Play The Diplomat’s Quiz: November 27, 2016 Edition

Diplomatic ties between Mongolia and China are set for a freeze.

Bloomberg reported on Saturday that, as anticipated, China has reacted negatively to Mongolia’s decision to allow a visit by the Dalai Lama, Tibet’s spiritual leader, to the country. The Dalai Lama wrapped up a four-day visit to Mongolia on Wednesday.

According to the report, China has postponed all bilateral interactions with Mongolia over the Dalai Lama’s visit. The immediate result of the Chinese decision is that upcoming talks on Chinese loans and infrastructure initiatives in the country will not go forward.

“The meeting was intended for negotiations on soft loans and the projects on Tavan Tolgoi railroad, a copper plant and coal gasification project. Unfortunately, the Chinese side responded that this visit was unacceptable,’’ Munkh-Orgil Tsend, Mongolia’s foreign minister, told reporters, according to Bloomberg.

Mongolia was hoping to conclude a $4.2 billion loan with Beijing to solve short-term spending needs while the country remains mired in an economic recession.

This does nothing about the hundreds of thousands of fishing trawlers that already operate in the South and East China Seas. According to one study, fighting over fish in the South China Sea will underscore the Asian diplomatic problems of tomorrow. Currently, 55 percent of the world’s marine-fishing vessels are employed in the South China Sea, with the overwhelming majority belonging to the Chinese who heavily subsidize their industry.

The increase in China’s fishing fleets in this area has grown simultaneously with a decrease in overall fish stocks. A report from the University of Columbia Fisheries Economic Research Unit has calculated that the total volume of fish in parts of the South China Sea has declined by between 70 and 95 percent in the past 60 years.

It’s settled: Kyrgyzstan will have a referendum to amend the constitution on December 11. This week the bill to hold the referendum passed in its third reading,with 89 parliamentarians voting “for” and, according to 24.kg, only 16 voting “against” (leaving 18 MPs unaccounted for).

Amusingly, Omurbek Tekebayev, the leader of the Ata-Meken faction and a staunch opponent of the referendum,accidentally voted “for” and asked for the record to corrected. “I beg you, put on a revote, [be]cause it will remain in the history.”

The Indian Navy commissioned its latest warship, the stealth guided missile destroyer INS Chennai, at a ceremony held at the Mazagon naval dockyards in Mumbai on November 21, according to an Indian Ministry of Defense (MoD) press release.

This Monday, combat engineers of the Japan Ground Self Defense Force (JGSDF) deployed for the first time to South Sudan as part of the United Nations peacekeeping mission in the country with an expanded set of duties and new rules engagement, The Japan Times reports.

According to the Japan Self Defense Force (JSDF) information department, 67 Japanese peacekeepers arrived in the morning of November 21 in South Sudan’s capital of Juba. A second batch of 63 soldiers arrived in the late afternoon. The entire contingent of 350 JSDF troops is slated to deploy by the middle of December.

The Japanese peacekeepers will replace a previous contingent of JGSDF engineers. The soldiers will be responsible for engineering and construction in the South Sudanese capital. Among other things, they will engage in road construction and help build refugee camps.

It started with a tweet: “Somebody watches too much movies on their free time. If you respect the audience you at least make your lies sound believable. #insult #sad.”

So wrote Kem Monovithya, deputy head of public affairs of Cambodia’s largest opposition party, the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), and daughter of the party’s vice-president, Kem Sokha.

Monovithya’s comments, expressed last month, came as a response to the proposal made by the CNRP’s president, Sam Rainsy, who has been in exile for the last year, that he would return to face imprisonment for the release of several CNRP politicians currently in jail. Days later, following the imprisoned CNRP politicians’ rejection of the so-called prisoner swap, and following Sam Rainsy’s criticism of China for encouraging human rights abuses in Cambodia, Monovithya took to Twitter again: “Cnrp official stance prioritizes Cambodia’s interests and regional stability. Not erratic positions based on wild theories/one’s moodiness.”

During his campaign, President-elect Donald Trump promised to increase the size of the U.S. Navy to 350 ships. Since the election, senior campaign advisors Alexander Gray and Peter Navarro have laid out what they say his Asia-Pacific strategy will be, a cornerstone of which is the 350-ship fleet. The Navy’s current 30-year shipbuilding plan is designed to grow to a 308-ship fleet, though it doesn’t achieve this goal until the 2020’s and projects that fleet size will drop back below that level for the last 20 years of the plan. Further, even this current plan faces strong challenges, as I wrote about earlier this fall.

As essays appear advocating visions for what Trump’s promised 350-ship fleet should look like, Franz-Stefan Gady recently posed strategic questions about what the Navy should be used for and how many ships it really needs. But to evaluate the coming debate over growing the fleet, it helps to have a baseline understanding of how big the U.S. Navy is today, where it is, what it does, and what it is for. What follows is meant to help orient readers along these lines. In Part II of this series, I will look more closely at the hurdles to achieving an even larger, notional 350-ship fleet.

On Saturday, Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif finalized his choice for the next person to lead the country’s armed forces. Lieutenant General Qamar Javed Bajwa was appointed to the role of chief of army staff, where he will succeed General Raheel Sharif (no relation to the prime minister). General Sharif’s term ends on November 29.

General Sharif was appointed in November 2013 and is stepping down at the conclusion of his three year term without seeking an extension like his predecessor, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani. Kayani’s term lasted from 2007 to 2013; he succeeded Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan’s former president, in the role.

Chinese and Cambodian troops will hold a major eight-day joint exercise next month in what some are billing a huge boost for their defense relationship.

The exercise, called Golden Dragon, will reportedly take place at the Thlok Tasek Military Institute in Kampong Speu province from December 15 to 23. It will feature more than 500 soldiers and focus on fields like emergency road repairs and construction, natural disaster medical treatment, landmine detection and destruction, dam building and flood relief.

Details of the exercise were unveiled as General Wang Jiaocheng of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) visited Cambodia. The exercise was discussed generally as part of Wang’s meetings with Cambodian officials including Defense Minister Tea Banh and Royal Cambodian Armed Forces (RCAF) commander-in-chief General Pol Saroeun.

Operation Enduring Freedom kicked off 15 years ago on October 7, 2001; today, roughly 8,400 U.S. and NATO troops are still engaged in assisting Afghan partner forces in their war against resurgent militant threats. As a stark reminder of the dangerous landscape that exists in Afghanistan, two American Special Forces soldiers were killed recently while assisting Afghan commando forces in an operation to thwart a Taliban offensive on Kunduz city.