It's time for a collective defense alliance in the Western Pacific
Don McLain Gill is a Philippines-based geopolitical analyst, author and lecturer at the department of international studies, De La Salle University.
In a May 27 article in Foreign Policy, former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense Ely Ratner suggested the creation of a "Pacific Defense Pact" between the U.S., Japan, the Philippines and Australia. He argued that such an alliance would be crucial given the threat China poses to the security architecture of the Western Pacific -- and for the Philippines, such an arrangement would benefit its long-term security interest.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Nikkei Asia
13 hours ago
- Nikkei Asia
Israel-Iran war threatens India's regional energy, transport links
Security guards with sniffer dogs patrol in the port of Chabahar, in southeastern Iran in 2017. © AP KIRAN SHARMA NEW DELHI -- The increasingly escalating Israel-Iran conflict, coupled with the U.S. announcing its bombing of Iran's nuclear sites on Saturday, puts at risk India's regional connectivity projects -- including one leveraging Iran's port of Chabahar -- and its energy security, experts warn. "An escalation of conflict in the Middle East puts Indian interests in jeopardy," Harsh V. Pant, vice president of the Delhi-based Observer Research Foundation (ORF), a think tank, told Nikkei Asia before the American B-2 stealth bombers conducted strikes on three Iranian nuclear sites. Pointing out that New Delhi has "good relations" with both countries, he said, "India's energy security is linked to the stability in the Middle East. ... So India has no interest in the widening of this conflict and the conflict continuing in the region."
Yomiuri Shimbun
13 hours ago
- Yomiuri Shimbun
Europeans Seek ‘Digital Sovereignty' as US Tech Firms Embrace Trump
BERLIN, June 21 (Reuters) – At a market stall in Berlin run by charity Topio, volunteers help people who want to purge their phones of the influence of U.S. tech firms. Since Donald Trump's inauguration, the queue for their services has grown. Interest in European-based digital services has jumped in recent months, data from digital market intelligence company Similarweb shows. More people are looking for e-mail, messaging and even search providers outside the United States. The first months of Trump's second presidency have shaken some Europeans' confidence in their long-time ally, after he signaled his country would step back from its role in Europe's security and then launched a trade war. 'It's about the concentration of power in U.S. firms,' said Topio's founder Michael Wirths, as his colleague installed on a customer's phone a version of the Android operating system without hooks into the Google ecosystem. Wirths said the type of people coming to the stall had changed: 'Before, it was people who knew a lot about data privacy. Now it's people who are politically aware and feel exposed.' Tesla TSLA.O chief Elon Musk, who also owns social media company X, was a leading adviser to the U.S. president before the two fell out, while the bosses of Amazon AMZN.O, Meta META.O and Google-owner Alphabet GOOGL.O took prominent spots at Trump's inauguration in January. Days before Trump took office, outgoing president Joe Biden had warned of an oligarchic 'tech industrial complex' threatening democracy. Berlin-based search engine Ecosia says it has benefited from some customers' desire to avoid U.S. counterparts like Microsoft's MSFT.O Bing or Google, which dominates web searches and is also the world's biggest email provider. 'The worse it gets, the better it is for us,' founder Christian Kroll said of Ecosia, whose sales pitch is that it spends its profits on environmental projects. Similarweb data shows the number of queries directed to Ecosia from the European Union has risen 27% year-on-year and the company says it has 1% of the German search engine market. But its 122 million visits from the 27 EU countries in February were dwarfed by 10.3 billion visits to Google, whose parent Alphabet made revenues of about $100 billion from Europe, the Middle East and Africa in 2024 – nearly a third of its $350 billion global turnover. Non-profit Ecosia earned 3.2 million euros ($3.65 million) in April, of which 770,000 euros was spent on planting 1.1 million trees. Google declined to comment for this story. Reuters could not determine whether major U.S. tech companies have lost any market share to local rivals in Europe. DIGITAL SOVEREIGNTY The search for alternative providers accompanies a debate in Europe about 'digital sovereignty' – the idea that reliance on companies from an increasingly isolationist United States is a threat to Europe's economy and security. 'Ordinary people, the kind of people who would never have thought it was important they were using an American service are saying, 'hang on!',' said UK-based internet regulation expert Maria Farrell. 'My hairdresser was asking me what she should switch to.' Use in Europe of Swiss-based ProtonMail rose 11.7% year-on-year to March compared to a year ago, according to Similarweb, while use of Alphabet's Gmail, which has some 70% of the global email market, slipped 1.9%. ProtonMail, which offers both free and paid-for services, said it had seen an increase in users from Europe since Trump's re-election, though it declined to give a number. 