The announcement last week that the U.S. is doubling its foreign aid to the Philippines came as the U.S. ally remains locked in a maritime standoff with China over a territorial dispute in the South China Sea. In an email interview, Richard D. Fisher, Jr., a senior fellow at the International Assessment and Strategy Center, discussed U.S.-Philippines military cooperation. WPR: In what concrete ways is U.S.-Philippines military cooperation being expanded in response to the Philippines’ territorial disputes with China in the South China Sea? Richard D. Fisher, Jr.: After nearly 20 years of U.S. and mainly Philippine indifference following the [...]
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has wrapped up her latest trip to Asia, which included stops in China, Bangladesh and India, where she met with government officials to review the strategic partnership between India and the United States. She emphasized that the countries must expand trade and investment, deepen security cooperation, promote a shared vision for the region and, she told the media in Delhi, “meet the challenges and seize the opportunities in South and Central Asia.” But Stephen Cohen, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, told Trend Lines there have been no major changes in the U.S.-Indian [...]
Between 1948 and 1973, Egypt and Israel fought four major wars and a collection of smaller skirmishes. Some of these conflicts — the Suez Canal crisis, the Six-Day War of 1967 and the October or Yom Kippur War of 1973 — had geostrategic implications for the United States. Any of them conceivably could have escalated into a confrontation between the two Cold War-era superpowers. And throughout that period, a strong, aggressive Egypt represented the gravest threat to the security of the state of Israel, which had become a vital U.S. interest in the Middle East. For all these reasons, and [...]
