Asia

China’s Two Meetings and What They Mean for the United States

On the first Monday in March 2024, delegates—nearly 3,000 to the National People’s Congress (NPC) and over 2,000 to the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference—gathered in Beijing. With the exception of a handful of members of ethnic minorities in...

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From Protests to Prosecutions: A Tale of Modern Hong Kong

 “This is how the world ends. Not with a bang but with a whimper.” The most famous line from T.S. Eliot’s “The Hollow Men” might fairly be applied to the fate of Hong Kong since 1997. China’s slow strangulation...

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Indonesia’s Presidential Elections: Old Guard, New Guard, and TikTok

The biggest single-day election on the planet is taking place on February 14 in Indonesia. It is the world’s third-largest democracy, largest Muslim-majority country, and tenth-largest economy by purchasing power parity. About 206 million domestic voters and 1.5 million...

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China’s Challenge to the International Economic Order

The United States has led the international economic order for the last seventy-eight years, with only the Soviet Union posing a serious challenge. However, China is starting to pose a severe threat to the United States by trying to...

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Central Asia’s Middle Corridor Expansion: Opportunity for China and Iran

The sustained attacks on merchant shipping in the Red Sea by Yemen’s Iranian-backed Houthi rebels since November 2023 have given a fresh boost to a budding Central Asian trade network known as the “Middle Corridor” and, in so doing,...

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US and North Korea: Testing the Water on Arms Control and Reduction

Ask US policymakers what America’s North Korea policy goal is and they will probably tell you it is denuclearization. After six nuclear tests from 2006 to 2017, the likelihood Pyongyang will denuclearize is unrealistic. North Korea’s nuclear arsenal is...

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China’s Military-Civil Fusion Strategy: A Blueprint for Technological Superiority

In an effort to transform the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) into the most technologically advanced military in the world, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is systematically reorganizing its science and technology sectors to ensure that new innovations simultaneously advance...

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Deterrence and Dissuasion in the Taiwan Strait

Discussions of how to prevent a war over Taiwan tend to center on strengthening deterrence and convincing Beijing that it cannot conquer Taiwan at an acceptable cost. The underlying concern seems to be that China’s growing military and economic...

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The Great Himalayan Chessboard: China, India, and the Geopolitical Gambit in Nepal

Nepal’s geographical and topographical attributes have endowed it with a newfound significance in the foreign policy realm, where nations strategically pursue power and influence. This significance is particularly pronounced in hydropower development, where the confluence of ambitions between China...

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How Is the Philippines Preparing for Conflict in the South China Sea?

On February 2, 2023, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin III announced the temporary return of American troops to four new military bases in the Philippines, restarting a military presence there that has been dormant for thirty years. These four new...

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