Meanwhile, Taipei’s allies, led by the United States, develop plans to evacuate their citizens from the island. Despite Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense’s “appeasement” statement on June 14 this year that the country’s leadership has no intention of integrating into the battlefield intelligence sharing mechanism used by the US and Japan to obtain a unified real-time information picture, tensions between the Taiwan Strait shores remain high. The island recently begun training to prepare the Taiwanese army to break the blockade imposed by the mainland Chinese forces (PLA)…

The phrase “New Asian Alliance” in the headline is not the invention of the present author, but comes from an article by an Indian expert who, to judge by his academic career, has studied the changed strategic relations between China, India and Japan in great detail. And any changes in the strategic relations within this particular triangle of nations will have a considerable impact on the future of the entire Indo-Pacific region. And in the current stage of the Big World Game the focus is shifting towards precisely that region. Although the US, as the leading world power, is still making its presence…

In early June 2023, the 20th edition of the “Shangri-La Dialogue,” an international forum for security in Asia, took place in Singapore, and witnessed a lot of developments of particular interest for this author. It is believed that the dialogue between the two countries has been in a state of deadlock since the US State Secretary Antony Blinken canceled his visit to China in February 2023 after the United States tracked and shot down a supposedly Chinese spy balloon. Traces of the incident could have been seen at the forum. First, the US Secretary of Defense Lloyd…

Beijing rejected Washington’s offer to conduct negotiations between Ministers of Defense on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue Summit against the background of mutual misunderstanding. The Singapore Security Summit for many years has served as a neutral forum for discussing controversies in the Asia-Pacific region, where even outspoken opponents can meet and clarify their mutual grievances without sacrificing credibility. This is why the PRC’s refusal to hold a meeting between Li Shangfu and Lloyd Austin has attracted increased global attention. The formal reason for rejecting the request was that the Chinese Ministers of Defense was under US sanctions. Li Shangfu previously…

Relations between People’s Republic of China and Europe resemble a complex mosaic, mainly due to significant presence of the sum of factors defined by the elastic term “politics.” The first of such important factors is the continuing prevailing influence of the United States on everything happening on the continent. All that despite the obvious shift of the Washington’s main interests towards the Indo-Pacific region, it plays its own game with Beijing, which is not always identical with European. But it is difficult to talk even about the European game with any degree of certainty due to obscurity of the very notion of “Europe” in and of itself…

At the end of April in Lithuania, one of the “major” NATO countries, the local Foreign Ministry initiated a conference on “NATO and the Indo-Pacific Region,” where Vilnius tried to contribute to the unfolding confrontation with China in accordance with the trends set by the United States. It is noteworthy that the Baltic state stood out noticeably against the other participants – the United States, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand – for its complete noninvolvement in the affairs of the region in question. Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis insisted on the need to build closer cooperation between NATO and “democratic” states…

On June 2-4, Singapore hosted another (already the 20th in a row) Shangri-La Dialogue (SLD), which is held annually by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies. Judging by the composition of participants and the range of issues discussed, this is one of the most reputable international expert platforms, which examines various aspects of security in the Indo-Pacific region. The very region where the focus of the current stage of the Big World Game is shifting towards. Each such Dialogue deserves attention, if only because…

The US and the EU have now developed the closest for the past three decades positions on the PRC, according to the US Department of State. On Tuesday, May 30, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who was visiting Sweden, made a very ambiguous statement regarding China. At a joint press conference with Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson in the port Lulea, the head of the US Department of State said that the countries of the Collective West have developed the closest positions on the PRC in recent decades. “In about 30 years of my work, I really haven’t seen a time when there has been greater overlap in approaches to China between the United States and Europe…

The general elections in Taiwan that are due in half a year (on January 13, 2024) are gradually becoming the most important of the factors accompanying the development of the Taiwanese agenda. Especially since various maneuvers around this agenda are continued by the USA and the PRC. That is, again, the importance of the factor of domestic political processes on the island, that by itself plays mostly the part of an important pretext and reason for a squabble between the currently-leading global powers, is drastically increasing (possibly, for a short period, but still increasing). First of all, it’s important to make note of the recent distinct…

Together with China and Japan, India is one of the three leading Asian powers, whose mutual relations will increasingly determine the situation in the Asia-Pacific region as a whole. In turn, this latter is today in the focus of the current stage of the Great World Game. And if we can speak more or less definitely about the positioning of the first two countries at the table on which the global action is unfolding today, then India’s position at this table still looks “transitional”. What are the initial and the end points of this “transition” and how far has it progressed? It is quite easy to answer the first part of this question…

For a system to function, its component parts must exchange signals with specific information encoded in them. This is also true for mankind, which at this moment in its evolution can be approximated as a sophisticated system made up of around 200 elements or states. If they interact in any manner, expressing everything from intense hostility to unconditional love, it demonstrates that the human social structure is still alive. Any continuous loss of communication signals is unmistakable proof that the human race is splintering into distinct social groups. There’s a danger that this or that faction may start to consider, metaphorically speaking…

As a result of the latest summit of the G7 countries in Hiroshima, the US, Canada, the UK and the EU adopted yet another, 11th to be precise, package of anti-Russian sanctions. The package includes more than 90 companies from all over the world, which, according to Brussels, allegedly violated the restrictive measures and continue supplying Russia with sanctioned goods (including companies in Armenia, Iran, UAE, Syria and others). At the same time, eight out…