Play The Diplomat’s Quiz: December 11, 2016 Edition

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.

With an overcast sky and the sun going down in Chennai, it appeared as if people were preparing themselves for an impending doom. The announcement that the ailing chief minister of Tamil Nadu J. Jayalalithaa – popularly known as amma or mother – was in critical condition was received with trepidation. Provision stores and vegetable shops had milling crowds. Supplies just flew off the shelves. Petrol stations had winding queues. People hurried as if they would be spared any bad news if they were ensconced in the safety of their homes.

The reverse played out outside the hospital where Jayalalithaa was being treated. In a somber mood, men waited outside with hope, oblivious to the chill in the December air. As the hospital remained a bastion of secrecy for all the 75 days that the chief minister was there, Jayalalithaa’s followers waited apprehensively for any news of revival. A heavy posse of police personnel guarded the entry points of all roads leading to the hospital. Harried shop-keepers could not turn away their customers and hence pulled their shutters halfway down, fearing a backlash, as had happened at the demise of Jayalalithaa’s mentor and chief minister M. G. Ramachandran. Hotels closed their gates while super markets and cinema halls downed their shutters.

In announcing its plans to roll out a public smoking ban across the country by the end of this year, China’s National Health and Family Planning Commission is taking on a Herculean task. Considering that China has one of the world’s most deeply ingrained and stubborn smoking cultures, getting 1.3 billion people to quit lighting up in public is going to take massive social and economic changes. If the central government’s plans do make headway, however, countless lives and could be saved from the ravages of tobacco. With 300 million smokers accounting for one in every three cigarettes smoked in the world, China’s tobacco problem is an epidemic.

India’s maritime woes are manifesting in multiple ways. In an unprecedented accident earlier this week, an Indian naval warship, the INS Betwa, slipped off her dock-blocks in a ship repair facility in Mumbai, suffering extensive damage. A Brahmaputra-class guided missile warship, the Betwa was in the process of undocking when the unfortunate incident occurred, killing two sailors and injuring another 15.

It is crushingly embarrassing for the navy and the Western Naval Command to face the ignominy of a 4,000-ton warship turning turtle in a dry dock. The fact that the mishap is only the latest in a long list of serious accidents involving Indian naval ships and submarines is an unsettling truth that naval commanders are finding hard to come to terms with.

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte will continue his regional tour of Southeast Asian states ahead of his country’s ASEAN chairmanship next year with trips to Cambodia and Singapore next week.

On December 15, 2016, Russian President Vladimir Putin is slated to visit Japan, where he will meet with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to discuss the future of Russo-Japanese relations, including the possible resolution of the territorial dispute around the South Kuril islands (referred to in Japan as the Northern Territories), as well as signing a peace treaty, both issues plaguing bilateral ties since the end of World War II.

There are expectations in Japan that Putin’s trip, which had been under discussion for several years and would mark the president’s first visit to Japan since 2009, might bring about tangible progress in the dispute. However, that is highly unlikely to happen due to Russia’s demonstrably stronger hand in negotiations, no observable shift in Moscow’s official rhetoric on the dispute, and the question of precise border demarcation, which might well prove the stumbling block to any resolution. Overall, the Putin-Abe talks will probably end up being little more than a talkfest, whereby both sides strike some minor deals, but nothing of real consequence is achieved.

People’s fear for personal safety has been steadily increasing since the start of the survey, from 40 percent in 2006 up to 70 percent now. The government maintains low levels of confidence amongst the people, while religious leaders and the media have slightly higher levels of confidence. Unemployment continues to be a primary concern in the country, with 71 percent saying it was the biggest problem facing Afghan youth. In addition, 52 percent of respondents cite unemployment as the reason to leave the country if they were given the opportunity.

A Philippine warship arrived at a key port facility in Vietnam this week as part of a four-day visit to the country, a reminder of the ongoing collaboration in the maritime space between the two Southeast Asian strategic partners.

The Philippine frigate BRP Ramon Alcaraz arrived in Cam Ranh International Seaport, a new international port facility capable of receiving foreign warships which was opened in March (See: “Vietnam Unveils Port Facility For Foreign Warships in Cam Ranh Bay”). The port, located in Cam Ranh Bay, a deep-water harbor in central Vietnam along the South China Sea, has since seen visits from a string of countries, including Japan, France, and China.

November 2016 has been particularly bad for New Delhi in terms of its general air quality, with high levels of smoke, low visibility, and dangerous levels of air pollution. Some days last month were recorded as the worst in 10 years. After the festival of Diwali earlier this month, PM 2.5 levels — the concentration of tiny pollutive and disease inducing particles within the air — soared to record highs. While initially there was suspicion that this was a direct result of the bursting of firecrackers that accompanies the festival, a pollution heat map released by the World Health Organization (WHO) earlier this year placed New Delhi as the 11th  most polluted city in the world, indicating a more deep-seated problem.

The Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) pegged the increase in pollutants to a drop in mean wind speeds and a reversal in the normal wind direction. While the WHO has recommended that these levels be contained to below 10 on an annual average, the rates went up to 119 in 2015 for the city. In the context of the events of this November, the risk of contracting respiratory diseases has been on a steady increase, on days visibility went to below 50 meters and the smog does not seem to be letting up. Regularly updated indices of air pollution have become a constant source of information for concerned citizens, as a lack of a reliable centralized system has been widely noted.