Southeast Asia

Unable to mollify ongoing demonstrations staged by anti-government protestors throughout Bangkok over the past several weeks, Thailand’s Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra dissolved Parliament on Monday and called for snap elections to take place in the beginning of February. The announcement from the country’s first female premier did little to deter the protestors, estimated at around […]

If you thought U.S. President Barack Obama was suffering from a political crisis in the wake of his problematic healthcare rollout, you should see the situation in Thailand these days for beleaguered Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra. A day after the World Court ruled in favor of Cambodia in a territorial dispute over an ancient temple […]

photo: Associated Press Chinese president Xi Jinping and premier Li Keqiang’s diplomatic offensive in Southeast Asia reaped benefits last month, as Beijing reached agreement with Vietnam to form a working group to jointly explore the waters of the disputed South China Sea.  Beijing seems to have copied Obama’s “pivot to Asia,” in the wake of […]

Every year, roughly between August and November, the monsoon season hits Southeast Asia as a matter of fact. Despite this constant and consistent phenomenon, the corrupt governments which proliferate throughout the region remain inept and incompetent to handle the inexorable flooding which the rainstorms leave behind. In the Philippines, an estimated 10,000 people are dead […]

There is an infamous line from a speech made by U.S. President Lyndon Johnson at Johns Hopkins University in 1965 during which he was attempting to rationalize American involvement in Southeast Asia to the skeptical public. “We want nothing for ourselves,” he said “only that the people of South Vietnam be allowed to guide their […]

General Vo Nguyen Giap, anti-imperialist hero and commander of the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) during the struggle against French colonialism and America’s decade long war against his country died on October 4. He was 102. Giap was a self-taught military strategist who masterminded the sensational victory over French forces at Dien Bien Phu in 1954. […]

White House press secretary Jay Carney offered a sharp rebuttal of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s op-ed in The New York Times recently by saying, “unlike Russia, the United States stands up for democratic values and human rights around the world.” History paints a somewhat different story. In contrast to President Barack Obama’s contention that the […]

One person was killed and several others were injured after a day of protests in Cambodia turned deadly Sunday night. Mao Chan, 29, was shot in the head and pronounced dead at the scene of Monivong Bridge when a faction of demonstrators confronted military police who had spent most of the day shooting smoke grenades […]

  U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel has just returned from his second visit to Asia, only two months after partaking in the Shangri La Dialogue back in June, and his second visit to Asia in six months since becoming secretary of defense. Acknowledging the immense human suffering and tragedy that continues to unfold in Syria […]

As I watched Secretary of State John Kerry stand before the lectern last Monday afternoon and give an impassioned speech decrying the use of chemical weapons in Syria, I was briefly transported back in time to about two years ago. I was in the Vietnamese town of Gia Nghia in the province of Dak Nong, […]

BANGKOK — Pictured above is Thailand’s “Democracy Monument,” an ironic name for a memorial in a country which has had ten coup d’états since it abolished the absolute monarchy in 1932. Indeed, it was only three years ago when blood and brains were spilled at this very sight which became the center of massive anti-government […]

It is typically customary for politicians who emerge victorious in elections to give victory speeches and revel in the adulation of supporters once the results of the ballot are officially called.  But in the immediate aftermath of last week’s general election in Cambodia — underpinned and perhaps undermined by myriad irregularities — Prime Minister Hun […]