South East Asia

While much of the bandwidth of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation’s (OIC) summit in Islamabad this month was reserved for the Afghanistan crisis, with the Taliban attending, another window of diplomatic restart was achieved within the Arab Gulf narrative as Syria’s heavily-sanctioned private airline, started direct flights between Damascus and …

Military flyovers from China and tough talk in Washington have made a possible conflict over Taiwan feel more real over the past month. That is true for Chen Yi-guang, a retired finance professional. The Taipei dweller and his family have casually deliberated overstocking on food and water. They could flee …

Russian President Vladimir Putin had been isolated on Ukraine in a series of major summits throughout December, but that changed significantly on Wednesday when his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping offered his strong support, strengthening an emerging Moscow-Beijing axis. The Chinese premier’s alliance with Putin — one of the key factors …

Cognizant of India’s growing strategic denouement with Russia, visibly so in 2021, in wake of Russia’s outsized priority to China and pivot to Pakistan in its South Asian policy formulations, Russian President Putin made a significant six-hour dash to India, to rebalance Russia’s fraying strategic partnership with India on December …

The crown jewel of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) increasingly looks like a powder keg that has exploded. Mass protests have for the past month swept Gwadar, a Chinese-dominated Pakistani port city 90 kilometres from the border with Iran that has long been plagued by intermittent protests and Baloch …

The Chinese military has been holding more live-fire drills in the contested South China Sea this week, state media reported, while accusing the United States of “saber-rattling and making provocations.” The military exercises come as Washington has amplified its concerns about China’s “aggressive actions.” This week the top U.S. diplomat …

India’s regional strategic planning was thrown into disarray by the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan. China has been a growing focus of India’s planning, but the Taliban takeover returns India’s attention to the historic rivalry with Islamabad. Pakistan’s close relations with the Taliban give Pakistan long sought “strategic depth” against New …

The alleged mastermind of the Bali bombings put Southeast Asia’s violent extremists on a collision course with the US and its allies Two decades on, his actions continue to reverberate – not least in the Jemaah Islamiah-linked schools that are the ‘Ivy League’ of Indonesia’s jihadi universe Two decades after …

China’s geo-economic influence is empowering the expansion of its security force posture in the Lower Mekong region, which should be of concern to both maritime Southeast Asia and the United States. While Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia—the geographic core of mainland Southeast Asia—are demonstrating resilience and sustaining some strategic autonomy, several …

While China has tried to rebalance its relations between India and Pakistan before, recent developments in Afghanistan give it fresh impetus to do so. Any future Cold War between the US and China would be entirely different to the previous version for several reasons, the most obvious of which is …