Economics

M. Faizal Abdul Rahman Contrast the speeches of the U.S. Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, and the Secretary-General of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Dr Kao Kim Hourn, at the 23rd IISS Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore on 30 May 2026. It raises the question of whether …

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 …

Hadi Elis NATO is getting ready for its 2026 summit. And somehow, the alliance decided to hold it in Turkey. That’s interesting timing. Right after Turkey and Britain cooperated to make Syria’s Al Qaeda offshoot, HTS, the de facto post-Baath Party government in Damascus. On paper, it’s an …

Marta Rehnman As the world seeks to mitigate climate change by transitioning to renewable energy sources, geopolitical actors are entering a new resource race to secure access to critical minerals like lithium, cobalt and copper, crucial for green technologies like EV batteries, wind turbines and solar panels, as …

Lama Al-Rakad The image was striking. In Washington, the leader of Syria’s transitional government, Ahmed al-Sharaa, was welcomed as a legitimate political actor after years in which he and his organization were synonymous with jihadist militancy. Whether viewed as diplomatic necessity or geopolitical pragmatism, the transformation raises one …

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 …

China strongly condemns the Israeli airstrikes and ground incursion into southern Lebanon, describing these operations as a dangerous escalation that threatens the stability of the entire region. China demands that Israel immediately cease its military operations and fully withdraw its forces from Lebanese territory, warning of the dangers …