With the most chaotic US election in memory four weeks out, it’s safe to say Asia is not sure what to expect. Neither do Americans, of course. Not with Covid-19-addled President Donald Trump ready to do seemingly anything to cling to the White House. Trump is not just cheating in plain sight, he’s telegraphing lawsuits and manoeuvres […]
What would a second Trump term look like for America and East Asia? Second presidential terms usually range from lackluster to disastrous. Bill Clinton’s second term was mired in scandal. George W. Bush saw his popularity plunge into the thirties amid failure in Iraq and a financial crisis. Barack Obama oversaw prolonged economic stagnation that […]
The relation between society and the authoritarian presidential state envisaged by the Twentieth Amendment will debilitate constitutional democracy in another highly significant way, and that is by destroying what little remains of the unstated rules of civility, restraint, proportion, tolerance, and accommodation in Sri Lankan political culture. Read Here | Groundviews
Former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe managed to strike a delicate diplomatic balance between China and the United States. But as Sino-American tensions escalate, his successor, Yoshihide Suga, will find it increasingly difficult to avoid taking sides, especially on technology issues and security arrangements. Read Here | Project Syndicate
Suga Yoshihide, the chief cabinet secretary throughout Abe’s record-long term, does not have a flashy image, nor a celebrity profile. But he is known as a tenacious political fighter, seeking to reform the LDP from within and to force through incremental but profound changes to the major institutions that control Japan’s society. He has warned […]
Yoshihide Suga, the low-key son of a farmer who will be named Japan’s next prime minister on Wednesday, is in many ways a policy clone of recently resigned Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. But that doesn’t mean Suga will bring anything like the same effort Abe did to bolstering Japan’s defense capabilities—a transition in Japanese politics […]
China and Australia’s trade is interlinked in many areas but the largest value items are commodities Beijing arguably cannot readily source in sufficient supply elsewhere. This is often missed when Australia and China’s trade relationship is weighed against security ties with the US and a rapidly changing world order some view as a New Cold […]
Asian history is now repeating itself. Like Japan, China is now another textbook example of power from wealth—and wealth from trade and commerce. For well over a century, China suffered under the West’s humiliation. Indeed, it suffered concurrent humiliations under Japanese aggression while fighting its own civil war. Read Here | The National Interest
The overall assessment is that Abe was a “pragmatic realist,” … But such assessments miss one critical point: Abe took Japan’s relationship with South Korea, one of Japan’s most important security and trade partners, and drove it into a ditch for reasons neither realistic nor pragmatic. Read Here | Foreign Policy
As Myanmar enters an election season, the economy, Covid-19 and issues of war and peace are expected to dominate the campaign trail discourse. But for the international community, speculation centers on which direction foreign policy will likely take after the poll: toward an even stronger and closer relationship with China or a shift towards a […]
looking beyond borders 