Vietnam

This week: the shutdown = bad cyber; the U.S. deals a blow to China's chip dreams; another Huawei executive arrested; and Facebook struggles to comply with Vietnam's new cybersecurity law. 

Never overpromise and under deliver. General William Westmoreland should have followed that advice when he addressed the National Press Club fifty years ago today. Instead, the commanding general of U.S. military forces in Vietnam gave his audience an upbeat assessment of the war in South Vietnam, going so far as to say it had reached the point “where the end begins to come into view.” He was tragically wrong. Westmoreland took charge of the U.S. military effort in Vietnam in March 1964. A highly decorated veteran of World War II and the Korean War, he looked like a general straight out of central casting. Time magazine was so taken with him that it named him its Man of the Year for 1965. When Westmoreland first took command in Saigon, the United States had fewer than 17,000 military “advisors” on the ground in South Vietnam. Their job was to train and advise the South Vietnamese military in the fight against the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong. Westmoreland continually pressed Washington to send combat troops. He got his wish in March 1965 when the first Marines hit the shores of Da Nang. The American phase of the Vietnam War had begun. But as President John F. Kennedy had predicted just a few years earlier, the result had been like taking a drink—the fix quickly wore off and more troops were needed. By late summer 1967, the United States had 450,000 troops in Vietnam. The Americanization of the war deepened the U.S. role in Vietnam. It didn’t, however, bring South Vietnam closer to victory. South Vietnamese governments came and went as a series of generals battled for control. Meanwhile, the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese held their own even though the U.S. military owned the skies and enjoyed a lopsided firepower advantage on the ground. The lack of progress on the battlefield eroded public support for the war. In October 1967, Gallup found for the first time ever that more Americans (46 percent) thought that it had been a mistake to send U.S. troops to fight in Vietnam than thought it hadn’t (44 percent). Perhaps even more significant for a president just a year away from running for re-election, the percentage of Americans doubting the wisdom of the war had doubled from just two years earlier. The trend was not LBJ’s friend. Discussions inside the administration gave LBJ no reason to believe that he would soon have good news for the American public. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, one of the architects of the Americanization of the war, had concluded by the spring of 1967 that the war couldn’t be won and pressed Johnson to scale back the U.S. effort. Meanwhile, Westmoreland, with the support of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, argued that the war could be won, but only if he sent 200,000 more troops and widened the aerial campaign. Unable to accept McNamara’s conclusion and reluctant to embrace the military’s push for a wider war, LBJ turned his attention to shoring up public support. He ordered U.S. officials in Saigon to highlight evidence showing that the United States was winning the war. The White House created a group to share favorable information with opinion leaders and news outlets. And at the recommendation of the so-called Wise Men, a group of former senior foreign policy officials convened to advise LBJ, Westmoreland was ordered home to reassure the American public that the war was going well. Westmoreland willingly took up the task. He had already returned to Washington seven months before at Johnson’s request to give an upbeat speech on the state of the war to a joint session of Congress. That had been the first time in U.S. history that a president had asked a wartime commander to return from the field to speak to Congress.  In his November 21, 1967 address to the National Press Club, Westmoreland was even more upbeat than he had been on Capitol Hill back in April. He assured his audience that “We have reached an important point where the end begins to come into view.” He cited a list of problems plaguing the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong, including an inability to recruit. And lest his fundamental optimism be missed, he ended his speech by invoking his goal to reach Phase IV of the war, when the communists would be on the run: I am absolutely certain that whereas in 1965 the enemy was winning, today he is certainly losing. We are making progress. We know you want an honorable and early transition to the fourth and last phase. So do your sons and so do I. It lies within our grasp--the enemy’s hopes are bankrupt. Westmoreland knew that he had put the best face on the war. He later wrote, “I permitted myself the most optimistic appraisal of the way the war was going that I had yet made.” Some of his fellow generals worried he had been too optimistic—and too willing to serve LBJ’s political objectives. As Army Chief of Staff General Harold K. Johnson put it, “Westys trip has gone extremely well, and I only hope that he has not dug a hole for himself with regard to his prognostications. The platform of false prophets is crowded.” General Johnson turned out to be prescient. Just ten weeks after Westmoreland’s National Press Club speech, the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong launched the Tet Offensive. What Americans saw on television and read in the newspapers looked nothing like the rosy picture Westmoreland had painted. While U.S. and South Vietnamese forces ultimately turned the tide and inflicted punishing losses on the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong, in political terms everything had changed. The end was not in sight, and no one knew when it would be. On March 22, 1968, Johnson announced that Westmoreland would be leaving Vietnam to take up the post of Army Chief of Staff. Nine days later, LBJ surprised by the nation by saying he would not seek re-election. U.S. troops would fight in Vietnam for another five years.

