In the last five years, tensions have increased between China and a number of neighboring states over territorial disputes in the East and South China Sea. In some cases, there have even been threats of armed conflicts. China's increasingly aggressive behavior has stoked fears that...

The assaults launched by Muslim youths on 28 April 2004 against police posts and military installations in three Thai provinces marks the climax, for the time being, of the unrest that has been mounting in the south of the kingdom since early January. Thus far, there are few indications of links...

The September 9 bomb attack in front of the Australian embassy in Jakarta signals a comeback of the Southeast Asian terror network, Jemaah Islamiyah, that had suffered setbacks in its struggle with Indonesian security forces in 2003 and that some had already pronounced dead. Much as with the...

The breakthrough in the Helsinki negotiations between the Indonesian government and the Free Aceh Movement (Gerakan Aceh Merdeka, GAM) came on August 15, 2005. Months of talks had brought about an end a civil war that had dragged on for more than thirty years in the resource-rich province at the...

For the third time since the end of the authoritarian Suharto regime the Indonesian people have directly elected their president. The victory of Joko Widodo ("Jokowi"), a self-made businessman from modest upbringings, has spurred hopes for a renewal of Indonesia's reform (reformasi) process,...

After the 2009 elections, the German coalition government promised to work within NATO to ensure that US nuclear weapons in Germany are withdrawn. This position has broad public support and is backed by a joint Bundestag resolution from March 2010 urging the government »to work vigorously«...

On the first day of his third term as Russian President, Vladimir W. Putin directed the Foreign Ministry to push for guarantees that US missile interceptors planned for fielding in Europe would not be aimed against Russia's nuclear facilities. A few days before at an unprecedented international...

After several years of restraint, the United States conducted its latest freedom of navigation operation in the South China Sea on 22 January 2016. Three weeks later President Barack Obama hosted a conference of the ASEAN heads of state and government in California to discuss the opportunities...

At the 2010 Lisbon summit, the NATO allies decided to develop a joint missile defence system as a core element of collective defence. Since then, the security environment has changed fundamentally. The hopes of cooperating with Moscow on missile defence have been shattered, while the nuclear...