'My household is definitely disengaging,' said British software engineer Ken Tindell, citing weak U.S. data privacy protections as one factor. Trump's vice president JD Vance shocked European leaders in February by accusing them – at a conference usually known for displays of transatlantic unity – of censoring free speech and failing to control immigration. In May, Secretary of State Marco Rubio threatened visa bans for people who 'censor' speech by Americans, including on social media, and suggested the policy could target foreign officials regulating U.S. tech companies. U.S. social media companies like Facebook and Instagram parent Meta have said the European Union's Digital Services Act amounts to censorship of their platforms. EU officials say the Act will make the online environment safer by compelling tech giants to tackle illegal content, including hate speech and child sexual abuse material. Greg Nojeim, director of the Security and Surveillance Project at the Center for Democracy & Technology, said Europeans' concerns about the U.S. government accessing their data, whether stored on devices or in the cloud, were justified. Not only does U.S. law permit the government to search devices of anyone entering the country, it can compel disclosure of data that Europeans outside the U.S. store or transmit through U.S. communications service providers, Nojeim said. MISSION IMPOSSIBLE? Germany's new government is itself making efforts to reduce exposure to U.S. tech, committing in its coalition agreement to make more use of open-source data formats and locally-based cloud infrastructure. Regional governments have gone further – in conservative-run Schleswig-Holstein, on the Danish border, all IT used by the public administration must run on open-source software. Berlin has also paid for Ukraine to access a satellite-internet network operated by France's instead of Musk's Starlink. But with modern life driven by technology, 'completely divorcing U.S. tech in a very fundamental way is, I would say, possibly not possible,' said Bill Budington of U.S. digital rights nonprofit the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Everything from push notifications to the content delivery networks powering many websites and how internet traffic is routed relies largely on U.S. companies and infrastructure, Budington noted. Both Ecosia and French-based search engine Qwant depend in part on search results provided by Google and Microsoft's Bing, while Ecosia runs on cloud platforms, some hosted by the very same tech giants it promises an escape from. Nevertheless, a group on messaging board Reddit called BuyFromEU has 211,000 members. 'Just canceled my Dropbox and will switch to Proton Drive,' read one post. Mastodon, a decentralized social media service developed by German programmer Eugen Rochko, enjoyed a rush of new users two years ago when Musk bought Twitter, later renamed X. But it remains a niche service. Signal, a messaging app run by a U.S. nonprofit foundation, has also seen a surge in installations from Europe. Similarweb's data showed a 7% month-on-month increase in Signal usage in March, while use of Meta's WhatsApp was static. Meta declined to comment for this story. Signal did not respond to an e-mailed request for comment. But this kind of conscious self-organizing is unlikely on its own to make a dent in Silicon Valley's European dominance, digital rights activist Robin Berjon told Reuters. 'The market is too captured,' he said. 'Regulation is needed as well.'
The Mainichi
14 hours ago
- The Mainichi
Pope Leo XIV says there should be no tolerance for abuse of any kind in Catholic Church
LIMA, Peru (AP) -- Pope Leo XIV has said there should be no tolerance in the Catholic Church for any type of abuse -- sexual, spiritual or abuse of authority -- and called for "transparent processes" to create a culture of prevention across the church. Leo made his first public comments about the clergy sex abuse scandal in a written message to a Peruvian journalist who documented a particularly egregious case of abuse and financial corruption in a Peruvian-based Catholic movement, the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae. The message was read out loud on Friday night in Lima during a performance of a play based on the Sodalitium scandal and the work of the journalist, Paola Ugaz. "It is urgent to root in the whole church a culture of prevention that does not tolerate any form of abuse - neither of power or authority, nor abuse of conscience, spiritual or sexual abuse," Leo said in the message. "This culture will only be authentic if it is born of active vigilance, of transparent processes and sincere listening to those who have been hurt. For this, we need journalists." Leo is well aware of the Sodalitium scandal, since he spent two decades as a missionary priest and bishop in Peru, where the group was founded in 1971. The then-Bishop Robert Prevost was responsible for listening to the Sodalitium's victims as the Peruvian bishops' point-person for abuse victims and helped some reach financial settlements with the organization. After Pope Francis brought him to the Vatican in 2023, Prevost helped dismantle the group entirely by overseeing the resignation of a powerful Sodalitium bishop. The Sodalitium was officially suppressed earlier this year, right before Francis died. Now as pope, Leo has to oversee the dismantling of the Soldalitium and its sizeable assets. The Vatican envoy on the ground handling the job, Monsignor Jordi Bertomeu, read out Leo's message on Friday night, appearing alongside Ugaz on stage. In the message, Leo also praised journalists for their courage in holding the powerful to account, demanded public authorities protect them and said a free press is an "common good that cannot be renounced." Ugaz and a Sodalitium victim, Pedro Salinas, have faced years of criminal and civil litigation from Sodalitium and its supporters for their investigative reporting into the group's twisted practices and financial misconduct, and they have praised Leo for his handling of the case. The abuse scandal is one of the thorniest dossiers facing Leo, especially given demands from survivors that he go even farther than Francis in applying a zero-tolerance for abuse across the church, including for abusers whose victims were adults.
