First study to properly treat a key regional grouping in Asia. Explores both security and energy issues across the region. Considers geopolitical obstacles to the SCO’s long-term viability. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) has developed into a key regional security group in Asia, its member states representing no less than “half of humanity”. Alarmists believe […]
Pakistan has been called the epicentre of terrorism. Since leaders from almost every Sunni Islamic extremist group worldwide, from the internationalist Al-Qaeda to the Afghanistan-centred Taliban, have been found on the Pakistani soil, there seems little reason to argue with the conclusion that Pakistan is indeed central to political violence and terrorism in the name of Sunni Islam. […]
1. China, India, and Thailand all need Burma’s energy reserves, in particular natural gas but also oil and hydroelectric power. 2. China also needs to transit Middle Eastern oil and natural gas through Burma. 3. Thailand already depends on Burmese energy for 20 per cent of its electric power demand. 4. Since Burma needs revenues, […]
What Makes Central Asian Islam Central Asian? In March 2005, an Afghan deputy minister of the interior (who out of mercy will remain unnamed) was touring Europe. At one stop, he suddenly found himself faced with a question that obviously took him by surprise. How long, an innocent but assuredly well-meaning European asked, had Afghanistan […]
Most academics working on the military revolution have focused their attention on Western Europe. This Eurocentric view is perhaps understandable, since many indeed seem to be more interested in the Rise of the West than in purely military affairs elsewhere. However, while the European strategists of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, being chiefly concerned with […]
Around 1800, three great powers faced each other in Inner Asia: Britain, Russia, and the Manchu empire. The West referred to the latter as China, given that China since the seventeenth century formed the economically most important part of the Manchu empire. The Manchus were in decline, but they remained sufficiently strong to control the […]
