Japanese researchers have released the findings of a study suggesting that the risk of an earthquake measuring magnitude 7 or above striking the Tokyo metropolitan area within the next four years could be as high as 70 percent. The last time Tokyo was hit by a major earthquake was in 1923, when a 7.9 magnitude quake killed more than 100,000 people.

Late last year, devastating flash floods killed over 1,200 people in the southern Philippines, while last month, dozens of villagers died and many more are still unaccounted for after a massive landslide in Papua New Guinea.

These events of the past 12 months have underscored the fact that the Asia-Pacific is the most natural disaster prone region in the world, with floods being the most frequent danger, followed by major storms, earthquakes and problems such as avalanches and landslides. Sadly, a combination of population growth, urbanization and climate change will see the number of lives lost through regional disasters rising in the coming years.

The Obama administration seems determined to put political science theories to the test by “binding” China into the rules-based order over which the United States presides. Only this time, China is already a signatory to the rules in question. The Obama administration seems to think it is the United States that needs the binding.

The timing of this new push over the U.N. Convention on the Law of Sea, signed by President Bill Clinton and then defeated by the Senate in 1994, is curious. One need only scan the past three years of Chinese activities in the South China, East China, and Yellow seas to find evidence that China intends to change the maritime status quo in ways detrimental to U.S. interests.  Despite ratifying UNCLOS, China’s maritime behavior in East Asia runs contrary to international law and custom as they have been commonly understood for centuries.

Where customary international law has protected the traditionally expansive understanding of freedom of the seas – allowing open access to all but narrow bands of territorial waters along national coastlines – China is trying to curtail that access, fence off its peripheral waters, and deny to other maritime nations the freedom of navigation they have long and lawfully enjoyed.  What’s the argument for signing UNCLOS when China itself doesn’t adhere to the law? When it turns out that the letter of the law is less clear than its proponents think?   Given these problems, U.S. ratification of UNCLOS won’t resolve Sino-U.S. disagreements; it will only lead to endless legal and diplomatic wrangling.

Few doubt his sincerity: As a campaigner for human rights in North Korea, he has taken the fight to what would appear to be some of the most extreme limits – and at what would seem to be an enormous cost on a personal level.

Yet while critics cast doubt on some of the methods he has employed to amplify his message, Korean-American activist Robert Park has recently identified a rather unusual bearer of bad tidings: a news report purporting to detail – in Park's own words –  the alleged sexual torture he endured while held captive in North Korea early in 2010.

The report, carried by Yonhap News Agency, a government-operated wire service, seems to contain a compelling lead source: Park himself. But there's one rather large problem – Park says the direct quotations were never enunciated by him, and indeed were a “fabrication.”

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The United States’ NATO allies reacted with surprise and consternation to Defense Secretary Panetta’s recent announcement that U.S. forces would move away from a combat role in Afghanistan as early as mid 2013. Reports have emerged that the U.S. decision was based on a shift in U.S. strategy toward a greater focus on Special Operations forces to kill insurgents and train Afghans. The allies are surprised and angry because the Obama administration decided to change strategy and move up the withdrawal deadline in isolation, apparently informing allies only after the fact.

This isn’t the way to treat long-term allies that are fighting and dying alongside American soldiers, often at great political cost to their governments. And this isn’t the first time. The Obama administration has made its most important strategic decisions on Afghanistan on its own with little or no role for allies in the process. Administration officials have then announced the decision and left allies holding the bag.

As a presidential candidate Barack Obama had a different idea about alliances. In his July 2008 speech in Berlin, Obama set out to distinguish his view of allies from those of George W. Bush. Obama argued that the U.S. needed allies to share burdens and but also that a “true partnership” would require “allies who will listen to each other, learn from each other and, most of all, trust each other.”

The United States is shifting its focus from the Atlantic across to the Pacific. However, if an Arctic century is on the horizon, then China is at the forefront of it. While Washington enhances its relationships across the Asia-Pacific basin, Beijing is busy engaging Arctic Ocean coastal states en masse. The Middle Kingdom is apparently interested in the commercial viability of new shipping lanes and developing the resources that lie underneath and along the Arctic seabed. Ostensibly to achieve its objectives, China is engaging the region at an unprecedented pace. Beijing’s comprehensive engagement of Arctic states demonstrates that China’s ambition isn't just to be a Pacific power, but a global one. Questions that remain are: what is Beijing’s intention in the Arctic, and by extension what type of global power will China be?

China has been in the Arctic since the early 1990s, but only recently began seeking to enhance its engagement there as a permanent observer in the Arctic Council. The Arctic Council is a high-level intergovernmental forum that addresses issues such as the management of resources, climate change, and Arctic environment maintenance. The Council has eight voting member states—Canada, United States, Russia, Denmark (Faroe Islands and Greenland), Norway, Iceland, Sweden, and Finland—all of which share a border with the Arctic Ocean. There are six permanent observer states—all of which are European—and multiple ad-hoc observer members, among them: Japan, South Korea, and China. While permanent observer status would grant China unrestricted access to Arctic Council meetings (as an ad-hoc member it must apply for admission each time), under the current system, China’s accession would serve more as a symbolic gesture than one that grants China tangible authority.

