While China’s influence in Southeast Asia is inevitable, the region welcomed Secretary Blinken’s recent trip as a counterweight to Beijing, says USIP’s Brian Harding: “[The region] wants balance, which means they want the United States to be as engaged as possible.”
U.S. Institute of Peace experts discuss the latest foreign policy issues from around the world in On Peace, a brief weekly collaboration with SiriusXM's POTUS Channel 124.
It is that time of the year again. World leaders are converging in New York for the launch of the 79th U.N. General Assembly. With every passing year, the global trends away from multilateral approaches and structures that ensure peace, security and global stability leave humanity in a growing state of precarity. That, however, should demand a penetrating call for less cynicism, not more.
Lacking formal recognition from all member states, the Taliban will not be present at the U.N. General Assembly next week. Their absence speaks volumes about how the international community struggles to constrain a regime that has repeatedly defied U.N. treaties, sanctions and Security Council resolutions. Three years into Taliban rule, the Afghan people are beset by a host of human rights, economic and humanitarian challenges, with women and girls particularly impacted. Meanwhile, the international community still has no clear approach to dealing with the Taliban, with the regime rejecting a U.N. Security Council resolution calling for a special envoy to develop a roadmap for normalizing Afghanistan’s relations with the international community.
Amid today’s renewed great power competition, the Korean Peninsula has entered a new Cold War winter without having enjoyed the spring of the previous post-Cold War era. During the post-Cold War period, the South Korean and U.S. governments anticipated that the seismic changes occurring in Europe would be replicated on the Korean Peninsula. However, over the past 30 years, none of their main policy goals regarding North Korea — such as reform and opening, denuclearization, peace settlement and unification — were fulfilled due to several factors in Northeast Asian geopolitics that favored the status quo. The enduring nature of these factors means the United States and South Korea should adjust their North Korea strategy and goals to enhance peace and security on the Korean Peninsula more effectively.
Last week, China welcomed more than 50 African leaders to Beijing for the ninth Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), which has met every three years since 2000 to coordinate economic and political relations. FOCAC is China’s main platform for Belt and Road-affiliated projects and Chinese plans for infrastructure development have generally dominated the action plans that come out of the forum. In recent years, exchanges between Chinese and African political parties, legislatures and local governments have also been a focus of the forum. China has also found in FOCAC a source of support for international relations principles it prioritizes, including noninterference and its "one China" principle. While security cooperation has been an element of FOCAC for more than a decade, this year’s forum saw an unprecedented Chinese emphasis on its role in security on the continent.