan Portends a Navy in Decline (RealClearDefense) - "Listening to the Secretary of the Navy testify before Congress this week, one might be lulled into thinking all is well with U.S. Navy shipbuilding. But the president’s budget for 2014 shrinks and diminishes the Navy’s fleet. Again. Last year’s budget accelerated these same trends while permanently downsizing the Navy’s long-standing fleet goal from 313 to 298 ships."

Paper Tiger (Foreign Policy) - "Why isn't the rest of Asia afraid of China?"

Half of American's Can't Identify Syria on a Map (Washington Post) - "One in five respondents told Pew they thought it was Turkey."

China's Strategic Hedging (Orbis, paywall) - "China has sought to gain regional influence by utilizing a mix of energy investments and military modernization efforts. China's overall efforts aim to bring about three broad goals. First, China seeks to hedge its economic growth potential against the threat of energy source disruption. Second, it seeks to limit or deny access to areas of operations within the first island chain, effectively expanding their core strategic zone of interest within the South China Sea. Third, China wants to establish the Taiwan Strait as a ‘no-go’ zone preventing U.S. interference in the event of another Taiwan crisis. This type of hedging behavior can enhance a second-tier state's power without directly challenging the system leader. China has experienced some success in this approach but at a high cost. Its use of strategic hedging as an insurance policy carries a high financial and diplomatic premium."

How does coalition-building affect procurement?  To what extent do (or should) states anticipate operating in a multilateral environment, and choose their weapons accordingly? A recent FlightGlobal article examined Canadian military procurement policies, especially with regard to plans to replace the Royal Canadian Air Force’s CF-18 fleet with F-35 Joint Strike Fighters. The F-35 purchase has generated a great deal of controversy because of the heavy price tag and the contracting process. Much of the debate turns on how Canada expects to become involved in foreign conflicts, and consequently on what tasks are required from Canadian military forces.

The process sheds light on how Canada, a state which has long conceived of its security interests as being embedded with the United States and the United Kingdom, thinks about the design of its military institutions. The question of integration with foreign partners has long bedeviled aspects of Canadian defense policy; the disconnect between Canadian civilians and military commanders during the Cuban Missile Crisis played a role in the eventual decision to unify the Canadian armed forces. Because the services were intimately tied to their counterparts in the UK and the United States, Canada ran the risk of going to war without sufficient civilian deliberation.

Canada’s dilemma in this regard is hardly unique. The broader question involves the degree to which military procurement policies will be guided by expectations of integration into a multi-lateral military framework. Middle powers have a choice between procurement policies that maximize their unilateral security, and policies that maximize their ability to contribute to multilateral operations. For example, the United Kingdom faces a choice between preserving its nuclear deterrent (at this point a fundamentally unilateral project), and maintaining viable conventional forces capable of operating at the sharp point of NATO.

For what it’s worth, the choice the United Kingdom faces seems to be an easy one, with (nuclear armed) irrelevance on one hand and non-nuclear but conventionally potent forces on the other. Canada’s choice is obviously more complicated, but it is difficult to imagine a strategic situation demanding that the Royal Canadian Air Force spearhead a prolonged air campaign against a modern air defense system. Following the defeat of an enemy air defense system, RCAF CF-18s (or Typhoons, or Rafales) can make Canada’s contribution in a far more cost effective manner than Joint Strike Fighters, the F-35’s stealth notwithstanding. Given that the U.S. Navy may continue to purchase F-18s, it’s less than clear that Canada will be left behind by a decision to forego the F-35 purchase.

In contrast to the Atlantic, the Asia-Pacific lacks this degree of military integration, although proposals for such joint ventures as ASEAN military exercises may point the direction toward greater integration in the future. As Andy Thomchick recently argued, the Philippines procurement policies may increasingly make military integration with the United States a given. But even between South Korea and Japan, tensions and strategic disagreements prevent coordination of security policy from reaching deep enough to touch procurement, although in some sense both Korean and Japanese procurement is complementary with that of the United States. Meanwhile AirSea Battle remains a tough sell even in states as friendly as Australia.