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Last month, Japanese Foreign Minister Koichiro Gemba restarted a round of “half-in” strategic dialogue with his Russian counterpart during the latter’s visit to Tokyo. With Vladimir Putin seemingly set to retake control of the Russian presidency this year, Japan sees an opening to make constructive progress on their decades-old territorial dispute with Russia over the Kuril Islands. 

Attempts to decipher which country is the rightful owner of the islands is muddied by a series of treaties dating back to 1855. Russia and Japan have fought two wars since then, but Tokyo claims control of the Southern Kurils as the Northern Territories, and argues that the 1951 San Francisco treaty it signed renouncing ownership of the Kuril Islands doesn’t apply to the four southern islands. Moscow remains unyielding to Japan’s protests that the islands be “returned.”

Gemba has expressed hope that Japan-Russia relations can improve under Putin, who despite his hawkish defense policies, has acquiesced to the Japanese dialogue on the Kurils more than his predecessor Dmitri Medvedev. Driving this issue further, especially for Tokyo, is the recent death of Kim Jong-il in North Korea and the uncertainty this brings to the fragile security architecture in East Asia. After official meetings in Tokyo, the ministers released a statement noting that “Japan-Russia relations are taking on a new importance amid drastic changes in the security environment in the Asia Pacific region.”

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Over the last several years, the United States and India have worked hard to achieve a warming of relations. Both nations share various mutual interests: they face pressure from a rising China, are hopeful on cooperation on sharing nuclear technology, are increasing cooperation on strategic and military matters, and see increasing trade opportunities.

There does, however, seem to be one issue that could drive both nations apart – that of Iran’s nuclear program and India’s need of Iranian oil.

In the face of the new sanctions placed on Iran, India finds itself in a precarious situation.  India seems unable to honor the demand for sanctions that involve stopping the import of Iranian oil. Procuring 12 percent of all its oil imports from Iran, and with little leeway for switching to other suppliers, India’s national interests demand continuing its relationship with Tehran.

David Axe is reporting from Afghanistan.

U.S. Special Forces and commandos from other nations are slated to remain in Afghanistan even after the coalition’s more than 100,000 conventional troops withdraw by the end of 2014. One of the Special Forces’ major responsibilities is training and leading Afghan police forces, widely seen as the first line of defense against Taliban infiltration.

One joint mission in Laghman Province in early February illustrates the relationship between Afghan cops and their international Special Forces advisers. A handful of U.S. and Romanian Special Forces led around 25 Afghan police from the Laghman Provincial Response Company on a mission to search houses in a valley outside the provincial capital of Mehtar Lam.

After sleeping on the ground through the freezing-cold night, the force broke into five elements, each led by a U.S. or Romanian commando. “B,” an American weapons sergeant, led his five Afghans into a blocking position to protect the troops searching the houses.

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Maybe Soviet Fleet Adm. Sergei Gorshkov had it backward: quantity doesn’t have a quality all its own. Instead the speed, mobility, and striking power of U.S. naval ships and aircraft render mere numbers largely moot. The U.S. Navy can do the same, or more, with less. Or at least that's the message Undersecretary of the Navy Robert Work seems to be sending. One hopes he's right. Budgetary exigencies mean that the size of the American navy will remain stagnant at around 285 ships -- even under the most upbeat forecasts. Work struck an ebullient note during the Surface Navy Association National Convention in Washington last month, maintaining that naval commanders "have" Ronald Reagan's fabled 600-ship navy for all intents and purposes. "We span the globe," declared the under secretary, despite fielding the smallest number of warships since World War I.

No navy official should convey defeatism. And he's right in a narrow sense. Ships outfitted with the gee-whiz Aegis combat system -- a combined radar, computer, and fire-control system -- now comprise the hard core of the surface fleet. And if you pitted today's Aegis guided-missile ships against their first-generation ancestors from the early 1980s, bet on today's vessels every time. This has been a refrain in Work's analyses since his days as a researcher at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, before he assumed political office. But piling the latest technical wizardry onto ships and planes doesn't tell the whole story.

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Two recent studies of national cyber power have placed China near the bottom of the table. China is number 13 on the EUI-Booz Allen Hamilton Cyber Power Index, behind Argentina, Mexico, and Brazil but better off than Russia, Turkey, South Africa, and India (the United Kingdom, United States, and Australia are the top three). The Brussels-based Security and Defence Agenda groups China with Italy, Russia, and Poland in the fifth tier (the U.S. and the U.K. are in the third tier, below Finland, Sweden, and Israel; the top group is empty).

These are very subjective studies based on interviews, surveys, and vague metrics. Still, they cut against the grain of popular perceptions. If you were just paying attention to the almost weekly reporting in the Western press about alleged Chinese cyber espionage, you could be forgiven for thinking that China ruled the cyber waves. Yet recent writings in the Chinese press have more of a “China is vulnerable” flavor and suggest that analysts, if not characterizing the country’s cyber strategy as weak, think there’s a great deal of work that remains to be done.