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      in Elections

      US takes aim at China territorial claims as Biden vows to back Japan

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      Joe Biden has vowed to strengthen the US’s alliance with Japan to counter growing Chinese military activity in the volatile Asia-Pacific region, including a commitment to defend the Senkakus, a group of islands in the East China sea administered by Tokyo but claimed by Beijing.The US president and Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga agreed during a phone call that their countries’ security alliance was “the cornerstone of peace and prosperity in a free and open Indo-Pacific”.Biden’s vow to strengthen security arrangements in the region contrasted with the approach taken by Donald Trump, who publicly mulled withdrawing troops from Japan and South Korea, both key US allies.Trump also complained that Tokyo and Seoul were not paying enough towards their own security and called on them to buy more US-made defence equipment.“We managed to have substantial exchanges,” Suga said after his 30-minute call with Biden. “We agreed to strengthen our alliance firmly by having more phone calls like this.”Biden reaffirmed the US commitment to provide “extended deterrence” to Japan, a reference to the US nuclear umbrella, the White House said in a statement.They also agreed on the need for the complete denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula, as speculation mounts over how Biden intends to engage with the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, over his nuclear and ballistic missile programmes.Japan is particularly concerned about frequent incursions by Chinese vessels into waters near the Senkaku islands, which are known as the Diaoyu in China.Biden’s “unwavering commitment” to defending the Senkakus was expected, but has taken on extra significance, coming a week after Beijing passed legislation authorising coast guard vessels to use weapons against foreign ships deemed to be involved in illegal activities around the uninhabited island chain.The two did not discuss the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, whose future is in doubt as the world continues to battle the Covid-19 pandemic, officials said.Suga’s predecessor, Shinzo Abe, established a rapport with Trump during rounds of golf in Japan and the US, and was the first world leader to meet him after his 2016 election victory.Suga said he hoped to “deepen my personal relationship with President Biden”, adding that he planned to visit Washington as soon as the coronavirus pandemic allowed.Media reports in Japan said the two leaders had agreed to call each other Joe and Yoshi.Biden’s secretary of state, Antony Blinken, had earlier told the Philippine foreign minister, Teodoro Locsin, that the US rejected China’s maritime claims in the South China Sea beyond what is permitted under international law.Blinken said Washington stood with the Philippines and other south-east Asian countries resisting pressure from Beijing, which has laid claim to wide areas of the South China Sea.“Secretary Blinken pledged to stand with south-east Asian claimants in the face of PRC [People’s Republic of China] pressure,” the state department said in a statement.China claims almost all of the energy-rich South China Sea, which is also a major trade route. The Philippines, Brunei, Vietnam, Malaysia and Taiwan have overlapping claims.The US has accused China of taking advantage of the distraction created by the coronavirus pandemic to advance its presence in the South China Sea.Blinken, who joined Biden’s administration this week, “underscored that the United States rejects China’s maritime claims in the South China Sea to the extent they exceed the maritime zones that China is permitted to claim under international law”, the statement said.US-China relations deteriorated under Trump over a host of issues, including trade, the pandemic, Beijing’s crackdown on the Hong Kong democracy movement and its persecution of Uighur Muslims. More

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      in US Politics

      The Guardian view on Biden and the climate crisis: fight for net zero | Editorial

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      There is no question that Joe Biden’s win will make a big difference to international efforts to deal with the climate emergency. A US president who recognises global heating as an “existential threat” will be a vital extra pillar propping up the teetering edifice of climate diplomacy. Four years of Donald Trump have done huge damage to the US’s reputation. But the world’s biggest economy, and second-biggest emitter of greenhouse gases (after China), remains vastly influential. With President Biden in charge, the prospects for next year’s Cop26 talks in Scotland, when drastic emissions cuts must be agreed if the world is to stand a chance of avoiding catastrophic heating, are already brighter.
      President Trump’s withdrawal of the US from the Paris agreement was a key plank of his nationalist “America first” agenda and an act of sabotage against both the UN climate process and the principle of a rules-based international order. It also gave cover to the world’s other climate vandals: Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Russia and Australia. With Mr Biden, that cover is gone, and ecocidal policies such as Amazon rainforest destruction and coal-power expansion should come under renewed and relentless pressure. It is striking that the president-elect put climate at the heart of his phone calls with foreign leaders.
      The path ahead is anything but smooth. A green stimulus package on the scale promised by Mr Biden’s campaign is unlikely to pass through Congress, with control of the Senate hinging on two undecided seats in Georgia. Conservative judges are a further roadblock. Legislation to limit emissions and punish polluters is certain to be challenged all the way to the supreme court. Fossil-fuel companies and other vested interests remain a formidable force. Nor can public support be taken for granted. Most voters are on board in principle, recognising the dangers of unchecked global heating. But the changes in lifestyle that will be needed to meet new targets, including reductions in meat-eating and flying, are challenging in the US as in other rich countries.
      Still, Mr Biden’s presence in the White House will be a huge opportunity, and one that the environmental movement and its supporters must seize with every hand they have. Global heating is a fact, not a hypothesis or ideology. It is not just the vast majority of Democrats who want their politicians to do more to tackle it, but also a sizable minority of Republicans. Younger people are the most anxious. Mr Biden will perform a valuable public service simply by doing the opposite of his predecessor, and telling the truth.
      Democrats have shown that climate can be a unifying force within their party. Mr Biden’s climate taskforce was chaired by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the New York congresswoman and star of his party’s progressive wing. Now, if they are to create sufficient momentum, Democrats must look beyond the ranks of committed green supporters, as the writer Arlie Russell Hochschild did in her book Strangers in Their Own Land, about environmental politics in Tea Party-supporting Louisiana. Already, Mr Biden has signalled that the harm caused by pollution to poorer Americans will be among his priorities.
      In recent weeks China, South Korea and Japan have all announced net zero emissions targets. Rapid falls in the price of renewables have made the process of weaning away from fossil fuels far less painful than most experts predicted. Climate protesters have shown how effective they can be in mobilising support for strong action. Now that the election is over, they must keep pushing Mr Biden and other legislators as hard as they can. More

