South China Sea
"Work in Progress": Visits from Washington to Beijing

The US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has made a trip to China. Prior to her, Secretary of State Antony Blinken was on a two-day visit to Beijing on June 18-19 and met President Xi Jinping. These high-level delegations are an effort by Washington...

Dissecting Vietnam Prime Minister Chinh’s Visit to China

Rebalancing diplomatic ties among nations in the Indo-Pacific amid strained relations with and between some of them is the new definition of diplomacy now. Each country pursues it foreign policy based on its national interests, be that on economic,...

Escalation of Conflict Feared after Tsai’s Visit to the US

The Taiwan issue again entered a new geopolitical churn when Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen met the US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy in California on 5 April 2023, provoking Beijing to issue a sharp rebuke. This was the highest-profile meeting of...

AUKUS’s Nuclear Submarine Pact: Implications

Two strategic groupings – the Quad and AUKUS – are in the news that has caught world’s attention. While the Quad has been for been in existence for some time now, AUKUS is a recent construct. When in September 2021, Australia, the UK and the US...

US- India & Indo-Pacific: Takeaways from 2022

The year 2022 brought a series of geopolitical changes of global magnitude that were last witnessed somewhat in the Cold War period. The economic slowdown and the disruption of the supply chains that were triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic got...

Trilateral Web Conference on "Emerging Strategic Environment in the Indo-Pacific"

The Vivekananda International Foundation organized a trilateral webinar with the Japan Institute of National Fundamentals and the Prospect Foundation on 29 September 2022 on "Emerging Strategic Environment in the Indo-Pacific". After initial remarks...

Japan upgrades its Defence and Security Posture

Introduction In a dramatic departure to Japan’s exclusively defensive posture embodied in the pacifist post-War Constitution of Japan, the Fumio Kishida administration effectively abandoned on 16 December 2022 when it passed ammendments to three key...

Assessing Vietnam Communist Party Chief Trong’s Visit to China

In a major diplomatic move following the precedent-breaking and historic third five-year term as General Secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and Chinese President Xi Jinping at the recently concluded 20th National...

Tensions in Taiwan Strait must not be Allowed to Develop into a Regional/Global Crisis – Part II

In the context of understanding the developments in the Taiwan Strait, two aspects need to be highlighted as a spillover of Taiwan-China spat: fresh US arms sales to Taiwan and increase in defence expenditure of Taiwan by almost 14 per cent. First:...

After Djibouti and (suspected) Military Base in Solomon Islands, China now Eyes Ream Naval Base in Cambodia

China’s relentless drives towards power projection endeavours and to expand its strategic and maritime imprints look unstoppable. In South Asia, the much talked about String of Pearls by building ports in Gwadar in Pakistan, Chittagong in Bangladesh...

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