US-China rivalry
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The US Aid Freeze: A Strategic Blunder That Strengthens China’s Hand in Southeast Asia
On January 20th 2025, President Trump signed an executive order initiating a 90-day suspension of US foreign development assistance programs to reassess their alignment with American interests. This was soon after accompanied by the dismantling of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the government agency responsible for foreign…
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SEATO: The Tantalizing Promise of Nato’s Forgotten Counterpart in the Indo-Pacific
The past failures of SEATO highlight the challenges of forming regional alliances in Southeast Asia and demonstrate that economic cooperation are more viable than security partnerships like NATO. With a Trump 2.0 administration increasingly focusing on China and Southeast Asia in 2025, a look at the regional alliance structure of…
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China-Southeast Asia Relations — What’s in Store for 2025?
China-Southeast Asia relations is best defined in terms of the plurality of interests, incentives and capabilities characteristic of the diverse states that make up the region. It is perhaps not the most useful, therefore, to refer to a “China-Southeast Asia relationship,” since such a label lacks nuance and conveys the…
Sino-Southeast Initiative 