Miguel Gomez is a senior researcher at the Center for Security Studies and Brandon Valeriano is a reader at Cardiff University, the Donald Bren Chair of Armed Politics at the Marine Corps University, a fellow at the Niskanen Center, and author of Cyber War versus Cyber Realities on Oxford University Press. The recent disclosure that an Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) operating out of Vietnam covertly released the transcript of talks between the Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte and the United States’ Donald Trump sheds light on an often overlooked cyber actor in the region. The recent disclosure suggests Vietnam is becoming a disruptive regional force in cyberspace. The appearance of inter-state cyber operations within South East Asia is not surprising given the long-standing, and often territorial, disputes between geographically proximate states. While Vietnam is a known actor in the regional cyber domain, its activity has paled in comparison to China, which undertakes frequent cyber espionage operations against neighbors, including Vietnam. In addition, cyber operations attributable to Vietnam have mainly targeted companies and dissidents – thus letting Vietnam fly under the radar. What is new and unique is attribution of Vietnamese attacks on Philippine state agencies, which was first reported on May 15. Cyber intelligence firms such as FireEye have attributed these attacks to an actor designated as APT32 (aka OceanLotus Group). The group has been associated with espionage campaigns targeting both foreign governments and local dissidents alike – to an extent mimicking the profile of Chinese operations within this domain. While no definitive link can be drawn between this group and direct government sponsorship, the alignment between targets and national interest is quite telling and supports the cyber forensic analysis already conducted. While still relying on common techniques such as spear phishing and corrupted Doc files, the hackers’s use of custom-built code suggests they are part of a well-resourced group. The timing of the documents leak suggests an attempt on the part of the Vietnamese regime (or elements of it) to increase pressure on the Philippines by exposing its warming ties with China. The document disclosure also included notes from a conversation between Duterte and Chinese President Xi Jinping. This rationale is not surprising considering the new president’s conciliatory remarks towards China and his willingness to forgo the advantage gained by the Philippines from the Permanent Court of Attribution in the Hague decision last spring, which weakens the on-going claims by other South East Asian states, including Vietnam. Nevertheless, even if Vietnam’s motive is evident, what it hopes to achieve is unclear. Is Vietnam trying to shame the Philippines into taking an assertive stance against China? If this is the goal, then the Vietnamese are overlooking the unique characteristics of the current Philippine administration, which has demonstrated an unwillingness to change its policies in the face of external pressure. Duterte’s refusal to curb the excesses of his “war on drugs” despite economic threats (e.g. loss of EU financial aid) reinforces this view. Perhaps, Vietnam’s goal is simply to sow chaos and distrust – which has been Russia’s objective in recent information operations against the electoral systems of Western democracies. Understood in this context, the burden of response is not on the state, but the society to reject these information disclosures and the more pernicious threat of disinformation. So far, the Philippine public has remained unresponsive to such stimuli and has maintained an overall position of unity against external threats. This outcome calls into question the efficiency of disinformation operations. If the goal of the Vietnamese was to foment outrage in the Philippines and force Duterte to reconsider his position, then proponents of this operation have either failed to understand how the Philippine public would react or have simply poorly timed their disclosure. In this situation, it may have been both. However, even if ineffective, Vietnam will incur little cost for engaging in cyber operations against neighbors, which is why we can expect them to continue. Despite growing interest in the ASEAN bloc regarding the threat of cyber operations, no mechanism exists to “punish” Vietnam. Similarly, as espionage is considered a routine state behavior, it is unlikely that its neighbors would reprimand Vietnam. Finally, the fact that ASEAN members, in general, are characterized as having limited defense capabilities in cyberspace, publicly criticizing Vietnam may invite future retaliation through cyberspace that other members may wish to avoid.

