History is full of Anglo-Saxons arranging wars for their interests, and shifting unprofitable ones over to the world, for instance in the Suez Crisis of 1956.

In a remarkable development in the Indo-Pacific political puzzle, on August 20 this year Japan and India held a 2+2 Ministerial Dialogue in New Delhi in which the foreign and defense ministers of both countries took part. It was the third meeting of its kind, the first of which took place in New Delhi in November 2019. The original decision to create this bilateral platform was taken following a series of reciprocal visits by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Japanese counterpart at the time, Shinzo Abe.

In South Korea the summer of 2024 has been marked by a series of spy scandals, which vividly illustrate a number of the country’s domestic and foreign policy problems. In this article we will look at a scandal involving the US and South Korean intelligence agencies. On July 16, 2024, the US federal prosecutor’s office has charged Sue Mi Terry, a prominent US expert on North Korea and a former CIA officer and analyst, with acting on behalf of the South Korea and violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). She was arrested but was released on $500,000 bail the same day.

In South Korea the summer of 2024 has been marked by a series of spy scandals, which vividly illustrate a number of the country’s domestic and foreign policy problems. Let us start with the scandal involving a data leak from South Korea’s Defense Intelligence Command (KDIC) in late June, potentially causing very serious damage to its “illegal” agents around the world.

The domestic political situation in the ROK is not easy at the moment. In August 2024, the President of the Republic made two rather controversial moves which, according to the author of the article, are not only a reflection of what is happening, but also a way of dealing with the current situation.

On August 14 of this year, Prime Minister of Japan Fumio Kishida announced that he will not run for head of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party at the end of the three-year term provided for in the party’s charter. This is a remarkable event in the current life of the country.

During the summer of 2024, Japan sharply intensified its foreign policy in its most important aspects, particularly on China and Pacific states. In our opinion, this intensification and some improvements in Japanese relations with China are primarily related to balancing its military and political activities with Western countries. On the one hand, Japan is building up its own defence potential and strengthening various multilateral formats in the field of security; on the other hand, it is trying to reduce tension in relations with China.

We have written many times before about how North Korea is increasing its military capabilities. This process is going on all the time, but today we are going to talk not about tests of new equipment, but about a much more important thing, because it is one thing to test an experimental prototype, and another thing to set up the mass production and equip troops.

For the past several years, the Middle East has been China’s key trading hub, not least because of more than 70 per cent of the oil that Beijing imports from here. Between 2017 and 2022, China’s bilateral trade with this region jumped from US$262 billion to US$507 billion. In 2022 alone, the region saw its trade with China jumping by more than 27 per cent. This was the largest increase in China’s trade compared with other regions, such as the ASEAN.

Italian Prime Minister Giorgiа Meloni paid a visit to China from July 27 to 31, serving as a suitable occasion to discuss both some aspects of bilateral relations between these countries and the geopolitical background against which such a remarkable event took place.

In July 2024, Japan sharply intensified its foreign policy in the most important areas, particularly regarding strengthening relations with the countries of the collective West, split into three aspects: US, South Korean and European. Japan has focused on defence cooperation with its allies in both bilateral and multilateral formats (IP4, AUKUS+, NATO, the Seoul-Washington-Tokyo axis, etc.).

July of this year saw a multitude of noteworthy events along the line of Japanese foreign policy. Japanese Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa visited Europe again. She did so ‘again’, as she visited Europe only two and a half months earlier together with her boss, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.