Politics News & Analysis

President Lai Ching-te’s recent visit to Eswatini illustrates how Taiwan’s already limited diplomatic leeway continues to shrink.

President Trump's maritime national monument order has been viewed as a deregulation story. But it's also a strategic one that places US civilian vessels in close proximity to China’s irregular maritime forces in the Pacific.

Newly elected right-wing President Abelardo de la Espriella wants to use Nayib Bukele’s heavy-handed tactics to reduce violence. But there’s a problem: Colombia is not El Salvador, and gang members are not insurgents.

Gold remains central to Indian household finances, despite all the best efforts of the state.

The Iran war has highlighted the difference between projecting power and producing trust.

The question facing Spanish politics is not whether Prime Minister Sánchez can withstand the political storm of recent scandals, but whether opposition parties are ready and able to capitalize on the opportunity.

Taking a deep dive into the Iran war memorandum of understanding – an agreement as delicate as it is consequential for the future of American power in the Middle East.

States are over-securitizing inputs and under-governing outputs, leaving the most consequential domains of AI power largely unregulated and open to capture.

The US-backed IMEC corridor sought to bolster resilience against the weaponization of chokepoints. Yet the Iran war closed the very waters the transport corridor relies on, and this is now forcing a rethink on future routes.

The debacle surrounding the launch of Fable by Anthropic is only the tip of the iceberg of dual-use AI. If effective safeguards are not established, the AI arms race ensures that dangerous models will fall into the hands of bad actors.

The UK and Spain celebrate the deal as a historic pact, yet the dispute over Gibraltar sovereignty persists.

Washington and Tehran agree on a memorandum of understanding, but the Iran war is far from over; Europeans are souring on trans-Atlantic relations just as the Trump administration rotates military assets away from the continent; and Ukraine’s FP-5 Flamingo has scored an early operational success deep within Russia.

Water infrastructure has emerged as a strategic target in the Iran war, signaling a possible trend for future conflicts.

For Washington, Iran’s “Hormuz Safe” scheme is a dangerous proposition, demonstrating that a sanctioned state can build its own maritime financial infrastructure, bypassing Lloyd's, the dollar, and US sanctions simultaneously.

Critical minerals like nickel and tin may power the next economy, but extraction alone will not secure ASEAN’s place in it. Southeast Asia does not need to become the quarry of the energy transition. It needs to become one of its industrial architects.