Strategic clarity and a long-term vision are sorely needed to provide direction in the messier, muddled reality that has arrived in Northeast Asia.

Bangladesh’s unfree election is part of a larger trend of democratic regression in South and Southeast Asia.

Whatever taboo existed against extraterritorial renditions and executions in other places around the world never really existed in mainland Southeast Asia.

The United States must protect the alliance architecture in Northeast Asia from internal threats, so that it will be prepared if and when external threats come its way.

Boko Haram, the jihadi insurrection associated with some 350,000 deaths since 2009 in northeast Nigeria, was characterized by factions—conflict among which was bloody—though at times they appear to have cooperated tactically. Now, the faction associated with the self-proclaimed Islamic State, the Islamic State in West Africa (ISWA), is claiming to have incorporated the followers of the rival faction led by Abubakar Shekau. (Weeks ago, Shekau died, apparently after committing suicide in a standoff with ISWA.)

Ruling elites in South and Southeast Asia have stacked the electoral deck in their favor, hindering the chances of opposition parties.