Top photo credit: Pearly Tan and Thinaah Muralitharan of Malaysia compete in the Women's Doubles Round Robin match against Nami Matsuyama and Chiharu Shida of Japan on day five of the BWF Sudirman Cup Finals 2025 at Fenghuang Gymnasium on May 1, 2025 in Xiamen, Fujian Province of China. (Photo by Zheng Hongliang/VCG )
How China is 'eating our lunch' with soft power
July 09, 2025
In June 2025, while U.S. and Philippine forces conducted joint military drills in the Sulu Sea and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth reaffirmed America’s commitment to the Indo-Pacific at Singapore’s Shangri-La Dialogue, another story deserving of attention played out less visibly.
A Chinese-financed rail project broke ground in Malaysia with diplomatic fanfare and local celebration. As Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim noted, the ceremony “marks an important milestone” in bilateral cooperation. The contrast was sharp: Washington sent ships and speeches; Beijing sent people and money.
Although the U.S. has increased its military presence in the region, from reinforcing defense pacts with the Philippines to expanding freedom of navigation patrols, it continues to lag where influence is most enduring: civilian visibility and public imagination. A survey taken during the first six weeks of this year by the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute warned that U.S. tariffs, short-term aid, and inconsistent engagement threaten to undermine trust.
As detailed in the paper “Charm Offensive amid the Tariff War,” the unpredictability of a second Trump administration has allowed China to demonstrate something the U.S. no longer consistently projects — reliability. China’s influence in Southeast Asia has grown because it consistently shows up. Its diplomats speak local languages, its media shapes youth discourse, and its projects, though self-interested, touch people’s daily lives.
Meanwhile, American values are often spoken from afar or filtered through the language of security. America didn’t lose soft power because China out-argued democracy. It lost because it stopped doing the hard work of showing up early, often, and empathetically.
Southeast Asia is not a peripheral theater, but a central pillar of 21st-century geopolitics. Located at the heart of the Indo-Pacific, the region is home to over 650 million people and constitutes the world’s fifth-largest economy, projected to become the fourth by 2030. Strategically, it encompasses critical maritime chokepoints. The South China Sea alone facilitates an estimated $3.5 trillion in annual trade, while 40% of global maritime commerce passes through the narrow channel of the Strait of Malacca.
In both military and economic terms, what happens in Southeast Asia significantly impacts global trajectories.
More than any other region, Southeast Asia embodies the global balancing instinct. Governments there do not want to choose between the United States and China. Instead, they seek diversified engagement: U.S. leadership without constraint, and Chinese investment without control.
The United States has long professed support for “ASEAN centrality,” but its engagement has too often been episodic, reactive, or filtered through a narrow security lens. If Washington intends to remain a long-term presence in the Indo-Pacific, it must begin treating Southeast Asia not as a chessboard but as a chorus of sovereign voices.
While the U.S. positions itself as the torchbearer of universal norms, China promises to never impose. America frequently invokes freedom, democracy, and human rights across speeches and communities. But in much of Southeast Asia, those values are no longer experienced as trustworthy exports. They are seen as patchy in application, moralistic in tone, and increasingly divorced from the everyday experiences of those listening.
In contrast, China does not attempt to export a values system. China’s approach is pragmatic: it delivers infrastructure, educational exchanges, and economic tools, often wrapped in language that stresses sovereignty, partnership, and mutual respect.
While the U.S. lectures and reiterates its commitment to maritime security and freedom of navigation, China listens and builds dormitories, lays undersea cables, and hosts youth forums. Chinese cultural centers are present in nearly every ASEAN capital. TikTok and WeChat are among the most used apps in the region. Even pro-U.S. elites now find themselves surrounded by Chinese-funded networks and Chinese-inspired alternative narratives. Beijing’s blend of non-interference rhetoric and strategic investment is winning regional favor, leaving the U.S. struggling to keep pace.
Of course, China’s soft power model is not without contradictions. Its Belt and Road financing has been criticized for opaque terms and unsustainable debt; its infrastructure projects have sometimes triggered labor abuses, poor community consultation, and environmental degradation, from Laos’s rail corridor to dam-induced displacements in Cambodia. In Indonesia, projects like Mandalika and Rempang have sparked protests over forced evictions and inadequate compensation. China’s non-interference rhetoric often masks accountability gaps.
Its soft power works, but it doesn’t escape scrutiny — it simply operates with a more convenient value proposition that prioritizes state-to-state relationships over societal alignment.
