Southern China Morning Post - ASEAN Diplomacy

In a layered signal to Indo-Pacific nations and America’s domestic audience, the Trump administration last week said the US Indo-Pacific Command would revert to its long-used name, the US Pacific Command. The Honolulu-headquartered command was renamed in 2018 during Donald Trump’s first presidency. The administrative order by the Department of Defence was justified to honour the...

China-Asean relations are usually described in two ways. One emphasises danger: the South China Sea, US-China rivalry, military pressure and risk of Southeast Asia being pulled into China’s orbit. The other emphasises opportunity: trade, infrastructure, investment, supply chains and shared growth. Both are true. Neither is enough. I recently joined a study tour by the University...

Led by Japan, East Asia seems to be setting off along a road to nowhere – beyond tension and maybe eventual conflict. This may seem a harsh indictment yet consecutive Japanese leaders have shown a lack of vision on the constructive role their country could play in achieving regional peace and economic integration. The latest manifestation of this is Japanese Prime Minister Sanae...

The runway at Clark International Airport was built to launch American air power across Asia. Now, it is being repurposed to project German industrial ambition. Analysts say the multimillion-dollar deal to develop the former US military base in the Philippines illustrates how economic investment has become the new language of strategic power. The deal, struck last week during Ge...

For years, Washington described India as an indispensable partner, a democratic counterweight to China and a strategic anchor in the Indo-Pacific. Then the US Navy killed three Indian sailors and America’s top diplomat could not even bring himself to apologise. India’s External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar raised the deaths directly with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio in a ...