The Japan Times Tuesday, November 3, 2015 9

opinion

Bernard-Henri LevyMoscow

across europe, apologists for russia and russian policy have coalesced into what amounts to a fifth column. The emer-gence in Western capitals of what might be called the “Party of Putin” is an exceptionally dangerous development, precisely because those who comprise it are not only the usual far-left and far-right suspects. so who are its “mem-bers”?

They are, for starters, those who, regardless of party, have had nothing critical to say about the full state recep-tion that russian President vladimir Putin just staged at the Kremlin for that multirecidivist enemy of the West (and butcher of his own people), syrian Pres-ident bashar assad. They are those whose craven relief that a “strongman” has appeared to impose order (his own) on the syrian mess prevents them from seeing that the primary effect of russia’s massive, indiscriminate bombardments has been to accelerate the flow of refu-gees toward europe.

and they are the great many who sim-ply ignore what motivates Putin’s armed diplomacy (and not just in syria): the desire to exact revenge on those who, in his eyes, were responsible for the soviet union’s downfall. Putin famously declared that the soviet collapse was a “major geopolitical catastrophe of the (20th) century,” and he has never stopped blaming it on the united states, the Catholic Church (and its Polish pope) and europe.

yet the Party of Putin prefers not to see how seemingly discrete events are components of a Kremlin strategy of ret-ribution, humiliation and, at the very least, destabilization aimed at europe. but one must be almost willfully blind to miss the big picture, because Putin’s tac-tics — pouncing on the slightest breach or sign of weakness in europe in order to sow division — have been remarkably consistent.

Thus, for example, Putin reportedly told ukrainian President Petro Poro-shenko in september 2014, “If I wanted, in two days I could have russian troops not only in Kiev, but also in riga, vil-nius, Tallinn, Warsaw and bucharest.” That November, he wondered “what was bad about” the 1939 molotov-ribben-trop Pact, the Nazi-soviet agreement that opened the way to stalin’s invasion of eastern europe and annexation of the baltic states and parts of Poland and romania. and, at the end of June, rus-sian prosecutors announced the open-ing of an investigation into the legality of the baltic states’ independence.

beyond the revisionist rhetoric, there is Putin’s Feb. 17 meeting with his eu party’s doyen, Hungarian Prime minis-ter viktor orban, (a meeting lamented in the streets of budapest by demonstra-tors opposed to becoming a “russian colony” again). There are also Putin’s repeated contacts with Greek Prime minister alexis Tsipras, who went to moscow at the height of Greece’s recent

showdown with the european union, allegedly seeking $10 billion to print a new drachma.

Then there are the russian military’s repeated violations of the airspace of europe’s border countries. and there is the Kremlin’s systematic support of the populist, nationalist and outright fascist parties that, in every eu country, are most eager to dismantle europe.

Wherever Putin goes, his party in europe is sure to follow. When ukrai-nian civil society proclaims its love for the eu and Putin interprets that as a hostile gesture directed at russia, its members take Putin’s side against europe. When Putin justifies his claims to Crimea and donbas by dredging up linguistic nationalism (russians are all those who speak russian), his apologists in europe — where the Nazis used the same strategy in the sudetenland (Ger-mans are all those who speak German) — consider it a matter of simple com-mon sense.

one hesitates to call the Party of Putin suicidal, masochistic or driven by self-hatred or a taste for treason. yet its members say nothing when, for the first time since the Cold War, the Kremlin alters by force frontiers upon which the continent’s collective security depends. They do not know, or pretend not to know, that Putin is an empire builder surrounded by ideologues whose vision of the world, though complex and robust, is in all key respects opposed to that of the West.

so we should be clear about what that vision entails: right and law in the ser-vice of strength and force, rather than vice versa; order over liberty; and insti-tutionalized persecution of gays and

other “deviants,” who represent the quintessence of a decadent West emas-culated by the poison of cosmopolitan-ism.

determined to embody a “manly” eurasian alternative to Western demo-cratic civilization, Putin is now on the offensive and testing his neighbors’ resistance. and the tools at his disposal are no longer those of the antiquated, corrupt, decomposing military that he inherited 15 years ago. russia’s new Kal-ibr cruise missiles, fired on syrian tar-gets from ships in the Caspian sea, recently surprised the world with their fearsome precision.

The blindness demonstrated by mem-bers of the Party of Putin — from France’s marine Le Pen and the united Kingdom’s Nigel Farage to the Nether-lands’ Geert Wilders — is obviously not without precedent. The current dangers have led me to read Thierry Wolton on the history of communism and the vol-untary surrenders that it brought about over the decades.

but what is confounding is the degree to which, to cite Jean-Francois revel (who was a friend of mine as well as of Wolton), knowledge of the past can go tragically unused, and how the same mistakes, the same willful ignorance, can return — and not always, pace marx, as farce.

