The Biden administration’s contradictory foreign policy has raised doubts among regional experts about how seriously to take its repeated pledges to support the “central role” of ASEAN. In late August the White House administration announced that President Biden would not take up his invitation to the ASEAN summit in Jakarta, but would send Vice President Kamala Harris instead. Nevertheless, in early September, United States Air Force One did indeed fly to Asia, carrying Joe Biden first to the G20 meeting in New Delhi, and then on a state visit to the Vietnamese…

On May 14, Cyclone Mocha, one of the most serious natural disasters of the last ten years, reached Myanmar’s Rakhine State, on the shore of the Bay of Bengal, killing more than 400 people and causing widespread devastation. According to aid workers and local residents, nearly 2 million people living in the state have still not received adequate support from the international community. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has claimed that only $24.3 million of the estimated…

At the end of August, a seemingly trivial and commonplace incident was immediately met with suspicion by a number of countries in the Indo-Pacific region, which is literally awash with problems of all kinds. The incident in question was the publication by the PRC’s State Cartographic Service of a set of “standard maps,” which showed both its own and other countries’ borders. It should be noted at once that these maps do not add in any way to the list of territories already claimed by the PRC, and whose possession has been the subject of disputes between Beijing…

Indonesia played host to many ASEAN political and military events in July and August of this year, including the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), a meeting of the defense ministers, a meeting of the Association’s defense and foreign ministers, and a maritime forum. The Western-led confrontation in the region required the leaders of the ASEAN states to declare a firm, consolidated position on the inadmissibility of military adventures threatening the peace and security of the region’s countries being launched by the West in the Association’s traditional responsibility zone…

Despite having primarily military connotation, the word “maneuvers” (“maneuvering”) may be used to describe the actions of a single state or even a collection of states in a given political situation. Controlling the situation in the South China Sea and the surrounding land area, which is made up of ten Southeast Asian nations and collectively forms a regional association known as ASEAN, is one of the most significant issues at the current stage of the Great Global Game. Over the past 20 years, the South China Sea and Southeast Asia as a whole have been increasingly at the center of the military and political maneuvering of the two current superpowers…

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 July 5, the ASEAN Working Group on Chemicals and Waste held a meeting in Hanoi, the capital of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. In addition to the ASEAN member states, other countries in the Asia-Pacific region also participated in the meeting. The agenda included the issue of the proper treatment and disposal of hazardous chemicals and their by-products in compliance with the provisions of the Basel and Rotterdam Conventions, which have been ratified…

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…

During the Shangri-La Dialogue security conference taking place in Singapore from June 2-4, US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin stated that the United States is not trying to form a new Western defense-oriented NATO-like bloc in the Asia-Pacific region. The Pentagon chief ascertained those present that the interests of European powers in the region are not only military-related, and therefore, of course, Europe “is present here” because it wants to guarantee the preservation of “good relations with the countries of the region.” Australian Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles echoed his American…

Cooperation of Philippines with the USA and its closest Asia-Pacific region allies is rapidly growing. And just as the international community barely got used to the March news about the number of bases in the Philippines which the USA has access to increasing to nine, as well as about the possibility of Japan and Australia fully joining the military cooperation with the Philippines, on May 31 the Japanese media reported that the defense ministers of Japan, the USA, Australia and the Philippines will hold four-party negotiations at the international forum on security…

As US-Chinese tensions grow and as it becomes increasingly clear the US is unable to compete with China head-to-head in terms of development, trade, and investment, especially in regions along China’s periphery, the US is resorting increasingly to asymmetrical measures including political coercion, subversion, and even violence. US military aggression and political subversion, particularly in Southeast Asia, spans many decades. Besides the Vietnam War and the related conflicts which raged across Laos, Cambodia, and even Thailand in the 20th century, more recently…

The global world order is on the verge of a radical transformation. The Western powers 30 years ago saw in the collapse of the Soviet Union, which resulted from its internal weaknesses and mistakes, an unprecedented opportunity to dominate the world by way of deterring possible competitors by any means. Perhaps one of the most important features of the current times is this truth dawning on the countries of the so-called Global South: they understand that the instruments of this deterrence have been “demonization, isolation, interference, political sabotage…