Asia-Pacific Archive

When a bomb attached to an Israeli diplomat’s car exploded in New Delhi earlier this week, it not only injured at least four people, it also seriously damaged India’s hopes of staying out of the conflict over Iran’s nuclear program. There is no confirmation that the attack was carried out by Iran or its ally Hezbollah, as Israel maintains. Still, the incident points to the increasingly untenable efforts by Indian officials to simultaneously nurture close ties with the U.S and strengthen relations with Israel, while maintaining valuable ties with Iran in the face of U.S. and international sanctions. At the […]

Deposed President Mohamed Nasheed’s ouster was a defeat for democracy and a victory for conservative Islamism in the Maldives. But the resulting political instability in the Indian Ocean archipelago threatens to exacerbate regional rivalries in which the strategically located island nation has increasingly figured. The apparent coup d’état on Feb. 7 was triggered by Nasheed’s move to arrest the chief justice of the Criminal Court, Abdulla Mohamed. Nasheed accused Mohamed of blocking a graft probe against Abdul Maumoon Gayoom, who ruled the Maldives for 30 years until Nasheed unseated him in the country’s first democratic election in 2008. But the […]

Gordon Chang, author of “The Coming Collapse of China”, talks about the meeting between President Barack Obama and Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping and the prospects of China giving financial aid to Europe. US News Video by NewsLook

After years of controversy and disagreement, the U.S. and Japan agreed last week to decouple the terms of an agreement to close the U.S. Marines’ Futenma air base in Okinawa, after negotiations over relocating the base elsewhere on the island had reached a stalemate. The 2006 agreement had required the relocation of Marine Corps Air Station Futenma to another site on Okinawa as a precondition for reducing the amount of U.S. troops stationed there. But heavy opposition among residents of Okinawa to hosting a new base, even in a less populated part of the island, had made the issue a […]

AKTAU, Kazakhstan — Last week, Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev traveled to Germany for the signing of $4 billion worth of economic agreements, exchanging access to Kazakhstan’s stores of rare earths and raw minerals for German technological expertise. Appearing alongside German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Nazarbayev struck a confident figure in deflecting criticisms of the country’s democratic performance. After two decades of independence, Kazakhstan appears to have won its place on the world stage. Going solely by the numbers, Nazarbayev has reason to be confident. Once considered yet another impoverished Central Asian post-Soviet republic, Kazakhstan’s per capita GDP now stands at more […]

Despite receiving little attention in the lengthy written testimony (.pdf) presented to the Senate and House intelligence committees’ recent hearings on threats to the United States, the question of the viability of reaching a peace agreement with the Taliban was raised repeatedly in the discusions at the two public sessions. Many in Congress are rightly concerned about the situation in Afghanistan and any nascent peace process. So it is important to understand the specific risks involved in negotiating with the Taliban before Congress’ last annual hearing on worldwide threats to national security takes place Thursday in the Senate Armed Services […]

Stratfor’s Vice President of Tactical Intelligence Scott Stewart examines the attack on an Israeli diplomat in New Delhi, India, on Feb. 13. World News Videos by NewsLook

China announced last month that it will send a contingent to participate in the U.N. peacekeeping mission in South Sudan. In an email interview, Courtney Richardson, a research fellow at the International Security Program at Harvard University’s Belfer Center and a doctoral student at Tufts University’s Fletcher School, discussed China’s peacekeeping deployments. WPR: What is the recent history of China’s involvement in international peacekeeping missions? Courtney Richardson: From the time it assumed its seat at the United Nations Security Council in 1971 until the early 1980s, China was morally opposed to the international peacekeeping regime; it abstained on Security Council […]

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has signed 21 business deals in China worth nearly $3-billion fueling speculation that a free trade agreement could materialize later this year. World News Videos by NewsLook

Beginning with the George W. Bush administration, the U.S. strategic policymaking community has expressed its desire to support India’s emergence as a great power. However, the very fact that these exhortations must be made from time to time reveals the distance the world’s two largest democracies must still travel to truly understand each other. The U.S. continues to struggle with India’s non-alignment impulses, while India continues to see relations in a globalized era as depending on balance of interests, and not balance of power. Indeed, it is this differing approach to globalization that prevents the two countries from fully consolidating […]

In the weeks after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the Central Intelligence Agency and the United States Special Operations Command sent intelligence officers and special operations forces to Afghanistan, making them the first American boots on the ground. Now, with the official end of the Iraq War and the upcoming withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan, it is becoming clear that the first ones in will be the last ones out. As the U.S. military begins to shift away from combat missions in Afghanistan over the coming two years, instead focusing on advising Afghan forces, CIA paramilitary operations officers […]

BEIJING — China’s long-standing policy of non-interference in the sovereign affairs of other nations is a cornerstone of its Peaceful Rise foreign policy doctrine. But as recent events have brought sharply into focus, the current approach fails to protect China’s expanding overseas interests and has caused a trust deficit with regard to China’s intentions at an intergovernmental level. This raises the question of how long the non-interference policy can be sustained, and whether Chinese interests would be better served by abandoning it for a less rigid position. The Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, which have guided Chinese foreign policy since […]

Over the past 10 days, 54 Chinese nationals have been taken prisoner in Sudan and Egypt, putting greater pressure on China to protect its 800,000 citizens working overseas in resource-rich but high-risk investment environments. On Jan. 28, rebels allied with South Sudan seized 29 Chinese construction workers building roads in the Sudanese border state of South Kordofan. Three days later, Bedouin tribesmen kidnapped 25 Chinese cement factory workers in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. The prisoners taken in Egypt were released the next day, and those in Sudan were freed Tuesday — after more than a week in captivity — following the […]

Germany’s handling of the sovereign debt crisis gripping the eurozone has led some to wonder whether Germany has lost interest in Europe, or in the role it has historically played in the European Union. But does Germany really believe it has other, global options for a more unilateral foreign policy? Is Berlin falling prey to an Eastern temptation, whether from Moscow or Beijing? The answer is clearly “no,” but it is a no that has shades of gray. And those shades of gray are now combining to cast a shadow over the skies of Berlin; German foreign policy is no […]

In January, the U.S. and several partner states announced a wideband global military satellite communication partnership, valued at more than $10 billion. In an email interview, Joseph N. Pelton, the former dean of the International Space University and director emeritus of the Space and Advanced Communications Research Institute at George Washington University, discussed the Wideband Global Satellite Partnership. WPR: What are the main objectives of the Wideband Global Satellite Partnership and what countries are participating in it? Joseph N. Pelton: For more than a decade, the U.S. Department of Defense has developed a new strategy of “network-centric warfare” centered on […]

Arguably the greatest strategic gift offered by America to the world over the past several decades has been our consistent willingness to maintain a high and hugely expensive entry barrier to the “market” that is great-power war: first by deterring outright war with the Soviet Union during the Cold War, and then by maintaining a lopsided and unipolar military superiority in the post-Cold War period. However, a case can be made that in recent years, the greatest threat to this enduring component of global stability arises from within the United States itself — namely, a national security establishment intent on […]

India commissioned its first nuclear-powered submarine, the Russian Akula-II class INS Chakra, last week. In an email interview, James R. Holmes, a specialist in Asian sea power at the U.S. Naval War College, discussed the Indian navy. WPR: What is the current force structure, capability and focus of India’s navy? James R. Holmes: Taking these elements in reverse order, India sees itself as a natural, benign, nonaligned hegemon in the Indian Ocean region, much as the United States saw itself a century ago during the age of the Monroe Doctrine. Accordingly, India’s 2007 Maritime Military Strategy (.pdf) defines the navy’s […]