Thus, the United States can to some extent provide a focal point for procurement decisions across the Asia-Pacific, at least to the extent that states see their interests as aligning with those of the U.S.  But Washington shouldn’t expect that Japan, Australia, the Philippines or the RoK will ever become as embedded in a U.S. led security community as Canada currently is, even though all of them should nonetheless pay close attention to how their procurement policies can address gaps in U.S. capability. They should also identify areas in which their strategic interests do not coincide with that of the United States or other neighbors, and determine what assets are fundamentally unilateral in nature and which operate best in a multilateral context. 

Over the weekend Chinese President Xi Jinping issued an order requiring PLA and People’s Armed Police generals and senior officers to spend two weeks on front lines as enlisted, low-ranking soliders.

According to South China Morning Post, the order stipulates that, “Leaders of regiment- and brigade-level units have to serve on the front line once every three years. Division- and army-level commanders must serve once every four years. Top leaders from army headquarters and military districts will do so once every five years.”

The move is part of an ongoing effort by Xi to impose greater discipline on a military brass that many argue was allowed to grow intolerably corrupt under Xi’s two immediate predecessors. The fear is that the extravagance the military leadership indulges in is reducing the army’s professionalism and alienating officers from the men they command, ultimately curtailing combat-readiness.

Since taking office in November, Xi has taken a number of steps that aim to change this military culture, or at least tame its greatest excesses. Some of these measures have been rather small and symbolic, as when military officers attending the National People’s Congress last month were required to share hotel rooms. Other aspects have been more substantive such as banning expensive banquets and alcohol consumption, as well as prohibiting military officers from obtaining military license plates for their private vehicles.

The new directive imposes similar conditions on the military: “They need to provide for themselves and pay for their own food. They must not accept any banquet invitation, join any sight-seeing tours, accept gifts or interfere with local affairs." 

Unlike the restrictions cited above, however, the demotions here will only be temporary, assuming it is enforced on so many officers at all. 

But the order is more notable for its symbolism, given the parallels it has with Mao’s rule of China when senior Party and military leaders were often forced to perform humiliating feats ostensibly to retain their revolutionary fervor, but really to reinforce Mao’s ironclad rule. As SCMP points out, the military was not exempt from this in all occasions, and was the primary target in at least one campaign in 1958.

The senior CCP leadership’s relationship with the military brass has changed in fundamental ways since Mao and Deng Xiaoping’s time in power. Unlike Mao and Deng Xiaoping, who had both been battle-hardened guerrilla commanders before coming to power, Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao hadn’t served in the military and were thus less certain of its leader’s personal loyalty.

From watching Mao and Deng’s reliance on the military, Jiang and Hu grasped the importance of winning this loyalty. Deng underscored this when handing power to Jiang, allegedly recommending that “Out of five working days, spend four with the top brass.”

According to Richard McGregor, Jiang took this message seriously by visiting 100 military installations in his first two years in power, and preparing for all military parades by practicing his moves in front of a mirror the night before.

Hu Jintao himself wasn’t above taking symbolic actions of his own when first coming to power.

As Scott Harold, associate political scientist at the US-based Rand Corporation, told The Diplomat via email:

“At the outset of Hu Jintao’s term he took the Politburo Standing Committee to Xibaipo, the last village the Red Army and the CCP leadership occupied before entering Beiping (now Beijing) as the victors in the Chinese civil war.  The intent was to remind the leadership that they had come from revolutionary origins and had to stay true to the ideals of the founders before they took power and developed the perverse vested interests that unchecked and unaccountable power produces.” 

Unlike Jiang and Hu, though, Xi Jinping is a princeling whose father was a commander in the Red Army during the wars that brought the Communist Party to power. This gives Xi a certain amount of respect with the military brass, many of whom he has known for years. Notably, Xi also differs from his two immediate predecessors in that he inherited the chairmanship of the Central Military Commission, the country’s top military decision-making body, at the same time that he became head of the Party in November.

All of these factors better position Xi to bring change to the military than were Hu and Jiang. Still, the order Xi issued over the weekend is unlikely to have much impact, the Rand Corporation’s Harold predicts.

“I don’t see much reason to think that 15 days out of 365 spent cleaning latrines or eating grunt rations will systematically reshape the thinking of military leaders whose perquisites are almost certainly beyond the imaginings of most enlistees,” Harold says.

“And moreover the nature of Chinese political culture, as well as the mere practical realities of how hierarchically-structured organizations like the armed forces [operate], will make it extremely difficult for the common soldier to treat the generals as genuine colleagues given that they will shortly thereafter go back to being their superior officers.”  

