US FON Operations: Challenging Excessive Maritime Claims
In April, the USS John Paul Jones carried out a freedom of navigation (FON) operation in India’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) 130 nautical miles (nm) west of t...
Category: Asia
Our Asia-Oceania desk covers South Asia, East Asia, Southeast Asia, Central Eurasia, Oceania, and most of the Pacific Ocean.
Savita: An Unexpected Leader
2020 was a year that reversed the idea of humanity being a dominant power; it was a year where neither the global economy, global conglomerates, nor global lead...
Translating Awareness into Action: Human Rights Advocate Daniel Sullivan on the Fight to End Genocide in Myanmar
Rohingya refugees walk to board a naval vessel to be relocated to to the island of Bhasan Char, in Chattogram, Bangladesh, Saturday, Jan. 30, 2021. (AP Photo/Az...
Positioning Photography in China: Liang See Tay and Elite Subjects
Background When examining the arrival of western photographers to China in the 19th century, men wielding cameras, armed with a revolutionary means of image-rep...
Dictatorship of the Vengeful: The Rise of Civic Authoritarianism in Rodrigo Duterte’s Philippines
This piece was published in the Spring Issue Print Edition (Volume 11) “The real inversion takes place when, in their desire for a certain majesty, the masses j...
War and Nationalism: How North Korea Forges a National Identity from Loss
The upcoming anniversary of the Korean War is a reminder of the United States’ first military loss after 1945. Although the conflict ended with the Korean Armis...
Nuclear Pacific: Ballistic Missile Defenses Drive an Arms Race in the Pacific
American military leaders’ argument is simple: Pacific adversaries (particularly North Korea) have large and growing ballistic missile arsenals. To combat this ...
The Price of Progress: Indonesia’s Omnibus Law and the Environmental Sacrifice of Economic Expansion in Asia
On October 5, 2020, the Majelis Permusyawaratan Rakyat (MPR) — Indonesia’s main parliamentary body—passed a long-awaited “omnibus bill” amending existing produc...
How Buddhist Nationalism Defines Myanmar’s Politics
The military-led coup in Myanmar has met with widespread protests by people of diverse backgrounds, including Buddhist monks. The demonstrations by the monks ho...
Tyranny of the Majority: Sri Lanka and Buddhist Majoritarian Politics
Buddhism as a religion is a proponent of equality and typically condemns discriminatory and hierarchical structures in society. However, the involvement of Budd...