South Asia

The evolving strategic dynamics in the Indo-Pacific are of paramount importance for the future of the rules-based international order. While the United States is redirecting strategic focus to the region as part of its Free and Open Indo-Pacific strategy, Europe is also stepping up its role—leveraging a strong economic profile, long-standing bilateral ties, and active engagement in various regional multilateral forums. The European Union (EU) and its member states can make distinct contributions to an open, transparent, inclusive, and rules-based regional order, though not necessarily always in lockstep with Washington.

The authors comment on the Washington Post's recently released 6-part investigative report on the U.S. war in Afghanistan. They conclude that although important, this report is only alarming to the extent that it demonstrates how often U.S. leaders deceive themselves.

Stephen Walt writes that inflated threats, concealed costs, and lack of accountability for failure—and the complicity of the foreign-policy establishment—have kept the infinity war going for 18 years.

SWJ interview with Nathaniel L. Moir, Ph.D., an Ernest May Postdoctoral Fellow in History and Policy at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School. Dr. Moir is completing a book manuscript on Bernard Fall for publication.

For decades, Singapore has been a premier refinery hub and gatekeeper between Asia and the Middle East, but its position is increasingly threatened as producer countries are shifting into the downstream activities that helped make Singapore the “Houston of Asia”. Oil and petrochemicals drive about one quarter of Singapore’s net exports. Greater competition in the global oil and gas value chain could take a heavy toll on the city-state’s national budget and economic growth prospects.

Nathaniel L. Moir reviews In The Warlords' Shadow: Special Operations Forces, the Afghans, and Their Fight Against the Taliban by Daniel R. Green  (Naval Institute Press, 2017).

Speech given by Admiral Philip Davidson, Commander of the  U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, at the Future of Diplomacy Project's event on "China's Challenge to a Free and Open Indo-Pacific" at the Harvard Kennedy School 

This article identifies the importance of NATO’s role as a facilitator of multinational collaboration. The Alliance’s established processes and standards worked well, enabling countries whose available resources might otherwise prohibit their participation to fully-contribute to the mission in Afghanistan.

A new book edited by Erica Chenoweth, Deborah Avant, Marie Berry, Rachel Epstein, Cullen Hendrix, Oliver Kaplan, and Timothy Sisk, Civil Action and the Dynamics of Violence, looks at recent conflicts in Syria, Peru, Kenya, Northern Ireland, Mexico, Bosnia, Afghanistan, Spain, and Colombia to explore the role that civil action played.

The UN Charter focuses on states as the central actors in the international system, defining as a multilateral action when three nation-states cooperate in a field of common interest. Today, nation-states are increasingly paralysed into inaction due to political divisions or great power rivalries. Hence, they are failing to effectively utilise collective action. Subnational entities are stepping into this vacuum to deliver on core functions embedded in the UN Charter, redefining effective collaboration on a transnational scale – what we call micro-multilateralism. Cities have emerged as particularly skilful champions of micro-multilateralism, even though their role as independent actors is not specifically addressed by the UN Charter. With 70 per cent of the world’s population projected to be urban by 2050, cities are now effectively tackling transnational issues once the prerogative of states.