So, maybe after all of North Korea's recent bluster we may now know a possible motivation for the recent standoff:  Pyongyang might simply be in need of food.

The Wall Street Journal's Korea Real Time blog reported this week that "at a courtesy call on the Mongolian president last week, Pyongyang’s new ambassador made a request for food aid, according to the official website for the head of state."

Mongolia's Presidential website has released a statement that confirms this report:

"At the meeting, both sides exchanged opinion on enhancing partnership in sport and cultural sector and discussed possibilities to bring North Korean basketball, football team and judokas to Mongolia to prepare for the international competitions. Mr. Hong Gyu said ‘North Korea may face severe food shortage. Therefore, we ask Mongolia to learn possibilities of delivering food aid to North Korea.’"

As has been discussed on The Diplomat, and by many academics and regional experts, there is a historical pattern of North Korean belligerence being followed by attempts to get aid. This process begins with North Korea making wild, outlandish threats or otherwise provoking a crisis. Many times South Korea, the United States and Japan have provided aid after some sort of agreement is reached. North Korea then later breaks the agreement, again making wild and threatening statements, and once again receiving again. This pattern has repeated over and over.

For its part, the Obama Administration has adopted a policy of "Strategic Patience," which basically vows to not reward North Korean belligerence with negotiations for aid.

The United States, some would argue, has been backing off this approach recently -- if only slightly.  Over the past several weeks the U.S. has stated North Korea must show progress towards denuclearization before talks can resume.

While current tensions have eased somewhat over the past week, North Korea has rejected the United States’ preconditions for talks, stating, "If the DPRK sits at a table with the U.S. it has to be a dialogue between nuclear weapons states, not one side forcing the other to dismantle nuclear weapons." 

The U.S. has also rejected what could be called North Korea’s preconditions for talks as well.

So, how does the current crisis end? Stay tuned...

On Monday, the military chiefs from China and the U.S., Gen. Fang Fenghui and Gen. Martin Dempsey, gave a joint press conference after holding meetings throughout the day. As expected, cybersecurity was a major topic of discussion in these meetings, as the Obama administration is ramping up pressure on China to curb its alleged cyber attacks on U.S. companies.

In a Wall Street Journal report that (not coincidentally) appeared on the same day of Fang and Dempsey’s meetings, numerous unnamed U.S. officials were quoted as saying that there has been a sharp increase in the number of American corporations who have approached the administration in recent months, to ask them to do more to curb China’s cyber attacks.

In response the administration held a meeting with Chinese officials in January where a U.S. intelligence official gave a two hour long presentation laying out the evidence of Chinese military involvement in these attacks. At the same time, since then the administration has continued to try to increase engagement with China on this issue, including during Secretary of State John Kerry’s trip to the country earlier this month, when the two sides agreed to begin holding a dialogue on cybersecurity.

Gen. Fang’s remarks at the press conference yesterday have been widely depicted by international media report as another sign that China will work with the U.S. on cybersecurity. According to Bloomberg News, Fang said at the press conference:“If Internet security cannot be controlled, it’s not an exaggeration to say the effects could be no less than a nuclear bomb.”

This may not be as placating as it sounds, however, or at the very least was not taken to be the Pentagon, who summarized Fang’s remarks on its site as having said “if Internet is not managed well,” without attributing that direct quote to Fang.

The fact that the story on the Pentagon’s website used the words “not managed well” seems significant. After all, China and other countries often use words like “management” and “supervision” of the internet to describe actions that Western governments would call censorship.

Indeed, Fang and Dempsey’s meeting takes place in the context of a larger battle for control over the internet that is being waged by a bloc of countries led by Russia and China, which believe that national and international organizations should have greater control over cyberspace, and the mostly Western states who argue that non-governmental organizations and the private sector should continue to regulate the internet.

This battle was on full display at a December UN conference in Dubai that was held to update the treaty that created the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), a UN Agency, when it was first signed in the late 1980’s. What should have been a relatively uncontroversial matter became quite heated when countries led by Russia, China, and Iran proposed language that would expand the ITU’s mission to include cyberspace. Western nations balked at this proposal arguing these new provisions would give the ITU—and by extension, national governments— greater authority to regulate and censor the internet. No common ground could be found between the two camps during the two week conference, prompting the Western nations to storm out in the final days.

