By Adem Kılıç, Political Scientist In the global arena, there is an environment in which many standards – from human rights to nuclear conventions, from international legal norms to social conventions – are failing, increasing insecurity and shaking the foundations of the so-called “rules-based” world order. Historically speaking, the global order has been shaped by two major historical turning points, ...
By Mehmet Enes Beşer As a region ever more characterized by strategic realignment and multipolar competition, growing defense cooperation between the Philippines and Japan has garnered international attention—and no small degree of controversy. The February 2025 meeting between Philippine Defense Secretary Gilbert Teodoro and Japanese Defense Minister Gen Nakatani, which resulted in enhanced military-technical and surveillance cooperation, has been touted ...
By Yunus Soner, from Antalya / Türkiye We are continuing our series of interviews conducted on the Antalya Diplomacy Forum that took place 11-13 of April. Dr. Henry Huiyao Wang is founder and president of the Center for China and Globalization. Hence, the interview started with a focus on Trump’s tariffs – and ended with a reform of the multilateral ...
by Fabrizio Verde, from Naples / Italy Risorgimento rhetoric has accustomed us to celebrating Garibaldi’s exploits and the annexation of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies as heroic acts, necessary steps toward national unity. But what really happened in 1860? Was it truly a liberation, or rather a colonial conquest orchestrated by foreign powers and carried out with the complicity ...
by Dure Akram, from Lahore / Pakistan The Baisaran Valley, Kashmir, should have been a place of laughter. Instead, it became a killing ground. On April 22, tourists were gunned down at point-blank range in a massacre that stunned Kashmir. Reports of families fleeing for shelter as armed militants separated men from women and children, killing them in cold blood ...
By Mehmet Enes Beşer Japan’s foreign policy in the 21st century is in the midst of a tectonic change. No longer influenced by its pacifist constitution and intimate alliance with the United States, Japan now is reasserting its strategic autonomy and revamping its security infrastructure in reaction to a demanding China. While as Indo-Pacific geostrategic stakes mount—around Taiwan, in the ...
By Michael Roberts * President Donald Trump implemented his new range of tariffs on US imports called reciprocal tariffs. In addition to those announced last Wednesday (Liberation day), Trump included an extra levy on Chinese imports in retaliation to China’s decision to impose a 34% tariff on US imports, which in turn was a retaliation against Trump’s 34% hike on Chinese imports ...
By Mohamed Sabreen, from Cairo / Egypt The Middle East is once again awakening to the wisdom of American political maestro Henry Kissinger: “To be an enemy of the United States is dangerous, but to be a friend is fatal.” Middle Eastern countries must now cope with developments in the international landscape, the harbingers of a shifting and shifting alliance ...
By Mehmet Enes Beşer Southeast Asia is a center of global trade, digital technology, and urban growth. But it is increasingly also at the epicenter of transnational crime. From cyber-enabled fraud and human trafficking to drugs, environmental crime, and illicit finance, transnational criminal networks are exploiting the open borders, legal loopholes, and unequal law enforcement capabilities in the region. While ...
At the beginning of April, a new bill was submitted to the Georgian Parliament aiming to ban LGBT marches and events. Speaking about the bill, Georgian Parliament Speaker Shalva Papuashvili stated that the proposal was “initiated and signed” by Georgian citizens. Previously, on October 3, 2024, Georgia had enacted the “Law on the Protection of Family Values and Minors” which ...