The Geopolitics of “AUKUS Plus”
In September 2021, the Australia, United Kingdom, and United States (AUKUS) deal brought nuclear technology for military use to the Indo-Pacific. The idea was to change the Indo-Pacific region in a way that would ultimately be ready to tackle – and scale back – China’s influence. The idea was to make Australia “sovereign ready”. Accordingly, the US and the UK are already in the middle of selling and building several nuclear submarines worth billions of dollars to Australia. While the US intends to sell at least 3 nuclear submarines by 2038, the UK and Australia are building a new SSN-AUKUS submarine that both fleets will operate. Australia is to receive Britain’s first SSN-AUKUS in the late 2030s and its first domestically built…
New Zealand and Australia: Down Under, Split between Colonial Masters and Claimed Values
This title begs the question as to whether being a Member of The Commonwealth “Makes it all Right” in terms of your Geopolitical Orientation? It would even help if you are WASP in blood, breeding and family history, as former and current British subjects are too close in too many ways—and not for their own best interests. Have the Commonwealth Countries near China found themselves caught between a rock and a hard place- NZ is part of the Commonwealth! To make a complicated issue the simpler, the Australians are joined to the hip with the Yanks…
US-China: Summiting Without Real Progress
The recent US-China summit received a lot of media attention precisely because of the extremely volatile nature of global politics, especially in the context of the ongoing conflicts in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. Biden hailed the summit as a success, while China described it very positive. Military-to-military communications have resumed. But how much real progress towards a full-scale normalization was made, let alone achieving full-scale normalization?
Australia between the US and the PRC
The two foreign visits that Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese made this year, one week apart, between late October and early November, should be analyzed in light of the state of the Great World Game at the moment. From this vantage point, they comprise a truly amazing, twofold interconnected enterprise. To begin with, because the visiting countries were its two primary participants, namely the United States (October 23-26) and the People’s Republic of China (November 4–7), the complicated set of interactions between them is currently at the center of the game table…
Sunsets in Myanmar Are Simply Artistic
In early September, a truly historic event took place. Russia and Myanmar re-established air links after 30 years. What does this do for our travelling enthusiasts? Should we expect a tourism boom to this exotic country? How promising is Myanmar for the Russian tourism industry today? Maya Kotlyar, the founder and head of MAYEL Travel, one of the most quoted public experts in tourism, will help us to understand these issues. – Dear Maya, Although Myanmar is quite an exotic tourist destination, you have a lot of experience in sending tourists there…
Washington’s Expanding Military Footprint on China’s Doorsteps
A series of announcements by the US reflect its large and still growing military presence across Asia-Pacific, particularly in East and Southeast Asia. Together, they reflect a continued and increasingly desperate desire by Washington to encircle and contain China. These announcements include plans for expanding the number of US air bases across the region as part of the US Air Force’s (USAF) new “Agile Combat Employment” (ACE) doctrine. It also includes plans for a “civilian port” in the Batanes islands, less than 200 km from the Chinese island province of Taiwan. Then there were recently announced plans by the US Department of Defense to create drone…
Australia and the USA held a 2+2 meeting
On July 29, Australia’s third-most populous city, Brisbane, located on the eastern Pacific, “The Pacific,” is worth noting. More on this below-coast of the country-continent, which hosted a notable event in the political space of the Indo-Pacific region. In particular, we will talk about the next meeting of the Australia-United States Ministerial Consultations Committee, AUSMIN. The method of communication between two countries on a platform where foreign and defense ministers meet is commonly referred…
How Pacific Nations Are Playing US-China Rivalry to Their Advantage
Today’s global geopolitics is more about great power competition than any other thing. It is evident from the ongoing military conflict in Eastern Europe, and it is evident from the ways in which the US has been trying to build a global coalition against China for the past many years now. So far, Washington has achieved no substantial success. While Washington, presuming that there is a lot of potential for conflict in the region and the countries are eager to find a powerful ally against China…
On some aspects of the latest SCO summit
On July 4, the 22nd summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) since its founding in 2001 took place in New Delhi via video conference. Following is a list of the participating countries in the order that their heads of state signed the final “Declaration,” which was adopted at the start of the event: India, Kazakhstan, China, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Russia, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan. They were joined by Iran, which was one of the main results of this summit. In the author’s opinion, its significance is rather conditioned by the context of the current stage…
Blinken Meets ASEAN: Turning Southeast Asia Against China
US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken’s meeting with ASEAN in mid-July, focused on convincing the bloc to confront Beijing, follows a long-running US strategy to transform Southeast Asia into a united front against China. By doing so, nations in the region are encouraged or coerced to antagonize China, despite the growing superpower being their largest trade partner, investor, and source of tourism as well as their most important infrastructure and development partner. Reuters in its article preceding the meeting titled, “Blinken to press ASEAN to take…
China hosts “Summer Sessions” of the World Economic Forum
In recent years, many journalists have tended to be skeptical about the role played by the World Economic Forum in driving contemporary global political processes. The WEF is better known by the name of the town that hosts its plenary meetings, Davos, in Switzerland. A few years ago, when “world government” conspiracy theories were popular, the WEF was frequently listed among shadowy and exclusive membership groups as the Bilderberg Group and the Club of Rome which, supposedly, took decisions of major global significance. At this stage, a few observations may be in order. First of all, it is true that the real global powers in today’s world are losing interest in the Davos Forum. In the author’s view, this interest peaked at the January 2017 meeting of the WEF, at which the Chinese leader Xi Jinping was the chief guest…
The Philippines still cannot get off the colonial needle
Despite gaining independence in 1946, the Philippines is still under US political and security control, remaining a US bridgehead in the southern part of the Asia-Pacific region. The sustained military presence of Washington was a requirement for the island country’s freedom. Under the Treaty on Military Bases, the Philippine government relinquished control of 23 military reservations totaling 4,000 square kilometers, or 1.3 percent of the country’s land area. Tens of thousands of American troops were stationed there. In the years that followed, the territory under US control dwindled progressively, but essential facilities remained, the most important of which were the Naval Base Subic Bay facility fit even for nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, and Clark Air Base facility, capable of hosting B-52 strategic bombers…