Asia-Pacific Archive

Ahead of a potential meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, recent statements from Washington and Pyongyang have veered wildly in tone and substance, moving from conciliatory to combative and back again. Yet the latest head-spinning developments follow several months of seemingly steady progress toward a potential breakthrough on the Korean Peninsula. The following 10 WPR articles trace that remarkable shift and also describe the risks for both sides going forward. The following 10 articles are free for nonsubscribers until June 14. Making Nice Will the Spirit of Korean Reunification Linger After the Olympics? […]

In mid-May, India sent a junior foreign minister to Pyongyang for an official visit, the first such visit by an Indian government minister to North Korea in almost 20 years. The trip took place against the backdrop of intense diplomatic engagement between Washington and Pyongyang that could ease North Korea’s economic isolation. In an email interview, Balbina Hwang, an adjunct assistant professor at Georgetown University, discusses North Korea’s economic and diplomatic ties with South and Southeast Asian countries, and the implications of the potential thaw on the Korean Peninsula for these relationships. World Politics Review: What has been the nature […]

SEOUL—Without knowing how many plot twists are left in U.S. President Donald Trump’s attempt to engage with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, it’s hard to know if the play will end up being a tragedy, a comedy or a satirical farce. The audacity of Trump’s belief that he can transform the Korean Peninsula into a denuclearized zone of peace in mere weeks is matched by his inability or unwillingness to master the historical issues and complex constraints that have so far kept the parties from achieving the breakthrough he seeks. One of the reasons the plot keeps changing is […]

It’s déjà vu all over again. Where’s the beef? And speak loudly, but forget the stick. Those were among the clichés that came to mind during the Trump administration’s China trade policy gyrations over the past few weeks. Almost exactly a year after Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross announced the results of a “herculean” effort to get a deal with China to boost U.S. exports of energy and agricultural goods, and six months after Ross announced another set of deals purportedly worth $250 billion in increased American exports of natural gas, soybeans, beef and pork, the White House released a joint […]

Editor’s note: This article is part of an ongoing series about press freedom and safety in various countries around the world. May has been a tough month for press freedom in Cambodia. On May 5, the Phnom Penh Post, an independent newspaper often critical of the Cambodian government, was sold to a Malaysian investor with links to Prime Minister Hun Sen. And on May 18, a court refused to release two Radio Free Asia reporters who have been held in pretrial detention for six months on charges of espionage. In an email interview, Sebastian Strangio, a journalist focusing on Southeast […]

Say you had just awoken from a long slumber and glanced at today’s headlines. You would conclude, no doubt, that Iran and North Korea are America’s greatest security threats. The attention those admittedly malign nations receive from the Trump administration surpasses all other adversaries or potential adversaries. In reality, though, Iran and North Korea are second-tier challenges, unlikely to strike directly at vital U.S. national interests. Russia is more worrisome, given its recent and continuing political meddling against the United States and President Donald Trump’s perplexing lack of concern with its attacks on American elections. Ultimately, though, Russia is devious […]

As global attention remains fixed on the desperate plight of Rohingya Muslims fleeing ethnic cleansing in Myanmar’s western state of Rakhine, another violent military crackdown has flared almost unnoticed more than 400 miles to the northeast in the remote and mountainous state of Kachin, along the isolated land border with China. Since mid-January, battles between Myanmar’s armed forces, known as the Tatmadaw, and the ethnic rebels of the Kachin Independence Army, or KIA, have intensified in several areas of the resource-rich and historically conflict-wracked region, displacing thousands of civilians. The surge in violence, with military airstrikes and retaliatory insurgent attacks, […]

For many years, North Korea’s relationship with the outside world has endlessly cycled between belligerence and crisis, always backed by an endless chorus of hysterical hostility. Recently, though, things seemed to be heading in a very different direction. Since late March, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has held two cordial meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping. And during a landmark April summit with South Korean President Moon Jae-in, Kim promised to work toward an official end to the Korean War and the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. The next big step for Kim was a planned June meeting with […]