This week’s visit of Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc to Washington resulted in the usual readout of supposed achievements and breakthroughs. The prime minister seems to have understood that this U.S. administration likes foreign officials to arrive in Washington with promises of new investments and other deals that the White House can quickly tout as a win.  And indeed, during the visit the U.S. president boasted that the two nations were signing deals that would result in “billions” in new trade, as well as, supposedly, creating many new jobs in the United States. At a speech at the Heritage Foundation, Vietnam’s prime minister promised roughly $15 billion in new deals. Reuters noted, however, that the Commerce Department’s figure for how much the deals would be worth was about one-half the Vietnamese prime minister announced in his speech.  Still, President Trump declared, “They (Vietnam) just made a very large order in the United States—and we appreciate that—for many billions of dollars, which means jobs for the United States and great, great equipment for Vietnam.” The two sides further discussed strategic issues, such as Vietnam’s desire to buy more cutters; Hanoi is hardly going to follow the lead of the Philippines and back down from its assertive defense of its exclusive economic zones in the South China Sea.  But this fanfare covers up some major problems in the relationship. The amount of deals announced is unlikely to fully please the U.S. administration, even though Hanoi likely sees the deals, in a way, as a concession to make to please the White House. And Vietnam will almost surely continue to run a major trade surplus with the United States. For an administration that looks at surpluses and deficits in a zero-sum way, trade relations are going to continue to be a primary irritant in the relationship.  Even on Tuesday, with the Vietnamese prime minister in attendance at an event, according to the Wall Street Journal, “U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer appeared to tag Vietnam as a country unfairly benefiting from trade by selling more to the U.S. than it buys. Mr. Lighthizer emphasized a $32 billion U.S. trade deficit with Vietnam while introducing Mr. Phuc at an event for businesses.” Indeed, trade hawks in the U.S. administration are likely to continue to view Vietnam warily, and the Vietnamese prime minister received little in the way of concrete action on trade from the U.S. side during his visit. It’s easy to imagine U.S. officials continuing to publicly push and shame Hanoi to try to reduce the U.S. trade deficit with Vietnam in some way. U.S. defense companies could seek significant deals in Vietnam, which is rapidly modernizing its armed forces, but Hanoi is not going to shift extensively to U.S.-made systems anytime soon, as much of its weaponry is dependent on Russian systems, which Vietnam has relied upon for decades and which Vietnamese officials are comfortable with.  What’s more, Hanoi’s leaders and the leaders of ten other nations could well move forward with the Trans-Pacific Partnership without the United States, signaling a further unmooring of Vietnam and the United States’ trade approaches in the Asia Pacific. This does not mean that Vietnam will become even more dependent on trade with China, but it would mean that the trade strategies of Hanoi—which is also negotiating with the European Union—and Washington will continue to further diverge. Vietnam’s prime minister also supposedly came to Washington with the idea that the two countries could, sometime in the future, negotiate a bilateral free trade deal, according to the Wall Street Journal. But such a possibility seems far off—even U.S. officials admit it is a low priority compared to many other potential deals and renegotiations. And in any case it is hard to imagine the two countries generating enough goodwill on trade issues in the next few years to move toward a bilateral deal.   

