New satellite photos have revealed a stunning development in China’s naval forces in the Indian Ocean region (IOR). An underground nuclear submarine base on the southern tip of China’s Hainan Province has many in India and throughout the region speculating how this will affect the region’s balance of power.

Asia Times Online has more…

According to reports, commercial satellite images indicate that the Chinese are building a massive strategic naval base on Hainan island, in the South China Sea, south of Hong Kong. This confirms suspicions of several Asian nations since 2002 about the underground submarine base.

A reputed British daily has described the base as a “vast, James Bond-style edifice capable of concealing up to 20 nuclear-powered submarines and which will enable China to project its power across the region”.

Nuclear submarines can remain under water longer than conventional diesel-electric submarines and are thus difficult to detect. They are also capable of firing nuclear warheads.

These recent satellite images have caused alarm in New Delhi and among regional military experts, who understand that China’s military expansion into the IOR sphere will only raise tensions with India who has long dominated the region with naval superiority.

The Times of India assesses the situation…

China and India…are fighting for the same strategic space in the IOR, with the former hugely dependent on the oil shipping sea lanes passing through the region. Much more than Pakistan, Indian defence experts view China as the real long-term military threat.

There is concern over the stark military asymmetry with China, with the latter’s military budget showing straight double-digit hikes for the last two decades.

China, of course, has a very active cruise and ballistic missile programme, which includes the new DF-31 and DF-31A road-mobile intercontinental ballistic missiles.

It’s leagues ahead of India in virtually all aspects of military projects. Take submarines, for instance. To India’s 16 conventional diesel-electric submarines, China has 57 attack submarines, including a dozen of them nuclear ones.

Feeling the Heat

The Times also highlights the strategic Sino-India chess match that China seems to be winning…

Apart from this military imbalance, India remains apprehensive of China’s strategic moves in the region. With its “string of pearls” strategy, China has already encircled India by assiduously forging maritime linkages with eastern Africa, Seychelles, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Myanmar, among other countries.

India has tried to counter this spreading arc of Chinese influence only in recent times by trying to build maritime bridges with countries in the IOR as well as the Asia-Pacific region. Though experts hold that China’s SSBN, ballistic missile and other military programmes are at this point in time primarily directed against any move by the US to intervene in the Taiwan Strait, India will have to keep a close watch on the People’s Liberation Army’s expanding capabilities.

Today, in the pomp and glory of the Kremlin’s St. Andrew’s Hall, Russian President Vladimir Putin officially relinquished his post as the Russian Federation’s top leader. His successor and long-time protege, Dmitri Medvedev, takes the reins of a country that has grown increasingly dependent on it oil and gas wealth to fund its reemergence on the global stage. Russia has also found its stride in confronting the West on a host of foreign policy issues, often using energy as a diplomatic sword.

For now though, the international community and Kremlin-watchers alike remain fixated on how this unlikely power arrangement will play out, with Putin nominated to take up the post of Prime Minister (previously held by Medvedev) and the leader of the dominant United Russia Party. Medvedev, meanwhile, campaigned on continuing the ‘Putin Plan,’ and it remains to be seen how much of his own person he will be.

The first Russian leader to not have any known ties to the KGB or Communist Party, some are hopeful that Medvedev may actually prove to be a very promising leader for Russia. This hope, however, will be largely based on how he meanders through the shark-ridden waters of Kremlin politics during his first months in office.

For now, Medvedev will remain veiled from any major challenge of his authority, as Putin has clearly made it known that he intends to afford his successor all of the support he needs as he works to get himself situated in the Kremlin.

Marshall Goldman in today’s IHT writes about some of the internal politics that Putin will prove useful in shielding Medvedev from…

Initially at least, Medvedev will need Putin, if for no other reason than to protect his flank from being undermined by some of the siloviki (law and order types) who have been brought to Moscow and into the Kremlin by Putin. They think of themselves as the rightful heirs who should have been selected to take over Putin’s office and resent Medvedev’s selection.

