This article draws on material from Geoffrey Gunn's Ho Chi Minh in Hong Kong: Anti-Colonial Networks, Extradition and the Rule of Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021).

Recent archaeological, anthropological, and historical studies have brought the relationships proto-Ainu/Ainu groups had with various neighboring states into light; notably the Yuan Dynasty, the Northern Fujiwara, and the Ando/Matsumae domains. In light of such scholarship, this article argues that Ainu ethnogenesis was marked by cultural practices of state evasion and resistance to state-like structures from emerging within. Moreover, it is argued that Ainu groups utilized their unique position to enrich their own culture by capitalizing on the productive capacities of neighboring states. By using other anthropological studies of state-evading cultures as a theoretical framework, this article examines different elements of Ainu cultures and their relations with states.

War – its preparation, rehearsal, prosecution, and remediation – is increasingly the preoccupation of 21st century states and peoples. Attention in 2022 focussed on the savage fighting in the Black Sea and Ukraine, but preparations, plans and rehearsals on a hitherto unprecedented scale for conflict were underway around the world, notably in the form of US-led and organized exercises in the Baltic, the East and South China Seas, the Mediterranean and the Pacific, with an expansive NATO and US-led regional engagement involving new roles for Japan, India, Australia and others in the Western Pacific.