The rivalry between the US and China for primacy in the Asia-Pacific, and then possibly on a global scale, is becoming the main story of world politics in the first decades of the twenty-first century.
But how, in the first place, did China grow so strong as to be able to challenge the world’s only (as yet) super-power? The answer is well known: the colossal growth of China’s economy. From 1980 to 2012, the PRC’s GDP increased 50 times.[1] As one might have expected, Beijing is...
Russia, Southeast Asia and ASEAN
Asia Pacific was in focus for Russia when it chaired APEC in 2012. However, it did not necessarily turn Russia’s attention to the region, including Southeast Asia. Domestic factors within Russia play an important role in determining Russian foreign ...
Recent elections in the United States, China, Japan and the Republic of Korea brought new Administrations to power in early 2013. Though it is too early to make meaningful prognostics as regards their impact on the fragile regional stability, the incumbent leaderships will undoubtedly shape a new political landscape in the Asia-Pacific. In particular, they may impact some of the most sensitive regional issues, from the sovereignty dispute in the China Seas to the acute tensions between China and...
At noon on the 1st of October 2012, the first Osprey V-22 aircraft landed at Futenma Marine Corps Air Station on Japan’s Okinawa Island. The controversial deployment of this ungainly looking aircraft (a hybrid between a helicopter and fixed-wing plane) has exposed tensions between centre and periphery in Japanese politics, revealed major fault-lines in the U.S.-Japan military alliance, and demonstrated far-wider strategic shifts and geopolitical miscalculations by key states in East Asia.
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Globalization and geopolitics are the two defining features of contemporary international relations. Yet there exists a fundamental tension between these two processes - one refers to a deepening and broadening flow of trade, goods, people, and information; the other to exclusive political and military control over space. These competing characteristics of global politics are coming into particularly sharp focus in the Asia-Pacific, especially in the case of the South China Sea.
Today, around half...