In this context, one interpretation of Gen. Fang’s remarks is that China is responding to U.S. concerns over the cyber attacks by saying that it absolutely agrees that cyber activities pose a huge threat (comparable to nuclear weapons), and that the proper response to counter this threat is to give governments’ greater control over the internet.

Other comments Fang made at the press conference seem to support this interpretation. For example, Fang reportedly said, “The Internet is open to everyone and attacks can be launched from anywhere.” More government control over cyberspace could allow them to prevent the Internet from being open to everybody across all borders.

Fang also reportedly spoke at length about the difficulty of attribution when it comes to cyber attacks, something China has been emphasizing since the allegations of its cyber attacks on American companies began. On the one hand, this is done to dispute that the U.S. intelligence actually proves the PLA is directly responsible for the attacks. On the other hand, some of the ways countries might strengthen their capabilities for pinpointing cyber attacks could include forcing users to provide their real identities when purchasing internet service or registering with social media sites, both of which China is doing.

This interpertation also just makes sense from a policy standpoint. China to respond in this way to U.S. allegations that it conducts cyber attacks on American companies. On the one hand, China would be able to present itself as quite willing to cooperate with the U.S. on cybersecurity. On the other hand, its approach to addressing the issue is one America is almost certain to reject. Thus, the status-quo persists but it is America, not China, that is seen as unwilling to play ball in the cyber world.

The armed forces of the United States and the Philippines conducted the 29th annual Balikatan joint military exercises April 5 through April 17. These military exercises are the largest and most significant joint military operations between the U.S. and Filipino militaries.

The exercises are “a signature element” of the “two nations’ robust treaty alliance relationship.” The war games help the U.S. military and Filipino military operate more effectively together—especially when it comes to humanitarian disaster relief missions.

But the militaries also conduct joint field exercises and try to come up with more effective ways to work together on the battlefield amid the chaos of combat. An estimated 8,000 U.S. and Filipino troops took part in the exercises. The U.S. Marine Corps brought in heavy-hitting military hardware—F/A-18 fighters, MV-22 Osprey aircraft, and amphibious assault vehicles (AAVs)—to make the field exercises as realistic as possible.

One of the major challenges for the U.S. in the region is the weakness of Filipino naval and air forces. As one member of the Academy of Military Sciences of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army commented, “In this joint exercise, the U.S. side mobilized a large amount of advanced navy and air force equipment, while the Philippines had but little to show in contrast.” The U.S. therefore acts as a “bodyguard” for the Philippines.

It’s not quite that simple. These exercises build on the interoperability of U.S. and Filipino forces. Such cooperation also sets an example for military-to-military cooperation with other countries in the region at a time when U.S. leadership is critical. The territorial disputes in the South China Sea, particularly between the Philippines and China, demand that the U.S. take a strong stance to guarantee the security of our treaty allies and to maintain the freedom of navigation in the South China Sea.

The U.S.–Philippines alliance needs a better equipped, more “ready” Filipino element. As Filipino scholar Renato de Castro and Heritage’s Walter Lohman explain:

"The Philippines has the weakest navy in the region, and its air force is unable to patrol and monitor its vast maritime territory. It resorts to the futile filing of diplomatic protests whenever an aggressive China encroaches on its [exclusive economic zone]."

The symbol of the Philippines’s need for assistance is the fact that it does not have a single fighter aircraft in service today.

In light of the current situation, the U.S. should:

- Help the Filipino military build up its forces, particularly its naval and air forces, so that they can contribute more to the alliance;

- Reaffirm our commitment to the 1951 U.S–Philippines Mutual Defense Treaty (MDF) and make it clear that an attack on either U.S. or Filipino “armed forces, public vessels or aircraft in the Pacific” will result in a U.S. response in accordance with the MDF treaty; and

- Maintain a strong forward-deployed presence in the Western Pacific. As Lohman argues, a strong America in Asia will lead to a “stable and secure” region and will lend credibility to our commitment to our allies.

Maintaining a strong relationship with the Philippines and helping them build up their military forces is an absolutely critical factor in the U.S. strategic “pivot” to Asia.

Andy Thomchick is currently a member of the Young Leaders Program at The Heritage Foundation. The following post was republished with permission.