The Choice the Philippines Didn’t Want to Make | Chinese “Spy Boats” | Impact of War in Ukraine on Security in the Indo-Pacific, and more

Sudden Inquiry May Derail Thailand’s Leading Prime Minister Candidate  (Sui-Lee Wee, New York Times)
Thailand’s Election Commission has announced that it will investigate Pita Limjaroenrat, the front-runner in the May general election, to determine whether he violated election rules that would disqualify him from becoming the country’s next prime minister.
The investigation, announced last week, is centered on Mr. Pita’s shares of iTV, a company that used to be a news broadcaster but is now focused on advertising. Mr. Pita, 42, said he inherited the shares from his father. Thai law prohibits parliamentary candidates from owning media shares.
A month after Thai voters delivered a stinging rebuke to the military junta and handed Mr. Pita’s Move Forward Party a decisive victory, his fate as an elected leader remained unclear. Here’s what to know about the investigation.
Activists say the case against Mr. Pita and the Move Forward Party is part of a broader effort to roll back the results of the election and erode democracy in Thailand.
The May election had a record turnout and was seen by many to be a vote against military rule. It also showed broad support for Move Forward, one of the few major political parties in Southeast Asia with a progressive platform.

Pacific Nation Asks U.S. to Repel Chinese “Spy Boats  (Richard Lloyd Parry, The Times)
The tiny but strategically important Pacific nation of Palau has called on the United States to see off Chinese boats that it accuses of carrying out illegal spying on its fiber-optic communications links.
Its president, Surangel Whipps Jr, accused China of breaking international rules after a Chinese survey ship entered its exclusive economic zone (EEZ) last month and “hovered” over the site of the fibre-optic cable that supplies internet access to the isolated island nation. It is the latest example of a small nation being dragged into a big game — the struggle for power between the world’s greatest powers that is being enacted in the Pacific Ocean.

Koreans’ Panic Buying of Seafood Is a Cry for Their Fears About Fukushima to Be Taken Seriously  Editorial, Hankyoreh)
Ahead of dumping radioactive water from the Fukushima nuclear meltdown, Japan has begun testing its equipment for the release; meanwhile, signs of panic buying of seafood products such as salt and dried fish are becoming evident. Anxious consumers have begun bulk-purchasing seafood that they can store for a long time, stocking up on them. Prices are reportedly surging as well.
The reason anxiety amongst the citizenry has multiplied instead of subsiding despite the government iterating again and again that the seafood is safe is because the authorities of South Korea and Japan have lost their trust. Japan originally argued that its radioactive wastewater processing system, which it calls the Advanced Liquid Processing System (ALPS), could eliminate almost every radioactive nucleotide excluding tritium. But it later acknowledged that the system can’t even filter 14C, the half-life of which is 5,730 years, and it was also exposed that wastewater processed by ALPS still contains radioactive substances over 70% of the safety threshold.

Investors Are Putting Big Money into Japan Again. Here’s Why.  (Vivek Shankar, New York Times / Japan Times)
The Japanese stock market is up nearly 30 percent this year, far ahead of the S&P 500, as firms bet that changes in how companies are run might just finally last.

Modi Can’t Look Away from Manipur  (Sushant Singh, Foreign Policy)
Since early May, the Indian state of Manipur has suffered from destructive violence that has barely registered a blip on the global radar. More than 130 people have died in the state, and another 60,000 displaced from their homes. 
Manipur, a state of just 3.7 million people at India’s easternmost edge, has a checkered history of ethnic clashes and militancy, which subsided in 2008 after a cease-fire agreement. But the current violence—taking place between two ethnic groups, the Kuki people and the Meitei people—is unlike any in the past.
Modi’s government has treated the violence in Manipur as a question of restoring order when it warrants a political solution.

