International relations remains the sum game of vast hypocrisies, a patchwork of compromises and the compromised. Every moral condemnation of a regime’s conduct is bound to be shown up as an exercise in double standards, often implicating the accusers. In the case of the military regime in Myanmar, double standards are not only modish but…
China’s ascendant global power is showing up the increasingly bankrupt condition of the United States and its Western allies. China is succeeding where the British, French and Japanese imperialist powers failed. This year saw the full operation of the China-Laos Railway, the first link in an ambitious Pan-Asian Rail Network that will integrate eight Southeast…
Russia’s military, economic, strategic, and potentially even diplomatic support for Myanmar (the latter referring in this context to it possibly mediating the Rohingya dispute with neighboring Bangladesh) can combine to create effective “Democratic Security” outcomes for stabilizing this geo-pivotal state at the crossroads of South and Southeast Asia, which will in turn accelerate the global…
The indomitable spirit of Raphael Lemkin, bibliophile, assiduous documenter of humanity’s dark deeds and inexecrable conduct, is bound to be an unsettled one. This brilliant, committed and peculiarly dedicated creature took years to come up with what would, in time, become a word so horrifying as to transfix judges of international law. The amalgam word…
Myanmar is a relatively small country on the Indochina peninsula. Its close neighbors are India, China and the other countries on the peninsula, Its geographical position means that it serves as a buffer zone between the two competing Asian giants, yet its role is not limited to that. In terms of land access, India is…
The meeting of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) foreign ministers was postponed amid disagreements over Myanmar. The West could use this division within ASEAN to dominate the association and pressure Southeast Asian countries to turn against China. ASEAN’s differences over Myanmar in the context of Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen’s visit to the isolated country…
