In Asian media this week: Washington sees global role for South Korean navy; the military cements government control in Pakistan; Palestine is an obstacle to Trump’s new Middle East plan; Japan prepares for drawn-out dispute with China; why South Korea is turning its back on coal power; and boot camps for beauty queens.

The US has told South Korea it wants its future nuclear-powered fast attack submarines to be used in joint efforts counter China.

It also sees a future global role for the South Korean navy.

US chief of naval operations, Admiral Daryl Caudle, said the submarine would inevitably deepen US-South Korean strategic co-operation in the Indo-Pacific region.

Donald Trump at a summit with South Korean President Lee Jae Myung late last month approved Seoul’s ambition to build a nuclear-powered submarine.

Caudle said on a recent visit to Seoul: “Utilisation of that submarine to counter China, I think, is a natural expectation. With that type of capability, the United States would expect that partnership – working as an alliance – to meet our combined goals on what the United States considers our pacing threat, which is China. I think to a large extent Korea shares our concerns with China as well.”

The Korea Herald reported Caudle said the difference between a nuclear-powered fast attack submarine and a conventional one was significant. Nuclear-powered submarines were much more capable.

“A nuclear-powered submarine is truly worldwide deployable,” Caudle said. “As they say in the move Spiderman, with great power comes great responsibility. I think there will be a responsibility for Korea to deploy those submarines globally, to move away from just being a regional navy to a global navy.”

An analytical article in The Korea Times said that Lee, in his pitch to Trump, explicitly cited China, alongside North Korea, as his reason for pursuing nuclear-powered submarines.

Lee had been thought to be sympathetic to Beijing and his sudden naming of China as a security challenge had raised eyebrows, the story said. It quoted retired navy captain Park Bum-jin as saying this was calculated messaging aimed at securing US approval.

“He intentionally mentioned China, along with North Korea, because he knew Washington is pre-occupied with China,” Park said.

North Korea said South Korea’s plan to build nuclear-powered submarines would trigger a nuclear domino effect, The Asahi Shimbun newspaper said. It reported the state news agency KCNA as saying the agreement showed the true colours of the confrontational will of Washington and Seoul to remain hostile to Pyongyang.

A commentary in Global Times, an official newspaper in China, said the submarine development would trigger a chain reaction of military competition and strategic instability in the region.

New law destroys Pakistan’s rule of law

Two judges of Pakistan’s Supreme Court resigned late last week, just hours after a new constitutional amendment was signed into law. They said the amendment was an affront to the judiciary and the constitution. The 27th constitutional amendment placed a new federal constitutional court above all other courts.

The amendment also elevated the army chief, Field Marshal Asim Munir to the new position of chief of defence forces and granted lifetime immunity from all legal action to Munir (and future five-star ranked officers) and the president.

Dawn newspaper supported the resignation of senior justices Syed Mansoor Ali Shah and Athar Minallah. It said in an editorial critics argued the Supreme Court had been reduced to a glorified district court. “Given the extensive powers handed over to [the new court], that assessment is not off the mark,” it said.

Zahid Hussain, a Dawn senior columnist, said the amendment amounted to the demolition of the independence of the judiciary and the surrender of even the semblance of civilian rule.

The new amendment would provide constitutional cover for the country’s march towards becoming a military state. “It is unprecedented in a democratic country not to hold leaders and state officials to account for their actions,” Hussain said. ”This is not only a negation of democratic norms but also of the rule of law.”

An article in The Indian Express said the amendment smashed Pakistan's current constitutional framework. The article, written by Bashir Ali Abbas, a strategic affairs researcher, said the amendment had fulfilled Asim Munir’s ambition to make Pakistan a “hard state”, allowed the military to cement the country’s hybrid model of governance, where the country retained a civilian administration but the military were in charge, and institutionalised the military’s central role in foreign policy.

“It is already evident that the army chief has formally cemented the pre-eminence of his office over the civilian leadership,” Abbas said.

Saudi Arabia wants pathway to two-state solution

The evolution of Saudi Arabia’s relations with the US is at an inflexion point.