How the War in Ukraine Is Impacting Security in the Indo-Pacific  (Reuben Johnson, Breaking Defense)
The annual Shangri-La Dialogue Asia-Pacific Security Conference has traditionally been the central meeting for those interested in national security issues for the Indo-Pacific region. So it was striking just how much of the discussion at this year’s conference was about the conflict happening thousands of miles away on another continent: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Numerous discussions at Shangri-La either by accident or by design ended up wandering into the territory of “what does the Ukraine conflict tell us about the potential for a conflict in our own backyard.” Sideline conversations similarly ended up in that territory. Ukrainian officials could be seen sprinkled throughout the crowd, working to shore up regional support.
Participants and delegates were largely in agreement that this European war has raised the level of anxiety about existing tensions in Asia, with three key focus areas: first, the Ukraine war is an example of failed deterrence; second, unlike Europe there is no Asian defensive alliance analogous to NATO’ and third, the growing relations between Russia and Indo-Pacific nations.

TikTok to Invest Billions of Dollars in Southeast Asia Amid Growing Scrutiny Over Data Security (Reuters / CNN Business)
Short video app TikTok, owned by China’s ByteDance, said on Thursday it would invest billions of dollars in Southeast Asia over the next few years, as it doubles down on the region amid intensifying global scrutiny over its data security.
Southeast Asia, a region with a collective population of 630 million – half of them under 30 – is one of TikTok’s biggest markets in terms of user numbers, generating more than 325 million visitors to the app every month.
But the platform has yet to translate the large user base into a major e-commerce revenue source in the region as it faces fierce competition from bigger rivals of Sea’s Shopee, Alibaba’s Lazada and GoTo’s Tokopedia.

The Choice the Philippines Didn’t Want to Make  (Timothy McLaughlin, The Atlantic)
The United States had maintained a military presence in the Philippines since 1898. But by1991, Manila and Washington were squabbling over payments for the bases, whose usefulness was in question as the Cold War waned and President George H. W. Bush sought to deepen relations with China. In the Philippines, a popular uprising had ousted the American-backed dictator Ferdinand Marcos just five years earlier, and nationalist sentiment was still high.
Thirty-two years later, there is no talk of reestablishing U.S. bases, but more American troops have returned to Philippine soil. President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr., the son of the ousted dictator, has reinvigorated his country’s alliance with the United States as a buttress against actual and anticipated Chinese aggression. Ships from the Chinese coast guard and navy regularly harass Philippine forces and fishermen, and Beijing has asserted expansive claims in the South China Sea. Unfettered by an international tribunal’s 2016 ruling in Manila’s favor, China is placing military installations on several islands it built in the contested waters.
For the moment, at least, the need for a counterweight against China seems to have overridden the vexed history between the Philippines and the United States—one in which the people of the Philippines have held Washington responsible for colonial oppression, aiding a dictator, and the excesses of its troops.

Making the U.S.-Philippine Alliance Work (Susannah Patton, War on the Rocks)
Over the past 18 months, the health of the U.S.-Philippine alliance has been restored. A patient on life support during the presidency of Rodrigo Duterte is now being readmitted into the ranks of America’s high-functioning Indo-Pacific allies.
Beginning with the reaffirmation of the visiting forces agreement by the Duterte administration in July 2021, the two sides have made steady progress toward establishing an operationally meaningful defense partnership. This includes expanding annual military exercises, designating four new sites for both parties to use under the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement, and agreeing to new bilateral defense guidelines. The Philippines has said it will resume joint patrols with the United States in the South China Sea, and the two sides have flagged plans to improve military intelligence sharing. Finally, there is now a roadmap on military capability enhancement, which includes new transfers of defense equipment to the Philippines.
Though the United States does not say so officially, the reinvestment in its alliance with the Philippines is at least in part because of that country’s potential role in a conflict over Taiwan. The Philippines’ northernmost island is less than 100 miles from Taiwan, providing access points to preposition supplies and provide military support. Given a dearth of other regional options for forward-basing U.S. forces or equipment, U.S. policymakers would be eager to lock Manila into a favorable arrangement now.