Play The Diplomat’s Quiz: August 9, 2015 Edition

It has been 70 years since the United States atomic bombings of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing more than 400,000 people, and affecting generations more through nuclear radiation. The horror of these bombings has been imprinted on our consciousness, holding at bay the further use of nuclear weapons in warfare.

In an unexpected and sudden development, the Indian government  announcement on Monday evening that it had signed a historic agreement with the Naga rebels in the country’s Northeast, thereby ending the six decade old insurgency in the region. The peace accord was announced jointly by none other than Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Thuingaleng Muivah, leader of the Nationalist Socialist Council of Nagaland (Isak-Muivah), know as the NSCN(IM) for short. Muivah is one of the leaders of the NSCN(IM). The other leader, Isak Chisi Swu, is on his deathbed.

In the summer, past and present Chinese leaders gather in the seaside resort town of Beidaihe, over 200 km from Beijing, to decide on policy goals and leadership shuffles. At least, so we think – the meeting is always shrouded in secrecy, making the subject matter, attendance, and even the timing of the meeting a subject of educated guesswork and rumor. In fact, the secretive summit is often marked by absence rather than presence: China watchers have been scouring official media reports for signs of China’s top leaders out and about in places other than Beidaihe. When days pass without these leaders being featured on the evening news, speculation grows that they’ve gathered in Beidaihe.

This year, the start of the meeting seemed a bit more clear-cut. State media openly reported that Liu Yunshan, a Politburo Standing Committee member, was meeting academics and researchers in Beidaihe on Wednesday.South China Morning Post took this as a signal that the summit was underway. One day previously, on August 5, the state-owned China Daily had run an article saying that the Bedaihe meeting would focus on China’s 13th Five Year Plan, particularly on setting economic goals. Other topics to be under discussion, according to China Daily, “might include the anti-corruption campaign, personnel arrangements, reform of State-owned enterprises and relations with major countries.”

Civilian casualties in Afghanistan are still on the rise, according to a UN report. In the first six months of 2015, the UN documented 4,921 civilian casualties (1,592 dead and 3,329 injured). While the total amount of civilian casualties rose only one percent compared to the same period in 2014, it looks like 2015 will be one of the deadliest years for Afghan civilians on record. Since 2009, the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) has recorded 52,653 civilian casualties (19,368 dead and 33,285 injured).

The midyear report, prepared by UNAMA and the UN Human Rights Office, covers January 1, 2015 to June 30, 2015. The report says that civilian casualties in 2015 are set to equal or exceed 2014’s record highs. Another recent report, from TOLOnews, reinforces this projection. The TOLOnews report says that civilian casualties in July were 26 percent higher than June numbers.

The widow of South Korea’s most iconic liberal president is traveling to North Korea in the hope of initiating a thaw in relations between the uneasy neighbors.

Lee Hee-ho, whose late husband, former President Kim Dae-jung, is best known for his “Sunshine Policy” of rapprochement with the North, arrived in Pyongyang on Wednesday for a four-day visit.

The 93-year-old former first lady, who is visiting at the invitation of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, is seen as the custodian of her husband’s legacy of goodwill gestures toward Pyongyang. In local liberal circles, she remains a symbol of a presidency credited with fostering unusually warm inter-Korean relations, despite several fatal naval skirmishes that also occurred during the period.

Japan may give the Philippines planes to use for patrols in the South China Sea, media sources reported August 6.

According to Reuters, sources have revealed that Japan may be looking to offer three Beechcraft TC-90 King Air Planes to Manila.

The reports will come as little surprise to those following the Japan-Philippine relationship closely. As I have written before, Japan has been a strategic partner of the Philippines since 2011, and the two countries have boosted the defense side of their relationship significantly over the past few years amid growing concerns about China’s assertiveness in the East China Sea and the South China Sea (“Japan, Philippines Boost Defense Ties”).

It’s been a rough few months for U.S.-China relations, with rising tensions in the South China Sea and the fallout of the hack against the United States’ Office of Personnel Management (OPM) casting a pall above this bilateral relationship of global consequence. As the days tick away before Chinese President Xi Jinping’s historic state visit to the United States in September, there is considerable concern on both sides that the relationship could continue to worsen. In fact, matters could be worse if U.S. legislators had come together to end civil nuclear cooperation between the United States and China. Instead, the 1985 U.S.-China civil nuclear agreement, which expires and the end of the year, will be renewed.

Judged on performance, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has probably lived up to expectations handed down by his father and his father’s father.

He has dealt with his dislikes with a ruthless abandonment. That included the execution of Uncle Jang Song Thaek, who he reportedly once liked and then went on to describe as “despicable human scum.”*

Then he ordered the execution by anti-aircraft fire of his defense minister Hyon Yong-chol, caught dozing-off during a rally. That also won many a international headline for Kim, whose loathing of the West seems at odds with his penchant for Disneyland and boxer Mike Tyson.

Nevertheless, prominent Indonesians have ranked the North Korean leader alongside Myanmar’s pro-democracy advocate Aung San Suu Kyi and India’s pro-independence leader Mahatma Gandhi by honoring him with an award for his statesmanship.

Kim’s grandfather Kim Il-sung also won the award posthumously, issued by the the Bali-based Sukarno Education Foundation for “peace, justice and humanity”.

In an interview with Channel News Asia television, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov attacked the U.S. military rebalance to Asia, including the increased deployment of U.S. naval and ground forces to the Pacific theater of operations, and additionally accused Washington of exaggerating the array of threats in the region, according to TASS.

“The United States is engaged in a very huge military buildup in Asia, including under the pretext of countering the North Korean threat but the scale of the buildup is way beyond the need and disproportionally (sic) huge,” Lavrov said.

The Russian foreign minister also pointed out that the United States is “building missile defense in cooperation with Japan and South Korea, which is not helpful at all.”

On August 3, the United States and Indonesia kicked off a series of bilateral naval exercises to boost their maritime partnership.

The 21st annual Cooperation Afloat Readiness and Training (CARAT) Indonesia will go on for a week on the ground in Surabaya and in the waters and airspace of the Java and Bali Seas. More than 1,000 U.S. military members will participate in CARAT Indonesia 2015, along with counterparts from the Indonesian Navy and Marines – known as Tentera Nasional Indonesia – Angkatan Laut (TNI-AL).

According to a U.S. Navy statement seen by The Diplomat, CARAT Indonesia 2015 will feature simultaneous amphibious landings, surface and anti-submarine warfare, visit, board, search and seizure demonstrations, mobile dive and salvage training, coastal riverine operations, maritime patrol and reconnaissance operations, a gunnery exercise, and an anti-air warfare missile live fire training exercise. Numerous civil action projects, aviation maintenance, sports exchanges, military law, and submarine warfare symposia will take place during the shore phase of the exercise.