The issue here is not that U.S. values are less worthy — it’s that they are no longer visible, culturally translated, or institutionally embedded in the region. This is not a call for abandoning American principles. Rather, it is a wake-up call that principles unaccompanied by presence quickly become noise.
The good news is that Southeast Asia hasn’t closed the door. The United States doesn’t need to replicate China’s model, but it must re-enter the competition for public imagination before the next generation decides America is no longer part of their future. Soft power isn’t built on slogans, but earned through people, programs, and sustained storytelling.
If the United States hopes to reclaim influence in Southeast Asia, it must stop leaning solely on security alliances and start increasing its efforts to connect on a deeper, more human level. Despite DOGE’s push to reduce State Department staff and departments, there remains bipartisan and strategic momentum in Washington to reassess and potentially reverse course on soft-power investment.
Analysts warn that cuts to U.S. development aid have created a vacuum that rival powers — particularly China — are keen to fill. Even modest increases in funding or targeted initiatives could yield outsized returns by strengthening people-to-people ties, reinforcing democratic norms, and enhancing America’s long-term standing in the region.
To do this, Washington needs to significantly scale up its soft-power efforts. This includes reversing cuts to the Fulbright Program, investing more in the Young Southeast Asian Leaders Initiative, and the Peace Corps, which have long fostered educational and cultural exchange in the region (though the administration's recent crackdown on foreign students coming to study here certainly hasn't helped).
Establishing a Southeast Asia Public Engagement Office — staffed with regional experts and youth communicators — would allow for more targeted outreach. Reviving American cultural centers, expanding book donation programs, and launching tech initiatives in everyday public spaces beyond the embassy will help the U.S. connect more deeply across the region.
While the U.S. has strong security ties in Southeast Asia, military presence alone doesn’t build lasting influence. Real credibility comes from soft power. Deterrence can prevent conflict, but it doesn’t inspire loyalty or a shared sense of purpose. If Washington hopes to remain a credible Pacific power, it must show up and become a trusted neighbor before the crisis comes.
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Top photo credit: President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev and President of Russia Vladimir Putin appear on screen. (shutterstock/miss.cabul)
Westerners foolishly rush to defend Azerbaijan against Russia
July 08, 2025
The escalating tensions between Russia and Azerbaijan — marked by tit-for-tat arrests, accusations of ethnic violence, and economic sparring — have tempted some Western observers to view the conflict as an opportunity to further isolate Moscow.
However, this is not a simple narrative of Azerbaijan resisting Russian dominance. It is a complex struggle over energy routes, regional influence, and the future of the South Caucasus, where Western alignment with Baku risks undermining critical priorities, including potential U.S.-Russia engagement on Ukraine and arms control.
The immediate spark came in June, when Russian security forces raided alleged Azerbaijani-linked criminal networks in Yekaterinburg, resulting in the deaths of two Russian nationals of Azerbaijani origin and arrests of more suspected mobsters. Baku condemned the raids as ethnically motivated, while Moscow claimed the deaths were due to natural causes.
The fallout was swift: Azerbaijan arrested Russian nationals, including Kremlin-linked media employees accused of espionage and seemingly random expatriates, while state-backed media in Baku launched a fierce anti-Russian propaganda campaign.
This clash built on deeper tensions. Since Azerbaijan’s 2023 reconquest of Nagorno-Karabakh, which sidelined Russian peacekeepers and exposed Moscow’s waning regional influence, President Ilham Aliyev has pursued an assertive foreign policy. Aliyev’s sharp public criticisms of Russia over the Azerbaijan Airlines plane crash in Russian airspace in December 2024 — in which he demanded accountability, compensation, and justice—signaled a newfound combativeness toward Moscow, marking a departure from Baku’s traditionally cautious diplomacy with its powerful neighbor.
Backed by Turkey and courted by the West for its energy exports, Azerbaijan aims to dominate the South Caucasus and serve as a critical energy hub for Central Asian exports to Europe that bypasses Russia.
Baku’s ambitions center on the proposed Zangezur Corridor, a transit route through Armenia connecting Azerbaijan to its Nakhchivan exclave and Turkey. This corridor, under prospective Ankara-Baku control, aligns with Western efforts to reduce reliance on Russian hydrocarbon export but is strongly opposed by both Russia and Iran, who fear it would bolster Turkish influence at their expense.
Armenia, caught in the middle, faces intense pressure, with Aliyev threatening military action if Yerevan resists.
