SOUTH CHINA SEA competition between the US and China has thrown up vicious verbal wars between the two superpowers – but according to one expert – President Xi Jinping is reluctant to allow for military escalation due to the superiority of President Donald Trump’s forces. While the Chinese Navy continues to aggressively assert its […]

  FEARS over China’s increasingly aggressive military movements in the South China Sea are expected to dominate the agenda when southeast Asian defence chiefs meet for talks over the weekend. The Asean Defence Ministers Meeting Plus in Bangkok will feature the defence chiefs from the 10-nation bloc and eight global partners, including US Secretary of […]

  MANILA, Philippines – United States Defense Secretary Mark Esper will visit the Philippines early next week to meet with Philippine Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana, as part of Esper’s Indo-Pacific tour that includes a meeting of Southeast Asian defense ministers in Thailand over the weekend. “In the Philippines, Secretary Esper will meet with his Philippine […]

  Retired Senior Associate Justice Antonio Carpio on Tuesday revealed that someone from the Aquino administration attempted to have him removed from the Philippine delegation to the Permanent Court of Arbitration in Hague in 2016. Interviewed on “Bawal ang Pasaway kay Mareng Winnie,” Carpio said someone from Malacañang blacked out his name from the list […]

  HANOI – With the global geopolitical center of gravity shifting toward Asia, a pluralistic, rules-based Indo-Pacific order is more important than ever, including for America’s own global standing. So it was good news when, two years ago, U.S. President Donald Trump began touting a vision of a “free and open” Indo-Pacific, characterized by unimpeded […]

  Assessing Hanoi’s strategy after the Vanguard Bank standoff with China. Now that the months-long standoff between China and Vietnam has finally ended at the disputed Vanguard Bank, it makes sense to take stock of how Hanoi’s security strategy fared in countering Chinese coercion in the South China Sea. Vietnam seeks simultaneous “cooperation and struggle” […]

  Unlike the West, modern China has seldom used brute force to access resources or expand markets — except, notably, in the South China Sea. This article is the first part in a series on China as a global power. Owing to geography and geopolitics, my country the Philippines finds itself in the middle of […]

  THE US military has sent another warning signal to China after a warship was deployed through the disputed Taiwan Strait. The USS Chancellorsville sailed through the disputed waters on Tuesday on what the US military has called a “routine” operation. Commander Reann Mommsen said the guided-missile cruiser travelled through the Strait to demonstrate “commitment […]