China scrambled fighter jets into its Air Defense Identification Zone as US and Japanese fighters continue to probe into the Zone without filing flight plans or radio frequencies. Both sides are testing each other’s intentions and the situation is certainly delicate. No one is looking for a shooting war but this is a classic test of wills. The burden is on China since it unilaterally declared the Zone so the probes are designed to find out how serious China is on insisting on its air control. Chinese leaders really have more important interests to protect, but it is difficult to tell whether the Chinese military is the driver of this confrontation.
The P5+1/Iran six-month agreement is itself highly significant, but there have been a host of ancillary moves by other countries eager to take advantage of the thaw in relations. India has rushed a special team to Iran to speed up the building of a port in southern Iran that would serve as a conduit for closer economic relations between India, Iran, and Afghanistan. The project has been on the books for a number of years, but India did not push it for fear of offending the US who was leading the sanctions against Iran. The port is designed to skirt Pakistani territory, but it also has the effect of challenging the Pakistani port of Gwadar which has been boosted by China as an economic center. Turkey also moved quickly to restore trade with Iran. All of these moves have the effect of validating the nuclear agreement and making it more difficult to unravel. They also have the effect of increasing Israel’s costs if it were to take unilateral action against Iran.
Protests have been ongoing in Thailand for over three months, and have recently increased in both size and intensity. The controversy is over an amnesty bill that would allow a former Prime Minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, to return to Thailand after a three year exile abroad. Mr Shinawatra was accused of several crimes and was ousted from office by the Thai military, but he remains a polarizing figure. The split in Thailand is multi-faceted, but the rural vs. urban is quite evident in this dispute.
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