Armenia’s own pivot complicates the situation. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s pro-Western government has distanced itself from Moscow, freezing its participation in the Moscow-led Collective Security Treaty Organization and signaling openness to NATO membership. Yet, this leaves Armenia isolated, as Western support remains largely rhetorical while Azerbaijan’s threats are tangible. Domestically, Pashinyan’s crackdown on opponents, labeled as “pro-Russian forces,” further destabilizes the country.
Encouraged by the growing geopolitical convergence between Armenia and Azerbaijan, some Western diplomats have rushed to back Baku, seeing an opportunity to push Russia out of the South Caucasus. The EU ambassador to Azerbaijan condemned alleged “violence, torture, and inhuman treatment” against ethnic Azerbaijanis in Russia, while the British ambassador expressed solidarity with the “Azerbaijani people.”
This framing is telling — both diplomats portrayed the Yekaterinburg incident as an unprovoked ethnic attack rather than a police operation targeting alleged criminals. While skepticism of Russian law enforcement is warranted, uncritically accepting Baku’s narrative — from a regime no less authoritarian than Moscow’s — is a deliberate political choice.
Although high-ranking EU officials like Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and High Representative for Foreign Affairs Kaja Kallas didn’t comment specifically on the latest clash, both have called Azerbaijan a “trusted partner” for energy security. Meanwhile, NATO has deepened its ties with Baku through programs like the Defense Education Enhancement Program.
This support reflects Azerbaijan’s decades-long lobbying efforts in Western capitals. Washington DC-based think tanks like the Atlantic Council, the Hudson Institute, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, and unofficial lobby shops like the Caspian Policy Center, some of them tied to Azerbaijani state-funded initiatives, have promoted Baku as a pro-Western counterweight to Russia and Iran.
Meanwhile, lobbying firms, sometimes skirting transparency rules, have secured congressional endorsements, with lawmakers praising Azerbaijan’s geopolitical role. Now, with the Russia-Azerbaijan rift widening, these long-cultivated networks are poised to push for even deeper Western alignment.
Some in Washington, London, and Brussels may see Azerbaijan as a useful counter to Russia, but embracing Baku uncritically would be a strategic miscalculation for four key reasons.
First, Moscow maintains decisive military superiority over Azerbaijan, including nuclear capabilities and the ability to swiftly cripple Baku's critical oil infrastructure with precision strikes. The only country that could potentially come to Azerbaijan’s aid, Turkey, is unlikely to commit itself as it has its own complex relationship with Russia, of which the Caucasus is but one piece of a much bigger puzzle.
While Moscow’s focus on Ukraine limits immediate escalation, once Russia achieves its objectives there, it could shift attention to the Caucasus. Any Western-backed confrontation would be largely futile at best and, at worst, could provoke disproportionate retaliation against Azerbaijan while further destabilizing the region.
Second, overt Western support for Azerbaijan would reinforce the Kremlin’s narrative that the U.S. seeks to encircle and weaken Russia at every turn. This would make future dialogue — whether on ending the war in Ukraine or reviving arms control talks — far more difficult. Given the existential risks of a U.S.-Russia confrontation, prioritizing a minor regional rivalry over strategic stability would be shortsighted.
Third, Aliyev’s regime is no democratic ally. His government has jailed critics, stifled dissent, and weaponized nationalism — largely mirroring Putin’s own playbook. In June, it sentenced a young researcher, Bahruz Samadov, to 15 years in jail on spurious treason charges solely for advocating peace with Armenia. Backing Baku for short-term geopolitical gains would further erode Western credibility on human rights and the “rules-based international order.”
Fourth, encouraging Azerbaijani aggression — whether against Armenia or through proxy confrontations with Russia — could trigger a wider regional conflict. The U.S. has no vital national interest in the Zangezur Corridor, but it does have an interest in preventing another war that could draw in Turkey, Iran, Israel, and Russia. Such a scenario would increase pressure from the usual interventionist quarters in Washington for the U.S. to join the fray against Russia and Iran.
Rather than taking sides, the U.S. should use its renewed dialogue with Russia to quietly push for de-escalation, making clear that Washington does not seek to exploit the conflict to further isolate Moscow. Simultaneously, the U.S. should use its influence over Azerbaijan to discourage further provocations, including threats against Armenia and Russian citizens in Azerbaijan.
The U.S. does not need another proxy conflict with Russia. Washington should resist the temptation to view Azerbaijan’s defiance of Russia as an opportunity to "win" the South Caucasus. Instead, the priority must be preventing further escalation — both to avoid another humanitarian crisis and to preserve the possibility of broader U.S.-Russia dialogue on far more pressing issues, from Ukraine to nuclear arms control.
