South East Asia

A famous general once said, the soldier is the army and no army is better than its soldiers. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) seems to be ruminating on this axiom and is pulling out all the stops to create wolf warriors in real life too. The clashes along the India–China …

The second in-person summit of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, Quad, in Japan managed to generate a lot of buzz. While the global media covered it in its usual breathless manner, China also ensured that the event retained its edge as its warplanes joined the Russians to approach Japanese airspace. It …

What do we know about the man supposedly leading Islamic State’s East Asia branch? Not much was known about the Islamic State’s new leader for its so-called East Asia province, which encompasses Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and, according to a terrorism monitor, also Thailand. The Diplomat has recently learned the …

More than 16 months after taking office, President Joe Biden stepped off Air Force One and onto Asian soil for the first time in his presidency. His four-day visit coincided with a slew of diplomatic initiatives: Bilateral summits with allies like South Korea and Japan, the Quad Leader’s Summit and …

Q: “Are you willing to get involved militarily to defend Taiwan if it comes to that?” (CBS News) A: “Yes.” (President Joe Biden, May 23, 2022) Q: “ You are?” (CBS) A: “That’s the commitment we made.” (President Biden) Once again, an unplanned and impromptu remark from President Biden has …

As NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg warned Beijing at a March 23 press conference not to aid Russia in the Ukraine war, a batch of e-mails believed to be sent by Chinese state-sponsored hackers landed in the inboxes of researchers and engineers at several Russian military-development institutes. The e-mails all carried …

All the Pacific Island nations invited to the foreign ministerial conference had already embraced Beijing’s “One China Policy.” Some of these states once had diplomatic links with Taiwan but were wooed away by Beijing’s offer of financial loans, investment and corrupt practices, such as direct interference in the domestic political …

President Joe Biden, speaking Monday during his first visit presidential visit to Japan, signaled an apparent end to the U.S. policy of strategic ambiguity by saying the United States would defend Taiwan against a Chinese invasion. “Yes,” Biden replied when asked by a reporter in Tokyo if he was willing …

In 2022, there will be great interest in Asia’s summit season because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The annual East Asia Summit, ASEAN and APEC meetings always attract attention due to the proximity of many world leaders, but the less glamorous work of the multilateral mechanisms goes on throughout the …

As their strategic rivalry grows, China and the U.S. are increasingly operating in close proximity in the Asia Pacific. An accident or misinterpreted signal could set off a wider confrontation. The danger level is low, but dialogue is needed to dial it down further. What’s new? The risk of an unintended …