Results tagged “asia”

We often hear from U.S. observers all about the mutual interests that Washington and the Kremlin share in curbing Iran's march toward nuclear proliferation and other indications of growing hostility, yet it's funny how we usually see nothing but obstruction.  We've speculated in the past that Russia benefits most from preserving the status quo, and want to maintain their swing position.  This opinion from David Kramer is also interesting:  for one, Russia may indeed be interested in seeing U.S. diplomacy succeed in Iran (indeed they are more directly threatened), but they want to see other countries do the heavy lifting.  Secondly, they just don't have all that much influence over Tehran.  From Voice of America:

But other analysts, including David Kramer, a former senior U.S. State Department official in the Bush administration (now with the German Marshall Fund in the United States), say Russia's influence over Iran is limited.

"I've been skeptical about Russia's ability: one - to have leverage to use over Iran, and two - its willingness to do so, even if it did have it," said David Kramer. "Russia has a lot of interests in Iran: significant trade, nuclear reactor construction, energy, arms sales. And I've been of the view that Russia would much prefer for the United States and other countries to play the role of the bad guy, to lean on Iran, to be the one pushing for sanctions while Russia stays in the background."

From Yulia Latynina's column in the Moscow Times:

On June 17, President Dmitry Medvedev and Chinese President Hu Jintao signed an agreement in which Russia will sell 300 million tons of oil to China over 20 years for $100 billion. That breaks down to $57 per barrel.

In order for Russia to deliver that oil, a new pipeline must be built to China. This is something that Yukos had originally planned to build by the mid-2000s at a cost of $4 billion.

By March 2008, however, the price for the project had risen to $29 billion. At that cost, oil deliveries through the pipeline would only recoup expenses given oil prices of at least $80 per barrel. But Russia has agreed to a price of just $57 per barrel for its exports to China. (...)

Robert Amsterdam has a new blog post up over on Huffington Post about Obama's approach to Iran and Venezuela.  Here is a short excerpt:

There are two reasons why both the authoritarians of Persia and the Orinoco Belt represent a common foreign policy challenge to the United States. Firstly, they both lean upon a brand of populism that is heavily dependent upon an outdated conception of anti-Americanism. They have woven a narrative, backed only by selective scraps of facts combined with myths, that the United States is a hostile, hateful, and aggressive power which is responsible for nearly every social problem of their country. Oh yes, and they also want to invade us, so we had better arm ourselves to the teeth.

This narrative makes for efficient politics and tosses more fuel to the ever growing fires of nationalism, but becomes a harder story to sell when you have an African-American president of an immigrant father with the middle name "Hussein" who is more popular on the streets on Tehran and Caracas than their own angry leaders.

Secondly, I consider Iran and Venezuela together because of their mutually supportive and burgeoning alliance (this has also been pointed out by Moisés Naím). They are cooperating together along with Russia to build a natural gas cartel, they have unregistered flights allegedly bring scores of Hezbollah members into Latin America, Chávez happily provides Iran with Bolivian and possibly Venezuelan Uranium, while the Venezuelan government even engages in vigorous anti-Semitism to please their friends in Persia and the Middle East (see this interview we recorded with a Jewish student leader who was attacked on state television). Additionally, while Iran maintains a stable of political prisoners such as Behrooz Javid-Tehrani, Chávez is doing his best to copy these tactics with prisoners such as Eligio Cedeño - a case I am directly involved in.

Robert Amsterdam was interviewed on the Lionel Show on Air America, discussing the Iran-Venezuela link, Eligio Cedeño and the new white paper, as well as some discussion about Russia:

Garry Kasparov's column in the Wall Street Journal today expounds on the significance of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's choice of Moscow as a good place to during the electoral turmoil to prove his international legitimacy.  He argues that the alliance makes sense, as "autocrats learn from each other and from history how to hold onto power."  Well, if we are to judge by its friends, Russia sure is not having its best week - Hugo Chavez is about to bring the sledgehammer down on a TV station, Tehran is shooting its own people, while Berlusconi, arguably Putin's closest friend in Europe, is doing his best imitation of a Mediterranean Hugh Hefner (Alexander Stille predicted this last scandal quite a long time ago).

Yet despite all this, they all keep on winning elections.  We will see Russia copy some of these tactics, or vice versa?  More commentary on Iran to come from RA later on...

AFP is reporting that the Kremlin is feeling pretty angry about getting scammed out of $2 billion to have have Kyrgyzstan close the Manas airbase to U.S. access.

