PSPD in English Peace/Disarmament 2010-11-23   1935

International Workshop for Peace and Disarmament in the Asia-Pacific Region(11/17) – Comments9(By Gemma Yu)

The first session included presentations from John Feffer from IPS(Institute for Policy Studies), Akira Kawasaki from Peace Boat, Taeho Lee from PSPD and Hua Han from Beijing University.

Compared to the second session which talked more on civil society’s role on creating civil solidarity for NWF disarmament and prevention of armed conflict in the Asia-Pacific Region, the first session was more policy oriented. So it may well be very obvious that with such orientation the first session doesn’t include much discussion on UN and the possible role it can place in security policies and civil priorities in this region.

First Mr. John Feffer from IPS talked about good news and bad news of U.S. Military strategy in Asia. The main good news he shared with us is the Deficit Committee with its proposal to cut down 100 billion dollar on U.S. military spending and possible downsizing the overseas U.S. military bases to 1/3 of its current size. Along with that he opened the bad news which is if U.S. Military expense is to be cut down; U.S.’s allies will have to be pushed to share the burden. As the burden of military expense (on domestic level in U.S.) goes down, it will transfer its burden to be shared by its allied countries by forcing them to either buy more military weapons from U.S. or to strengthen their own military system which also means increase on the military spending on their side. As for S. Korea, neither the good news nor the bad news that Mr. Feffer shared with us is really any good: Rather it’s a matter of which is lesser evil.

Regardless of downsizing U.S. military spending on domestic level, S. Korea is forced to spend more money on its military expense with not much positive gaining. On the other hand, I can assume that it could be and will be a win-win situation for both Japan and U.S. either way. For example, U.S. won’t loose anything either way since even if its military expense is cut down, it can be made up by its allies one way or the other. It can even work out better for U.S. since it can use its saved budget on military toward welfare of its nation and people and still be able to make up its shortage through its allies. U.S. might even benefit more by doing so since budget cut can give U.S. a good reason to sell off its stocked up weapons to its little brothers.

How about Japan? Japan can also benefit from such change along with change of its own policy and strategy on military. At least from what I’ve been hearing Japan’s been wanting to revise its self defense forces and through Mr. Akira Kawasaki’s presentation, I was able to confirm that to be true and further more, Japan is trying to revise the arms-export-ban principle, too. The arms-export-ban principle, as a part of Peace Constitution, was in effect since 1960s. With those two major changes in the process, Japan would even welcome the news from the U.S. Military budget cut. What better than “we will sacrifice for the sake of our brother” as an excuse (justification) to beautifying the action of fulfilling one’s ambition. Japan can have a perfect excuse to reform its military system of self defense forces and this kind of strategic shift can and will cause changes in security arrangements in this region. On top of this flash back of Cold War nightmare, Japan discarding the arms-export-ban would mean a complete threat to neighboring countries and the victims of Cold War.

As for China, since U.S. is always been using on and off pressurization on China, it probably won’t be influenced as much as S. Korea and/or Japan. Listening to Prof. Hua Han from Beijing University, I couldn’t help thinking that she or perhaps China in general thinks of its security policy to be much more lenient (if I may say) or defensive than outer world. At least among my friends we share a similar sentiment that China’s security policy is quite assertive and even quite offensive to its neighboring countries with territorial issues. And think about how aggressive China is toward issues on Tibet and Taiwan, Province of China.

Overall impression I received from the first session is that each speaker and moderator acknowledged what they wanted to say except for Prof. Hua Han. From the beginning of her presentation, she seemed unorganized and disrupted. I found it somewhat more difficult to concentrate and follow along her presentation so I chose to read her material instead. I do not agree with her argument that China is holding a defensive position but could not raise any question since I myself can’t decide what’s less dangerous or damaging for S. Korea between U.S. giant power and China developing into a giant power in counterpart. The first presenter, Mr. John Feffer criticized the U.S. Military strategy and effects of its cut down on military budget. His good news and bad news were just plain bad news and worse news to me and as much as I appreciated his clarification on current shift of change in U.S. domestic level, I was hoping to hear more on “so what’s the alternative?” He suggested a possible solution with “off-shore balance” to withdraw U.S. military bases and personals from Asia and use this U.S. economic crisis as a chance to push forward “off-shore balance” and to cut down military spending. To do so, we will need global/international solidarity and network among the countries with U.S. bases. As we all know it’s never easy to give one specific answer to such issue.

With Mr. Taeho Lee from PSPD, it was quite well explained where Korea stands in relation to what Mr. John Feffer said. Though it was a bit long, it was useful and enjoyable. However, I wonder how well it can be understood for those who heard his presentation through the interpretation since some of the basic background information which was quite familiar to Korean auditors was skipped. Overall I assumed the second session would be more interesting but I found the first session to be more impressive. Perhaps it was quite a long session with such intensity that I was worn out by the middle of second session.

 

By Gemma Yu, SungKongHoe University

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