As U.S. President Joe Biden convenes this week’s Summit for Democracy, governments around the world are gearing up to participate—or not. Here’s what some global players are looking for.
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Maiko Ichihara is no longer with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Maiko Ichihara is associate professor in the Graduate School of Law at Hitotsubashi University, Japan, and was a visiting scholar at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. She is a steering committee member of the World Movement for Democracy, East Asia Democracy Forum, and Partnership for Democratic Governance (Japan), and is a co-chair of Democracy for the Future project at the Japan Center for International Exchange. Throughout her career, she has undertaken research on international relations, democracy support, and Japanese foreign policy. She earned her Ph.D. in political science from the George Washington University and her M.A. from Columbia University. Her recent publications include: “Universality to Plurality? Values in Japanese Foreign Policy,” in Yoichi Funabashi and G. John Ikenberry, eds., The Crisis of Liberalism: Japan and the International Order (Washington DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2020) and Japan’s International Democracy Assistance as Soft Power: Neoclassical Realist Analysis (New York and London: Routledge, 2017).
As U.S. President Joe Biden convenes this week’s Summit for Democracy, governments around the world are gearing up to participate—or not. Here’s what some global players are looking for.
In order to avoid a standoff with China and contribute to global health, it is necessary for the Quad to maintain firm cooperation with COVAX to keep its support comprehensive and non-strategic.
There’s currently no end in sight to the growing civil unrest that has gripped Myanmar since its military coup on Feb. 1. As protests grow by the day, Myanmar’s military, the Tatmadaw, has turned to lethal violence to quell demonstrations.
The last four years, though, have been different: The United States has experienced a series of setbacks to its democratic institutions, with the country plunging in its ratings in various democracy indexes and with questions arising about the worldwide impact of the U.S. democratic regression.
The military’s killing of at least 18 protesters on Sunday in Myanmar has increased pressure on foreign governments to use their influence to push for the release of the country's elected leaders, including Aung San Suu Kyi, from detention, and restore some measure of democratic rule.
Sophisticated Chinese media influence operations in Japan are already underway.
Amid Asia’s high-profile security concerns, the role of democracy in the region’s geopolitics seems to be gaining resonance.
The time is ripe for Indonesia, India, and Japan to shed their inhibitions and redouble their efforts to strengthen the foundations of Myanmar’s democracy.
Constrained by their adherence to the principle of non-interference, Asian democracies have been reluctant to proactively push Burma toward democratization.
The military coup in Thailand has presented Asian democracies with a test case for their commitment to upholding democratic norms in the region.