Asia Pacific

Mugdha Joshi The spokesperson for India’s External Affairs Ministry, Randhir Jaiswal, said in March that “India is actively engaging with member countries of BRICS to arrive at a common position on the ongoing conflict in West Asia.” These talks ended up an exercise in futility, with member states …

Pranjal Saraswat Imagine a policy analyst in Brussels arriving at work on an ordinary morning, carrying coffee in one hand and reports on European cyber resilience in the other. Before her meeting begins, she opens an advanced artificial intelligence platform she regularly uses to map cyber vulnerabilities and …

Taiwan has sharply rejected China’s latest maritime patrol east of the island, declaring that its sovereignty “cannot be violated” after Beijing concluded a days long coast guard operation in waters that Taipei considers beyond Chinese jurisdiction. The patrol came after Japan and the Philippines announced plans to begin …

Sarah Wu North Korea’s latest declaration that denuclearization is a “settled issue” should not be dismissed as routine rhetoric. Rather, it represents a blunt acknowledgment of a strategic reality that many policymakers have been reluctant to accept: Pyongyang no longer views its nuclear arsenal as a bargaining chip, …

Dr. Shehab Al-Makahleh The headlines trumpet ceasefires in Gaza, Lebanon, and along Israel’s northern front with Iran’s proxies. Politicians breathe sighs of relief. News anchors speak of de‑escalation. But let us be brutally honest: this is not the end of war. This is the suspension of war. Across …

Khizar Hayat “Rejoice! For by God, they have handed their land over to us.” And then the world saw how the Arab Commander turned a basket of intended humiliation into the very omen that brought the Great Persian Empire crashing down. Sometimes, in arrogance or in folly, we …

Dr. John Calabrase A tentative U.S.–Iran memorandum of understanding appeared close to completion in late May, but Iran’s decision to suspend indirect talks over Israel’s expanding operations in Lebanon has thrown the process into uncertainty. What had looked like an emerging framework now appears less a pathway to …

For decades, geopolitical scholars have been concerned about a potential hot war between China (the “rising” power) and the US (the “ruling” power) because of the Thucydides Trap, which warns that conflict between the two will very likely occur when a rising power becomes strong enough to unseat the ruling …

Since the public launch of large-language models like ChatGPT and OpenAI in 2020, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is gaining ground across a variety of private and public areas,  the prospect of not only facilitating mundane tasks but also revolutionising labor markets, research, medicine and militaries. The gilded age of …