By Mehmet Enes Beşer Vietnam is the top nation most likely to become the world’s greatest champion of making plastic pollution a pending threat. Producing over 3.9 million tons of plastic rubbish annually, and the majority of it running into rivers, coastlines, and eventually the ocean, the problem has been a public health emergency and source of shame for a ...

The American empire seems to be sinking deeper into a quagmire of war with Iran, with only bad options on the horizon. Donald Trump is now being urged to resolve this disaster as quickly as possible. Perhaps the decisive factor is that the war has begun to strain the lives of Americans. Once again, the lesson of “economy, stupid” resurfaces, ...

By Serhat Latifoğlu The threat by US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent by sending letters to 2 Chinese banks threatening sanctions if Iranian money found is a manifestation of the US’ military desperation and defeat. It is already evident that sanctions to be imposed on China will prove futile, much like those imposed on Russia. The most concrete proof of this ...

By Mehmet Enes Beşer Cambodia comes to a juncture in its development journey. Three decades of rapid GDP growth led by garments, construction, and tourism have ended, and Cambodia now confronts a daunting set of domestic and international challenges. Its near-term economic goals—to become an upper-middle-income country in the 2030s and a high-income country by 2050—are ambitious but feasible. To ...

Editor-in-Chief of Aydınlık Newspaper Tevfik Kadan summarized the important parts of Russian Federation Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s speech at the Antalya Diplomacy Forum regarding multipolarity and Turkiye. Russian Federation Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s two-hour speech was significant, containing important messages for Türkiye and Europe between the lines. Lavrov stated that “European countries, under pressure from Brussels, stopped buying gas from ...

I am in Coro, the capital of Falcón state in western Venezuela, where I was invited to participate in the meeting “The Enduring Relevance of Bolivarian Diplomacy: 200 Years After the Amphictyonic Congress of Panama.” This event continues the commemoration of the bicentennial of that important continental gathering. Organized by the Simón Bolívar Center for Studies, the Falcón State History ...

By Adem Kılıç, Political Scientist While the ongoing tensions in the Strait of Hormuz are currently only disrupting global energy markets, the real major impacts will emerge in the coming days. About 60 days later, the first signs began to emerge, with the surge in energy costs triggering a ripple effect across a wide range of sectors—from fertilizer shortages impacting ...

By Mehmet Enes Beşer The digital economy of ASEAN is growing with abandon. More than 460 million are connected online, and also a thriving e-commerce market that will cross over $300 billion by 2025. The most dynamic digital frontier in the world is Southeast Asia. But growing digital connectivity translates to growing exposures. Cyberattacks are mounting in frequency and sophistication, ...

UWI author and political scientist Onur Sinan Güzaltan gave a presentation on the consequences of the Iran/US-Israel war and possible future developments at a conference titled “Energy and the Global Economy: Its Significance and Impact in the Aftermath of the Ukrainian and Middle East Crises” organized by the Russian House International Relations Club in Mumbai, India. We present Güzaltan’s speech ...

The war, which began with the US-Israeli attack on Iran on February 28, 2026, is currently in a period of ceasefire. What follows remains highly uncertain. A process full of fluctuations and contradictions continues to unfold. What is certain, however, we are at a stage to be able to grasp what has happened so far and draw some conclusions. The ...

In this article, I aim to analyze the relationship between diplomatic conventions and symbolic politics in the interactions between Donald Trump, the 45th President of the United States, and Charles III, the head of the British monarchy. In the discipline of international relations, the view that diplomatic gestures should be evaluated not merely as superficial practices of courtesy, but rather ...

By Mehmet Enes Beşer Australia keeps calling itself a “middle power.” Fine. But the label is starting to feel like one of those old stickers on a suitcase: once useful, now mostly nostalgic. Because the world Australia learned to do “middle-power diplomacy” in—the world of patient committees, slow consensus, and polite press releases—has changed shape. Not completely. But enough that ...