Asia and Pacific
Mapping the world's EEZs
What does a political map of the world look like if you include those sometimes contentious 200nm Exclusive Economic Zones?
Here's a handy tool from Open Democracy, who stress …
Would Americans give their lives for Asia? No
Picture it: it's 1 March 2015. Tokyo and Beijing are headed towards what was once the unthinkable.
Over the last several months China has instituted daily non-naval maritime…
What Shinzo Abe actually said in Singapore
The Chinese rhetorical fireworks over Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's speech to the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore last weekend have been so widely reported that we are at…
Allure of normalcy: America's first-order foreign policy issues
Last week saw the publishing of Robert Kagan's latest essay for New Republic magazine: 'Allure of Normalcy: what America still owes the world'. It is a magisterial contribution…
Shangri-La Dialogue: General Wang Guanzhong returns fire at Abe and Hagel
Nick Bisley ended his distillation of Day 1 of the Shangri-La Dialogue with this: 'We will have to wait for the second day to see how Beijing responds to the gentle but…
The diplomacy of hard and soft power at Shangri-La
The Shangri-La Dialogue styles itself as the premier forum for defence diplomacy in Asia. Given the scale of the event, the number of countries represented and the media coverage…
Hagel at Shangri-La: China's behaviour 'destabilising and unilateral'
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's keynote speech to the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore last night did not quite match the pre-event speculation that he would pitch Japan as a…
Shinzo Abe talks China at the Shangri-La Dialogue
By my count, the word 'China' only passed Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's lips twice during his keynote address to the Shangri-La Dialogue here in Singapore, yet it is…
West Point speech neglects East Asian security
Amid tensions in the South China Sea and new alarm about a China-Russia alignment, President Obama's speech at West Point sends some confusing signals to the countries of Indo…
Obama at West Point: The limits of American power
Barack Obama has declared a new foreign policy doctrine: the limits of American power. The US, he argues, 'must always lead on the world stage,' but 'US military action cannot be…