Modest Step Ahead for Anti-China Trade Framework
US President Joe Biden celebrated an economic agreement last week among fourteen Asia-Pacific countries, including Japan, which implicitly aims to counter China’s regional economic influence.
US President Joe Biden celebrated an economic agreement last week among fourteen Asia-Pacific countries, including Japan, which implicitly aims to counter China’s regional economic influence.
Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen has announced the extension of the military draft to one year from the current duration of four months, citing the perceived need for increased military preparedness.
Republican lawmakers in the US House of Representatives are calling for increased confrontation with China, and should this party take power in next week’s midterm elections, they may exercise significant influence on US foreign policy in the Asia-Pacific region.
Western nations have recently taken up a mantra that claims they will never allow “changes to the status quo by force,” but when it comes to the dangerous crisis in the Taiwan Strait, it’s not entirely clear that all Western commentators even understand what the diplomatic “status quo” is all about.
The government remains on track to dump treated radioactive wastewater into the Pacific Ocean in spite of fierce foreign and domestic criticism.
Kurt Campbell, the Biden administration’s National Security Council Coordinator for the Indo-Pacific, is the “brain” behind much of what the Pentagon and US State Department are doing in East Asia today, but his policy approaches do not correspond with the realities of a global US empire now in rapid decline.
The European Union (EU) is preparing to launch its own vaccination passport system on July 1, while many other nations are considering similar initiatives.
US farmers and food justice advocates have published a statement of solidarity with Indian farmers who are protesting unpopular new laws and “the forces of neoliberalism” imposed at the prompting of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s far right, Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party
This SNA Speakeasy features Hiroki Takeuchi on the theme of “Japan at the Center of Trade Rulemaking in Asia-Pacific.”
The Biden administration surprised over the weekend, issuing a statement on Taiwan through the US State Department on Sunday in response to an incursion of Taiwan’s Air Defense Identification Zone by thirteen Chinese warplanes the previous day.