The announcement by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo portends more American military operations to push back Chinese maritime activity and sanctions on Chinese companies. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo denounced China on Monday, saying its maritime claims in the South China Sea were “completely unlawful.” WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced on Monday […]

NEGOTIATIONS for the Code of Conduct (CoC) in the South China Sea have stalled, thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic. The 2021 conclusion target anticipated by Premier Li Keqiang appears increasingly unlikely. Some stakeholders have proposed negotiations via video-conferencing, while others insist on face-to-face meetings. That aside, questions remain on the final output, quality and effective […]

Today (12 July 2020) is the fourth anniversary of The Hague’s ruling (The Republic of the Philippines v. The People’s Republic of China) on the South China Sea dispute in favor of the Philippines. To commemorate the event, and to remind us all that (1) China’s nine-dash line was invalidated by the ruling, and (2) […]

US PRESIDENT Donald Trump’s threats to move nuclear weapons from Germany to Poland would represent a major flashpoint with Vladimir Putin’s Russia, if the move went ahead, a defence expert has warned. Mr Trump has already pulled 9,500 troops out of Germany after accusing the country, led by Angela Merkel, of being “delinquent” in its […]

“Independence Support Spikes,” blared a headline this week in the Taipei Times, one of my favorite erstwhile publishing haunts. And blare it should. A Taiwanese Public Opinion Foundation poll indicated that a striking 54 percent of respondents favor early independence from China, 23.4 percent back the cross-strait status quo, 12.5 percent favor early unification with […]

CANBERRA – Albert Einstein said while he didn’t know the weapons to be used in World War III in the nuclear age, the war after “will be fought with sticks and stones.” In an already surreal 2020, we’ve witnessed two nuclear-armed neighbors fighting with fists, rocks and nail-studded clubs at an altitude of 4,250 meters. […]

“We are in the foothills of a Cold War.” Those were the words of Henry Kissinger when I interviewed him at the Bloomberg New Economy Forum in Beijing last November. The observation in itself was not wholly startling. It had seemed obvious to me since early last year that a new Cold War — between […]

Regional flashpoints are heating up, as we’ve seen with the fatal clash in Ladakh on the India–China border, the protests in Hong Kong and provocative sorties in the airspace over Taiwan and Japan. But the South China Sea may be the most dangerous of all. Recent developments suggest that China is making even more decisive, […]

Strike fighters and electronic-warfare jets took off day and night from two U.S. aircraft carriers in the South China Sea to simulate sustained attacks on enemy bases as Washington put on one of its biggest displays of naval power in a potential flashpoint for conflict. Throughout the weekend, the USS Ronald Reagan and USS Nimitz […]

The Philippines—not China—is still in possession of Sandy Cay, the sandbar closest to the island of Pagasa in the West Philippine Sea (WPS), Defense Secretary Delfin N. Lorenzana asserted on Thursday. The defense chief told a virtual forum organized by the National Defense College of the Philippines that the government could have taken control of […]