The announcement last week that Singapore will be the site of the summit on June 12 between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un—just a week after it will host the annual Shangri-La Dialogue, Asia’s premier security forum—once again put the city-state in the international spotlight. But within its own region of Southeast Asia, Singapore already faced a year of heightened attention and expectations. It holds the annual rotating chair of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations amid a series of domestic, regional and global challenges, and has recently become a more vocal defender of the […]

In a result few pollsters and analysts predicted, including myself, last week Malaysia’s opposition coalition, led by 92-year-old former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, defeated the ruling coalition of Prime Minister Najib Razak in national elections that marked the first transfer of power in Malaysia’s modern history. The long-dominant United Malays National Organization, or UMNO, and the coalition it leads, Barisan Nasional, have governed Malaysia since its independence in 1957. To the Najib government’s credit, despite rumors on election night and the following morning that it would take measures to defraud the voters, or prevent a change of government, the transition […]

In this week’s Trend Lines podcast, WPR’s editor-in-chief, Judah Grunstein, and managing editor, Frederick Deknatel, discuss President Donald Trump’s decision to pull the U.S. out of the Iran nuclear deal. For the Report, Hilal Mir talks with WPR’s senior editor, Robbie Corey-Boulet, about the insurgency in the India-administered Kashmir Valley, where violence is surging again and al-Qaida and the Islamic State are believed to be making gains. If you like what you hear on Trend Lines and what you’ve read on WPR, you can sign up for our free newsletter to get our uncompromising analysis delivered straight to your inbox. […]

The historic inter-Korean summit on April 27 drew global attention, but it overshadowed another important meeting that began the same day between two other neighbors in Asia with their own fraught history. Billed as an “informal summit” between Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Wuhan, China, it was a welcome development in their strained relationship that revealed the domestic priorities driving both countries in the short term, as well as the strategic undercurrents that are shaping the Asia-Pacific. Modi’s visit to the central Chinese city of Wuhan was seen by some as an effort to […]

ANANTNAG, Jammu and Kashmir, India—The Facebook status updates of people living in the Kashmir Valley are a lot like those posted anywhere else in the world. There are birthday wishes and engagement announcements, and photos of weddings and newborn children, all followed by seemingly endless strings of comments from well-wishers. The content can also skew toward the political, but the stakes are much higher than they tend to be for typical political debates on a Facebook feed. This is because of the decades-old military campaign waged by those seeking independence from Indian rule. Listen to Hilal Mir discuss this article […]

Forty years after China embarked on the economic reforms that have helped transform it from an isolated and impoverished communist outpost into an increasingly confident and capable global power, a growing number of observers in the United States have, understandably, concluded that Washington adopted the wrong strategy toward Beijing. Their judgment is largely rooted in two propositions. First, the United States was mistaken to assume, or hope, that China would become more democratic as its economy grew. Second, by persisting with efforts to integrate China into the postwar international order, the United States ultimately enabled the rise of a country […]

It is a bedrock for both countries, so why does the 65-year-old security alliance between South Korea and the United States look shakier today than it has been at any time since its inception? Codified in a 1953 treaty after the armistice that froze the Korean War, the alliance helped South Korea preserve its independence and transform itself from one of the world’s most underdeveloped nations to an economic powerhouse and robust democracy, while signaling America’s determination to contain communism. But today, amid an unexpected diplomatic thaw between North and South Korea and with an American president dismissive of alliances, […]

Last Friday’s historic meeting between South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, the first inter-Korean summit in over a decade and only the third since the nation was divided after World War II, was arguably long on symbolism and short on substance. But the symbolism was extraordinary. Kim came to the meeting across the heavily fortified boundary dividing the Korean Peninsula, the first North Korean leader to set foot in the South. He and Moon shook hands at the concrete curb that marked the boundary, and—in an apparently unscripted moment—Kim took Moon’s hand and the […]