South East Asia

At the recent Commonwealth for Independent States (CIS) summit held on October 14 in Astana, Kazakhstan, Tajik President Emomali Rahmon expressed previously inconceivable remarks. His public admonishment of Russian President Vladimir Putin to treat Central Asian states with more respect showed the growing confidence of Central Asian leaders amid Russia’s …

Xi Jinping Brings Back Marxism In 1978, Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping announced that his country would make a break with the past. After decades of political purges, economic autarky, and suffocating social control under Mao Zedong, Deng began stabilizing Chinese politics, removing bans on private enterprise and foreign investment and …

The People’s Republic of China (PRC) has finally initiated its highly anticipated railway project to Uzbekistan. On the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit held in September 2022, the official decision was made to begin actively working on the railway (The Diplomat, September 26). This fits into trends …

Xi Would Prefer Détente—Not War—With America At a time of growing tension between Beijing and Washington, China’s 20th Party Congress in October unsettled many outside observers. During the proceedings, not only did Chinese President Xi Jinping stack China’s all-important Politburo Standing Committee with loyalists and secure a third term in …

U.S. President Joe Biden offered rare praise for Cambodia’s authoritarian premier as he encouraged diplomatic support for ending the war in Ukraine and bringing peace to Myanmar at a summit with Southeast Asian leaders on Saturday. Although the control of U.S. Congress lies in the balance back in Washington, Biden …

Approval of PSOs will further initiate the process of prototype development for each project. The Indian Ministry of Defence (MoD) has announced that the Army has approved the project sanction orders (PSOs) of five projects under the Make II procurement scheme. The five projects include high-frequency man packed software-defined radios …

Chinese President Xi Jinping met with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on his official visit to China at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Friday. Xi noted that Scholz is the first European leader to visit China after the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China …

Today the possibility of consolidating an inclusive regional architecture for comprehensive security in the Asia Pacific has become almost inconceivable. This is because on-going China–US tension appears to have excluded that option. The United States has been busy consolidating its old military alliances and putting together new ones in the …

In spite of US Special Envoy for Iran Robert Malley’s recently having said that the White House is not going to “waste our time” on the nuclear deal “if nothing’s going to happen,” he nevertheless stressed that the Biden administration is still committed to employing diplomacy, presumably to revive it …

For four years, as an increasingly belligerent China breathed down their necks, the United States’ allies in Asia quietly endured a torrent of abuse from President Donald Trump. Under President Joe Biden, they again have a winning hand in Washington. By the time he took office, Biden, a leading optimist …