In Asia: Weekly Insight and Features from Asia

This week, President-elect Obama announced his national security team, and with last week’s terrorist attacks in Mumbai, strengthening bilateral and regional relationships in South Asia will be among their most urgent priorities. In The Asia Foundation’s recently released recommendations for the in-coming administration, America’s Role in Asia, former Ambassador Karl Inderfurth provides recommendations for U.S. [...]

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On December 2, 2008, Thailand’s Constitutional Court ruled to disband three core parties in Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawat’s beleaguered ruling coalition government:  the People Power Party (PPP), Chat Thai (CT), and Matchima Thipataya (MT). The Court also revoked the voting rights of the executives of the three parties for five years, effectively banning them from [...]

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For one week, a group of anti-government protestors, known as the People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD), occupied Thailand’s two major airports in Bangkok. The PAD’s major demand was for Prime Minister Somchai Wonsawat and his cabinet to resign. The taking over of the airport wreaked havoc for over 100,000 passengers trying to leave the country [...]

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Meet Buddhist Monks, Ride an Elephant Budget travelers in search of inexpensive Southeast Asian vacation packages take notice: the Constitutional Court of Thailand has disbanded the ruling government party and barred the current Prime Minister, Somchai Wongsawat, from participating in Thai politics for five years.  In short, the occupation of Thailand’s Suvarnabhumi International airport by [...]

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Where is Jonas Burgos?  Where is Jaime Balao?  Who killed Rolando Antolihao and Danny Qualbar? One might better ask, “Who are these four men?” and find an easier answer. Jonas Burgos was the son of the late Philippine publisher-activist Joe Burgos, who dedicated his life to teaching farmers natural farming techniques. At noon on April [...]

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Six months ago, a major earthquake struck central China, leaving nearly 88,000 people dead or missing, injuring hundreds of thousands, and leaving over five million homeless. The quake, with a magnitude of 8.0, was centered in Wenchuan County in Sichuan Province, and was felt as far away as Beijing, Bangkok, and Hanoi. In the days [...]

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In Hit the Ground Running, an op-ed published Monday in The International Herald Tribune, Karl Inderfurth, Former Assistant Secretary for South Asian Affairs (1997-2001) and a Trustee of The Asia Foundation, advised the incoming Obama Administration to forge an Afghanistan plan that takes into account current Afghan public opinion on their most pressing needs and [...]

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If we want to maintain a special alliance with the United States under Obama, there is an urgent need to find shared values that both nations want to pursue. An empire’s decline or fall depends mainly on its capacity for change and innovation. If this becomes paralyzed, the nation falls. The Roman Empire is a [...]

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There’s a lot of speculation about how President-elect Obama will organize his administration to address a truly daunting list of security challenges, including a global economic crisis, Iraq, and Afghanistan. On the list of potential crises that the Obama administration will inherit come January 20th will be the task of achieving the denuclearization of the [...]

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In the northwest corner of central Mongolia’s Tov province, 80% of the land in Ugumuur town has been licensed to 18 Mongolian, Russian, and Chinese miners. Activity hums dusk to dawn. Ugumuur is a boom-town but like many towns in Mongolia, it is deeply scarred by a legacy of poor mining practices in the 1990s. [...]

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