"The news about the preservation of the base was an extremely unpleasant surprise for us. We did not anticipate such a dirty trick," the foreign ministry source told Kommersant.

The source said that Russia would give a "corresponding response" and dismissed the base's new description as a "transit centre", saying that Manas would essentially remain a US military base.

"Renaming the base a centre is a cosmetic alteration. The real nature of the US military presence in Central Asia has not changed, which goes against the interests of Russia and our agreements with the Kyrgyz government."

The comments were much harsher than Russia's official reaction, which said Kyrgyzstan had the "sovereign right" to make such a decision.

Remember back when the Russians bribed the Kyrgyz government with a $2 billion aid package in order to kick the Americans out of the Manas airbase, severely hampering the U.S. government's ability to operate in Afghanistan?  Well it looks like those clever guys in Bishkek are double dipping, and are now taking more than three times the rent to allow NATO to continue to use the airbase.  (I wonder if the Russians got a money-back guarantee on this one.)

There also appears to be a presidential "election" next month that Kurmanbek Bakiyev is hoping that Washington will not criticize.  It makes one wonder how they assign value to all these political and strategic favors - I would think that having everybody ignore a stolen election would be worth at least one free airbase.  So at the end of the day, Bakiyev gets $2 billion from the Russians for nothing, three times the rent from the Americans while retaining the right to kick them out in another six months, and a criticism-free seizure of power.  Oh yes, and the war continues, and Obama and Medvedev have one less sticking point for the July summit.  You've got to love Central Asian politics.

I have often argued that Russia's friendship with China is more talk than it is substance (for example, Venezuela's president has made twice as many trips to Moscow in recent years than China's President Hu Jintao).  But this news about Russia's participation in developing military aircraft in Taiwan may partly explain some of Beijing's hesitance to schedule more state visits to Russia..  From the RCW's Compass blog:

When it comes to China, Moscow has been developing a strong military-economic relationship with its giant neighbor for the past two decades, seeking to avoid any major internal or external component to jeopardize these ties. So its comes as a surprise that Russia has had a hand in the development of a third generation advanced fighter jet for the Republic of Taiwan - mainland China's official opponent. This was reported recently by Agence France-Presse, referring to the Chinese edition of The China Times. The information source argues that technology for the fifth generation F-35 Lightning II, which is currently being developed by the American corporation Lockheed Martin for the United States and its allies, was used in creating the Taiwanese fighter.

According to The China Times, Taiwan has begun work on a new military aircraft after appeals to the U.S. with a request for the sale of 66 fighter aircraft F-16C/D. Washington, as previously reported, denied this request, not wanting to spoil relations with Beijing. Chinese journalists also point out that the plane, developed by a public company Taiwan Aerospace Industrial Development Corporation (AIDC), has two engines and has a short take-off capability. Its development, according to The China Times, was completed only after Russia sent its experts to Taiwan - the source did not specify what Russian organization or company they represented.

George Soros is pledging $100 million to charities in the former Soviet republics, eastern Europe and the Balkans to help counteract the effects of the global recession. The money will be distributed in 20 countries based on recommendations by local Soros foundations. The charities could include anything from cultural institutions at risk of closing to helping families buy lunches in schools, according to a Soros spokesperson.

The FT, which broke the story, carries this statement from Soros:

"The political risk is very severe and the rise of the chauvinistic, xenophobic far right is a disturbing development," said Mr Soros, in a reference to the advances made by extremist parties in the recent European parliament elections, including Jobbik in Hungary, the Slovak National Party and the Greater Romania Party.

"The EU must do more in terms of providing support, including financial support. The International Monetary Fund programmes [launched in Hungary, Ukraine, Latvia and about five other countries] are very severe in terms of cutting budgets. The EU must solidify support for EU values," said Mr Soros.

The jury apparently is in for now - a Treasury Department official says that the $134.5 billion of treasury bonds recently seized at the Swiss-Italian border are fakes. As much as I wish there was something more to this story, sadly, there is not, and I'm generally not of the mind to conjure up conspiracy theories. I do, however, remain more than open to entertaining others' conspiratorial whims, so if anyone out there has an unsubstantiated theory that has a pig's chance of actually being something close to the truth, by all means let's hear it!

I am reading a lot about the events in Iran this week, and I thought this piece by Charles Kurzman in Foreign Policy cut through the fog, reminding us of the cottage industry of punditry that clouds and rarely enhances our understanding of these important events.  Out of all the rough draft predictions, I think we can safely say that we are witnessing something more significant than just "blowing off steam." (Interestingly, I have also heard Echo Moskvy referred as a type of "pressure valve."  Maybe Iran and Russia should look into updating their social plumbing.)

