South East Asia

Principal Findings What’s new? Amid China’s increasing assertiveness in the South China Sea, and the deepening involvement of the United States and its allies, Vietnam is navigating a steadily thornier set of policy challenges. As the disputes intensify, the risk of armed conflict in the Sea is growing. Why does it …

China intends to establish a permanent military presence on the Atlantic Ocean in the tiny Central African country of Equatorial Guinea, according to classified US intelligence reports cited by US officials. A report published in Wall Street Journal said Chinese intention to establish its first permanent military presence has raised …

A historical analogy may be necessary to fully understand the looming conflict between Chinese authoritarianism and the uneasy democracies of the world. In the run up to the First World War, Germany pursued a combination of militarism, overbearing diplomacy, nationalism and brinkmanship in order to achieve policy goals, despite the …

Intensifying Russian and Chinese joint military activities around Japan are intended to cow Tokyo into timidity. They are likely to have the opposite effect. The Russian heavy bomber’s propellers whipped up snow from the runway at the Ukrainka base in Russia’s Far East as it took off to join its …

China and Russia have strengthened their political, economic and military relations this year, despite their uneasy history in the past, as both countries say they resent what they call growing pressure from the West. So far this year, the two have held a series of military exercises and issued joint …

In the first week of September, Pakistan’s ambassador to the United Nations, Munir Akram in an interview given to Associated Press unfolded Islamabad’s plan to expeditiously resolve the crisis in Afghanistan created by Taliban’s forcible takeover of Kabul. He urged the international community to adopt this ‘three-pronged approach’ – one, …

The European Union and the United States have expressed strong concern over what they see as China’s “problematic and unilateral actions” in the South and East China Seas, as well as the Taiwan Strait. A joint press statement issued Thursday after the first day of the second high-level meeting of …

The United States is tracking enough indicators and warnings surrounding Russian military activity near Ukraine to trigger “a lot of concern” and Russian rhetoric appears increasingly strident, the top U.S. military officer said late on Thursday, Reuters reported. Army General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, declined …

Naval ships from Russia and countries in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) are holding their first-ever joint exercise, signalling Moscow’s intent to engage the region though not heralding a major shift in its geopolitical strategy, analysts say. The first ARNEX-21 joint exercise opened on Wednesday in Indonesian waters …

Get the Marines ready. Store the supplies. Marshal the allies. The United States is getting ready for war (the preferable term in Washington is policing) in the Indo-Pacific region, and is hoping to do so with a range of expanded bases across client states, or what it prefers to call …