Asia-Pacific Archive

In the aftermath of the failed summit meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Hanoi in February, the task of resuscitating talks over Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program has fallen to the man who brokered Trump and Kim’s historic first meeting in June 2018: South Korean President Moon Jae-in. Moon’s willingness to again play the role of mediator is commendable, but he faces an uphill climb. The surprising breakdown of talks in Hanoi revealed nothing if not the extent to which the United States and North Korea misunderstand each other. U.S. negotiators understandably turned […]

In late February and early March, India and Pakistan engaged in a series of aerial skirmishes after a suicide bombing killed 40 Indian security personnel in the disputed territory of Kashmir. The crisis marked the worst escalation between the two nuclear-armed countries in nearly two decades. In an interview with WPR, Avinash Paliwal, a lecturer and deputy director of the South Asia Institute at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, discusses the longer history of the dispute over Kashmir and what it will take to prevent future crises from escalating. World Politics Review: Recent tensions between India […]

Prime Minister Hun Sen dissolved Cambodia’s opposition party ahead of 2018 elections to prevent it from repeating its 2013 success. Find out more when you subscribe to World Politics Review (WPR). Prime Minister Hun Sen and his Cambodian People’s Party now utterly dominate Cambodia, after the CPP won control of the entire lower house of parliament in elections in July 2018. The regime had, of course, ensured in advance that the CPP would sweep the vote, the culmination of Hun Sen’s increasingly brazen repression. With political regression all but complete, what is left for the remnants of the Cambodian opposition […]

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia—In December, nearly 40 men stepped off a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement-chartered plane onto a humid tarmac on the outskirts of Phnom Penh, the capital of their unfamiliar homeland. It was the first time many of them, who were born in refugee camps in Thailand and the Philippines to parents fleeing the Khmer Rouge regime, and who grew up in the United States, had ever set foot in Cambodia. Others fled the country as children, with their only memories of Cambodia being the horrors of the Khmer Rouge. The overwhelming majority of these Cambodian deportees came to […]

On March 27, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi took to the airwaves to make a dramatic announcement: India had successfully shot down one of its own satellites in low-Earth orbit with a missile. Only three other countries have demonstrated that capability: Russia, China and the United States. “India stands tall as a space power,” Modi declared, noting that the technology had been developed indigenously. But Modi’s glee at this demonstration of his country’s technological prowess was not shared by many space experts, who caution that the debris created by the missile test poses a threat to other satellites and spacecraft […]

Find out more about Kim Jong Un, his rise to power and his rule in North Korea when you subscribe to World Politics Review For nearly a quarter-century, since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the North Korean regime’s continued survival has baffled observers. When North Korea’s founding leader Kim Il Sung died, North Korea entered a period of famine that lasted three years and killed hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of North Korean citizens. Yet the regime carried on under his son, Kim Jong Il, and his grandson, Kim Jong Un, currently leads the country, making it the […]

Editor’s Note: Every Wednesday, WPR Newsletter and Engagement Editor Benjamin Wilhelm curates the week’s top news and expert analysis on China. Hong Kong’s government introduced revised extradition legislation last Wednesday, going ahead with plans to ease the handover of fugitives to jurisdictions that it does not have extradition treaties with, including China, Taiwan and Macau. Human rights groups and lawyers’ associations in Hong Kong have protested the move, saying that Beijing could use extradition as a weapon against political dissidents or anyone else its justice system deems criminal. Mainland China was deliberately excluded from Hong Kong’s 1997 extradition law, passed […]

The Philippines is set to hold congressional, provincial and local elections on May 13, midway through President Rodrigo Duterte’s six-year term. The polls are widely seen as a referendum on the controversial but still-popular Duterte, who has drawn international condemnation for his repressive tactics and his brutal war on drugs. The key battleground in next month’s elections is the 24-seat Senate, where Duterte-backed candidates are poised to win a majority of the 12 seats up for grabs. In an interview with WPR, Malcolm Cook, a senior fellow at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore, discusses the outlook for the elections, […]

