South East Asia

China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, held a phone call with Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov on Thursday after Russian troops invaded Ukraine and began airstrikes on numerous Ukrainian cities. The call is part of a delicate geopolitical balancing act on China’s part. Beijing has been careful not to explicitly endorse …

When President Donald Trump lost the 2020 US presidential election to democratic candidate Joe Biden, many leaders in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) saw an ominous warning that democracy may again take center stage in US foreign policy, with autocrats trying to consolidate power in their hands. However, …

Taiwan scrambled fighter jets Thursday in response to nine Chinese aircraft entering its air defense identification zone, the Taiwan Ministry of National Defense said on its website. Chinese aircraft have encroached on Taiwan’s air defense zone with increasing frequency during the past year, but Thursday’s sorties come at a particularly …

Pakistan’s Taliban movement, led by its most vicious and largest group, Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and apparently buoyed by the recent triumph of their ethnic Pashtun cousins in Afghanistan, is revitalizing its strategy either for regional autonomy or to overthrow Pakistan’s government and replace it with an Islamic Emirate of Pakistan …

When President Donald Trump lost the 2020 US presidential election to democratic candidate Joe Biden, many leaders in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) saw an ominous warning that democracy may again take center stage in US foreign policy, with autocrats trying to consolidate power in their hands.

After alleged images of the J-10C fighter jet with the marking of the Pakistan Air Force recently emerged on social media and were widely circulated by media outlets, Chinese analysts on Sunday lauded the latest defense cooperation between China and Pakistan, saying that the move yields great significance to both …

The fragile geopolitical nature of the Balkans has allowed Russia to consistently undermine Western integration attempts in the region. While foreign interference is nothing new in Europe’s underbelly, it has historically been limited to regional powers and the U.S. But China’s recent collaboration with Russia in supporting ethnic separatism in …

With corruption playing a significant role in the outcome of recent security force assistance missions, a different approach to tackling the problem is needed. An issue that haunts more or less all security force assistance missions to various degrees is widespread and large-scale corruption in host institutions. Such corruption can …

Despite the optics of a Sino-Russian presidential summit at a time of heightened tensions with the West, the trust upon which their bilateral relationship is built remains shaky. President Xi Jinping and President Vladimir Putin held a much-vaunted meeting in Beijing on 4 February, on the cusp of the Winter …

On January 21, 2022, Vice Admiral Kay-Achim Schönbach attended a talk in New Delhi, India, organized by the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defense Studies and Analyses. Schönbach was speaking as the chief of Germany’s navy during his visit to the institute. “What he really wants is respect,” Schönbach said, referring …