While Putin used these siloviki to push out and replace most of the original oligarchs (including Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the former head of the Yukos Oil Company who is now serving an eight-year prison term in Siberia), they now have settled in and taken over many of the companies that were privatized in the 1990s. So now these new oligarchs have not only money but KGB and insider connections. This will make it difficult for Medvedev to push them out and replace them with his own supporters as Putin was able to do when the oligarchs only had money to protect their holdings.

The host of challenges confronting Medvedev from ‘Day One’ are enormous. Reuters highlights just a few of these…

They include rampant corruption, rising inflation, a falling population, sickly industry and agriculture and increasingly tense relations with former Soviet neighbors and the West.

Putin has been accused by domestic critics and Western governments of trampling on human rights and reining in freedoms won after the collapse of Soviet communism in the 1990s. He has reasserted the state’s grip on the Russian economy and business.

To say that Medvedev has his work cut out for him is an understatement. Russia is currently entangled in so many issues across the globe that it will take some time for the new President to get a grip on things. For now, Medvedev seems eager to focus on domestic issues facing everyday Russians.

In broad strokes laid out before the guests gathered to hear his inauguration address, Medvedev proclaimed that “…It is very important to understand that availability of justice, the general right to freedom and achievements in fighting corruption are integral to the right citizens have to get true information…We must defend the real independence of mass media, which provides feedback between civil society and various branches of power.”

The question that remains at the forefront of everyone’s mind is, can Medvedev deliver. And if so, how is he going to do it with the long shadow of Vladimir Putin placed firmly behind him and the former KGB apparatus surrounding him.

VOA quotes Yevgenia Albats, a Russian radio talk show host, who says the jury is still out. “It’s really hard to say whether we do, whether we are going to have a new president, whether we are going to have a puppet in the Kremlin and president Putin who will become prime minister will keep a grip over all power structures in this country. I don’t know the answer yet.”

The Washington Post today highlights the challenges facing a Tibetan blogger, writer and poet, named Woeser, who is living in Beijing.

In her quest to chronicle the struggles of the Tibetan people, Woeser has found it difficult to continue her work due intimidation by the Chinese government.

Her books are banned here and three different blogs she maintained on Chinese servers have been shut down in the past two years — on government orders, a friend at one of the Internet companies told her. Her current blog, woeser.middle-way.net, is hosted on a computer server in the United States, but even that one temporarily succumbed to an attack April 26.

Despite these challenges, however, she tells the Post with determination, “I feel I have a responsibility to do this.”

Tibet Writes, cites Beijing writer-scholar Wang Li-Xiong, who believes that Tibetan writers like Woeser are critical to providing alternative forms of information in China…

“The fact that they have paid the high price of losing the language of their nation to gain such fluency in Chinese can also be interpreted as a reversal of something negative into positive.”

The feeling among Tibet Watchers like Wang is that up until now the experience of Tibet has been voiceless within China due to censorship, the language barrier and the distortions created by Beijing propaganda.

They see writers like Woeser as Tibet’s ’public intellectuals’ who have the literary and linguistic skills to play an important role by interacting with China’s populace and authorities through publishing, the media, internet and by mixing in the PRC’s mainstream.

Their articulation of Tibet’s ’otherness’ is seen as a powerful weapon to regain national equality and resist, and even disarm, the ’cultural imperialism’ imposed upon Tibet under Chinese rule.

Woeser has also been a critical information source for those outside of China. Through her writing and wealth of contacts in Tibet, the world has been able to more accurately monitor the sequence of events stemming from the most recent crackdown by Chinese authorities in Tibet.

Reprinted by Epoch Times, here is an excerpt from an April 12, 2008 post by Woeser…

A Japanese reporter said that Taktser, a small village in Pingan County in Qinghai’s Xining City, is the Dalai Lama’s hometown. Now the front doors of the old house are closely shut. The Qinghai provincial judicial authorities posted notices on walls on both sides of the main entrance. The notice in both Chinese and Tibetan is dated April 2. The Chinese version roughly says that posting and distributing any logos or flyers that endanger national security are prohibited. Manufacturing and distributing the Dalai Lama’s portraits or photos is also prohibited. The notice also reads, “Realizing one’s errors and mending one’s ways is the only way out for lawbreakers. Those who surrender and plead guilty or report other lawbreakers will receive a lesser or mitigated punishment.” The notice also points out that the general public will be commended and rewarded for reporting lawbreakers. It is said that there are police officers patrolling during the day, and the roads leading to the village have been blocked.

