South East Asia

Both sides want peace and stability in the region. What’s next for the bilateral relationship as the U.S. withdraws from Afghanistan? For the last two decades, U.S.-Pakistan relations have been defined by the war in Afghanistan and counterterrorism concerns. With the United States military withdrawal almost complete, the relationship should …

Introduction On July 7, 2021 Iran hosted talks between the Afghan Government and Taliban (the Taliban delegation was led by Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai). The same day, the Taliban attacked the Badghis provincial capital Qalat-i-Naw. Iranian Foreign Minister, Javad Zarif emphatically stated that the Afghan people should decide their own …

On June 6, 2021, a bipartisan team of U.S. senators visited Taiwan, arriving aboard a C-17 U.S. military transport plane. Netizens from Mainland China were surprised that Beijing did not react strongly to the presence of a U.S. military airplane in Taiwan, since in the past Chinese diplomats and media …

Introduction At the Fourth China-Afghanistan-Pakistan Trilateral Foreign Ministers’ Dialogue, held in Guiyang, China on June 3, 2021, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, Afghan Foreign Minister Mohammad Hanif Atmar, and Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi discussed various challenges to Afghan peace in the wake of the announcement of the unilateral …

Official celebrations have been taking place throughout China to mark the 100th anniversary of the Communist Party of China (CPC). Xi Jinping and other leaders of the ruling CPC pretend that there is an unbroken chain from the founding congress of the party in July 1921 to the present-day CPC. …

The two-decade war in Afghanistan has given U.S. spies a perch for keeping tabs on terrorist groups that might once again use the beleaguered nation to plan attacks against the U.S. homeland. But that will end soon. The withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan is leaving intelligence agencies scrambling for …

On June 27, 2021, Syria-based Saudi jihadi cleric Abdallah Al-Muhaysini tweeted [1] a call to bolster ties between Turkey and Afghanistan’s Taliban. Commenting briefly on a potentially closer relationship, Al-Muhaysini wrote: “It is proper for Muslim Turkey, which supported people and provided refuge to the oppressed, to be supportive of …

The United States vowed to destroy the Taliban. Today, they are stronger than ever. But will that last? In early October 2001, then-U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell sent a cable to his envoy in Pakistan, ordering her to get a message to the head of the Taliban through Pakistani …

Tanzania, Cambodia, and the UAE are on China’s wish list—and now Kiribati, within striking distance of Hawaii. On a small, sandy atoll smack dab in the middle of the Pacific Ocean lies a rundown airstrip that served as a critical U.S. staging and supply hub during World War II. Today, …

What does China want the narrative to be? The ideal outcome would be that the virus originated outside of China. Failing that, an acceptable outcome would be, as highlighted in a recent Wall Street Journal (WSJ) article, that the virus “that killed millions of people and shattered the global economy” …