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      in US Politics

      Joe Biden’s move to net zero emissions will leave Australia in the (coal) dust | Bill Hare

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      The election of Joe Biden to the White House is likely to see Australia increasingly isolated as the world heads to net zero emissions, with quite fundamental implications for our economy. Let’s have a look at what has happened in the last two months.In September, the European Union proposed increasing its 2030 target from 40% to at least 55% reduction below 1990 levels in order to meet the net zero by 2050 target it adopted in 2019. Critically, the EU has made climate action one of its three main Covid-19 response priorities, so that at least 30% of its multi-annual budget and recovery fund is to be spent on achieving its increased 2030 emission reduction targets and its climate neutrality goal for 2050. These new goals for the EU27 would bring its domestic emissions very close to a 1.5°C Paris compatible level for the period to 2050. The UK has similar goals and ambitions to the EU27.Shortly afterwards, President Xi Jinping announced that China would “aim to achieve carbon neutrality before 2060”, the first time China has acknowledged the need to reach anything close to zero CO2 emissions by mid-century. If it covers all greenhouse gas emissions it would also be very close to what is needed by mid-century to be in line with the Paris agreement’s long-term goal. If this goal covers CO2 only, then China would need to achieve carbon neutrality around 2050 for this to be compatible with the Paris agreement.With China responsible for about a quarter of the world’s emissions, a move to net zero by mid-century has very significant implications for global temperature, lowering the Climate Action Tracker’s end of century projections by 0.2-0.3oC towards 2.4-2.5oC, compared with the previous 2.7oC projection.In October, both Japan and South Korea also announced net zero GHG goals for 2050. Japan’s prime minister, Yoshihide Suga, announced Japan would aim for net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 with several specific measures, including a fundamental revision of its policy on coal-fired power plants. In an important change to Japan’s narrative, Suga emphasised the benefits to economic growth from the net zero commitment, whereas he’d previously characterised it as a cost.Getting to net zero essentially means the phasing out of coal, gas and oilThis was followed two days later by the South Korean president, Moon Jae-in, announcing his commitment to achieving carbon neutrality by 2050, replacing coal power generation with renewable energy to create new markets, industries and jobs.Taken together, these four countries account for about 40% of global GHG emissions. There is also a large number of smaller countries with comparable net zero emissions commitments that would bring the total global coverage to about 48% of global emissions.What’s notable about all of these announcements is that they were made in the absence of any commitment by the United States and before any US presidential election outcome. China’s announcement in particular seems to reflect a geopolitical judgement by the Chinese government that they intend to move forward with ambitious climate goals even without the US.Arguably, these moves by this set of countries on their own will generate a major global move towards increased ambition and towards net zero by 2050.So where does this leave Australia? These net zero by mid-century moves by its major export markets create huge challenges.In 2019 China, South Korea and Japan accounted for 72% by value of Australia’s exports of LNG and coal: 88% of Australia’s LNG exports; 75% of thermal coal exports; and 51% of metallurgical coal exports. It is notable that none of these countries have focused on natural gas and all have mentioned renewable energy and other technologies, and all recognise that early action on coal is needed.The election of Joe Biden could trip this already major momentum into a landslide towards higher climate ambition. His election means the US will re-enter the Paris agreement, reverse the Trump administration’s rollbacks and make a significant contribution to closing the Paris agreement’s ambition gap with a new 2030 target. If he took the initiative to reboot US action in line with his plan to reach net zero emissions by 2050, Biden could reduce US emissions substantially by 2030.If he is able to fully implement his proposed Energy and Climate Package, and continues to be supported by the existing strong sub-national action in the US, the US could significantly reduce its 2030 emissions, reducing the gap between where it is headed now and a Paris agreement-compatible emission range for that year.Even in the case of delays and challenges to federal action, the efforts of state and local actors, such as the We Are Still In campaign, are expected to continue. A recent study estimated that enhanced action by subnational actors in the US could reduce emissions by 37% below 2005 levels by 2030. Biden as US president may not have control of the Senate (although the vote count on this result is far from over – and may not be resolved until January), but there are workarounds.Biden also has a net zero 2050 goal, which will place the US close to a Paris agreement-compatible emissions pathway. This would further lower the 2100 projected warming by about 0.1°C, and further if America undertook negative emissions action of scale beyond 2050. So the EU, China, Japan, South Korea and the US – about two thirds of the global economy, about half the world’s emissions and close to 75% of our fossil fuel export markets –will have net zero goals for 2050 or shortly afterwards. This is a massive shift.Let there be no misunderstanding about what this means. Getting to net zero essentially means the phasing out of coal, gas and oil, with markets more or less halved by 2030. This is a seismic shift for Australia and it means that it’s very likely that demand for our coal and gas will drop at least as fast as it has risen in the past few decades.It would hardly be a strategy for Australia to follow Poland’s lead and simply start to stockpile coal in warehouses. Diplomatically, Australia will find itself increasingly isolated, even in its own region and in particular with its close Pacific Island neighbours, not to mention the two superpowers, China and the US.Australia needs a forward-looking strategy aimed at taking advantage of its massive natural advantages in renewable energy and the resources essential for the low and zero carbon transition, and one that provides for a just transition for the communities and workforces affected by the rapid reduction in the markets that they have hitherto dependent upon.There is no time to be lost dithering, denying and obfuscating.• Bill Hare, a physicist and climate scientist, is the managing director of Climate Analytics More

