It’s a trip Steve Swerdlow has made many times: from Los Angeles, California, to Istanbul, Turkey, then to Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. Kyrgyzstan is a country that Swerdlow knows well and loves deeply. He lived in Bishkek from 2012 to 2019 while working for Human Rights Watch and completely immersed himself in the rhythms of the city – literally, Swerdlow is a jazz pianist and performs regularly while living in Kyrgyzstan. He continued to visit her in the years that followed, after taking a professorship at the University of Southern California (USC). On May 19, it was in this role – as…
Author: Frank M. Everett
The world is a more dangerous place than ever. At least that’s what most governments seem to believe, given the global increase in military spending. From 2021 to 2025, global arms spending increased by 9.2%. And when gun sales increase, so do profits. This means that some countries not only develop their armed forces, but also benefit from them. Asia is already home to two arms exporting powers in its own right, but many other countries have high hopes of joining the ranks of the world’s leading defense exporters. Today, we count down the region’s top 10 defense exporters and…
Commercial banks in Kazakhstan are increasingly offering attractive super-apps with convenient functions that go beyond traditional financial services for the country’s 21 million citizens. Using a banking application, citizens of Kazakhstan purchase the necessary goods, find the specialists they need and even benefit from government services. For security reasons, super apps have shifted to identifying personal data and biometric fingerprints of citizens to speed up the process of entering the application and confirming approval of operations. But there is a gap between the rapid development of digital ecosystems and existing legislative regulation, raising questions about the level of protection of…
One of my favorite childhood memories is visiting the Plain of Jars with my grandmother, Noy. I come from a long line of artisans who made textiles and shaped gold into jewelry in southern Laos. Grandma Noy wove Lao sins and exchanged with other talented loomers. She often took me to markets in other provinces like Xieng Khoang. It was then that I first discovered the megalithic jars scattered throughout this famous northern land. These ancient treasures have mystified archaeologists, historians and other experts around the world. Who made them? And why? Mesmerized by the jars, I ran among them,…
Seoul reportedly preparing to announce a road map for its nuclear-powered submarine program, transforming what was once a long-held strategic aspiration into a more immediate political issue. Naval nuclear propulsion increases non-proliferation issues on fuel, safeguards and nuclear latency. But treating Seoul’s pursuit solely as a sign of hidden nuclear ambitions risks missing a larger question: whether a U.S. ally facing a rapidly nuclearizing North Korea can remain non-nuclear while believing it has sufficient means to defend itself. This question has become more urgent as North Korea is growing not only its nuclear arsenal, but also the means by which…
A year has passed since the four-day crisis between India and Pakistan in May 2025, which ended following a US-brokered ceasefire. The conflict, described as “Marka-e-Haq» by Pakistan and “Operation Sindoor” by India, has accelerated a structural transformation in South Asian warfare. The crisis has demonstrated that future clashes between the two nuclear-armed countries will likely be shaped by multi-domain non-contact warfare, with precision stand-off weapons, drone systems, roaming munitions, advanced missile capabilities, and integrated missile forces occupying core space. Over the past year, both states have taken steps to strengthen their non-contact warfare capabilities. In a nuclear environment, the…
The ghost of China haunts all conversations about India. When US Deputy Secretary Christopher Landau visited New Delhi earlier this year, he declared directly: “We are not going to make the same mistakes with India that we made with China 20 years ago…” Today, as Secretary of State Marco Rubio heads to New Delhi for his first official visit since taking office, the comparison with China will follow him to every meeting. Washington once backed a rising Asian giant, the argument goes, and got burned. Why should India be any different? This fear may be intuitive for Americans, but it…
Taiwan is often discussed in the contemporary international community because of its democratic resilience in the face of authoritarian pressure from Beijing. In Europe, where many countries have transitioned from authoritarian rule to democracy, Taiwan’s experience has become an important point of reference: a small society that built a system widely seen as worth defending. This dominant narrative of Taiwan’s success is not false. However, what is often hidden behind this is a less visible but crucial problem: the presence of stateless and undocumented populations, numerous in the tens of thousandswho live in a democratic country without access to basic…
On April 10, China’s Ministry of Civil Affairs (MCA) released a list of names of 23 mountain passes, peaks, rivers and settlements in Chinese characters, Tibetan script and pinyin, with precise GPS coordinates. The problem was that all these sites were in Arunachal Pradesh, an Indian state. A sharp rebuttal followed from New Delhi on April 12 with the spokesperson of the Indian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MEA). describing the move as “malicious attempt » and a “baseless narrative”. This is the sixth time the Chinese MCA has published these names, which will be rejected by India. For Beijing, there…
In January, the Tokyo District Court find that a crime had been committed and ordered the North Korean government to pay compensation for the repatriation project that sent ethnic Koreans in Japan to North Korea between the 1960s and 1980s. The case was brought by four plaintiffs who moved to North Korea but later returned to Japan. They expressed hope that “this decision would help dispel the notion that the escapees’ suffering was simply their own responsibility in Japanese society.” At the same time, they expressed concern for family members and acquaintances still in North Korea and renewed hope for…