News Snapshot:
As cross-Taiwan Strait tensions heat up, the Philippines expressed its desire to stay neutral on the flashpoint. Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte made the remarks on Dec. 23 in a command conference to coordinate the government’s delivery of relief to provinces battered by a recent destructive typhoon. The statement underpinned growing wariness about getting entangled in a possible conflict, especially should its treaty ally, the US, get involved and the theater of conflict expand to the South China Sea. On Dec. 1, former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe said that “a Taiwan emergency is a Japanese emergency, and therefore an emergency...