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      in US Politics

      Harry Truman and the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki | Letters

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      Clifton Daniel is right about his grandfather’s bombing of Hiroshima (‘He felt he had to do it’, 4 August). “That was no decision!” Harry S Truman told me when I interviewed him in July 1963 in the presidential library in Independence, Missouri. I was a postgraduate student and had come to ask him about Hiroshima, the case study at the centre of my recently completed thesis on presidential decision-making. At a stroke, the very core of my research was undercut by the amiable old man.Truman, who had only become president a few weeks before Hiroshima upon the sudden death of Franklin D Roosevelt, told me how FDR’s advisers, notably the venerable secretary of war, Henry L Stimson, persuaded him that dropping the atomic bomb on people was the one initiative that might bring the war in the Pacific to a rapid end, without the need for a protracted invasion of the Japanese islands at the cost of a million more lives. When I asked Truman about the dangers of nuclear radiation, or whether the bomb was really used to impress or scare the Soviets, all this was dismissed as the dreamings of people who weren’t present at the time and were speculating about matters they weren’t competent to judge. “All the atomic bomb was,” said Truman, “was a big bomb to end the war. And it did end it too!”I told him I had always had visions of the US president pacing the corridors of the White House, like Lincoln during the civil war, weighed down by the pressure of the job. Truman laughed. “I never lost sleep over any decision I had to make,” he said, adding confidentially: “Your Winston was the same, you know!”As I left, Truman told me that, if I’d wanted to focus on a real decision – the biggest, most important he had had to make as president – I should have turned my attention to the US entry into Korea a few years later.Daniel SnowmanSenior research fellow, Institute of Historical Research, University of London• Whether the bombing of Hiroshima or the entry of the Soviet Union into the war was the crucial event in causing the Japanese surrender can never be conclusively settled (Hiroshima at 75: bitter row persists over US decision to drop the bomb, 5 August). However, very little is said about the motives for the second bomb, on Nagasaki three days later. Few argued that it was necessary to reinforce the message of Hiroshima. Rather, the military and scientific imperative was to test a different bomb design – “Fat Man”, an implosion type using plutonium, as opposed to the uranium of Hiroshima’s “Little Boy”. To my mind that, destroying a mainly civilian city for such reasons, makes it even more of a war crime, if that is possible, than the bombing of Hiroshima.Frank JacksonFormer co-chair, World Disarmament Campaign More

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      in US Politics

      Coronavirus at a glance: the latest developments

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      A summary of the biggest developments in the global coronavirus outbreak Follow our latest coronavirus blog for live news and updates Coronavirus daily briefing. Illustration: Guardian Design/EPA/GETTY Key developments in the global coronavirus outbreak today include: Global infections pass 720,000 Covid-19 infections worldwide have risen to 722,000, according to the Johns Hopkins University tracker. The […] More

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      in US Politics

      Coronavirus quarantine plans ignite row between South Korea and Japan

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      Seoul lashes neighbour’s ‘passive’ approach to containing the virus and implies Tokyo is more concerned with ensuring Olympics go ahead ‘Fake, fake’: Chinese leader heckled on visit to Wuhan Latest updates The coronavirus outbreak has ignited a diplomatic row between Japan and South Korea, after Tokyo said it would quarantine all passengers arriving from the […] More