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General Category => World News => Topic started by: To-Whose-Benefit? on August 10, 2018, 02:23:37 pm

Title: U.S. Looks To Loosen China's Grip On SE Asia
Post by: To-Whose-Benefit? on August 10, 2018, 02:23:37 pm

Asia Times
Richard Javad Heydarian Manila and Washington, August 10, 2018 5:03 PM (UTC+8)

[excerpt]

http://www.atimes.com/article/us-looks-to-loosen-chinas-grip-on-se-asia/ (http://www.atimes.com/article/us-looks-to-loosen-chinas-grip-on-se-asia/)


Intensifying Sino-American rivalry is sending both glad tidings and worrying ripples through Southeast Asia, a strategically crucial region at risk of becoming a proxy theater in any armed conflict or all-out trade war between the two superpowers.

The Donald Trump administration has now openly turned its concept of a “Free and Open Indo-Pacific” (FOIP) into an overt anti-China narrative, one that portrays the Asian powerhouse as a direct and rising threat to the region’s “rules-based order.”

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo underscored that point on a recent high-velocity diplomatic tour that aimed to rally regional support and resistance against China’s reclamation and military activities in the South China Sea.