Just before the White House launched the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, or IPEF, in Tokyo last month, Taro Kono, the former Japanese foreign and defense minister, offered a blunt recommendation: Deriding the IPEF as the “Indo-Pacific Economic whatever,” Kono urged the U.S. to “forget” it and rejoin the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, or CPTPP. During his press conference with U.S. President Joe Biden, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida welcomed the IPEF but echoed Kono’s advice, stressing the strategic significance of a U.S. return to the CPTPP, which is essentially the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact that then-President Barack Obama effectively [...]
Ukraine’s successes in resisting and even turning back an invasion by a numerically superior Russian force has raised expectations in East Asia that smaller nations in the region could conceivably fend off an attack from a large military like China’s. Taiwan, of course, has long struggled with executing such a defense strategy, but since its strategic considerations are in many ways unique, other countries nominally threatened by China may not be able to draw as many lessons from Taipei’s experience. Ukraine’s performance in its war against Russia, on the other hand, may look to them like a more relevant model—for [...]
In Timor-Leste’s recent presidential election in April, Jose Ramos-Horta—the former president, prime minister, foreign minister and resistance-era spokesman—won with a 62 percent majority. A political perennial, Horta’s success can largely be attributed to support from another former president, prime minister and resistance-era hero: Xanana Gusmao. In the two decades since Timor-Leste’s independence, Gusmao’s endorsement has been decisive for all the country’s presidential candidates, including for Horta in his first successful run for the presidency in 2007; former military commander Jose Maria Vasconcelos, who won in 2012; and outgoing President Francisco “Lu-Olo” Guterres, who was elected in 2017, but with whom [...]
