After a White House meeting between Trump and Netanyahu, Netanyahu said, ‘We’re both united in the goal that Iran does not get nuclear weapons’. He added, ‘If it can be done diplomatically, in a full way, the way it was done in Libya, I...

On 22 April 2025, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) released its annual World Economic Outlook report, which has a quiet but decisive subtitle: A Critical Juncture and Policy Shifts. The...

The acceleration of Donald Trump’s war against China in recent weeks has generated more doubts than certainties. These measures are allegedly aimed at re-industrialising the United States and regaining ground in favour of the West. Under the slogan ‘Make America Great Again’, the right-wing administration...

The ninety-day customs truce ‘graciously’ granted by Trump is rapidly expiring, placing European economies in a serious dilemma. A looming 20% tariff hangs like the Sword of Damocles over an economic sector already in decline, further accelerated by the current wave of militarisation. Europe has...

Seventy years ago, representatives of twenty-nine countries met in Bandung, Indonesia, for the Asian-African Conference. Among them was Sir John Kotelawala, the Prime Minister of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), which was one of the five sponsor countries of the Bandung Conference alongside Burma (now Myanmar),...

A friend from another country recently posted on social media, ‘I visited the exhibition The Road to Rejuvenation at the National Museum of China. It tells the harrowing story of the “Century of Humiliation”. Now I finally understand why every Chinese citizen feels compelled...

The West has long cherished political correctness as though it were a core democratic value. This drive to ‘civilise’ public discourse has been especially aimed at illiberal democracies or post-socialist societies that are still expected to become ‘true...

In January 2025, Indonesia – the world’s fourth-largest country by population (282 million) with the seventh-largest Gross Domestic Product by purchasing power parity – joined the BRICS+ bloc.  Eleven countries are now in this expanded grouping. The original...

Since US President Donald Trump signed an executive order in February to impose a 10% tariff on all imports, the world has witnessed a confounding series of unilateral tariffs placed on both friends and foes of the US. On self-declared ‘Liberation Day’, on...

In 1964, during the second summit of the Non-Aligned Movement in Cairo, Prime Minister of Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) Sirimavo Bandaranaike proposed that the Indian Ocean be turned into a ‘zone of peace’ that was free of military bases and nuclear weapons. In...