News Snapshot:
Even though officials in the Biden administration, including Biden himself, continue to emphasise that the purpose of their renewed engagement with Southeast Asia/ASEAN is not containment of China, Washington’s drive to reinvent the QUAD, as well as the recently signed AUKUS treaty that could nuclearize the Indo-Pacific, is only a series of steps that it has taken in the past few months to confront China in much the same way the US confronted the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Most recently, the Central Intelligence Agency, recognising China as the most important threat to the US, has established a ‘China...
