South East Asia

The US trade and tech wars against China continued under President Joe Biden, who escalated export controls related to technology. The US wants to cut China’s access to advanced semiconductors and the equipment used to manufacture them in order to prevent their use for military purposes. The restrictions follow the CHIPS and Science …

Even international alliances can unravel when nations confront the insanity of a nuclear holocaust. An illustration of this point occurred recently, after Vladimir Putin once again threatened Ukraine and other nations with nuclear war. “To defend Russia and our people, we doubtlessly will use all weapons resources at our disposal,” …

Pakistan is struggling to strike a balance in its relations with the US and China, as rivalry and competition between the two superpowers are set to spark geopolitical turmoil in South Asia. The growing tension in the region has made Islamabad noticeably ambivalent about its foreign policy postures. Although Islamabad …

The redeeming quality of a tense G20 held in Bali – otherwise managed by laudable Indonesian graciousness – was to sharply define which way the geopolitical winds are blowing. That was encapsulated in the Summit’s two highlights: the much anticipated China-US presidential meeting – representing the most important bilateral relationship …

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine seems to have captured worldwide attention; yet under the Taliban, Afghanistan continues to exist in a state of ‘durable disorder,’ limping along without either fully collapsing or stabilizing. The immediate future in Afghanistan looks bleak, with little confidence that the Taliban will be able to fix …

China and India, after months of refusing to condemn Russia’s war in Ukraine, did not stand in the way of the release this week of a statement by the world’s leading economies that strongly criticizes Moscow. Could this, at last, signal a bold new policy change by Beijing and New …

At the recent Commonwealth for Independent States (CIS) summit held on October 14 in Astana, Kazakhstan, Tajik President Emomali Rahmon expressed previously inconceivable remarks. His public admonishment of Russian President Vladimir Putin to treat Central Asian states with more respect showed the growing confidence of Central Asian leaders amid Russia’s …

Xi Jinping Brings Back Marxism In 1978, Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping announced that his country would make a break with the past. After decades of political purges, economic autarky, and suffocating social control under Mao Zedong, Deng began stabilizing Chinese politics, removing bans on private enterprise and foreign investment and …

The People’s Republic of China (PRC) has finally initiated its highly anticipated railway project to Uzbekistan. On the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit held in September 2022, the official decision was made to begin actively working on the railway (The Diplomat, September 26). This fits into trends …

Xi Would Prefer Détente—Not War—With America At a time of growing tension between Beijing and Washington, China’s 20th Party Congress in October unsettled many outside observers. During the proceedings, not only did Chinese President Xi Jinping stack China’s all-important Politburo Standing Committee with loyalists and secure a third term in …