Bernard-Henri Levy is one of the founders of the “Nouveaux Philosophes” (New Philosophers) movement. His books include “Left in Dark Times: A Stand Against the New Barbarism.” © Project Syndicate, 2015. www.project-syndicate.org

Nothing harmless about Putin’s new ‘moscowteers’ Philip Bowring

Hong KongTHe GLoBaLisT

Xi Jinping’s recent visit to seattle, Wash-ington and New york generated the usual acreage of reporting and com-mentary in american media.

but did anyone take notice of Indone-sian President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo when he visited Washington last week? one has to wonder. For sure, foreign presidential visits to the united states come thick and fast this time of year. but are u.s. politicians, policymakers and media so myopic that they fail to give due importance to the largest nation in southeast asia?

Indonesia is a muslim-majority coun-try with a secular constitution and a democratic political process. It is the world’s largest archipelagic country — within which are some of the world’s most important straits, melaka, makas-sar, sunda — all of these easily choked arteries of global commerce for 2,000 years.

This nation of 250 million is the heart-land of a larger malay world that includes the Philippines and malaysia — both countries subject to China’s expansionist claims in the south China sea, claims that overlap with the gas fields off Indonesia’s Natuna Islands. Taking Indonesia seriously is at least as logical and consequential as the long-accepted imperative to take Japan seri-ously.

The u.s. claims to be refocusing on asia. some progress has been evident, including in the naval presence and the recent signing of the Trans-Pacific Part-nership.

Links with India have improved nota-bly since Narendra modi became prime minister. yet Indonesia gets scant atten-tion, despite its key strategic and politi-cal position. This is despite Jokowi’s willingness to turn back the economic nationalists in his own administration, which is not easy given the de-central-ization of power in Indonesia.

Jokowi has indicated that Indonesia could join the TPP in two years. He has also agreed upon a long-argued new deal with u.s.-owned Freeport mcmo-ran for a $16 billion investment in its existing gold and copper mine in Papua. This is a big number by any measure. He has made other efforts to remove nationalist obstacles to foreign invest-ment, many of which are in place less for ideological reasons than as rewards for rent-seeking politicians and bureau-crats.

If you know anything about Indone-sia’s history as an independent nation, you would know that these are not small accomplishments. They are signals that Indonesia — for all its nationalism and

determination to appear neutral in big-power conflicts, tropes that date to the vigorously anti-american stance sukarno eventually adopted — wants american attention. but he seems unlikely to get it.

The Chinese president’s u.s. tour was a reminder that discourses about asia in the West are completely dominated by academics and assorted pundits. These pundits claim expertise on China and forget the southeast asian neighbors who share a population of 600 million. In their universe, the u.s. and China are the only two countries that matter — the rival hegemons for whom the other nations are simply pawns.

This is perhaps not surprising, given the widespread neglect of southeast asian studies in Western universities.

In britain, for example, Cambridge university’s asian studies faculty has 12 people devoted to China studies and none to southeast asia, let alone the wider malay world and its 400 million people. Things aren’t too different in america. Then there’s australia, which is highly dependent on commodity exports to China. Thus, the conversa-tion, too, tilts in favor of China.

The view is that as China is on its way up and u.s. on its way down, sooner or later america’s allies will fall away and China will assume its supposedly natu-ral position as the hegemon of asia.

This argument combines a weak grasp of asian history with apparent contempt for the interests of other asian states.

Case in point. Jokowi recently empha-sized the fact that Indonesia is a mari-time nation that must defend its waters, then proceeded to capture and destroy foreign vessels fishing illegally while spending to beef up a very tiny navy.

In consequence, he was accused of unseemly nationalism by australia. yet, it is this sense of national and broader malay identity in Indonesia, as in the Philippines, that the u.s. should encour-age. Taking Jokowi and his country more seriously during his imminent state visit is one way to do that.

History matters, too, and it is not on China’s side — its absurd claims over the south China sea notwithstanding.

Times have changed and the demo-graphics have reversed. Today, China is aging, polluted and its institutionalized racism has exposed its land frontiers, notably Xinjiang and Tibet, to sustained turmoil.

China’s supposed past domination of the maritime region via “tributary” states is largely a myth peddled by China experts in the West who piously believe annals written long ago to please Chinese emperors.

Tributes were mostly a matter of trade interests on the southeast asian side and empty but grandiose “submis-

sions” to appeal to imperial vanity.The one brief occasion when China

sought to impose itself on the maritime zone to the south was in the early 15th century. The voyages of Zheng He’s heavily militarized fleets around the south China sea and Indian ocean achieved “awe” but little else.

