South East Asia

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is expected Thursday to approve moving the only aircraft carrier based in the Asia-Pacific region to the Middle East, two defense officials told VOA. The rare movement of the USS Ronald Reagan, which is based in Yokosuka, Japan, and usually deploys around the Pacific, would …

China’s military may be examining its decades-old space program for ways to improve data collection and disrupt the satellites of other countries if needed, analysts said this week following a Mars landing and a debris crash into the Indian Ocean. Earlier this month China placed a rover on Mars, the …

In August 2020, China fired what were reported to be anti-ship ballistic missiles (ASBM) into the South China Sea. The missile firings were the second time that China launched such missiles into the disputed waters. The first occurred in June 2019, when China fired six ASBMs into the area. Whether …

China has invested heavily in African infrastructure, often in return for guarantees of access to strategic military or economic opportunities. Investing in relationships with elites has enabled China to maintain strong ties with a number of African governments, especially autocracies. The absence of Chinese colonial history in Africa results in …

Without a large military footprint, can the United States help Afghan women and minorities protect their rights? For the Dasht-e-Barchi neighborhood of Kabul, home to the Hazara minority group, the devastating May 8 bombing outside a school is part of a disturbing trend of attacks in the area. The bombing …

On March 15, the China’s National Bureau of Statistics released some of the country’s economic data for January and February. In terms of investment, consumption, and industrial production, the figures for the first two months this year all showed double-digit year-on-year growth. It should be emphasized that the first two …

The world is wiser with the emergence of documentary evidence that China discussed weaponizing the SARS virus since 2015, together with studying the effects of a biological strike including on the health-hospital infrastructure of the target country and put in place the propaganda to absolve itself of any blame before …

But the US withdrawal is no longer conditions-based, which means the Taliban have achieved their number one objective without bending on any of the key issues such as their continuing links with the al-Qaeda or their agenda to reestablish the Islamic Emirate… Apparently, all that the US extracted out of …

The threat of violent extremists attacking the United States or allies from Afghanistan has been greatly reduced over the past 20 years, and any remaining threat emanating from the country can be addressed without a persistent U.S. military presence there, DOD officials told the House Armed Services Committee today. President …

The US–China rivalry has many dimensions, but at its heart is a strategic contest over primacy in the Western Pacific. Although this contest is being waged on many fronts — including economic, diplomatic and ideological — it is essentially military. China seeks to challenge US leadership in the Western Pacific …