April 29,2016 Alternative Scenarios

Xi Jinping’s Belt & Road Initiative: How to Win Friends & Influence Europeans

In China’s history, every so often a fever grabs hold of the public imagination. Since Xi Jinping enunciated the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in 2013, over one million academic papers were written in China on this new subject.1 China’s experts were recruited to celebrate Xi Jinping as the “designer of China’s road to being a great power.”2 BRI is also known as t..

Theresa Fallon
BRI , Economic statecraft , Juncker Plan , MES , TPP
April 29,2016 Alternative Scenarios

Reconciling Alternative Scenarios

One Belt and One Road, hereafter the new Silk Roads, is a Chinese initiative to connect different parts of regions in Asia. As a newly launched ambitious program from a rising power, it has incurred concerns, skepticism, and resistance from other players in the region. Indeed, in the positive scenario, skepticism and self-doubts are reported in China after the inauguration of the new Silk Roa..

Min Ye
ADB , AIIB , Asian Financial Crisis
April 29,2016 Special Forum

The Japan-US-Russia Triangle in 2016

The Washington-Tokyo-Moscow triangle has intermittently drawn attention since the 1950s for its potential to shift Japan’s foreign policy and alter the course of great power balancing. Until the late 1970s, Tokyo’s soft stance—a territorial deal in return for an autonomous foreign policy or an energy program boosting the Russian economy—was of prime concern, although it never ..

Gilbert Rozman
2 + alpha , Abe-Putin courtship , G-7 sanctions , Hikiwake , Northern Territories , Ukraine
April 28,2016 National Commentaries

A View from Australia

From Indonesia’s perspective, the defense of its territorial waters from incursions and the protection of its natural resources from exploitation are key priorities. China’s aggressive behavior in reclaiming the fishing vessel fits a pattern of belittling Southeast Asian states by flaunting their sovereignty. On March 19, the policies of these two countries collided when Indonesia..

Natalie Sambhi
Global Maritime Fulcrum , Maritime security , Natuna Islands , non-alignment , Pribumi
April 19,2016 Open Forum

Russia-Southeast Asia Relations: In China’s Shadow?

From May 19-20, the leaders of Southeast Asia nations will convene for the Russia-ASEAN summit at the Black Sea resort of Sochi to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of the establishment of the ASEAN-Russia Dialogue Partnership.1 Moscow attaches great importance to this summit as a step forward to reassert Russia’s global standing damaged by the reverberations of the Ukraine crisis in..

Vitaly Kozyrev
APEC , EAS , EEU , regional security architecture , Russian Far East
April 15,2016 Open Forum

The Belt & Road Initiative as Power Resource: Lessons from Japan

In 2013, the Chinese government announced its plans to establish the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and to pursue a massive regional infrastructure plan initially called either the “New Silk Road” or the “One Belt, One Road” (OBOR), and now officially termed the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The simultaneous push to create a new development bank with nea..

William W. Grimes
"Belt and Road" Initiative , ADB , AIIB , MITI , Transactional power
April 07,2016 Open Forum

Mongolia’s Place in China’s Periphery Diplomacy

Under President Xi Jinping, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has reprioritized the country’s peripheral relations within its larger foreign policy portfolio. This marks a break with foreign policy since Deng Xiaoping, which placed a decided premium on great power relations, particularly with the United States, to ensure China’s growth and security.1 While the Xi administ..

Jeffrey Reeves
Comprehensive strategic partnership , One Belt One Road , peripheral diplomacy , Steppe Road Initiative
March 30,2016 Alternative Scenarios

Negative Scenario II

Key terms over the past quarter century in strategizing about the Russian Far East include: complementarity, geo-economic competition, modernization, intimidation, and geostrategic competition. Reflecting on them, I revisit the limited optimism in the Positive Scenario II posted in this issue of the journal. There may be grounds for some positive outcomes, but I argue the barriers are more se..

Gilbert Rozman
complementarity , Russian Far East
March 25,2016 Country Reports

Country Report: Russia (March 2016)

Vladimir Lukin, after explaining shortcomings of the United States, wrote in Rossiia v Global’noi Politike, no. 1, about his conceptions of China and India. He praised Deng Xiaoping for controlling China’s not inconsiderable foreign ambitions to devote all energies to resolving severe domestic problems. Over the following three-and-a-half decades, China lost not in the least its ..

Editorial Staff (with the assistance of Olga Puzanova)
EEU , Russian Far East , Silk Road Economic Belt , Sino-US Relations , TPP