Author: Kyle Ferrier, KEI

As the dust settles on Donald Trump’s far-reaching campaign promises, one thing is clear: the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is effectively dead. What replaces it will be of the utmost importance to Asia’s future. Read more…

Author: Claude Barfield, AEI

US Secretary of Defence Ashton Carter has called the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) the equivalent of a ‘second aircraft carrier’. Secretary of State John Kerry has warned that ‘We cannot withdraw from TPP and still be viewed as a central player in the Pacific Rim Read more…

Author: Hugh White, ANU

As strategic tensions have mounted in Asia this year, it has become steadily clearer that small and middle powers in the region — countries like Singapore and Australia — face a stark choice. Read more…

Author: Ashley Hess, Pacific Forum CSIS

The US–South Korea Civil Nuclear Agreement (the 123 Agreement, required by US law before bilateral nuclear cooperation can take place) was first signed over 40 years ago and will expire next March. A bill to extend the treaty until March 2016 (HR 2449) was introduced into the US House of Representatives in June and was unanimously approved on September 17. Read more…

Authors: Robert A. Manning, Atlantic Council, and James J. Przystup, NDU

To answer Hugh White’s initial question, ‘what is America’s ultimate aim in Asia today?’, there is no mystery about American aims in Asia: it is simply a rules-based order with unimpeded access to the global commons.

To the degree that other stakeholders are willing and able to help enforce such a system, they are welcome as partners. The question we posed remains unanswered. Parity does not tell us what regional order China would like to preside over. Read more…

Author: Artyom Lukin, Far Eastern Federal University

As the geopolitical competition between China and the US intensifies, other actors must decide how they will position themselves in this power struggle. Of these, Russia is arguably one of the most crucial ‘swing states’ in the contemporary global arena.

Russia and China have been close ‘strategic partners’ since the late 1990s, but there is speculation that Russia will eventually Read more…

Author: Louise Merrington, ANU

US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta’s visit to India in June highlighted both India’s increasing importance as a regional balance in the US ‘pivot’ to the Asia Pacific and the extent to which the US–Pakistan relationship has deteriorated in recent months.

Although the US–India relationship reached a high note with the 2008 civilian nuclear deal, several Read more…