The West mostly swallows beijing’s untrue claim that Zheng He was a peace-loving envoy, but almost none remember that China’s only attempt to enforce its claimed suzerainty over island southeast asia ended with the humiliation of Kublai Khan’s forces in Java in 1293.

The relative decline of the u.s. doesn’t mean China replaces it. It means that China faces not the ring of states lined up in a faltering american attempt to stem Chinese influence — the current Chinese theory of encirclement — but the independent states of varying degrees of power.

These may not love each other, but they have no interest in being any more subservient to China than did their pre-decessors.

This lack of understanding of history may explain how, at the urging of a for-eign ministry stuffed with China experts, u.K. humiliated itself with the extraordi-nary political and economic kowtow to Xi Jinping, just witnessed in London. That drew derision even in berlin and Paris.

Jokowi matters to the u.s. not just because Indonesia has economic, let alone military power, but also because it has long rewarded investors more gen-erously than China.

The u.s. needs to treat the unassum-ing Jokowi with the attention due to his country.

It is vital to u.s. interests in asia, not to mention the wider issues of sustain-ing pluralism and tolerance in a mostly muslim nation. Indonesia has many rea-sons to distrust China and is afflicted neither by a rapidly aging population, nor unnatural gender imbalances, nor an excessive birth rate.

Indonesia still needs to be flattered other than by beijing bearing multibil-lion dollar Trojan horse gifts or ethnic Chinese businesses with no sense of loy-alty to their adopted country and with commercial interests in the mainland to protect. If the u.s. wishes to remain a global power, it must work a lot harder at relations with the world’s fourth-most populous nation — and one that shares far more with it than does Leninist/Con-fucian/racist/expansionist China.

Philip Bowring is a journalist who has been based in Asia since 1973 and is a resident of Hong Kong. © The Globalist 2015.

u.s. better keep an eye on Indonesia

Hassan sheikh MohamudMogadishu

somalia is blessed with the largest coastline in continental africa. our rich marine waters are some of the most pro-ductive in the world, teeming with schools of yellowfin tuna, blue marlin, dolphinfish and sardines.

For more than 30 years, however, this bountiful marine wilderness has also been a source and site of conflict, as for-eign illegal, unreported, and unregu-lated (Iuu) fishing vessels have plundered our waters — stealing our fish and selling their catches at distant ports.

Just a few years ago, the encroach-ment of illegal, unreported and unregu-lated fishing vessels sparked a wave of piracy in somalia that cost the global maritime shipping industry billions of dollars in lost revenue.

as illegal foreign fishing vessels fled our waters, somali pirates quickly shifted their focus toward more lucrative vessels, such as cargo ships and oil tank-ers. and, now that piracy has mostly been eliminated, there is growing evi-dence that foreign fishing vessels have returned to plunder our waters once again.

a new report by the group secure Fisheries, called securing somali Fish-eries unveils new satellite data showing that foreign Iuu fishing vessels are now catching three times more fish than somalis. They are targeting some of the highest-value fish in our waters, leaving their somali counterparts to compete over lower-value fish.

The report shows that, making mat-ters worse, these foreign fleets have con-tributed to overfishing our swordfish, snapper, marlin and shark populations.

Foreign bottom trawlers have fished recklessly and acted with impunity, dragging heavy nets, razing the bottom of our seafloor, and damaging an astounding 120,000 sq. km of important marine habitat. The damage is so exten-sive that even if trawling were stopped today, this area may need many years to recover.

This pillaging of our marine ecosys-tem is taking place even as somalia has made great strides over the last 18 months toward better management of our waters. In June 2014, my govern-ment laid claim to somalia’s 200-nauti-cal-mile exclusive economic zone (eeZ), in line with the united Nations Convention on the Law of the sea.

This past december, we also passed the somali Fisheries Law, which explic-itly outlaws bottom trawling. This groundbreaking legislation calls for improved monitoring of fish landings, an ecosystem-based approach to fisher-ies’ management whereby the area would be managed holistically, and the protection of threatened and endan-gered fish species.

but, despite all our progress in strengthening fisheries’ management domestically, we lack the ability to police our vast waters. The interna-tional community could make a signifi-cant difference in this area, by helping my government monitor and control somalia’s eeZ, as well as through improved sharing of the critical intelli-gence gathered by international naval patrols.

according to the secure Fisheries’ report, eliminating Iuu fishing today would enable somalia to begin to license and sell commercially valuable tuna sustainably, generating up to $17 million per year. These funds could then

be reinvested into better infrastructure — such as port construction, improved cold storage and modern processing facilities — to support our artisanal and industrial fishing fleets.