Two years ago I posted my picks for the "Top Ten Vietnam War Movies." As I noted earlier this month, whenever you post a list you are inviting people to point out what you missed. Since today is the forty-eighth anniversary of U.S. troops capturing Hill 937, which is depicted in one of my top ten movie picks, Hamburger Hill, I am sharing ten Vietnam movies people thought should have been on my original list.  Steve Havenaar recommended two movies released in 2002, The Quiet American and We Were Soldiers. The Quiet American was a remake of a 1958 movie that was itself an adaptation of Graham Greene's classic novel about the havoc wreaked by an idealistic American aid worker. It's one of the best novels about the Cold War. We Were Soldiers is a dramatization of one of the best histories of the Vietnam War, We Were Soldiers Once...And Young. It tells the story of the first major clash between U.S. and North Vietnamese forces, the Battle of Ia Drang.   Matt Brandish and Deryle Perryman wondered why I omitted No 84 Charlie MoPic (1989). Matt says it's an "often overlooked movie about a LRRP team and Combat Motion Picture cameraman. See it, it's really good." 84 MoPic is military lingo for a military cameraman, while LRRP means long-range reconnaissance patrol. You can watch the film, which is shot in the style of the Blair Witch Project on YouTube.  Deryle also liked Same Same But Different (2009), which he describes as "a well-made, modern take on the Vietnam debacle." It's a "story about forgiveness, and reconciliation. Watch it. It's good for your soul." Here's a link: https://vimeo.com/68704406.  Ronald Yates and Noclu4u voted for Go Tell the Spartans (1978), which featured one of Hollywood's all-time greats, Burt Lancaster. It's set early in the American phase of the war, and Lancaster's character is a grizzled Korean War veteran who realizes that the war will not turn out well. Ronald also liked The Boys in Company C (1978), which tells the story of a group of young men who train for, and eventually fight in, Vietnam.  Joe Bangert and William Shelton gave two thumbs up to Sir! No Sir! (2005). Joe says it is "a great film" that shows "the incredible internal resistance by America's soldiers, airmen, Marines, sailors and Coasties to the insanity of the Vietnam War. The film documents the G.I. Movement." Randall Moody hailed Good Morning, Vietnam (1987), which featured the incomparable Robin Williams. The movie has personal meaning for Randall: "I was the officer in charge of Network News from June 1968 to June 1969. While the movie was a parody and humorous to a degree, there was more truth than fiction there. The military authorities were trying to insure the Government's view that the war was going swimmingly was conveyed to the 550,000 American troops there. Some of us thought they ought to know what was really happening." Angus Mansion recommended La 317ème section, which was released back in 1965. It's about a French platoon trapped behind enemy lines in 1954, when France, rather than the United States, was discovering the limits of its power in Vietnam. La 317ème section was directed by Pierre Schoendoerffer, who also directed Diên Biên Phú (1992). It tells the story of an American journalist who finds himself at one of the most significant and horrifying battles of the twentieth century.  We can endlessly debate the degree to which each of these films illuminates or obscures our understanding of Vietnam. And perhaps the answer for all of them is that they do a little of both as we continually rethink what we know about what was once American's longest war. Corey Cooper assisted in the preparation of this post. 

In forty years, the relationship between the United States and Vietnam has swung about as widely as is possible. In 1975, the United States cut diplomatic ties with the country after the end of the Vietnam War---or, more formally, the Second Indochina War. Now, though Hanoi remains a repressive, one-party, nominally communist state, it has become one of Washington’s closest partners in Southeast Asia. Indeed, Vietnam, which fears China’s growing maritime power, is perhaps the closest U.S. strategic partner in its region, other than Singapore. The United States and Vietnam signed a Comprehensive Partnership in 2013, and the U.S. navy pays regular port calls in Vietnam. The two sides have annual summits between the U.S. Secretary of Defense and his Vietnamese peer. President Obama lifted the ban on sales of lethal arms to Hanoi, which had been in place since the end of the war. Such a swing in Vietnam’s foreign relations might seem unusual, but in reality it is the norm. A narrow country surrounded, in Asia, by large, more populous powers, Vietnam has been repeatedly invaded and, eventually, colonized by France. Its leaders have spent centuries playing foreign powers off of each other, using whatever leverage they can, and defending Vietnam ferociously from invasion. For more on my analysis of how Vietnam has survived for centuries, and the impact of foreign forces---and Vietnamese revolts---on Vietnam’s history, see my new review of Christopher Goscha’s The Penguin History of Modern Vietnam. The book, by a leading Vietnam scholar at the University of Quebec at Montreal, is probably the finest modern one-volume history of the country in English.

