The Biden administration’s announcement on Monday that it would soon export tens of millions of doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine completed a dramatic policy U-turn. It came after a tumultuous week in which the administration’s carefully constructed pandemic-diplomacy plan fell apart as the COVID-19 crisis in India worsened. Read Here | The Atlantic
The number of infections in India surpassed 17 million in recent days, and the official death toll now exceeds 190,000. How did everything go so wrong so soon after India recovered from the first wave of the pandemic last year, resumed normal life and economic activity, and started exporting vaccines? Read Here | Project Syndicate
Across Asia, in places such as Myanmar, India, and Hong Kong, leaders that espouse nationalist rhetoric and bemoan their former colonial overlords see no issue with deploying laws designed by those foreign masters against their own people. These lasting vestiges of the British empire are draconian, overly broad, and vaguely worded, but they persist very […]
A more assertive China is extending its influence across the Indo-Pacific and around the world. Existing alliances and institutions aren’t up to the task of addressing the consequences, and domestic politics across the region mean that an “Asian NATO” is off the table. That’s where the Quad comes in… Read Here | Foreign Affairs
For 24 hours last week Pakistan gave everyone cause for hope. On Wednesday, Pakistan’s Finance Minister Hammad Azhar disclosed that the government was lifting the ban on import of sugar and cotton from India–something that was widely seen as a signal of a further thaw in the otherwise frosty relations between the two neighbouring countries, […]
Forget the poetic flap of a butterfly’s wings in Beijing causing rain in Central Park. Climate issues in Asia-Pacific are measured in superlatives. The world’s biggest population. Two of the three largest carbon dioxide-emitting countries and the largest share of emissions globally. The most exposed to extreme weather events. Some of the smallest and most vulnerable […]
One factor that begs the attention of many is the United States’ role during Bangladesh’s war of independence in 1971. Why did the United States choose to look away while its ally was involved in systematic massacres? Blood’s memoir and Bass’s investigative reporting seek to answer that question and, in so doing, highlight how the […]
Whither the “Quad”? Is the Quad, or Quadrilateral Security Dialogue—a loose grouping of likeminded Indo-Pacific nations—a military coalition in the making? Maybe—but how tight that fellowship becomes is largely up to Communist China, the provocateur that brought disparate partners together in the first place. Read Here | The National Interest
Pakistan has unveiled a new “geo-economic vision” that offers to “bury the past” with neighbouring rival India if it reciprocates with a “relaxation” on the two sides’ long-running dispute over Kashmir. Pakistan’s olive branch announcement, made on March 18, comes after last month’s bilateral resolution to revive an 18-year-old ceasefire agreement to end Kashmir’s Line […]
Ahead of an all-crucial meeting with high-ranking Chinese officials later this week in Alaska, top Biden administration officials are rallying regional allies for a united front against the Asian powerhouse. In their first foreign trip (March 15-18), the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin have embarked on “two plus […]
looking beyond borders 