Commentaries

The Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) will convene the thirteen National Congress from January 25 to February 2, 2021. According to the CPV’s draft resolutions issued in mid-2020 for public review, during 2021-2025, Vietnam will continue the cause of industrialization and modernization on the foundation of science and technology, innovation and creativeness, and the advancement of the fourth innovation revolution. 

Despite China’s attempt to trouble Taiwan, the political stability under the leadership of President Tsai and her success in containing COVID 19 outbreak has highlighted Taiwan’s global image in 2020. There is no doubt that 2020 is an unusual success story for Taiwan, which has emerged as one of East Asia’s strongest democracies

The United States has to increase its presence in the High North seas. In the last decade, the traffic of vessels has increased around 128 percent in the waters of the North, which again gives a bad signal to the US, which just ignores the geopolitical and geostrategic importance the Arctic region.

Biden will try to foster good relations with ASEAN nations so as to contain the rise of China. As Biden’s sole policy is “to lead the world and not retreat from it” as such he and his team will try to maintain America’s status quo. Biden holds the view that China has its own domestic problem and as such it cannot be a competition to the US.

The US under Joe Biden will definitely continue to formulate its policies on South East Asia centred around China. With economically and militarily rising China as the elephant in the Asian bloc, the South East Asian nations would like to preserve their independence. With China as the next big hegemon, the ASEAN countries would like to optimize the benefits by maintaining relation with both the US and China. However, the growing intense geopolitical rivalry between US and China would make it difficult for the  ASEAN countries to maintain its balancing act, which is certainly a difficult task in days to come.

Being a major global power along with  Indo-Pacific actor, India, should take the lead in creating a new regional security structure by involving countries like Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, Russia, Kazakhstan and the Philippines.  This can serve twin purposes. These are: this regional grouping can facilitate growing economic cooperation among them and at the same time can provide a forum which can checkmate the hegemonistic tendencies of China in the Indo-Pacific region.

The George Floyd’s tragic chokehold-death in the hands of law authorities has not only propelled the famous Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement across the U.S. but also exposed America’s untreated old wounds of complicated race relations. This has resulted in a polarized American politics marked by debates on the racialization process, racial prejudice, police defund, police reform, and how the two primary mainstream parties fair when it comes to policies for genuine upliftment of the African-American community.  

The Minister for Foreign Affairs of Nepal is set to take off on 14 January 2020 to participate in 6th meeting of Nepal-India Joint Commission. Meanwhile, Nepal politics once again stole the limelight when Chinese delegation visited Kathmandu in last week December 2020, post-dissolution of the House of Representatives

India and Australia are part of this emerging axis in the Indo-Pacific which includes countries of the Indo-Pacific littoral, France, Japan and the United States, which can now be seen as moving towards a common geopolitical and geo-economic agenda.

Recently, the Taliban leaders in their conversation with the US officials advised them that the Afghan issue could not be solved militarily and hence America should focus on a “peaceful strategy for Afghanistan instead of war.”  But the US knew that the Taliban had in a way demonstrated their resilience and the powerful American and NATO forces had not succeeded in their war efforts.