What if? Those two words are easy to ask, whether about our own lives or world history. But the answers can be haunting—a different choice might have created a better opportunity or prevented a tragedy. 

Things usually slow down in Washington in August. Congress goes into recess, and Washingtonians who can leave town do. But this predictable lull in government activity doesn’t mean that policymaking stops. Indeed, it can be precisely because much of official Washington is elsewhere that critical decisions get made. The cable that the U.S. State Department issued on August 24, 1963, is a classic example. The target of the coup cable was Ngo Dinh Diem. He had once been an American favorite. The United States helped install him as South Vietnam’s leader after the 1954 Geneva Accords divided Vietnam in two. Washington looked the other way when he won 98.2 percent of the vote in a national referendum in October 1955, receiving 50 percent more votes in Saigon than there were registered voters. When Diem flew to Washington, DC, in May 1957, President Dwight Eisenhower personally met him at the airport, something Ike did for only one other head of state. Eisenhower’s man in Saigon was initially John F. Kennedy’s as well. Kennedy’s vice president, Lyndon B. Johnson, called Diem the “Churchill of Asia” during a 1961 visit to South Vietnam. But relations with Diem soured as the Vietcong insurgency grew in size and urgency. By the end of 1962, Kennedy had dispatched roughly 11,000 U.S. military advisors to South Vietnam, where they trained South Vietnamese troops and frequently (but secretly) led them on operations against the Vietcong. Diem bristled at the growing American presence—and at U.S. officials telling him what to do. He complained, “All these soldiers I never asked to come here. They don’t even have passports.” The Kennedy administration in turn worried that Diem’s increasingly heavy-handed suppression of his domestic critics was alienating the South Vietnamese public he was trying to lead. Diem came from a devout Catholic family—his older brother was the Catholic archbishop of the old imperial city of Hue—and he himself had taken a vow of chastity. The vast majority of Vietnamese, however, were Buddhists. They rankled at the blatant favoritism that Diem showed his fellow Catholics. As criticism of Diem grew, he relied more and more on his younger brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu, his chief political advisor and the informal head of both South Vietnam’s Special Forces and its secret police, to harass and silence his critics. Tensions spilled into public view in May 1963. On the Buddha’s 2,527th birthday, Nhu’s forces fired on Buddhists protesting the government’s ban on flying religious flags. Nine people were killed, including several children. More protests quickly followed. Then in June, an elderly monk set himself on fire in downtown Saigon. Seven other monks soon followed his example. Diem did nothing to stem the growing public anger, while his sister-in-law, Madame Nhu, added to it. She likened the self-immolations to a “barbecue.” “Let them burn,” she said, “and we shall clap our hands.” Despite promises from Diem that his government would not escalate the “Buddhist Crisis,” Nhu’s forces ransacked Buddhist pagodas across the country on August 21, arresting more than 1,400 people. The raids were the last straw for three second-tier U.S. officials: Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs W. Averell Harriman, Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs Roger Hilsman, and National Security Council staff member Michael V. Forrestal. They were appalled by Nhu’s tactics and fearful that his anti-Americanism would lead him to strike a deal with communist North Vietnam. Acting on intelligence reports that some South Vietnamese generals might be willing to overthrow Diem, they set out make a coup official U.S. policy. With every one of the administration’s senior national security officials out of town, they drafted a cable on Saturday, August 24, to be sent to Henry Cabot Lodge, the U.S. ambassador to South Vietnam. (He had arrived in Saigon just two days earlier and wouldn’t present his diplomatic credentials to the South Vietnamese government until the next day.) The cable was clear: Lodge