This week Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan made headlines by controversially describing what he called, “China’s deeply ingrained need for conflict,” in comments made to the Washington Post, part of an ongoing row over islands in the East China…
Brunei
2013 Asia-Pacific Forecast: Southeast Asia
by Ernest Z. Bower • • 2 Comments
By Ernie Bower Editor’s Note: The CSIS Asia Team is writing a series of analyses that forecasts key issues and challenges in the Asia-Pacific. Here Ernie Bower explains that sustaining U.S. commitment to Southeast Asia in 2013 will require consistent…
By the Numbers: Surveying Southeast Asia
by cogitASIA Staff • • 0 Comments
Several surveys were released in recent weeks assessing aspects of governance, security, and quality of life worldwide, including Transparency International’s Corruptions Perception index, the Clean Air Asia Report, and the World Justice Project’s Rule of Law index. We have summarized…
ASEAN’s Time to Invest in Timor-Leste
by cogitASIA Staff • • 5 Comments
By Liam Hanlon As Brunei assumes ASEAN’s chairmanship for 2013, one major question it faces is Timor-Leste’s bid for membership in the group. Despite some ASEAN members’ previous resistance to Timor-Leste’s entrance, the country’s sustained political and economic development over…
US Seeks to Strengthen ASEAN ties through English Language Initiative
by cogitASIA Staff • • 0 Comments
By Jeremiah Magpile Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced the launch of the Brunei-U.S. English Language Enrichment for ASEAN September 7 during a visit to Brunei, in a significant gesture of U.S. support of ASEAN. English is the official language…
CNOOC Pulls Back the Curtain
by Gregory Poling • • 7 Comments
By Greg Poling [Editor’s note: This post is the second in cogitASIA’s new blog series, The South China Sea Frame-by-Frame. It incorporates data and imagery from the CSIS Southeast Asia Program’s innovative policy tool, The South China Sea in High…
Striving for Realism in Assessing Sino-ASEAN Disagreements
by cogitASIA Staff • • 1 Comment
By Joseph A. Bosco [Editor’s Note: Since ASEAN’s unprecedented failure to issue a joint communique due to disagreements over the South China Sea, various accounts have surfaced about what happened at the ASEAN foreign minister’s meeting and who is to…
Malaysia’s 2015 Test
by cogitASIA Staff • • 1 Comment
By Ernie Bower In 2015, Malaysian leadership and foreign policy will be judged by a benchmark defined not by Kuala Lumpur, but by ASEAN’s leaders. In less than five years, Malaysia will assume the chair of ASEAN, and will be…
Define “Engagement”
by cogitASIA Staff • • 0 Comments
By Ernest Z. Bower, Senior Adviser and Director of the Southeast Asia Program, CSIS The road into Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei. Photo by Ron Knox, used under a Creative Commons license. Bandar Seri Begawan is not a thriving megalopolis, but…
2nd US ASEAN Summit: What's on the Menu in Manhattan?
by cogitASIA Staff • • 0 Comments
US President Barack Obama will host eight of the ten leaders from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)[i] in New York on Friday, September 24, 2010 at the 2nd US ASEAN Summit. The meeting underlines renewed American policy energy being invested in Southeast Asia. Headlines from the discussion should focus on three areas …