The latest news says on the evening of the 10th, a large number of military vehicles entered the Drepung Monastery again. On the 11th, roads leading to it were blocked. It is said that many hungry monks, who have been stranded for 30 days in the temple surrounded by military police, are going to come down the mountain to seek lifting of the martial law. Other sources say that there may have been an incident triggered by military police who made arrests by breaking into the temple. The exact reason of this military deployment is not yet known, but there are reported casualties. While communication with the temple is still blocked, the news has already spread across Lhasa. The Tibetans are filled with anxiety.

In its monthly report, the International Crisis Group lists Georgia among the “eight actual or potential conflict situations around the world deteriorated in April 2008.” Georgia has joined in odd company with Burundi, Haiti, Somalia, Sri Lanka, Uganda, Yemen, Zimbabwe as a potential or current conflict zone.

Such a distinction was certainly not the vision of those who helped to usher in Georgia’s 2003 Rose Revolution, but a confluence of events (see: A Race to the Bottom in Georgia) has led to the current stalemate with Russia.

In Slate on Monday, Anne Applebaum ponders the “possibility that Abkhazia could become the starting point of a larger war.” She says that “Abkhazia ranks right up there with Nagorno-Karabakh, Dagestan, South Ossetia, and all the other forgotten Caucasian cities and statelets that no one wants to think too hard about but where, occasionally, something really awful happens.”

True or not (the international community has kept close watch over these frozen conflicts since their inception), events in Abkhazia may in fact lead to chain reaction that could spiral into military action.

In Monday’s Moscow Times, Alexander Golts, deputy editor of the online newspaper Yezhednevny Zhurnal, leaves us with this thought…

Recall how World War I began. States wanted only to protect their national pride and frighten their opponents. But at some point, the tensions escalated sharply and, coupled with mass mobilizations of their armies, the conflict in the Balkans spun out of control with tragic consequences for the entire world. This scenario could be repeated in the Caucasus.

On the eve of the inauguration of Dmitri Medvedev as Russia’s next president, the country is entangled in a slew of entanglements. Whether it be with the West over NATO enlargement or Kosovo, the United States over its proposed European-hosted missile defense systems, or frozen conflict zones in countries like Georgia.

While all of these issues will prove an immediate challenge for Medvedev, he will also face the continuing tensions in the restive Russian province of Chechnya. Recalling President Putin’s own response to unrest in Chechnya, where he moved with brutal force against Chechen militants shortly after taking over the reins of the Kremlin, Medvedev will likely follow a similar path.

Despite progress made in Chechnya and a rebuilding of the capital city, Grozny, and outlaying areas, Chechnya remains a very dangerous place and the fragile piece that currently governs the region is being held in place by an oppressive administrative government in Grozny backed by force from Moscow.

While large-scale military actions have ended, smaller attacks continue in Chechnya

Six policemen were murdered in two separate incidents in Chechnya over the weekend. One involved a metal shrapnel-loaded bomb and the other came after a police patrol came under fire from automatic weapons. Chechen rebels have continued small-scale attacks against pro-Russian security forces and police patrols have become the norm.

From the AP…

A remote-controlled bomb exploded on a roadside in the capital of troubled Chechnya, leaving five police officers dead, while another officer was fatally shot near the city, regional authorities said Monday.

The regional Emergency Situations Ministry said the bomb blast took place late Sunday in the city of Grozny. Two other officers were seriously wounded in the attack, the ministry said.

The police were part of a squad of 10 that was working to tighten security in the city ahead of this week’s inauguration of new Russian president Dmitry Medvedev and the celebration of Victory Day, which commemorates the 1945 defeat of Nazi Germany.