But the biggest similarity between the current protests and the Islamic revolution is the population's widespread confusion about what comes next.echo In a year from now, people will look back on this week and say that what happened was inevitable. Whatever happens, they will predict the outcome retroactively. Already, experts are providing rough drafts for these explanations, such as:

• A charismatic and enigmatic opposition leader is serving as a rallying point for different sectors of society, who all imagine that he shares their varied political positions; the opposition is too small and divided to pose a serious threat to the regime.
• The main leaders of the opposition movement -- presidential candidate Mir Hossein Musavi and his ally, former President Mohammad Khatami -- are not calling for a revolution, only for a resumption of the Islamic Republic's previous electoral procedures; during the violence of a revolution, moderation often gives way to more radical demands.

Some key stats that Bloomberg uncovers in what must be the 800th article in the past 48 hours with the word "BRIC" in it:

• Dollar bonds sold by China earned 11.4 percent in the past year, more than double the 4.6 percent for debt in yuan.
• Brazil's U.S. currency bonds returned 3.6 percent as real-based notes lost 4.9 percent
• Russia's dollar bonds outperformed with a 1.9 percent loss compared with a 7 percent drop in ruble debt

Now for the most quoteworthy quotes:

• "It's not up to politicians to determine which currency will be the world reserve currency," said Lutz Karpowitz, a currency strategist at Commerzbank AG in Frankfurt.
• Bonds sold in dollars have beaten domestic debt in part because Russia and China manage the ruble and yuan. Those denominated in the U.S. currency can trade more freely, giving fund managers confidence they can sell the securities and get their money when they need it.
• China and India are "highly restrictive on the local debt side" and Russia has "quite an illiquid market" for foreign investors, said Cristina Panait, an emerging-market strategist at Los Angeles-based Payden & Rygel, which manages more than $50 billion. "Currency performance is a big portion of returns."

While Russian government officials parse the ins and outs of dollar diplomacy, Kazakh Central Bank Governor Grigory Marchenko said in no uncertain terms in London today that Kazakhstan is a ready buyer of dollars for at least the rest of the year. What he specifically told Reuters:

"Now we have been buying dollars in small quantities. There are more petrodollars flowing in the country, and exchange rates have been stable and we don't see any threat. Actually we believe we will be buying more dollars until the end of the year but we will maintain this medium term band of 150 tenge plus/minus 5 tenge."

This intention relies at least in part on commodity prices maintaining more or less at their current levels. Looking deeper at Kazakhstan's current economic outlook, Bloomberg's latest on the country's IMF needs, or lack thereof, seems to cover all the bases.

Two things unmentioned in all of this that jump out at me. First, Bloomberg's $43 billion quote for Kazakhstan's reserves strikes me as very high. I am assuming that includes the country's sovereign wealth fund holdings, which stood somewhere in the $25 billion range in their own right before economic crisis came to central Asia. Second, I recall watching in person Kazakhstan's Planning Minister last fall say that as long as the price of oil remains above $65, the country's sovereign wealth fund would still grow by $9 billion annually (this was when the price of oil was just above $100).

I don't typically like spending a lot of time on stories that have more coverage by blogs than actual news outlets, but this one is really too juicy to pass up and it also continues our ongoing conversation about the dollar's prominence as a global reserve currency. Two men were recently stopped by Italian authorities while trying to cross the border into Switzerland with a fake-bottomed suitcase containing $134.5 billion worth of US Treasury bonds. That's right - billion with a B. Let's take just a moment to review which of the United States' various creditors even hold that much US debt. According to the latest data from the US Treasury Department, this is what we have to work with through April of this year:

China ~ $763.5 billion
Japan ~ $685.9 billion
Caribbean Banking Centers ~ $204.7 billion
OPEC ~ $189.5 billion
United Kingdom ~ $152.8 billion
Russia ~ $137 billion

Caribbean Banking Centers include Bahamas, Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Netherlands Antilles and Panama.

From the above list, which is the most likely to attempt smuggling undeclared $134.5 billion in treasuries across the Italian-Swiss border? Which is LEAST likely to attempt it? Got your guesses? No cheating! Answer after the jump.

This week Russia is hosting the first summit of BRIC nations in Yekaterinburg, which is the third summit in a row in under a week - all of which do not include any participation of North American or Western European countries.  It appears that Russia living up to its promises to built a "new global architecture" of multilateralism. 