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Top photo credit: OpenAI. 2025. Netanyahu, Trump, and Syrian President Ahmed Al-Sharaa. AI-generated image. ChatGPT
Shotgun wedding? Israel and Syria go to the altar
July 08, 2025
For half a century, the border between Israel and Syria on the Golan Heights was a model of hostile stability. The guns were silent, but deep-seated antagonism prevailed, punctuated by repeated, failed attempts at diplomacy.
Now, following the sudden collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in December 2024 and a 12-day war between Israel and Iran that has solidified Israel's military dominance in the region, the geopolitical ice is cracking.
In a turn of events that would have been unthinkable a year ago, Israel and Syria are in “advanced talks” to end hostilities. Reports now suggest a White House summit is being planned for as early as September, where Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would sign a security agreement, paving the way for normalization. But this is no outbreak of brotherly love; it is a display of realpolitik, a shotgun wedding between a triumphant Israel and a destitute Syria, with Washington playing the role of officiant.
The groom is Ahmed al-Sharaa, Syria’s new president, a former jihadist leader who has swapped his fatigues for a suit. Al-Sharaa assumed power just six months ago and sits atop a transitional government formed from the ashes of a 14-year civil war, largely comprising the ranks of his former fighting force, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). He governs a country in ruins, desperate for economic relief and a respite from conflict.
The other party to this unlikely courtship is an emboldened Israel, fresh from a military operation against Iran that American and Israeli officials have called a stunning display of Israel’s military and intelligence dominance. Though the damage to Iran’s nuclear program is severe but “not total,” according to Rafael Grossi, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the perceived success of the campaign has emboldened Israel, which is keen to press its new strategic advantage. Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu speaks of “broad regional possibilities,” and his government is aggressively pushing to expand the Abraham Accords in the aftermath.
“We have an interest in adding countries, such as Syria and Lebanon…to the circle of peace and normalization,” declared Gideon Sa’ar, Israel’s foreign minister, on June 30. For Israel, bringing Syria into the fold would be the ultimate strategic prize — transforming one of the historic linchpins of Arab rejectionism of Israel into a partner and possibly formalizing on paper its 58-year illegal hold over most of the Golan Heights.
Israel’s actions since the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s dynasty in December 2024 have been a brutal demonstration of the new power dynamic. Israeli forces have not only pummeled what remained of Syria’s military infrastructure but have also moved into the U.N.-patrolled demilitarized zone, seizing new territory deep inside Syria, including the strategic peak of Mount Hermon, which overlooks Damascus.
The potential agreement—whether its final form will be a non-aggression pact or a more comprehensive normalization—may come with a hefty dowry to be paid entirely by the Syrians. According to statements by Israeli officials, that price is the Golan Heights, a strategic plateau of internationally recognized Syrian territory, largely conquered by Israel in 1967. Though the “quiet talks” between Israel and Syria are shrouded in secrecy, Israel has made its position on the Golan Heights publicly clear, with the Israeli Foreign Minister stating that it will “remain part of the state of Israel ” and Prime Minister Netanyahu declaring that it will remain part of Israel “for eternity.”
A Syrian concession of the Golan Heights to Israel would shatter the "land for peace" principle enshrined in U.N. Security Council Resolution 242. This was the formula that underpinned the 1979 Egypt-Israel Camp David Accords, which saw the full return of the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt, and the 1994 Jordan-Israel treaty, which included the return to Jordan of roughly 380 square kilometers that Israel had controlled since the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. Crucially, “land for peace” was the explicit basis for all previous, albeit failed, negotiations with Syria, from the Madrid Conference in 1991 to the Turkish-mediated talks in 2008.
The precedent of the “Rabin deposit ”— the late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s reported commitment during U.S. brokered negotiations in the mid-1990s of a full Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights in exchange for full normalization — has for decades set the bar for Syrian expectations, a standard Israel is now overturning with its demands that the Golan remain under its control.
The Abraham Accords of 2020 pioneered a new model that decoupled normalization from territorial concessions by Israel or genuine progress on Palestinian statehood. For the original signatories, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, and later joiners Morocco and Sudan, none of whom share a border with Israel, the deals provided benefits for each signatory. Morocco received U.S. and Israeli recognition of its sovereignty over Western Sahara, the UAE secured a symbolic promise that Israel would suspend annexation of parts of the West Bank, and Bahrain gained a powerful ally against its larger and more powerful neighbor, Iran.
Sudan’s incentive was removal from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism. However, its formal peace with Israel never fully materialized as the country descended into civil war.
