Year Ender 2023 – Geopolitics in East Asia
Emanuel Pastreich, President of The Asia Institute spoke to CGTN Europe on the highlights in East Asia.
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00:00 explore that a little further and talk to Emmanuel Pastryk, the president of the Asia Institute think tank.
00:06 Emmanuel, welcome. Good to see you. Let's just pick up on this point that North Korea does have a historic tendency to
00:13 instigate provocations ahead of or in time for
00:17 major political events. Is this just about saber-rattling or should we be worried about what lies ahead?
00:27 Well, I think there definitely are some significant shifts taking place
00:31 to be concerned about.
00:34 Specifically, the decision on the part of the Younan administration itself
00:38 to suspend all the military agreements reached in 2018
00:43 to normalize ties, has sort of opened the door for
00:48 escalation on both sides, and maybe equally important, North Korea has committed itself to a close engagement with Russia
00:57 which has given it access, we don't know all the details, to Russian technology, which allows it to
01:04 launch spy satellites and may allow it to
01:08 upgrade considerably its capacity to put things in space and perhaps even get new technologies for missiles,
01:16 which could be
01:18 revolutionary. A meeting between
01:20 China, Japan and South Korea's foreign ministers was held back in November and the three sides
01:26 agreed to try to lay the groundwork for a
01:30 trilateral meeting between their leaders. How do you see that evolving in the coming year?
01:37 Right, well, it was clearly a response to the Camp David meeting, a summit of the US,
01:49 South Korea and Japan, in this case working towards something which might take place in the following year.
01:55 Obviously, it will be a positive development and I guess we have to
01:59 contrast the US, South Korea, Japan
02:07 with the China, South Korea, Japan
02:14 meeting in that one was much more high-level coordination,
02:19 but was
02:22 very much focused on
02:24 military and security issues and much less on some of the more
02:27 issues of time. On the other hand, I think the meeting
02:32 in Asia for the three powers was more positive in its direction,
02:37 but it's been more difficult because of this alliance structure
02:42 in getting the top leaders together in one place.
02:46 Your thoughts on Japan's decision to ship Patriot missiles to
02:52 the United States, does that surprise you?
02:55 Well, it's perhaps a natural result of some developments going on, but it's certainly very worrisome.
03:07 Mitsubishi Heavy Industries makes the Patriot missiles under contract from Lockheed Martin,
03:12 and this is a move to
03:16 overcome the various barriers under
03:19 Japan's so-called peace constitution and efforts to promote peace by Japan, which has been one of Japan's great contributions to Asia,
03:29 to making Japan a
03:31 major participant in the arms market
03:35 and supplying arms now potentially to the Philippines, to Malaysia and other countries,
03:40 which would ratchet up pensions and put Japan, I think, in a
03:47 not particularly positive position as being yet another
03:50 agent for selling weapons around the world.
03:55 Emmanuel, good to see you and happy new year. Emmanuel Pastrak, the president of the Asia Institute think tank.
04:03 Thank you.