The U.S. media has been full of dire warnings of an imminent U.S. attack on North Korea. Two aircraft carriers are now within firing distance of North Korea. They’re part of a military exercise in the Sea of Japan in which South Korea and the United States are...
The Philippines would seem to have won a major victory against China in a recent international court ruling in the Hague, which voided Chinese claims to parts of the South China Sea claimed by the Philippines and other Southeast Asian countries. In a major rebuke of...
Two recent close encounters between US spy planes and Chinese jets spell trouble for relations between Washington and Beijing. The first, between a US EP-3 spy plane and two Chinese jets over the South China Sea (SCS) near China’s Hainan Island, was strikingly similar...
By now, the phrase “Pacific Pivot” gives off a whiff of nostalgia. The Obama administration’s announcement of its intention three years ago to reorient U.S. foreign policy toward Asia seems to belong to an entirely different era. It was a time when the United States...
The past six months have seen an incredible ratcheting up of tensions in the East and South China Seas, where the world's three largest economies—China, the United States, and Japan—are caught up in an increasingly tangled web of territorial disputes, competing...
As U.S. President Barack Obama descends on the Philippines, Manila and Washington are rushing to complete negotiations on an Agreement on Enhanced Defense Cooperation (AEDC) between the two countries. The Philippines’ territorial disputes with China are one major...
Last year, the Philippines brought a complaint against China’s aggressive actions in the West Philippine Sea to the United Nations Arbitral Tribunal. The Chinese “were really unprepared for that and were really embarrassed by it,” one of Vietnam’s top experts on...
The countries of Southeast Asia are planning to integrate their region in 2015. Meanwhile, in the dynamic city of Bangkok, the government of Thailand seems to be heading in the opposite direction, as recent protests have entered a ”shut down” phase. This was the...
While the proponents of the U.S. pivot to Asia argue that it enhances regional security, it is in reality precipitating a much more explicit Sino-American rivalry, thus undermining the prospects of an amicable and pluralistic regional order. Ultimately, America’s growing military presence in the region could backfire, giving birth to what it dearly seeks to prevent.
A new Syrian opposition group is trying to resurrect the nonviolent tactics that the opposition used during the first few months of the rebellion last year, when demonstrations and calls for civic activism filled the squares of towns across Syria. But more important is who formed the group: Syrian Alawites.