United States President Barack Obama sought to re-invigorate the US’ primacy in the Asia Pacific with a speech to the Australian Parliament in November 17, 2011, announcing a new foreign policy towards the region. Dubbed the “rebalancing strategy,” this plan sought to expand American presence within the Asia-Pacific by forging closer military, trade, and people-to-people ties with various states ...

So why should Filipinos care about the French Presidential Election? The outcome of this election will not only determine who will be the next president of France, it could also decide the fate of the EU, and by extension, the global economy at large.

Since the change of administration in the United States, there has been declining enthusiasm to move forward the Joint Cooperation Plan of Action (JCPOA) or the Iran nuclear deal. US President Donald Trump’s vocal, antagonistic stance on Iran sparked an exchange of rhetoric and provocative actions and reactions between the US and Iran, with Trump going as far as calling the agreement “the worst deal ...

The Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) won the elections in July in convincing fashion, effectively ensuring policies and initiatives es-poused by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will meet little to no resistance in the Diet. LDP managed to capture majority of the seats in both the House of Representatives and House of Councillors, an unprecedented achievement in Japanese electoral politics. With the Diet ...

The ASEAN Charter and key documents, such as the ASEAN Community Vision 2025: Forging Ahead Together, explicitly state that ASEAN maintains its centrality in the regional processes and in the conduct of its external affairs. Maintaining centrality is crucial to ASEAN’s success as a regional bloc and critical to its relevance in the international arena. Moreover, through ASEAN centrality, a rules-based ...

In December 2016, Philippine Trade Secretary Ramon M. Lopez expressed the country’s decision to put its full weight behind the Asian trade pact Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) after President Rodrigo R. Duterte criticized the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement by highlighting the restrictive nature of its provision on intellectual property rights covering pharmaceuticals. ...

On 11 December 2015, the Philippines launched negotiations on its free trade deal with the European Union (EU), some three years after the two parties signed the Partnership and Cooperation Agreement (PCA). In addition to being a prerequisite to FTA negotiations, the PCA functions as a general framework of relations between the two sides in the political, security, economic, and development spheres. ...