The world is losing its battle against climate change. Greenhouse gas emissions rose to record levels last year, as countries lagged in meeting their already inadequate pledges under the Paris Agreement. Based on the current trajectory, the warming Earth will blow well past the 2-degrees Celsius ceiling widely agreed to be the maximum acceptable increase in average global temperatures before catastrophic impacts set in. In the face of this looming threat, climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts are necessary but insufficient. Humanity must also consider a third option it has long resisted: geoengineering, or the deliberate, large-scale manipulation of the […]

Editor’s Note: This article is part of an ongoing series on gun policy and the debate over gun control around the world. New Zealand is set to ban certain types of semi-automatic weapons following last month’s mass shooting that killed 50 people at two mosques in Christchurch. This week, new gun control legislation passed the first of three votes in Parliament. Many commentators have compared the situation to what happened in Australia in 1996, when strict new gun laws were enacted in the wake of a deadly mass shooting that shocked the country. But studies looking at the effectiveness of […]

“Eras” in a country’s history are usually determined in retrospect, or labeled metaphorically after a seminal event. But in Japan, the term is quite literal, corresponding to the reign of a new emperor. A new era is about to begin there, and it has a name already. For the first time in more than 200 years, Japan’s emperor is abdicating. On April 1, exactly one month before the coronation of the emperor’s son, Crown Prince Naruhito, on the Chrysanthemum Throne, the chief cabinet secretary unveiled the name that had been the subject of feverish speculation across Japan. Yoshihide Suga held […]

Editor’s Note: Every Wednesday, WPR Newsletter and Engagement Editor Benjamin Wilhelm curates the week’s top news and expert analysis on China. New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern completed a quick visit to Beijing on Monday, her first trip to China since becoming prime minister in 2017. Ardern was originally expected to tour the country over the course of a week, accompanied by a business delegation, with plans to stop in several Chinese cities. But an emerging rift between the two countries delayed that trip, and the mass shooting last month in Christchurch prompted Ardern to shorten her stay to one […]

Later this month, Japan’s Emperor Akihito will become the first monarch to abdicate in the country’s modern history. When he does, the curtains will fall on Japan’s current imperial era, known as “Heisei,” which began in 1989 when Akihito became emperor. His son, Crown Prince Naruhito, will accede to the throne on May 1, opening a new chapter in Japanese history. In a much-anticipated moment earlier this week, the government unveiled the name of that new era: “Reiwa.” Japan’s unique imperial calendar scheme dates back to the 7th century, and ever since the 1860s, the reign of every Japanese emperor […]

Loyal followers of U.S. President Donald Trump might enthusiastically proclaim that his “America First” foreign policy has been a success. His apologists more modestly argue that, if you ignore Twitter and focus on Trump’s actions, what little has changed in U.S. foreign policy is for the better. Whether enabled by ideological blinders or driven by partisan hackery, both claims are quite simply wrong. After more than two years of Trump’s amateurish bluster, no amount of posturing and self-declared victories can obscure the damage he has done to America’s interests. His failures are now on prominent display in Iran, North Korea […]

For all the fears it raised about a direct confrontation between South Asia’s nuclear-armed neighbors, the tit-for-tat that erupted between India and Pakistan in mid-February was relatively restrained compared to the political battle that unfolded around it in New Delhi. While the details about India’s “pre-emptive” military operation against Pakistan, in retaliation for a suicide bombing of a convoy of troops in Indian-controlled Kashmir, still remain hazy, it’s clear that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi trounced his domestic political opponents in the war of narratives during and after the crisis. In doing so, Modi stabilized his government and his own […]

In Thailand’s elections on March 24, the military’s proxy party, Palang Pracharath, performed better than pre-election surveys had indicated, finishing with 8.4 million votes, the most of any party. Combined with its seats in the unelected upper house, which is stacked with pro-military allies, Palang Pracharath should control enough seats to ensure that Prayuth Chan-ocha, who has led a military junta governing the country since 2014, will become prime minister again. Pheu Thai, the populist party aligned with exiled former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, finished second with 7.9 million votes, but won the greatest number of the 350 constituency-based seats […]