Now, Israel is applying this doctrine to Syria, albeit in a cruder, more coercive form. Its continued control over most of the Golan Heights—which it formally annexed in 1981 (a move recognized only by the U.S. under President Trump in 2019)—has been declared non-negotiable. The area is now home to some 30,000 Israeli settlers, with plans approved since al-Sharaa's rise to power to increase that population even further.
And yet, the Syrian side is attempting to push back against this new reality, albeit from a position of weakness. While unnamed Syrian sources have floated ambitious proposals for the return of one-third of the Golan Heights, the official position is far more modest. Following a call with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad Al-Shaibani expressed Syria’s “aspiration… to return to the 1974 disengagement agreement.” In effect, Syria’s official position circles back to the original “land for peace” formula—resetting the process to the open-ended negotiation framework of Resolution 242.
Even this scaled-back demand, however, faces a wall of political opposition that extends beyond Netanyahu’s government, exemplified by figures like Benny Gantz, a prominent opposition leader and former Defense Minister, who has stated that Israel “must not withdraw from the strategic positions” in the newly seized territory. His insistence on maintaining “Israel’s security superiority” reveals a shared consensus between the government and its centrist opposition, effectively boxing Syria out of any meaningful territorial negotiation.
This is a negotiation where Israel holds all the cards; its troops occupy Syrian territory with guns pointed toward Damascus, and its recent military actions—from the 12-day campaign against Iran to the ongoing war in Gaza—demonstrate a clear capacity for aggression to secure its demands.
Acting as the enthusiastic matchmaker for this abusive relationship is President Donald Trump’s administration. For Trump, for whom personal chemistry is paramount, a single meeting in May was enough to judge Sharaa as "young, attractive," and "tough." That instinctive judgment, coupled with Saudi-Turkish lobbying, was sufficient to reverse decades of antagonistic policy.
His envoys, Tom Barrack and Steve Witkoff, have been relentless in their public messaging. Barrack speaks of Syria as an “experiment of getting this done the quickest,” while Witkoff hints at “big announcements” regarding the Abraham Accords. Yet even the American envoys acknowledge the political minefield Sharaa must navigate. Barrack himself noted that the process must be managed carefully to avoid domestic backlash in Syria. “He cannot be seen by his own people to be forced or coerced into the Abraham Accords,” Barrack said. “So he has to work slowly.”
This awareness of appearances, however, does not change the underlying strategy. The rapid dismantling of the U.S. sanctions regime, formalized in a June 30 executive order, is the critical tool for this transaction. But this is not a blanket pardon; rather, it is a carefully sequenced exercise in control.
While the order terminates the broad sanctions program, it keeps the most potent leverage in play: Sharaa himself and Syria's status as a State Sponsor of Terrorism remain under “review," not revoked, their removal held back as bargaining chips.
This provides Washington with carrots, offering Sharaa the immediate, tangible benefit of general economic relief while holding back the ultimate prizes of personal and national delisting. These rewards are contingent on numerous conditions, with “taking concrete steps toward normalizing ties with Israel” at the top of the list, as the White House fact sheet on Syrian sanctions revocation makes clear.
However, many Syrians view any deal with Israel cynically. In response to Israeli demands for a demilitarized south in February, protests erupted with chants of, "Netanyahu, you pig, Syria is not for division!" Druze communities in Sweida, which Israel has tried to woo, have hoisted banners rejecting Israel’s encroachment and affirming, "The Syrian law is their protector." For many Syrians, regardless of sect, Israel is not making a peace offer but exploiting their country's weakness to formalize a land grab—a view amplified by the unprecedented violence in Gaza and an ongoing aggressive expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank.
In addition, the core Palestinian issue, the original casus belli of the decades-long conflict, remains entirely unresolved, with the prospect of a two-state solution seemingly more distant than ever.
For Damascus, bankrupt and battered, a deal is not about not what Israel will give but what it will finally stop taking.
The potential prize for Syria is two-fold: an end to the relentless airstrikes and a withdrawal of Israeli troops from the U.N.-designated buffer zone they seized after 2024—an outcome that, despite the seizure's illegality under international law, remains far from guaranteed. Given the power imbalance, however, these are not Syrian demands but potential Israeli concessions: the reward for Damascus finally accepting the new reality on the Golan.
Ultimately, the inevitable agreement between Syria and Israel will be less a partnership of equals and more a transaction dictated by the new calculus of power, which is tilted overwhelmingly in Israel's favor. The only real question is the nature of the reception to follow: will it be a grand celebration of full normalization on the White House lawn desired by the U.S. and Israel or a more discrete, politically palatable truce that Damascus desperately needs?
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