Knife: Salman Rushdie’s memoir of surviving attack
Knife is Salman Rushdie’s account of how he narrowly survived an attempt on his life in August 2022, in which he lost his right eye and partial use of his left hand.…
‘A thousand Modis’: the secret of BJP’s enduring success
Since 2014, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s popularity has grown exponentially – and so has the formidable organizational machine of his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).…
How deep is Vietnam’s financial rot?
The real estate tycoon at the center of a US$12.46 billion fraud case has been sentenced to death, a penalty which appears to have appeased an outraged Vietnamese public but may not be enough to stem rising concerns about the health of the financial system.…
West faces stark choice on Ukraine losing the war
Ukraine is now experiencing a level of existential threat comparable only to the situation immediately after the full-scale Russian invasion in February 2022.…
Can Modi honestly run on his economic record?
More than 960 million Indians will head to the polls in the world’s biggest election between April 19 and early June.…
Zelensky begs for Israel’s level of US support
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky openly complained last weekend that his country was getting far less military support from Western allies needed to fend off fierce Russian bomb and missile attacks than Israel got last weekend during one night of drone and rocket bombardment from Iran.…
Putin wants to get closer to the Taliban
Russia is currently considering taking the Taliban off its list of terrorist organisations, officials have indicated. While no final decision has yet been taken, one sign of their increasingly cordial relationship is the Taliban’s invitation to an international economic forum being held in Kazan, Russia, in May.…
Charting the future of the US alliance network
The recent US-Japan alliance bilateral summit between President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Kishida Fumio not only launched more than 70 deliverables that spanned the interagency, across the defense, across space, education, and technology, it also launched a new trilateral with the Philippines (at the summit level, at least), adding one more minilateral partnership to a lexicon […]
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US complains China hurts shipbuilding, steel firms
The Biden administration has unveiled a series of new measures to try to protect the United States’ shipbuilding and steel industries from being eroded by Chinese overcapacity and non-market investments.…
Israel unlikely to attack Iran nuclear program
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to retaliate against Iran for the unprecedented aerial assault on April 13. He has made it clear that “we will make our own decisions and the state of Israel will do all that is needed to defend itself.”…
The AI-piloted fighter age has arrived
In a scene harking to a futuristic science fiction film, a US AI-piloted fighter has just engaged in a dogfight against a manned fighter, heralding the autonomous future of aerial combat.…
Food fight: Russia’s ‘grain diplomacy’ reshaping global markets
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “grain diplomacy” continues to cause headaches for the European Union while potentially reshaping global trade dynamics and markets more in Moscow’s favor.…
Australia’s new defense strategy already behind the times
There have been a lot of defense announcements recently about buying new equipment, building up Australia’s manufacturing capabilities, creating local jobs, new legislation to support AUKUS and even a new defense chief.…
A five-body problem in geopolitics
Subscribe now for access at a special price of only $99/year. A five-body problem in geopolitics: Jerusalem, Tehran, Washington, Beijing and Moscow Uwe Parpart highlights China’s potential role in preventing further geopolitical escalation in the Middle East and shaping the region’s future trajectory towards peace after the success of the Beijing Accord of March 2023 which […]
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EU enlargement: What does the future hold?
To “widen” or to “deepen”. This has been one of the longstanding dilemmas throughout European Union (EU) history, and a perennial sticking point in the unending process of European integration.…
Blinken to China to fuss about support for Russia
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will visit Beijing soon to raise concerns about China’s support for Russia’s defense industrial base and its purchase of Iranian oil products. …
Apply Israel-Iran lessons to Taiwan
There is still a great deal to learn about Iran’s drone and missile attack on Israel. Even so, it is very clear that if such an attack were launched by China against Taiwan, the results could well be dismal and Taiwan would suffer greatly.…
US-Japan-Philippines trilateral gives Manila a fighting chance
In an unprecedented move with big regional implications, US President Joe Biden hosted a trilateral summit with Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr and Japanese Prime Minister Kishida Fumio.…
Trump plan to devalue dollar a gift to China
TOKYO — Donald Trump would make currency devaluation great again in a second term. Surrogates for the former US President are telegraphing a strategy to weaken the dollar unilaterally to advantage exporters.…
US Navy can’t hide its flagging fleet
The US Navy faces shipbuilding delays and setbacks threatening multiple critical capabilities, challenges the service is apparently trying to hide from public view and scrutiny.…
Remembering Cambodia’s genocide in a corner of Africa
Kigali, RWANDA- April 1975 was a cruel month for millions of Cambodians. Forty-nine years ago, on April 17, the Khmer Rouge finally captured Phnom Penh after a five-year civil war with the US-backed Lon Nol regime.…
Toward a China-checking Asian NATO
Last week’s US-Japan alliance bilateral summit between President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Kishida Fumio not only launched more than 70 deliverables that spanned the interagency, across the defense, across space, education, and technology, it also launched a new trilateral with the Philippines (at the summit level, at least), adding one more minilateral partnership to a lexicon […]
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Yen hits 34-year low, defying end of negative rates
The Bank of Japan (BoJ) raised interest rates for the first time in 17 years on March 19, bringing an era of negative interest rates to an end.…
Countering China’s rare earth dominance and coercion
In December, the People’s Republic of China announced a retaliatory restriction of rare-earth element processing technology, a continuation of its strategy to monopolize the critical mineral market.…
Three takeaways from China’s upbeat Q1 growth
China’s first-quarter gross domestic product (GDP) surpassed market expectations, indicating a promising start to the year for the world’s second-largest economy. …
Sri Lanka’s lost revolution
On July 9, 2022, Sri Lankans protesting the regime of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa shocked the world when they stormed the executive mansion in Colombo.…
Iran attack puts US back on Israel’s side – for now
Israel’s war cabinet has been meeting to discuss its next move after fighting off a massive air attack launched by Iran and its proxies on April 13.…
Why it’s China’s turn now
In the second half of the 20th century, scholars and macrohistorians like Alvin Toffler, Francis Fukuyama and Paul Kennedy developed so-called grand narratives to predict future trends.…
Is the shine coming off Japan’s bullet trains?
Just ten days before the 1964 Tokyo Olympic Games, Japan opened its Tokaido Shinkansen, a high-speed rail line connecting Tokyo with Osaka.…
US to convert oil rigs into floating missile defense sites
The US Navy has unveiled plans to convert surplus oil rigs into mobile missile defense and resupply facilities, a seemingly risky and costly scheme to address rising US vulnerability to rival missile threats in the Pacific.…