East-West Center in the News

(2012-04-27) Political analyst and adjunct senior fellow Richard Baker at the East West Center in Hawaii says the agreement comes after complex negotiations involving political, technical, financial and infrastructural issues.

"And I don't think it was inevitable that they would be able to make a meeting of the minds of that sort, so that is the good news," he said. "Now the bad news is that the public handling of this has got to be as sensitive as the negotiations were and as nuanced."

... Baker, a retired veteran U.S. diplomat, acknowledges that repositioning troops from Okinawa to Guam and Hawaii may be viewed as a move in the wrong geographical direction.

"Critics will be tempted to say that this belies the intended pivot to Asia. I think that would be an unfair criticism given the realities of the negotiations and the realities of the very, very longstanding problem in Okinawa that this is designed to solve," he noted.

-- Also appears in: Journal of Turkish Weekly, States News Service

(2012-05-15) “Washington’s allies in the Pacific want a stable military balance in the region and I think they want Washington to encourage Beijing to pursue its goals according to accepted international norms, “ Gerard Finin, a senior fellow at the Hawaii-based East-West Center told VOA.

Finin said he expects the maritime dispute to be revolved diplomatically. “The key is keeping lines of communications open to avoid miscalculations,” he said.

... The East-West Center’s Gerard Finin agrees U.S. involvement in the dispute carries certain risks. “The Chinese tend to see U.S. involvement in the region as something of a challenge, if not a threat to long-term Chinese sovereignty.”