The daily reports issued by the OSCE Observer Mission in Ukraine testify to a constant stream of ups and downs. Sometimes the number of ceasefire violations increases over the previous day; other times it decreases. There is no definite direction either way – like a barely fluctuating wave that flares up on rare occasions. Today, …

The conflict in Eastern Ukraine is in its fourth year. More than 10,000 people have died so far, and the number of ceasefire violations is on the rise. The humanitarian situation is dire, especially for people living close to the line of contact. The area around the line is polluted with land mines, leading to …

General Curtis LeMay, chief of staff of the United States Air Force in the early 1960s, once interrupted one of his officers who described the Soviet Union as an enemy. The USSR, LeMay said, was not an enemy, but an adversary. The enemy was the US Navy, the general clarified, referring to the bitter and …

Stock exchange traders know what a Minsky Moment is. It’s when a market fails or falls into crisis after an extended period of market speculation or unsustainable growth. This phenomenon was named for Hyman Minsky, an economics professor famous for arguing that a long bull market tends to end in large collapse.

As we live …

Security alignments in the Asia-Pacific are quickly hardening in response to China’s rise and regional assertiveness.

These realignments have led to the formation of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or simply the Quad, which comprises the United States, its two close allies Australia and Japan, and India. The Trump administration’s endorsement of the term “Indo-Pacific” gives …

As we meet this year at Munich, global tensions are at their highest point since the end of the Cold War. Like much of the rest of the world, Asia saw a number of security crises unfold over the last year. Tensions between China and South Korea flared over Seoul’s deployment of the THAAD missile …

As we enter 2018 and move toward the end of the second decade of the 21st century, the world is witnessing new instabilities and turbulent situations. Having attended forums in Munich, Sochi and Rome in late 2017, I could sense the anxieties in international strategic circles. People were asking: What is happening in the world …

For seven decades now, the world’s most perilous flashpoints have all been in Asia: Kashmir, Taiwan and Korea. India and Pakistan fought three bloody wars over Kashmir, in 1947-48, 1963 and 1971, and still face one another at gunpoint in the contested Himalayan region. Beijing’s determination to reunify Taiwan with the mainland has triggered several …

One can be forgiven for doubting that Kim Jong-un is an “absolutely competent and mature politician,” as Russian President Vladimir Putin has called him. He is rather a cold cynic risking the lives of millions of people to secure his own political survival. Indeed, the sole reason he is amassing a nuclear arsenal is to …

When Donald Trump became US president on Jan. 20, 2017, the world could and should have seen a downturn in Sino-American relations. During his election campaign, Trump had criticized China fiercely: “We can’t continue to allow China to rape our country, and that’s what they are doing.” He also declared he would “label China a …

For 73 days between June and August 2017, Indian and Chinese troops were locked eyeball to eyeball over a small strip of land marking the tri-junction between India, Bhutan and China: the Doklam Plateau. The clash was ostensibly triggered by Chinese road construction activities around disputed territories. But military tensions at Doklam are only the …

Over three years after the launch of the military campaign against the Islamic State, the US-led global coalition, together with Iraqi and Kurdish forces, have accomplished their mission. Ninety-eight percent of the territory IS once held in Syria and Iraq has been recaptured. The caliphate’s most important cities, Raqqa and Mosul, are no longer controlled …

Cyber security is a relatively new foreign policy problem. A decade ago it received little attention, but in 2013 the US Director of National Intelligence James Clapper declared cyber security risks to be the biggest threat facing the nation.

In 1996, only 36 million people or about 1 percent of the world population used the …

The arms control horizon is both grim and complex, bogged down by a triple tangle of geopolitical, strategic and technological factors while reflecting the depth and difficulty of today’s security dilemmas. The continued inability to move forward risks deepening them, yet even small advances could signal and encourage an easing of global tensions.

In the …

Conventional warfare tactics, traditionally maintained through rifles and tanks, artillery, and fighter jets, is now centered on the rapid innovation and advancement of IT, artificial intelligence (AI), avionics and cyber technology in developed countries. The battlefield is expanding to five dimensions – ground, sea, air, space and cyber. However, the South Korean military faces a …