We think that this is a positive trend, and that the world can only benefit from the foundation of greater rule-based international institutions, especially among non-traditional powers.  We also think that it would be even better if Russia and its new rising star partners had a clearer idea of what they wanted to accomplish, but the fact that these meetings are happening is indisputably important and noteworthy.

For example, President Dmitry Medvedev (who appears to be getting pushed aside this one photo), has called out for the creation of a "fairer global economic order."  That sounds awesome - sign me up - but I do wonder what steps that may include.  Aha, it means substituting the dollar as a global reserve currency (check out a vigorous series of debates on this subject kicked off by our guest editor and former currency strategist, El Maestro.)

According to this piece in TIME, Russia may be on the cusp of changing its policy toward Iran and cooperating with the United States on strengthening sanctions - but maybe not.  Although the warmer diplomacy from the Obama administration has been appreciated, there are still many in Russia that don't like the idea of linking the Iran issue to the cancellation of the missile shield in Eastern Europe.

Aware that it needs Russia's help, the Obama Administration has been looking for ways to persuade Moscow to support tougher sanctions. In a secret letter in March, Administration sources tell TIME, Obama promised President Dmitri Medvedev that the U.S. would freeze plans to install an anti-missile system in eastern Europe to which Russia strongly objects if Russia helped curtail the Iranian nuclear program. The U.S. has also initiated high-level nuclear-arms reduction talks with Moscow, and President Obama hopes to visit the Russian capital later this month in hopes of advancing -- or even signing -- a new nuclear pact.

The Russians appreciate all this. "We clearly value this very intense and in-depth dialogue on non-proliferation," says Ryabkov. But will it buy any help on Iran? When it comes to the missile-defense program, he answers, "We do not think that this linkage is fair," because Russia believes the anti-missile system Washington had planned to station in Poland and the Czech Republic would not help defend against a potential Iranian threat. Russia loves the revival of arms-control talks with the new Administration, but it sees Iran's nuclear program as a separate issue -- on which it's holding its cards close.

An interesting piece in Asia Times Online highlights the recent efforts on behalf of Dean Peroff and Robert Amsterdam to gain observer status for the Singapore Democratic Party, led by dissident Dr. Chee Soon Juan, from the Liberal International.  With the pressures of the economic crisis stirring protests in many countries, the authoritarian rulers of Singapore have clamped down even further on the population with the passage of the Public Order Act (POA), allowing virtually any arrest for any public demonstration.

The SDP's nomination was championed by Dean Peroff, from the international law firm Amsterdam & Peroff. In passing the unanimous motion, Peroff maintained that Singapore's political order was authoritarian, autocratic, run by a one-man system and that SDP's new observer status to Liberal International would be an important first step towards reaching out to the broader international community for the cause of promoting basic human rights and freedom of expression in Singapore.

One minute Russia is talking about the potential for cooperation in mutual interests to help Washington discourage nuclear proliferation in Iran, while the next minute they are selling missile systems and assisting with nuclear technology.  From the energy perspective, this blog has long argued that the most important strategy for Moscow is the maintainence of tensions between the United States and Iran in order to prevent the awakening of a sleeping gas giant.  Further complicating the plot, today the Financial Times is reporting on Gazprom getting involved with Iran to help build a pipeline to Pakistan.  Moral of the story:  if Iran is going to increase its gas exports, then they had better go through Russian built pipes and away from their sphere of energy influence. 

From the FT:

"Both we and Pakistan are talking with Gazprom and we have agreed that Gazprom can be a partner [to construct] the pipeline inside Pakistan," Hojatollah Ghanimifard, vice-president for investment affairs at the National Iranian Oil Company, told the Financial Times.

The proposed 2,600km gas pipeline would transport gas from Iran to Pakistan and India, providing them with 60m cubic metres of gas a day initially, eventually rising to 150m cu m a day.

Ariel Cohen has a new piece in the Washington Times, which has some very interesting material on Russia's growing diplomatic overtures to Mongolia to seal up uranium supplies, as well as some info on a letter sent by President Barack Obama to the president of Azeribaijan (let's see if Ilham Aliyev treats him a bit better than Dick Cheney).

As the rain falls on St. Petersburg's glitzy economic forum and the Obama administration plans its summit meeting with Mr. Putin and Mr. Medvedev in July to negotiate Moscow's accession to the World Trade Organization, Russia is consolidating its geostrategic advantage from the Gobi desert to the Black Sea. The U.S. and Europe had better take notice. While the talk of high-tech diversification appeals to Western businessmen, the real show is happening thousands of miles away from the capital Peter the Great built on these grim Baltic shores.