should encourage the South Vietnamese generals to oust Diem. Forrestal didn’t ask his boss, National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy, or Secretary of State Dean Rusk or Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara, to approve the cable. He instead called JFK directly. Kennedy, who was spending the weekend at his family’s compound in Hyannis Port, told Forrestal to get a senior administration official to okay the cable. Forrestal, Harriman, and Hilsman then used the impression that Kennedy had already approved the cable to secure the approval of Secretary Rusk and several other senior officials. After being told that his senior advisors had signed off on the cable, Kennedy approved it. By nightfall, Cable 243 had gone out. It told Lodge: U.S. Government cannot tolerate situation in which power lies in Nhu’s hands. Diem must be given chance to rid himself of Nhu and his coterie and replace them with the best military and political personalities available.  If in spite of all your efforts, Diem remains obdurate and refuses, then we must face the possibility that Diem himself cannot be preserved.  Ambassador and country team should urgently examine all possible alternative leadership and make detailed plans as to how we might bring about Diem's replacement if this should become necessary.  You will understand that we cannot from Washington give you detailed instructions as to how this operation should proceed, but you will also know we will back you to the hilt on actions you take to achieve our objectives.  Tempers rose when Kennedy’s national security team reassembled at the White House the following Monday morning. McNamara, CIA Director John A. McCone, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Maxwell D. Taylor all opposed the coup and objected to what Taylor later called an “egregious end run” around the normal decision-making process. Forrestal offered to resign, but Kennedy told him, “You’re not worth firing. You owe me something, so you stick around.” The acrimony among his advisors drove JFK to lament, “My God! My government is coming apart.” (Bundy later quipped that the lesson of Cable 243 was: “Never do business on the weekend.”) Yet when Kennedy asked his advisors whether he should retract the cable, none said yes. While official Washington bickered over how the cable came to be, Lodge enthusiastically implemented his instructions. Within days, U.S. officials in Saigon had secretly contacted disaffected South Vietnamese generals. The message was direct: while the United States would not help the coup plotters overthrow Diem, it would recognize their new government. Suddenly, a coup seemed imminent. Then, just as quickly as it had come together, the coup plot fell apart. The plotters could not arrange for the right military units to be in Saigon, and they worried that that Washington might backtrack on its offer. Despite the collapse of the initial plot, complaints about how Cable 243 was approved, and the doubts about the wisdom of encouraging a coup, Kennedy never reversed the decision he had made at Hyannis Port. He instead left the question of whether to pursue a coup in Lodge’s hands. That decision was tantamount to giving it a green light. Lodge firmly believed that the administration had already “launched on a course from which there is no respectable turn back.” The coup that Kennedy authorized and Lodge helped orchestrate materialized on November 1, 1963. Although JFK had hoped that it would be bloodless, it wasn’t. Diem and his brother at first eluded the coup plotters. But they were eventually captured and then shot and stabbed repeatedly in the back of an armored car. The plotters initially claimed that the brothers had committed suicide. A photo of the murder scene, however, showed the blood-soaked bodies of both men with their hands tied behind their back. Time magazine ran the photo over the caption, “’Suicide’ with no hands.” Many South Vietnamese cheered the end of Diem’s rule. However, the coup didn’t produce the stability and national unity that U.S. officials wanted. Vietnam would go through seven leadership changes in the following year-and-a-half. But that instability would bedevil a different president. Three weeks after Diem’s murder, Kennedy was assassinated.

