The political crisis that triggered off in Nepal with Prime Minster Prachanda’s resignation yet again indicates not only the trials and tribulations of a fledgling democratic process but also points to the geopolitical vulnerability of the country sandwiched as it is between the two Asian giants. While India considers Nepal a part of its sphere of influence, it is increasingly being challenged by China’s inroads into Nepal. In fact, the growing Nepal-China nexus should be seen in the context of India-China power competition in Asia.

• Abanti Bhattacharya
• May 18, 2009
• IDSA Comments

The collapse of the ASEAN Summit in Pattaya (Thailand) on April 11 following anti-government protests tarnished Thailand’s image. It also brought the regional group’s age-old policy of non-interference in the domestic trivials of a member state under question. The incident impeded ASEAN’s strategy to define a common approach to current global financial crisis. The Pattaya incident also demonstrated the ineffectiveness of ASEAN as a regional organization.

• Pranamita Baruah
• May 04, 2009
• IDSA Comments

True to its planned schedule, North Korea defied warnings from the international community on 5 April 2009, launching a rocket capable of reaching Alaska and Hawaii. As was expected, it stirred a chorus of worldwide criticism. Yet, the emergency meeting of the United National Security Council convened for the specific purpose of debating the North Korean issue remained deadlocked. China armed with veto power remained inflexible in its position and called for “calm and restraint” from the international community in an effort to “safeguard peace and stability of the region”.

• Rajaram Panda
• April 13, 2009
• IDSA Comments

For decades, the issue of Tibetan autonomy has been a bone of contention between China and the Tibetan government in exile. While Beijing considers Tibet an integral part of China, the Tibetan people owe their allegiance to the Dalai Lama. Over the years, friction between the two parties have manifested through outbreak of anti-China uprisings, both within and outside Tibet. The occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Dalai Lama’s escape from Tibet on March 10, 2009, once again reinforced the acrimonious relationship between China and the Tibet government in exile.

• Pranamita Baruah
• April 13, 2009
• IDSA Comments

North East Asia’s fragile peace is being threatened by North Korea’s planned launch between 4 and 8 April over Japanese territory of a communication satellite. The US and its allies suspect the planned satellite launch to be a long-range ballistic missile test. The prevailing uneasy peace is accentuated by the fact that both a ballistic missile and a satellite launcher operate on very similar technology.

• Pranamita Baruah , Rajaram Panda
• April 02, 2009
• IDSA Comments

Labour Party Prime Minister of Australia, Kevin Rudd, has been in office for nearly one and a half years after his unexpected victory over John Howard in late 2007. For almost three decades after World War II, Australia systematically repudiated the idea of being identified as an Asian country, until the resource boom in the early 1970s that catapulted Australia as one of the major resource exporters to resource-importing countries such as Japan and now China. Since then, Australia’s external orientation has undergone a profound change.

• Pranamita Baruah , Rajaram Panda
• April 01, 2009
• IDSA Comments

In its efforts to check the piracy menace, Japan deployed two Maritime Self Defense Force (MSDF) destroyers - Sazanami and Samidare - on March 14, 2009 in the Gulf of Aden, off the coast of Somalia, on a four-month long anti-piracy mission. Japanese law mandates that that the destroyers can only escort Japanese merchant ships through this piracy-prone area without the authority to use weapons. 2,595 Japan-linked commercial ships have already registered their requests to be escorted.

• Pranamita Baruah
• March 30, 2009
• IDSA Comments

Ichiro Ozawa, leader of the opposition Democratic Party of Japan and projected to be the man most likely to become Japan’s next prime minister, has become dangerously entangled in an illegal political funds investigation. The resulting damage to the DPJ appears to be severe. It was believed to have had a strong chance to win the coming general elections, scheduled anytime before September 2009. The scandal has injected a new dimension to the already volatile political situation that has evolved in Japan since 1992, when the Liberal Democratic Party lost power for the first time.

• Rajaram Panda
• March 18, 2009
• IDSA Comments

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s recent four-stop swing through Asia – Japan, Indonesia, South Korea and China – in her first tour as Secretary of State represented a strong new beginning for America’s Asia diplomacy. Relations between the US and China and the US and Japan at the moment are free of any acrimony and generally good. However, the recent global economic meltdown has affected the major Asian economies such as Japan and China to some extent given their heavy dependence for exports on the American market.

• Rajaram Panda
• March 09, 2009
• IDSA Comments

Prior to the Democrats coming to power the Chinese Communist Party believed that the Barack Obama administration will push harder on Human Rights and other sensitive issues. The stability in relations between Washington and Beijing during the Bush era appeared to be on test given that both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were quite critical of China during their election campaigns.

