The Joe Biden administration has rarely missed an opportunity to stress the critical importance of Southeast Asia to its Indo-Pacific agenda of containing China’s influence and rise. But until a string of recent high-level visits to the strategic region, observers noted that little had been done to match its words with deeds. Read More Here
With the Taliban’s sudden reconquest of Afghanistan, US President Joe Biden is learning how quickly “inbox problems” can derail other objectives. Whether he will recover and salvage his legislative agenda remains to be seen; history offers conflicting lessons. Read More Here
A supply chain crunch that was meant to be temporary now looks like it will last well into next year as the surging delta variant upends factory production in Asia and disrupts shipping, posing more shocks to the world economy. Read More Here
Before the Radcliffe Line, there was the Durand Line. The British, having seized territory from Afghanistan during the Second Anglo-Afghan War in 1878-80 and annexed it to British India, dispatched Mortimer Durand to formalize those gains with a treaty in 1893. Read More Here
The West’s sluggishness in realising that it has been on the receiving end of China’s elaborate, multidecade hostile strategy has a lot to do with the hubris that followed the United States’ triumph in the Cold War. U.S. policymakers assumed that the CCP would find it nearly impossible to resist the tide of liberalisation set off by the […]
For members of China’s red aristocracy, the problem isn’t billionaires—it’s billionaires they’re not related to. The new rich of the 1980s onward often scrabbled to build connections to powerful families, like the relatives of Gen. Ye Jianying, for exactly this reason. Read More Here
The election of hardline President Ebrahim Raisi in Iran has raised fears that the country will refuse to negotiate with the West. But with Iran’s economy in tatters, and the Sunni Taliban returning to power in neighbouring Afghanistan, Iran’s leaders have every incentive to revive the 2015 nuclear deal. Read More Here
The withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Afghanistan is likely to accelerate current trends in India’s relations with the United States, China, and Russia: greater cooperation with Washington, deeper conflicts with Beijing, and wider fissures in the traditional strategic partnership with Moscow. Read More Here
The White House is moving quickly to contain the fallout from the botched Afghanistan withdrawal, hoping to blunt possible damage to the rest of the president’s agenda. Read More Here
Policymakers in the United States and Europe have adopted the position that their mission is to promote democracy worldwide, regularly arguing that if they fail, authoritarian governments will exploit American restraint and join forces. Read More Here
