Play The Diplomat’s Quiz: March 5, 2017 Edition

Chinese People’s Liberation Army-Navy (PLAN) and People’s Liberation Army-Air Force (PLAAF) warships and aircraft carried out exercises in the vicinity of Taiwan on Thursday. According to Chinese state media, PLAAF fighters, bombers, and early warning aircraft, along with PLAN warships, transited the Miyako Strait and entered the Western Pacific.

In response to Chinese activities in the Miyako Strait, Japan’s Air Self-Defense Force scrambled fighters to monitor the large-scale drill. The Miyako Strait runs between the Japanese islands of Miyako and Okinawa and offers a small passageway with international waters and airspace through Japan’s exclusive economic zone. Chinese strategists identify the Miyako Strait, along with the Bashi Channel, as one of the critical chokepoints in the so-called first island chain.

Timor-Leste’s 15 years of independence have been marked by a mixed performance of progress and crisis. Having emerged from war and internal conflict in the late 1990s, Timor-Leste has a challenging path to get on par with other countries, in particular on issues related to development.

After 15 years of independence, it is time to take stock of how far things have come. The country’s presidential election will be held on March 20, with a potential second round of voting in April before the parliamentary election in July, the first such election to be held since the United Nations (UN) Mission departed in 2012.

Eight candidates, including one female candidate, will be contesting the March 20 presidential elections after fulfilling the criteria, including securing enough supporters. The eight candidates are Amorim Vieira, Angela Freitas, Antonio da Conceição, Antonio Maher, Francisco Guterres Lu-Olo, Jose Luis Guterres, Luis Alves Tilman, and Jose Antonio Neves. All eight candidates are scheduled to carry out their political campaigns from March 3-17. Voting is scheduled to take place simultaneously on March 20 both inside the country and overseas for Timorese abroad.

For Central Asia-watchers, the inclusion of Uzbekistan on the list signifies just how limited foreign nationals’ attempts at terrorism on American soil have been since 2011. (To say nothing of the fact that two of the states, Ethiopia and Cuba, are Christian-majority states.) That’s not to deny that Uzbekistani nationals have threatened to kill or maim Americans on American soil; rather, these attempts have been sufficiently ham-handed — and bizarre — that the inclusion of Uzbekistan on the DHS’s list undercuts the Trump administration’s executive order that much more.

Crossroads Asia was able to identify only a handful of Uzbekistani nationals tied to terrorist-related activities in the United States over the past few years — most notably, when a pair of Uzbekistani nationals were tied to threats to bomb Coney Island and assassinate then-President Barack Obama on behalf of Islamic State. More recently, a 25-year-old Uzbekistani national pleaded not guilty to making a terrorist threat following his arrest for aiming a pellet gun at passing cars in Missouri. (He didn’t fire any shots.)

China’s defense budget will grow 7 percent in the coming year, representing the slowest pace for year-on-year growth since 2010. China made the announcement on Saturday, ahead of the Sunday opening of the country’s National People’s Congress, the national legislature.

With seven State Legislative Assembly Elections scheduled for 2017, the Indian political climate is rife with activity this year. Five of those elections – in Goa, Punjab, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, and Manipur – will conclude over February and early March, with the announcement of final results expected by March 11. Here is a quick look at what is at stake for each state.

On Tuesday, India posted its quarterly gross domestic product (GDP) growth statistics for the period of October-December 2016. Growth came in at 7.0 percent for the period, falling short of the 7.4 percent that had been observed in the third quarter of 2016. As a result of the figure, India maintains its position as the world’s fastest growing large economy.

On Saturday, China’s Commerce Ministry announced that it would suspend imports of North Korean coal for the rest of 2017. Beijing’s precise intentions are not fully clear, but one can surmise that there are several: to punish North Korea for its missile test on February 11, and to send a signal to the new Trump administration about China’s willingness to engage in talks on the North Korean nuclear issue with all parties involved. One might suspect it is also a signal to Pyongyang after the killing of Kim Jong-nam, Kim Jong-un’s half brother, who had strong ties to China and reportedly lived under Chinese protection.

Of the Asian security alliances, the one with the Philippines was actually the earliest one to be forged. The U.S.-Philippine Mutual Defense Treaty was signed on August 30, 1951; a few days before the one with Australia and New Zealand (ANZUS) was inked on September 1, 1951 (New Zealand was suspended in 1986); and years before the U.S.-ROK alliance was inked on October 1, 1953 and the U.S.-Japan alliance on January 19, 1960.

Indeed, in terms of security treaty commitments, Thailand is the odd one out among these countries since there was no initial bilateral foundational treaty between Washington and Bangkok. Rather, both countries were signatories of the 1954 Manila Pact of the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), and even though SEATO itself was dissolved back in 1977, the Manila Pact itself remained in force and, along with other bilateral understandings like the Thanat-Rusk communique of 1962 and the 2012 Joint Vision Statement for the U.S.-Thailand Defense Alliance, is considered the wider basis for U.S. security commitments to Thailand.