Tomorrow, an international tribunal in The Hague is expected to deliver its verdict on the Philippines’ legal case against China’s claims in the South China Sea. Under the previous Aquino administration, Manila launched a case at the Permanent Court of Arbitration tribunal, asking for it to rule on whether China’s nine-dashed line claim in the South China Sea was legal under international maritime law, and whether other aspects of Beijing’s claims were legal. Although few other countries paid attention when the case was taken up by the court last year, Vietnam has now rhetorically supported the Philippines’ right to a hearing. The Obama administration also increasingly has seen the case as a way to demonstrate that U.S. partners obey international law in the South China Sea, while Beijing does not. Indeed, while senior Obama administration officials said little about the case last year, in recent weeks they have repeatedly mentioned it, warning Beijing not to launch provocative actions after the ruling, and emphasizing that the court is a neutral decider. The new Rodrigo Duterte administration, though potentially more open to bilateral negotiations on the Sea than Aquino’s administration was, has continued to support the Philippines’ right to seek a ruling in The Hague. China is not actually participating in the case, rejecting any third-party efforts to resolve South China Sea disputes. Yet although China has said that it rejects the Court’s jurisdiction and will not heed any ruling made, Beijing seems to have become increasingly skittish that the court is going to rule against Beijing. A ruling could not really be enforced, but it would give the Philippines legitimacy and leverage in dealing with China. A ruling against China’s claims also possibly would strengthen the claims of other countries, like Vietnam, Malaysia, and Brunei, to the South China Sea. It is very likely that, tomorrow, the tribunal will rule against Beijing. In recent months, China has apparently exerted significant pressure on Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand, and other ASEAN nations it considers potential allies to prevent ASEAN from releasing a consensus statement about the ruling. Beijing also has used state media and other outlets to public cast doubt on the court’s legitimacy before the ruling is released. If the ruling goes against China, and Beijing responds with a show of force in the South China Sea---clearly increasing the pace of building on man-made islands or declaring an air defense identification zone (ADIZ) in the South China Sea, for instance---it will be a critical test of how far the United States will go to support its allies and partners with South China Sea claims. The declaration of an air defense identification zone would be particularly provocative, but it should not catch the United States and its partners off-guard, since Beijing has been threatening to announce an ADIZ in the South China Sea for months now. When China announced an ADIZ in the East China Sea in 2013, it came as something of a surprise to both U.S. and Japanese forces. The stakes in the South China Sea, of course, are enormous. In advance of tomorrow’s ruling, and the potential aftermath, here is a link to the Contingency Planning Memorandum I wrote for CFR last year. It examines several potential warning signs of emerging conflict in the South China Sea, as well as signs of other types of conflict between China and its Southeast Asian neighbors.

Rachel Brown, Lincoln Davidson, Theresa Lou, Gabriella Meltzer, and Gabriel Walker look at five stories from Asia this week. 1. Poisoned Vietnamese fish fuel popular discontent. A massive die-off of fish has occurred along 120 miles of coastline in Vietnam, where hundreds of residents in traditional fishing villages have fallen ill from eating the poisoned catch. This could have a devastating impact on the nation’s fishing industry that earned $6.6 billion from seafood exports last year alone. Most suspect the immediate cause of the die-off to be the release of toxic waste from a steel plant owned by Taiwan’s Formosa Plastics Group, which invested $10 billion in the enterprise. Despite Vietnamese officials’ statement that they failed to find evidence linking the fish kill to the factory’s activities, hundreds across the country have demonstrated against the communist government’s prioritization of foreign direct investment and industrialization over the protection of population public health. The Vietnamese prime minister has promised to investigate any agency, organization, or individual in violation of environmental regulations. 