I have a piece up at Asia Times, The Salami Slices Back!, on freedom of navigation in the South China Sea. Spoiler: the threat to FoN is the linchpin justification for US meddling in the SCS, but it's pretty much BS. Rather timely, isn’t it? Since the US started flying military patrol aircraft around PRC-held... Read More

As I predicted a while back, the United States has quietly ditched its old, underperforming pretext for confrontation in the South China Sea and is sidestepping into a new justification. I do not care deeply about America’s stake in the South China Sea. So I have little interest in slogging through recent US & PRC... Read More

Whoever is rolling out the new US maritime strategy for East Asia apparently regards the Financial Times as his or her chosen instrument. The FT, for its part, appears to believe that it completes its journalistic mission by reporting the US position, and sees no need to examine the US claims in detail, a shortcoming... Read More

[This piece originally appeared on Asia Times Online on April 26, 2013.� It can be reposted if ATOl is credited and a link provided.] Oscar Wilde wrote, "When the gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers." Perhaps this is how Kurt Campbell feels today. Campbell, after all, as assistant secretary for East Asia... Read More

[This piece appeared at Asia Times Online on Oct. 27, 2012.� It can be reposted if ATOl is credited and a link provided.] The real action in Sino-US relations this week was not the predictable China-bashing in the third election debate between US President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney in Florida on October... Read More

Kim Jung Il has been very good to me. I have an article up on North Korea at Asia Times under the pen name Peter Lee, titled A convenient North Korean distraction. Kim Jung Il has also been very good to the United States and Japan, providing a conventional security threat that plays to America’s... Read More