The elimination of Iuu fishing would also allow our overfished stocks to recover and help build a prosperous somali domestic fishery, along with increased government support and funding for data collection and resource management.

The report shows that healthy fish stocks could provide significantly greater amounts of resources than they currently do. In fact, almost half of our managed fisheries are currently exploited at sustainable levels. but we need more investment in better infra-structure to realize our industry’s full potential.

Fishing in somali waters must not be allowed to remain a free-for-all, where far-flung foreign fleets exploit the eco-system in unsustainable ways. I call upon the international community to collaborate with my government to ensure that Iuu fishing in somali waters is stopped for good.

doing so would improve maritime security and promote a vibrant domes-tic fishing industry that benefits and helps sustain all somalis. a sustainable, dynamic fishing industry would help us build a more stable and prosperous somalia.

Given our country’s great potential and its strategic location, that is an out-come that everyone should be willing to support.

Hassan Sheikh Mohamud is the president of Somalia. © Project Syndicate, 2015 www.project-syndicate.org

somalia facing a whole new type of pirateNew York

on dec. 7, 1988, yasser arafat stated in stockholm that the Palestine Liberation organization (PLo) accepted the exis-tence of the state of Israel. at a news conference that day, arafat said, “We accept two states, the Palestine state and the Jewish state.” despite the clear mes-sage of arafat’s statement, it was dis-missed by Israel and greeted coldly by the united states.

on his address to the Knesset honor-ing the late Prime minister yitzhak rabin on the 20th anniversary of his assassina-tion, Israel’s current prime minister, ben-jamin Netanyahu, said, “The Palestinians aren’t prepared to recognize once and for all the national state of the Jewish people, they are not truly prepared to end the conflict and give up the dream of return-ing to Haifa, Jaffa and acre.”

This is not the first time that Netanya-hu’s words conflict with historical facts. recently, at the 37th International Zion-ist Congress, he stated that a grand mufti of Jerusalem, Haj amin al-Husseini, an arab nationalist and a zealous foe of Zionism, was one of the main instigators of the Holocaust. With these assertions, Netanyahu not only shows his ignorance of history but, more seriously, contrib-utes to the demonization of the arab peoples, particularly the Palestinians.

Netanyahu’s words intend to give the impression that resistance of the Pales-tinians is based on their hatred of the Jewish people, and not in the miserable occupation that they have been undergo-ing for decades. although it has been his-torically proven that Husseini met with Hitler in 1941 seeking his support, there is no evidence that he communicated to Hitler the idea of the “Final solution.” This is not the first time that Netanyahu has made such an outrageous assertion. He said something similar in a speech before the Knesset in 2012.

Netanyahu’s statement was later denied by a spokesman of the German government who, in an unusual move, admitted that Nazi Germany was exclu-

sively responsible for the murder of 6 million Jews. although he later toned down his original assertion, Netanya-hu’s words only serve to inflame an already violent situation between Israe-lis and Palestinians.

Netanyahu’s declaration wasn’t a slip of the tongue. He read it from a pre-pared text that soon after it was spoken was translated into Hebrew and appeared on the Prime minister bureau website. Professor dina Porat, chief his-torian of yad vashem — Israel’s official memorial to the victims of the Holo-caust — and a professor in the depart-ment of Jewish History at Tel aviv university, said that Netanyahu’s state-ments were “completely erroneous, on all counts.” more pointedly, she declared to Haaretz: “Hitler did not need anyone to encourage the final solution. In terms of the facts, there’s no debate … all these actions, Hitler’s obsessions, have no link to the mufti.”

according to Porat, Hitler told the mufti that he “would continue his plans” that had already began, and didn’t need the approval of the mufti. Porat said that Hitler’s plans to exterminate the euro-

pean Jews were drawn years before his meeting with Husseini, and there are even references to it in “mein Kampf,” which was published in 1925.

Netanyahu has a unique capacity for creating his own reality, which in many cases contrasts with the facts. Increas-ingly, he is accused of lack of credibility and leadership. speaking at a meeting of the Israel democracy Institute, Gideon sa’ar, a former Likud minister, called for a real leader “that takes responsibility and doesn’t pass the buck, that strives to make decisions, including tough deci-sions, and doesn’t evade them.” and he added, “Israel is crying out for a proactive leadership. We are sated with words. …”

Netanyahu’s assertions regarding the Holocaust are not supported by history. They also threaten to exacerbate a vola-tile situation of antagonism that can give rise to even more violent conflicts, and doom forever the possibility for peace in the region.

Dr. Cesar Chelala is a New York writer and winner of an Overseas Press Club of America award.

benjamin Netanyahu’s bid to rewrite historyCESAR CHELALA

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