Southeast Asia Archive

Thailand’s political deadlock has shifted from the streets of Bangkok to the courts. It is there that the real battle is now being played out. A March 21 ruling by the Constitutional Court invalidating the result of the country’s Feb. 2 election most vividly highlighted the change of venue. The court, with a vote of 6-3, threw the current turmoil onto a new trajectory. When the court made a similar ruling in 2006, annulling an election result, the military swooped in and installed a new, unelected government. The judicial instruments that are now being used to wade into Thailand’s political […]

In the past few years, India has been strengthening its civil nuclear cooperation with countries bordering China. This trend, when taken together with India’s interest in marketing surface-to-surface missiles in Asia, clearly signals a shift in New Delhi’s policy stance. China’s latest wave of nuclear exceptionalism toward Pakistan seems to be pushing India to abandon its traditional self-imposed limits on trade in strategic technology, with the result that India is now willing to broaden strategic technology options for countries on China’s periphery in order to secure Indian geoeconomic interests. New Delhi’s approach is somewhat reminiscent of the early 1980s, when […]