A century ago the British flag hung over harbors from Hong Kong to Singapore. Today the same flag reappears on the horizon, not as a force of command but as a ghost of rehearsal. In the Asia-Pacific, where every movement is measured not only by satellites but by historical memory, Britain’s gestures carry the weight…
The silence of the ocean is deceptive. It carries centuries of memory, and sometimes it carries revolutions. A meeting hall in Honiara can alter the map more than a fleet of aircraft carriers, and the refusal of small island nations to sign on the dotted line can echo louder than the roar of American bombers….
The China 80th anniversary Victory parade in Beijing collides deliberately with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Tianjin, fusing war memory with diplomacy in a single stroke of political theater. This is no nostalgic ritual. It is the reclamation of history from the archives where the West prefers it to stay, a reminder that the…
The quiet architecture of global finance is no longer American. Across Asia, governments and central banks are dismantling the scaffolding that once kept them chained to Washington. Settlements in local currencies, once dismissed as peripheral experiments, now form the bloodstream of trade. The growing role of the yuan is no longer an abstraction; it is…
In March 2025, CSIS issued a study with a sterile title: Understanding U.S. Allies’ Current Legal Authority to Implement AI and Semiconductor Export Controls. Behind the legal vocabulary lies an unmistakable confession. Washington knows its grand design of AI semiconductor export controls rests on fragile pillars. The empire of rules depends on allies whose legal…
