April 30,2015 Open Forum

Mongolia’s Dilemma: A Politically Linked, Economically Isolated Small Power

Mongolia operates under the geopolitical and economic forces of rising China, reactive Japan and Russia, and retrenching America. It strives to preserve its nomadic, democratic, and Buddhist identities while accommodating currents of Western, Chinese, Russian, and Islamic civilizations. Thus, like other small powers, it faces new opportunities and uncertainties as the over-arching geopolitical, economic, and […]

Mendee Jargalsaikhan
Abegeopolitics , Khaan Quest , Mongolia
April 30,2015 Open Forum

The Strategic Alignment between Russia and China: Myths and Reality

Speculation about the possibility of China and Russia creating an official strategic alliance in response to American unipolar dominance is not new and can be traced back to the early 1990s. Recently, however, the American “pivot to Asia,” China’s new assertiveness in territorial disputes, Russia’s high-profile “turn to the East,” and the deterioration of Russia-America […]

Alexander Korolev
April 30,2015 Open Forum

A Stronger Korea-Mongolia Link in a Changing Northeast Asia

As the constellation of relationships that has dominated Asia for decades begins to evolve towards a new dynamic, the vocabulary of change has begun to foreshadow a very different regional map, with some new trends holding the promise of stronger regional integration while others, perhaps, suggest increasing stresses and frictions. Of course, there is the […]

Mark Minton
AIIB , MCA , Mongolia , NAPCI , National security , Regionalism , Ulaanbaatar Initiative
March 05,2015 Open Forum

Russia’s Policy towards China: Key Players and the Decision-making Process

Analyzing the foreign policy of modern states, many scholars lean towards describing different transactions as a result of interactions between states, which have their own interests and will, as the sole actors in international relations,. A more sophisticated analytical framework equates a certain policy with decisions taken by a ruler or the ruling elite. Russia’s […]

Alexander Gabuev
Balancing Against the West , Kremlin , Personality Politics , pivot to Asia , Putin , Sino-Russian Relations
February 16,2015 Open Forum

Making Sense of the Russo-North Korean Rapprochement

Although the six-party process about North Korean nuclearization is moribund if not dead, ongoing informal discussions among those parties are robust and ever evolving. Because these multi-party relationships are so protean, they force us to devise an analytic framework for them. After all, these talks are about much more than Korean denuclearization. They represent an […]

Stephen Blank
Ostpolitik , pivot to Asia , rapprochement , Ukraine
February 16,2015 Open Forum

Beyond Geopolitics: South Korea’s Eurasia Initiative as a New Nordpolitik

Beyond Geopolitics: South Korea’s Eurasia Initiative as a New Nordpolitik 1 On October 18, 2013, at an international conference on Eurasian cooperation in Seoul, Park Geun-hye proposed the “Eurasia Initiative.” Under the watchwords of “one continent, creative continent, and peaceful continent,” the initiative projects a unified system of transport, energy, and trade networks across the […]

Kim Taehwan*
Eurasia Initiative , NAPCI , National security , Nordpolitik , pivot state , Regionalism , trust-building
February 10,2015 Open Forum

Synopsis of Five-University Collaboration, Dec. 2014

Agenda: Five University Collaboration on East Asia Security Conflict & Cooperation File Download In mid-December, faculty and graduate students at five universities in five countries met again to exchange views on the state of security in East Asia. Prior conferences had produced thoughtful, constructive exchanges, but no reports were circulated on what they covered and […]

Editorial Staff
Obama-Xi Summit , Six-Party Talks , TPP , Trustpolitik
December 30,2014 Open Forum

Washington Insights: December 2014

The November summitry—APEC, the EAS, and the G20 as well as concomitant bilateral, trilateral, and other multilateral meetings—stimulated rethinking about regional relations. In Washington, this took the form of reassessments of how the US rebalancing was proceeding, renewed examination of the broader regional context, and reactions to appeals from Koreans to give further thought to […]

Editorial Staff
Asia for the Asians , Bipolarity , hedging against China , triangularity , US rebalancing