More than four years after President Barack Obama’s 2009 Prague speech declared the goal of eliminating nuclear weapons worldwide, the nuclear landscape has become more complex and precarious and shows little sign of movement toward abolition. The so-called global zero initiative has arguably been overtaken by countervailing nuclear realities. Yet the administration remains mired in a Cold War paradigm, gearing up for more U.S.-Russia arms control. Instead, the Obama administration should focus on other components of its 2010 Nuclear Posture Review as priorities for advancing nonproliferation objectives. These include securing nuclear materials, institutionalizing the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), capping […]

Since assuming power in early 2011, Myanmar’s government, led by President Thein Sein, has focused its energies on the domestic agenda: rejuvenating the economy, liberalizing the political system and bringing an end to the decades-long ethnic conflicts along the country’s periphery. In tandem with these reforms, however, Naypyidaw has also endeavored to rebalance its foreign relations, with a particular emphasis on improving ties with the United States and members of the European Union, as well as important Asian neighbors such as Japan and India. China, which forged a close economic and political relationship with Myanmar during the 1990s and 2000s […]

Venezuela president Hugo Chavez.

Although it is difficult to predict the precise course of Venezuela’s current leadership transition, it is almost certain that President Hugo Chavez will pass away within the coming weeks or months. His departure will impact not only Venezuela, but also the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA), the regional bloc that Chavez founded to promote his vision of Bolivarian socialism. While conventional wisdom assumes these impacts will be mostly negative, this is not necessarily the case. In fact, another outcome is possible: A rejuvenated ALBA could take shape, one centered on a new coalition of pragmatists and restructured around economic […]

Since the election of reformist President Benigno Aquino, the Philippine economy has been on an unprecedented upswing, defying almost all earlier forecasts. Today, the country is among the fastest-growing economies in the world, expected to grow by up to 8 percent this year. No wonder the Philippines is seen as the next Asian tiger economy and is expected to attain a much-coveted “investment grade” rating this year. The emerging consensus among experts is that the increasingly positive economic outlook is a result, first, of the Aquino administration’s good governance agenda focused on tough anti-corruption reforms and, second, of the larger […]

In a recent WPR feature essay on economic integration and security competition in Asia, Amitav Acharya used our article in Foreign Policy, “A Tale of Two Asias,” as a conceptual framework for thinking about the future of this dynamic and important region. But his piece, “Why Two Asias May be Better Than None,” misunderstands or fails to address many of our key arguments. On some points, we agree with Acharya. For example, he notes that Japan “started the process” of economic integration in Asia, or what we call “Economic Asia,” and “still plays a vital role in it.” We made […]

As China prepares to complete its leadership transition with the handover of the presidency in March, activists are seeing positive signs about government HIV/AIDS policy, with incoming Premier Li Keqiang prominently endorsing grassroots treatment efforts. In an email interview, Jia Ping, the founder and chief executive officer of the China Global Fund Watch Initiative, discussed China’s HIV/AIDS policies. WPR: How have China’s efforts to tackle HIV/AIDS evolved in recent years? Jia Ping: China has made some progress but not enough. The government has begun to pay attention to marginalized groups. The number of nongovernmental organizations is increasing; there is an […]

Contemporary Vietnam, officially known at the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV), was formed in 1976 after a four-and-a-half decade armed struggle led by the Vietnam Communist Party (VCP) against French colonialism and U.S. intervention. When the war against France came to an end in 1954, Vietnam was partitioned, and North Vietnam became Southeast Asia’s first communist state, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. During the early years of the Democratic Republic, China was its chief provider of foreign assistance as well as its main model of development. For example, Vietnam carried out land reform in the mid-1950s and then reorganized the […]

In 2010, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave an important speech condemning government censorship, calling for greater Internet freedom and reiterating that freedom of expression was a vital U.S. value. But during the past two weeks, as issues of press censorship in China have become front-page news, the State Department has remained noticeably silent, even as that censorship has impacted the U.S. media. On Dec. 31, 2012, the New York Times announced that the Chinese government had failed to process the journalist visa of one of its Beijing correspondents, Chris Buckley, before his old visa expired. Without a valid […]

After a year of intense diplomatic brinkmanship over the management of maritime disputes in the South China Sea, Cambodia passed the rotating chairmanship of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to the tiny kingdom of Brunei on Jan. 1. Recent years have witnessed a dramatic escalation in territorial disputes between China, on one hand, and a number of Southeast Asian nations such as the Philippines and Vietnam on the other. However, the past year in particular marked a major deterioration in regional relations, due in no small part to the failure of ASEAN, under Cambodia’s watch, to adopt a […]

On Tuesday, tens of thousands of people took to the streets of Hong Kong to demand the resignation of Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying, who has faced mounting public discontent with his rule since winning office six months ago in an election in which most of Hong Kong’s citizens could not vote. Leung is facing deepening controversy over questions concerning his personal integrity. Protesters at the New Year’s Day demonstrations demanded he step down, spurred by the news that Leung had made unauthorized additions to his $64 million home and concealed this fact during his election campaign. Henry Tang, Leung’s primary […]