Chinese diplomats are taking an increasingly strident tone on US President Donald Trump’s favourite battleground Twitter, as Beijing works to shift the narrative away from its handling of the coronavirus outbreak, which was first reported in central China last year.
Despite all of Washington’s platitudes about the world’s oldest and largest democracies uniting in common cause to uphold a free and open Indo-Pacific region, rhetoric has failed to match reality. Pinning American hopes on India saving an outdated order is wishful thinking at its worst.
New Delhi’s interest in bolstering ties with Brazil’s new leader suggests that it is aware of the potential the bilateral relationship holds. For New Delhi, relations with Brazil are of the highest importance in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), which until recently was considered a “forgotten continent” in Indian foreign policy. Bolsonaro’s visit gives us an opportunity to examine India’s engagement with LAC, which, although neglected, has great potential.
The British government still needs to negotiate the terms of its future relations with the EU, a task so complex that many doubt it can be completed by the end of the year, when another ominous deadline looms. In the meantime, the country will be stuck in EU purgatory, bound by the bloc’s laws and regulations but powerless to shape them. Trade deals with other countries remain to be hammered out. And at home, the toxic fallout of Brexit division will linger…
China and Myanmar agreed to accelerate several joint infrastructure deals and projects during President Xi Jinping’s historic visit to the country, giving new impetus to commercial relations that have revived under Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi. Xi visited Myanmar on January 17 and 18, marking the first time a Chinese leader traveled to the Southeast Asian country in nearly two decades and coinciding with the 70th anniversary of the two sides establishing formal diplomatic relations.
…India is facing a chasm between its global aspirations and the reality of its national power. A confluence of disruptive factors has now made the business-as-usual approach simply unsustainable. A course correction if not undertaken and executed sensibly could imperil India’s rise for the next generation.
Local conflicts serve as mirrors for global trends. The ways they ignite, unfold, persist, and are resolved reflect shifts in great powers’ relations, the intensity of their competition, and the breadth of regional actors’ ambitions. They highlight issues with which the international system is obsessed and those toward which it is indifferent. Today these wars tell the story of a global system caught in the early swell of sweeping change—and of regional leaders both emboldened and frightened by the opportunities such a transition presents.
How Asia is changing and what are the challenges for 2020 … a presidential election year in the United States and how it will change the dynamics between Washington and key Asian capitals after a bruising trade war with China that impacted the global economy. Then there are elections in Taiwan, North Korea.. and other elephants in the room.
A stable world order is a rare thing. When one does arise, it tends to come after a great convulsion that creates both the conditions and the desire for something new. It requires a stable distribution of power and broad acceptance of the rules that govern the conduct of international relations. It also needs skillfull statecraft, since an order is made, not born.
In his speech at a rally in Delhi on Sunday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi referred to India’s expanding friendships in the Middle East during the last few years. The PM, however, might be in the danger of squandering a major diplomatic achievement, if he miscalculates the external costs of the government’s domestic politics. Worse still, Delhi might be giving an opportunity to an otherwise divided world, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, to agree in their disapproval of India’s domestic politics.