2. Japan aims to counter aging population with foreign workers. The Japanese government announced last week that it will seek to reduce barriers to permanent residency for skilled foreigners who wish to work in Japan. It also hopes to increase the proportion of foreign students who remain in Japan following their graduation from Japanese universities. Aging and shrinking populations are leading contributors to slow economic growth throughout East Asia’s developed economies. Japan’s predicament is particularly severe: its population has declined by more than one million since 2008 and a third of the population is above the age of sixty. Analysts are skeptical of the new immigration proposals’ ability to counter these trends, however. To maintain its current population level, Japan would need nearly 400,000 immigrants annually for the next thirty-five years; it has received only 300,000, on average, over the last several years. To get to that number, and truly jump-start the economy, some argue that the country needs to allow in not just skilled foreigners, but also blue collar workers. 3. Corruption tarnishes the Afghan gem trade. While Afghanistan’s mineral wealth, estimated to be worth up to $1 trillion in 2010, could be a major source of government revenue, instead it appears to be helping fund militias and the Taliban. A Global Witness report released this week focused on corruption surrounding the lapis lazuli trade in Badakhshan, a province in northeastern Afghanistan. In 2013, the Lajwardeen Mining Company secured the rights to a major lapis mine, but less than a month later, a local militia took it over. Rather than opposing this usurpation of mining rights, the Afghan National Security Council actually ordered the contract’s termination. Corruption also runs rampant in the marble trade in the southern Afghan province of Helmand, much of which remains under Taliban rule. According to the United Nations, the Taliban earned approximately $10 million from the marble trade, including taxes paid by private firms selling marble to the government. Other estimates place the amount as high as $18 million per year. Overall, minerals are believed to be the Taliban’s second largest source of income. 4. United States accuses Chinese fighter jet of “unsafe” interception. The U.S. military accused a Chinese fighter jet for conducting an “unsafe” intercept of a U.S. reconnaissance plane that was operating in international airspace over the East China Sea. The U.S. Pacific Command stated that the Chinese jet was flying too fast and too close to the U.S. aircraft, calling it a case of “improper airmanship.” Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Hong Lei emphasized that Chinese pilots act in accordance with laws and regulations, and that crux of the problem is continuous U.S. reconnaissance activities in China’s coastal areas. The interception occurred as U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry was in Beijing for the eighth session of the U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue. In May, two Chinese fighter jets flew within fifty feet of a U.S. aircraft over the South China Sea, an act that the U.S. Department of Defense deemed to have violated a previous agreement between the two governments. Both incidents are considered the latest signs of increasing tension in the East and South China Seas between China and the United States and its allies. 5. Seoul plans $9.5 billion infusion for beleaguered shipping sector. In recent years, weak global trade has hit South Korea’s shipping industry hard. The country’s three largest shipbuilders, for example, which once controlled almost 70 percent of the global market, lost a combined $4.9 billion during last year alone. Hyundai Merchant, one of South Korea’s main container operators, recently managed to renegotiate debts in order to avoid bankruptcy. The heavy losses pose a risk not only to the 200,000 people employed by the shipping industry, but also to banks, which hold over $40 billion in loans to top shipping firms. To help stave off financial ruin, the South Korean government and the Bank of Korea will establish a nearly $9.5 billion fund to buy bonds issued by two policy lenders that have helped shippers stay afloat. In another glimmer of hope for the flagging industry, Iranian companies have recently reached deals with South Korean shipyards, valued at around $2.4 billion, to facilitate trade between the two countries. Bonus: Creation story, not creationism, sparks outrage in China. In America, debates over teaching the book of Genesis creation story in schools usually revolve around the science classroom. In China, at least in recent weeks, the same story has sparked a very different kind of controversy: not over the validity of Darwinism, but over why the story was included in a middle-school literature textbook. Netizens and officials alike criticized the book for including the story, representative of Western values and religion, in place of a more traditional Chinese passage. Last year, China’s education minister called to “never let textbooks promoting western values enter into our classes,” or at least those ideas that “defame the leadership of the party or smear socialism.” But one Global Times op-ed contrarily called for more restraint in hasty public criticism, and argued that including such passages would expand students’ perspectives. “Is it a myth or is it religion?,” one article asked. “The key is perspective.”