The two countries’ close ties date back 80 years, when Abdulaziz Ibn Saudi, the founder of the modern kingdom, and President Franklin Roosevelt forged a partnership based on American access to Saudi oil and American security guarantees to the House of Saud.

This week’s meeting between Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (known as MbS) and Donald Trump was aimed at rebooting the partnership and reaching a new grand bargain, says a commentary in _The Indian Expres_s newspaper.

The agenda, says international affairs academic and contributing editor C Raja Mohan, covered building a broad economic and technological relationship, strengthening security ties and re-ordering the Middle East.

MbS also wants Trump’s support for his looming succession, Mohan says. King Salman, 89, is frail and Saudi successions are rarely straightforward. “American endorsement could be critical,” he says.

Equally important for MbS is strong backing for this Vision 2030 agenda – transforming Saudi Arabia from an extractive state to a diversified, globally competitive economy and a more open society.

Saudi Arabia remains an indispensable US partner. Washington needs Riyadh’s co-operation in stabilising the Middle East and continuing US primacy. Trump also wants Saudi recognition of Israel and expansion of the Abraham Accords between Israel and several Arab states.

Palestine, however, present an obstacle to Trump’s plans. Riyadh insists on a credible pathway to Palestinian statehood as a pre-condition but Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu is under pressure to avoid any gesture towards Palestinian statehood. Trump is pressing him to show some flexibility.

“A Saudi-Israel normalisation and expanded Abraham Accords could herald a different political architecture for the Middle East,” Mohan said. “Yet Israel’s reluctance to concede even minimally on Palestinian statehood, and the resistance of its supporters in Washington to any American grand bargain with MbS, mean expectations of a dramatic breakthrough must be tempered.”

An Al Jazeera explainer notes that Trump recognised Saudi Arabia as a major non-NATO ally, joining 19 other countries (including Australia) and gaining expedited access to US military hardware. Trump said he would authorise the sale of F-35 fighters to Saudi Arabia and said they would not be downgraded in a way that would ensure Israel’s regional military superiority – a departure from previous policy.

The report quotes MbS as saying Saudi Arabia wants to be part of the Abraham Accords. “But we also want to be sure that we secure a clear path [to a] two-state solution,” he said.

Diplomatic row the worst for years

The diplomatic row between China and Japan over Taiwan has now continued for two weeks and Japanese media are expressing concern that it might drag on longer.

Nikkei Asia, the online politics and business magazine, said concerns were growing that the rift might descend into a drawn-out crisis, similar to the dispute more than a decade ago over the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea.

In 2012, Tokyo decided to nationalise the Islands, claimed by China as the Diaoyu Islands. High level talks were frozen until Xi Jinping met Japan’s then-prime minister, Shinzo Abe, in 2014.

The row this time is over remarks by new Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi that Chinese military action against Taiwan might constitute a “survival-threatening situation” and trigger Japan’s right to self-defence.

Beijing, which sees Taiwan as part of China, retaliated by warning Chinese people against travelling to Japan, or against studying in Japan, and re-instating a ban on Japanese seafood, imposed over the release of wastewater from the Fukushima nuclear plant. In reporting the revived ban, The Japan Times said officials were preparing for a prolonged dispute.

China has launched a war of words against Japan. Global Times, an English-language official paper reprinted from the People’s Daily a Zhong Sheng (Voice of China) commentary. The column is regarded as an authoritative expression of the Communist Party’s views.

The commentary said Takaichi’s remarks on Taiwan were akin to invoking the spirit of militarism. “Historically, Japan’s militarism has often used the so-called existential crisis as a pretext for external aggression,” it said.

Japan sent a senior diplomat to Beijing to try to smooth things over – but later downplayed the importance of his visit.

A commentary written by Japanese academic Hiroaki Kato and published in The Diplomat, said Takaichi’s remarks did not represent a departure from previous government positions. “What followed was an overreaction to a hypothetical statement about the Japanese government’s range of potential responses to a situation that may never occur,” he said.

