It reflects the city-state’s confidence in advancing its own national interests together with those of neighbors, major powers, and the wider maritime commons.

The fundamental question remains whether this revolution will produce genuine systemic change or fade into another cycle of instability.

While increasingly widespread, the view of China as an existential challenge to the current world order reflects political alarmism more than sober analysis.

Malaysia’s approach as chair epitomizes the bloc’s difficult balancing act.

24 years after the U.S. invasion, and four years after the Taliban’s triumphant return to power, the question lingers: Were the war’s many sacrifices worth anything?

History in East Asia is never just history. It is weaponized, re-scripted, and deeply entangled in present-day struggles for legitimacy, identity, and power.

“These flashpoints alone cannot account for the speed or scale of the escalation, or the intensity of the nationalist fervor it has unleashed.”