On May 14, Sergei Shoigu, secretary of the Russian Security Council, announcement that Russia and the Afghan Taliban would establish a formal partnership in areas such as security, trade and humanitarian aid. Buried in the announcement was a long-term goal to create agreements on migrant labor between the two countries. Shoigu and other Russian commentators have cited some grievances about the former U.S. presence in Afghanistan, shared concerns about Islamist groups and Russia’s desire to find new allies. The justification put forward is not without merit, but the migrant labor provision points to a different explanation that is easy to…
Author: Frank M. Everett
When US President Donald Trump visited his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping for a two-day summit in mid-May, perhaps no country followed more closely than Japan. Since at least the end of the Cold War, a fundamental principle of Tokyo’s geostrategic posture has been “double hedge,» the implicit strategy of anchoring security in the Japan-US alliance while simultaneously developing strong economic relations, and sometimes interdependence, with China. Over the years, the two sides of the coverage have faced distinct competing pressures that Tokyo has had to continually balance. When it comes to the security alliance with the United States, Japan fears…
In February 2026, Myanmar’s widely condemned “sham” general elections received public support from Ashin Wirathu, founder of the religious fundamentalist 969 and Ma Ba Tha movements and a figure long associated with incitement against gender rights advocates seeking to combat a patriarchal Bamar-Buddhist vision of Myanmar. The approval was not accidental. By lending the junta a claim to religious legitimacy, Wirathu illustrated what Asia Centre’s new report, “Religious Fundamentalism in Myanmar: Post-Coup Repression of Gender Rights,” documents at length: that Buddhist fundamentalism functions in post-coup Myanmar not as a parallel force to military authoritarianism, but as an integral component of…
Debates over the exchange rate in India often proceed as if the price of rupee were just another financial prize best left to market correction and macroeconomic adjustment. In theory, a weakened currency serves a useful balancing function. Imports become more expensive, domestic demand adjusts, exports become more competitive and external imbalances gradually stabilize. It is a classic mechanism, elegant in its abstraction and widely accepted in orthodox macroeconomics. But economies, especially emerging market economies, do not experience exchange rate depreciation in abstraction. They experience it through speculative attacks, fuel prices, transportation costs, electricity bills, food inflation and falling real…
It appears that true integration will remain elusive until New Delhi stops treating Kashmir as a security variable to be managed.
At the start of 2026, Southeast Asian stock markets looked poised for a good year. The Jakarta IDX Composite Index was hitting new highs every day. Global index provider FTSE Russell was preparing to upgrade Vietnam to secondary emerging market status, a move likely to attract billions of dollars of institutional funds. Tariffs imposed by US President Donald Trump on Liberation Day sent Malaysian and Singaporean markets stumbling in early 2025, but by the start of the new year both were trending higher. We’re now almost halfway through 2026 and stocks in the region have been on a wild ride.…
Trump’s slush fund intended to pay those who committed crimes while trying to help him overturn an election he lost is dead. After having the fund’s implementation blocked by a federal court on Friday, the DOJ announced:The Department of Justice strongly disagrees with the Gun Fund ruling issued by the United States District Court Judge for the Eastern District of Virginia, in which the Court stated that under no circumstances can the Department of Justice proceed with the recently established Gun Fund to compensate for the enormous abuse, harm, and hatred unfairly shown to so many. This Fund was open…
Hours after delivering the speech at the first Asia Security Forum, Vietnam’s top leader, General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam To Lam, said in an interview that Vietnam “does not approach [its] relations with the great powers through the prism of security.” For 13 years within the Shangri-La Dialogue (SLD), Hanoi has built its regional position on a non-traditional security agenda that has continued to expand. This program began with Nguyen Tan Dung’s 2013 keynote speech at the SLD and reached its full expression in To Lam’s speech in 2026. The balance between the United States and China…
At the end of May, the National Statistics Committee of Uzbekistan announcement that the number of tourists to the country in the first four months of 2026 increased by 29 percent compared to the same period last year, with the total number of tourists exceeding 4 million. The latest figures are part of a broader trend that has transformed Uzbekistan into one of the fastest-growing tourist destinations in Central Asia. Last year, 11.7 million people visit the country, an increase of 46.8 percent, or 3.7 million more, than in 2024. Even if the statistics indicate that tourists come from more…
Recent court order temporarily blocks DOJ’s weaponization of government funds that aim to pay those who committed crimes to help Trump in his efforts to overturn the 2020 election was an even bigger deal than initially reported. The temporary order blocking the fund gave members of Congress from both parties who oppose it time to work together to kill it. While it is true that Congress cannot close the already authorized DOJ settlement fund that was diverted for Trump’s purposes, Congress can do something else.Congress can leave the fund in place, but use its financial power and budgetary authority to…