Warren Buffett’s Taiwan Pullout | American Power’s Staying Power | Thailand’s Military Has No Good Options, and more

Keeping American higher education open to the world is not about helping China to become strong, nor should we delude ourselves about Beijing’s intentions.

Thailand’s Military Has No Good Options  (Andrew Nachemson, Foreign Policy)
Many observers predicted Thailand’s two main opposition parties would emerge victorious in the May 14 parliamentary elections, but few expected the progressive Move Forward Party to edge out the populist Pheu Thai Party. Move Forward won 152 seats to Pheu Thai’s 141 by eating into the latter’s traditional strongholds.
The election result is disappointing for the Pheu Thai Party, but it’s a nightmare for Thailand’s conservative establishment, which centers around the politically meddlesome military and the country’s monarchy. Move Forward, popular with Thailand’s youth, hopes to make its reform-minded leader, Pita Limjaroenrat, the next prime minister. The party’s proposed plan for its first year in power pledges to rewrite the military-drafted 2017 constitution and reopen investigations into the deadly military crackdown against pro-democracy protesters in 2010. Move Forward has also promised to amend Thailand’s strict lèse-majesté laws, which criminalize criticism of the monarchy.
The military remains firmly in control of the country’s most important institutions, meaning it could subvert the election result, but doing so would throw Thailand into a political crisis. Its attempts to control the population have sparked a cycle of repression and protest that will only end when the military accepts the will of the people.

China’s “Blue Dragon” Strategy in the Indo-Pacific Makes America and India Restless  (Patrick Mendis, National Interest)
While New Delhi would want Washington to prevail in a major conflict with Beijing in the East China Sea or the South China Sea, it is “unlikely to embroil itself in the fight,” Ashley J. Tellis wrote his recent critical Foreign Affairs essay, “America’s Bad Bet on India.” This assessment is predicated largely on India’s nominal “strategic autonomy” in its foreign policy. India has evolved with a history of Soviet and Russian military ties as well as a lingering record of border conflicts with China.
However, China’s unprecedented military and economic capabilities have increasingly challenged New Delhi’s strategic autonomy. A matured India may not have a strategic alternative to sustain the past; it must thus work harmoniously and collaboratively with Washington for its national interest and civilizational heritage.

The Myth of Multipolarity  (Stephen G. Brooks and William C. Wohlforth, Foreign Affairs)
In the 1990s and the early years of this century, the United States’ global dominance could scarcely be questioned. No matter which metric of power one looked at, it showed a dramatic American lead. Never since the birth of the modern state system in the mid-seventeenth century had any country been so far ahead in the military, economic, and technological realms simultaneously. Allied with the United States, meanwhile, were the vast majority of the world’s richest countries, and they were tied together by a set of international institutions that Washington had played the lead role in constructing. The United