Japan’s Indispensable Role in Southeast Asia

Japan is operating from an advantage, so long as the broader alliance structure holds.

By
Phillip Orchard
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1853

One of the funnier moments of the past few years in geopolitics took place in 2017 in Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s bedroom. Duterte had been in power for only about six months at this point, but he’d famously announced a divorce from the United States, Manila’s longtime treaty ally, and aggressively courted China. Given the […]

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Phillip Orchard
Phillip Orchard
https://geopoliticalfutures.com/author/porchard/
Phillip Orchard is an analyst at Geopolitical Futures. Prior to joining the company, Mr. Orchard spent nearly six years at Stratfor, working as an editor and writing about East Asian geopolitics. He’s spent more than six years abroad, primarily in Southeast Asia and Latin America, where he’s had formative, immersive experiences with the problems arising from mass political upheaval, civil conflict and human migration. Mr. Orchard holds a master’s degree in Security, Law and Diplomacy from the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, where he focused on energy and national security, Chinese foreign policy, intelligence analysis, and institutional pathologies. He also earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Texas. He speaks Spanish and some Thai and Lao.

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