But an article written by Wenran Jiang, a Chinese academic living in Canada, and published in Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post, said her remarks were a strategic pivot away from Japan’s post-war pacifist ethos. “They reflect a calculated alignment with containment strategies aimed at curtailing China’s rise,” he said.

The Asahi Shimbun newspaper said in an editorial Takaichi’s comments went beyond parliamentary statements and official positions of past Cabinets, including that of Shinzo Abe.

“Now there is a need to stop the situation from worsening further and end the unproductive confrontation,” the editorial said.

Drive to restore pledge to phase out fossil fuels

An international commitment to move away from fossil fuels did not appear in a UN climate declaration until the COP28 conference in 2023. Last year, at COP29, hosted by Azerbaijan, an economy that depends on fossil fuels, the pledge went missing from the final text.

This year, Brazil, the host of COP30, was determined to place phasing out fossil fuels at the centre of discussions, Singapore’s The Straits Times reported. Before the conference started, Brazil’s President, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, called on world leaders to draw up road maps to cutting dependence on fossil fuels. Momentum against their use had grown, the paper said.

This was the international context of South Korea’s decision, announced at the start of the second week of COP30, to join a global coalition aimed at phasing out the use of coal.

The domestic context was that a week earlier Seoul had decided on its greenhouse gas targets. The Korea Herald said the goal was to reduce emissions by 53-to-61 per cent from 2018 levels by 2035. Transport and power generation faced the steepest cuts.

In a later story, the Herald reported South Korea had joined the Powering Past Coal Alliance, a significant step in the country’s shift toward a cleaner energy future. The alliance, of 180 national and sub-national participants, seeks to phase out unabated coal power (coal-fired electricity generation without emissions-reduction technologies). South Korea is the second Asian nation to join, after Singapore.

South Korea’s electricity system was still dominated by fossil fuels, the paper said. The country operated the world’s seventh-largest coal-power fleet, by capacity.

The Government had announced plans to retire 40 coal power station units by 2040. A plan for a further 20 plants would be unveiled next year after public discussions of environmental and economic considerations.

As COP30 neared its conclusion, both President Lula and UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres arrived at the conference, the Herald said, quoting Greenpeace as saying this was a sign they meant business.

And scores of countries, rich and poor, were pushing for a detailed road map on how to phase out fossil fuels, the paper said.

Why beauty contests create a buzz in developing world

International beauty contests are viewed by many in the West, aside from former Miss Universe owner Donald Trump, as sexist and passe. But in many countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America, they are seen as a key to a golden, glamorous future.

In the Philippines, a country whose women have won more beauty competitions (known as “pageants”) than any other, winners are a symbol of national pride. The business of beauty contests is taken so seriously, says Nikkei Asia, that “boot camps” for beauty queens, offering intensive training in how to become a champion, have turned that country into a powerhouse of the beauty contest world.

“Oh my God! You literally have to train here,” said Sanne-Esmee Walstra, from the Netherlands. She was training with boot camp owner Rodin Flores, preparing for a contest called Miss Earth. With her was Divine Ekimini Nelson, a student pilot and computer scientist from Nigeria. “I’m here to get new knowledge,” she said.

Miss Earth is one of the ‘Big Four’ competitions, along with Miss Universe, Miss World and Miss International. The industry’s self-estimate is that it is worth US$1 billion (A$1.54 billion) globally.

In the West, beauty contests have faced criticism since the rise of feminism decades ago. “Beauty pageants are a patriarchal enterprise,” Sofie Zeruto wrote in 2023 in America’s Brown Political Review. “The notion of ranking women based on attractiveness, even with the added modern categories of personality and intelligence, is dehumanising.”

Boot camp operator Flores told Nikkei Asia he has scientific way of producing winners, a holistic system of training. Gerry Diaz, another boot camp manager, said: “We operate like a car assembly plant.” His curriculum involved perfecting a range of skills, such as fitness, poise, mental fortitude and speech and diction.

Criticism within the Philippines is rare, the article said. The success of a Filipina on the international beauty stage, it said, is celebrated with the fervour typically reserved for Olympic gold medallists.

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.