• Gunjan Singh
• March 05, 2009
• IDSA Comments

Call it China’s new military diplomacy or emerging naval strategy. A Chinese naval fleet arrived in the Gulf of Aden off the Somalian coast on January 6, 2009 to carry out the first escort mission against pirates. On February 18, 2009, in an efficient display of its growing naval capabilities, the fleet completed its twenty first mission (the largest held so far in the series) of escorting merchant ships in this region.

• S. Rajasimman
• March 02, 2009
• IDSA Comments

Expectations are high in Japan, both in the general public and amongst the elite, after Democrat Barack Obama’s ascendancy to the American Presidency. Japan was clearly uncomfortable with Republican Bush administration’s pursuit of a unilateralist foreign policy as against Obama’s more pronounced multilateral approach. According to Professor Kenji Takita of Chuo University, multilateralism is closely associated with smart power and therefore Obama’s shift towards multilateralism is likely to undo some of the damage that the Bush administration’s unilateralism has done to American standing.

• Rajaram Panda
• January 29, 2009
• IDSA Comments

The global financial crisis which had been brewing for some time began to unfold in the middle of 2008. Stock markets around the world have nosedived, large financial institutions have collapsed or been bought out, and governments of even the wealthiest nations have had to come up with rescue packages to rescue their financial systems. The crisis stemmed from the collapse of the US sub-prime mortgage market and the reversal of the housing boom in other industrialised economies.

• Gunjan Singh
• December 04, 2008
• IDSA Comments

External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee's recent outburst that China poses a security challenge indicates a dangerous ambiguity in India’s China policy. The fact that Mukherjee has aired such a view after his intense and long diplomatic rapport with the leadership of that country needs to be noted seriously. It is not that China has not been a puzzle to Indian strategic thinkers. Even former Defence Minister George Fernandes considered China as India’s number one enemy, but his views were transformed after he paid an official visit to Beijing.

• P. Stobdan
• November 18, 2008
• IDSA Comments

If current developments are any indicator, the long road to economic integration on either side of the Taiwan Straits has commenced. In a first of its kind, a sixty member delegation led by Chen Yunlin, Chairman of the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits (ARATS) visited Taiwan from November 3-7, 2008 to hold talks with his counterpart Chiang Pin-kung, Chairman of the Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF). ARATS and SEF are two non-governmental organisations authorised by China and Taiwan in the early 1990s to examine the entire gamut of cross-Strait relations.

• Raviprasad Narayanan
• November 14, 2008
• IDSA Comments

The two recent glorious achievements - the Olympics and spacewalk mission – seem to have transcended China to a new global height with wide implications for the world’s strategic balance. From all accounts, analysts suggest that China will not only survive but has also gained from the recent global financial meltdown.

• P. Stobdan
• October 27, 2008
• IDSA Comments

Since 2005, the ‘centre of gravity’ of Asian piracy has clearly shifted westwards from Southeast Asia to the western Indian Ocean. The Somalia-based pirates are on the rampage, capturing vessels of all sizes ranging from yachts to super-tankers and their crew for ransom. This is hardly surprising, considering that the writ of Somalia’s Transitional Government (TFG) does not even run on the entire Somali land territory, and much less on its adjoining seas.

• Gurpreet S Khurana
• October 22, 2008
• IDSA Comments

On October 7, 2008, the PLA Daily reported that the Central Military Commission (CMC) and the four general departments of the Chinese military celebrated in great style the success of the Shenzhou-VII manned space flight mission. Shenzhou-VII, carrying three astronauts (Zhai Zhigang, Liu Boming, and Jing Haipeng) returned successfully on September 28 after conducting a historic spacewalk mission. This success made China the third country after the United States and Russia to conduct a space walk mission.

• Jagannath P. Panda
• October 16, 2008
• IDSA Comments

Will Taiwan ever participate in the United Nations? Pessimist views have started flowing after the rejection of Taiwan’s fresh bid for ‘meaningful participation in international agencies’ at the UN on September 18, 2008. This proposal was submitted by sixteen “diplomatic allies” of Taiwan to the UN Secretariat on August 14, 2008. Blocking Taiwan’s new attempt, a UN subcommittee decided that it would not let the 63rd UN General Assembly (UNGA) consider their request for permission to join ‘UN activities’.

• Jagannath P. Panda
• September 24, 2008
• IDSA Comments

Let the fact speak for itself. China was not happy about India gaining the waiver in the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) and it played the role of a spoiler till such time it could. The Indian Government now feels betrayed. Perhaps India expected China’s reciprocity in exchange for its gracious support for the successful tour of the Olympic Torch. Indeed, it was naiveté that led India to believe Chinese rhetoric.

• Abanti Bhattacharya
• September 17, 2008
• IDSA Comments