October 29,2014 Country Reports

Country Report: China (October 2014)

Ukraine (Russia), South Korea, India and, as usual, Japan attracted keen attention for their potential to alter the geopolitical environment in Asia. Ukraine’s significance is its impact on Russian relations with both the United States and China. In the case of South Korea its tensions with Japan and forward-looking diplomacy with China led to questions about the strength of its alliance with th..

Editorial Staff (with the assistance of Dong Jiaxin*)
Civilizations , hegemonism , India , Look East policy , New Cold War , new defense guidelines , Ukraine , US-ROK alliance
October 20,2014 Country Reports

Country Report: Japan (October 2014)

Hopes for Japanese diplomacy had grown faint in the late summer of 2014. Russian relations had stalled, as Russia flexed its muscles with rare military exercises on the islands in dispute. North Korea was delaying a report on the abductees, which Japan had been expecting in the middle of September. Possible meetings on the sidelines of APEC in November between Abe and Xi Jinping or Park Geun-hye r..

Editorial Staff
ASEAN Asian dream , comfort women , Eurasian diplomacy , Japanese Abductees , Northern Territories , Putin’s visit , sanctions , Thailand , Ukraine , US pressure
October 17,2014 Special Forum

Japan’s Approach to Southeast Asia in the Context of Sino-Japanese Relations

At times, since 2000, interest has piqued in Sino-Japanese competition—over Russia (rival proposals for an oil pipeline in the early 2000s), South Korea (maneuvering within ASEAN+3 and in the Six-Party Talks), and India (recently, as Abe Shinzo and Xi Jinping both are seeking upgraded ties to Narendra Modi)—, but the most intense, sustained rivalry has unfolded over Southeast Asia. In 2013-201..

Gilbert Rozman
Asian values , Asianism , Australia , East Asian Community , Fukuda Doctrine , India , Rebalancing , Regionalism , Revisionism , South China Sea
October 15,2014 Open Forum

Washington Insights, October 2014

The Obama visit to East Asia in April marked a transition from one set of discussions in Washington, DC to another. Instead of agonizing about Japan-ROK relations, there was new thinking about the future of the Korean Peninsula, stimulated by debates in South Korea encouraged by Park Geun-hye. Rather than a narrow focus on bilateral maritime disputes in the East China and South China seas, discuss..

Editorial Staff
ASEAN centrality , India , Indo-Pacific region , North Korean outreach , Park-Xi Summit , peaceful unification , Southeast Asia
October 15,2014 Open Forum

Can Indonesia Fulfill Its Aspirations to Regional Leadership?

There is much talk today about Indonesia’s rise and aspirations to regional leadership as a middle power. Supporters of this proposition often cite a raft of facts and statistics to validate this claim: Indonesia’s impressive economic growth rates in recent years (averaging 6 percent) relative to other Asian countries, its young population and vibrant democracy, its size and enormous natural r..

Liow Joseph Chinyong*
ASEAN Security Community , Bali Democracy Forum , Cambodia , Indo-Pacific Treaty , Indonesia , Malaysia , Philippines , regional leadership , Singapore , Thailand
October 15,2014 Open Forum

Trilateral Cooperation Secretariat (TCS) of China, Japan and the ROK

A new impetus for regional cooperation arose at the third Korea-Japan-China trilateral summit held on May 30, 2010 on Jeju Island. Upon agreement among the three heads of government, the ROK, Japan, and the People’s Republic of China launched a Secretariat to strengthen and institutionalize trilateral cooperation, and in September 2011, the Trilateral Cooperation Secretariat (TCS) was officially..

Shin Bong-kil*
ASEAN , ASEAN+3 , Northeast Asian economic region , regional cooperation organization , Secretariat , trust
September 29,2014 Country Reports

Country Report: Russia (September 2014)

While the world’s gaze centered on Russia’s relations with the West and the on-again, off-again confrontation over Ukraine, Russian publications paraded a new, more assertive outlook on Russia’s “turn to the East” (povorot na Vostok). Giving impetus to this was an early July meeting of ambassadors addressed by Vladimir Putin, the statements at which on East and Central Asia were aired by..

Editorial Staff (with the assistance of Olga Puzanova)
BRICS , Central Asia , dead hikiwake , India , liberal secularism , New Cold War , turn to the East , Ukraine
September 29,2014 Topics of the Month

Civilizational Divides and Regional Confrontations – 1

To start this exchange, Gilbert Rozman wrote a meditative piece on the dangers of civilizational “pull” for Japan and France were they to respond with some complacency toward Russia and China’s respective challenges to their immediate neighborhoods. He is right on the need for a strategic “push”—one whereby both countries would clearly overcome their old, cultural inward-thinking and c..

François Godement
civilizational debates , cultural inward-thinking , France , Putinism , Sino-Russian quasi-alliance , strategic gambles , Ukraine