Showing 1 - 3 of 3
Trump's 'America First' in overdrive
News, Thitinan Pongsudhirak, Published on 23/01/2026
» President Donald Trump's extraterritorial capture of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife on cocaine-trafficking and terrorism-related charges earlier this month and repeated demand to take over Greenland at the World Economic Forum this week are part and parcel of a belligerent and transformative "America First" paradigm that dates back at least four decades.
The geopolitics of China's CPTPP move
Oped, Thitinan Pongsudhirak, Published on 03/12/2021
» Nowhere is the intersection between geopolitics and geoeconomics more evident than the accession negotiations under the 11-member Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). At issue are three new applications for accession by the United Kingdom, China, and Taiwan. While the UK's candidacy alters the geographic crux of what has been Asia-Pacific trade liberalisation, China's and Taiwan's entry efforts represent a proxy showdown between the United States-led global order and 75-year-old alliance system versus Beijing's geostrategic ambitions and objectives.
Maintaining what's left of rules-based order
News, Thitinan Pongsudhirak, Published on 20/07/2018
» For anyone who is alive today, the world as we know it has never been so stirred and shaken. The international order based on a common set of institutions, rules and norms that used to be widely cherished and universally beneficial is unravelling before our collective and helpless eyes. From an emerging United States-China trade war and Beijing's militarised occupation of the South China Sea to Russia's revanchist annexation of Crimea, world order over the past several years has been breaking down. Those who once set the rules, principally the US, are breaking them, while aspiring new rule-setters, mainly China, have not found sufficient international reception. Rule-takers, such as the smaller states in Asean, suffer the most when set rules lose cohesion, lustre and abidance.