Through early and efficient border closures, uncharacteristic official transparency and strategic Covid-19 diplomacy, communist-run Vietnam is fast emerging as a likely post-pandemic winner. For a nation that has long-sought to secure it’s place as a reliable and responsible global actor, the coronavirus outbreak and its minimal impact on Vietnam has presented the nation an opportunity […]
Now that the pandemic crisis is hammering America’s finances, U.S. strategy risks veering even further into permanent insolvency. Even before the crisis, the military demands of an intense global competition with China, Russia, and secondary competitors like Iran and North Korea were becoming financially untenable. Now, the costs of the current crisis — in both […]
In the mid-twentieth century, modern art and design represented the liberalism, individualism, dynamic activity, and creative risk possible in a free society. Jackson Pollock’s gestural style, for instance, drew an effective counterpoint to Nazi, and then Soviet, oppression. Modernism, in fact, became a weapon of the Cold War. Both the State Department and the CIA supported exhibitions […]
Over recent weeks, the United States and China have been using increasingly strong rhetoric around COVID-19. The war of words had real-life consequences in late March when a meeting of the G7 failed to agree a joint statement following US State Department’s insistence on referring to the virus as the “Wuhan Virus”. How have the two […]
The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) is a global public health disaster of almost biblical proportions. It is a once-in-a-century occurrence that threatens to destroy countless lives, ruin economies, and stress national and international institutions to their breaking point. And, even after the virus recedes, the geopolitical wreckage it leaves in its wake could be profound. Read Here […]
As most Southeast Asian governments anticipate China’s potential reaction and adjust their behaviours accordingly, China no longer needs to exert explicit pressure. The COVID-19 crisis has made this trend more obvious, highlighting not only the internalisation of this “privileged relationship” but also a more disturbing – but unspoken – reality: Southeast Asian countries’ acceptance of […]
The United States has accused China of using the global coronavirus pandemic to further expand its “unlawful claims” in the South China Sea. In a strongly worded statement, the US State Department gave Washington’s view of last week’s collision of a Chinese coastguard ship and a Vietnamese fishing vessel near the disputed Paracel Islands. Read […]
A pandemic is no time to tout the superiority of any country’s governance system or approach, let alone compete for global dominance. Instead of congratulating itself on having pushed back COVID-19, China should quietly win trust by helping the United States and other countries, not out of strategic interest, but on moral grounds. Read Here […]
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. Read Here – South China Morning Post
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. Read Here – The National Interest
