Japan is currently facing a number of serious political and economic challenges, forcing the country’s political-military leadership to respond accordingly. On January 30, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida presented an extensive policy report on the Japanese government’s plans for 2024 at the regular session of the country’s parliament, which meets once a year.  In the foreign policy section, Fumio Kishida outlined the following trunk lines…

A recent op-ed appearing in Foreign Affairs titled, “The Taiwan Catastrophe,” helps paint a clear picture of US motivations behind its growing confrontation with China and the increasingly unrealistic nature of Washington’s desired outcome. The premise of the op-ed is built on a now declassified top-secret memo by US General Douglas MacArthur in 1950 describing Taiwan as an “unsinkable aircraft carrier,” essential not to protect the continental United States, but to preserve US primacy over Asia-Pacific thousands of miles from US shores…

At no time, at least in its modern history, has Myanmar ever been a peaceful place – and for that, the British Empire is to blame. For the sake of administrative convenience, London grouped together in one nation peoples of vastly different ethnic origins, languages and cultures who previously had no idea they were living together in a single country. Following its independence in 1948, Burma was driven by continuous localized conflicts between numerous ethnic groups and the central government…

In the previous article, you and I examined the relations between Russia and the ASEAN organisation – one of the fundamentally important “players” in the Asia-Pacific region. This is the largest and most successful association in Southeast Asia, which in geo-economic terms occupies one of the leading places in Asia and unites a region with a population of over 600 million people. Now I propose to talk about the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum, a multilateral regional association with the participation of 21 economies, including Russia, which discusses…

“Our country is fully open to an extensive dialogue on pressing issues on the regional agenda, intends to continue to actively participate in efforts to build a system of interstate relations in the Asia-Pacific region based on equality, mutual benefit and respect for each other’s legitimate interests” – Russian President Vladimir Putin told the participants of the Eastern Economic Forum held in Vladivostok, the Primorsky Krai capital, last September, once again designating such a complex and diverse region as the Asia-Pacific as one of the priority frontiers of the country’s modern foreign policy…

The contemporary world is rife with strategic competition and wars between the global south and the global north. The United States is at the center of all these wars and competition. The most significant and threatening competition in the world is between the United States and China. Both countries are engaged in strengthening their power by gathering allies around the world. Taiwan’s issue is considered the boiling point between Sino-US relations. This issue holds the potential to commence a war between China and the United States…

The island-nation of Taiwan seems to feature much more in strategic considerations in the great game between the two superpowers of our time than its size alone would suggest. Home to less than 25 million people and a third the size of KPK in Pakistan, the country is one of the most important in the world; almost exclusively due to its position as the world’s leading manufacturer of computer chips. The history of American support for Taiwan against China’s claims to it as part of its own territory comes as a legacy of the Cold War. Upon the rise to power in China…

China’s fast-expanding global influence – especially, in the context of the Gaza war – has already emerged as a key issue for Washington. The US is already in a state of denial, and China’s rising global status is turning into too big an issue for New Delhi to handle without entering into a formal anti-China alliance being put together by the US. Therefore, there is an added incentive for New Delhi to reinforce its alliance with the US in an even more anti-China way. This was the major development out of the fifth annual US-India “2+2 dialogue” held on November 10, 2023, in India…

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…

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…

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?

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…