May 30, 2025

In the week of 25th May 2025, Kuala Lumpur played host to a landmark event: the inaugural ASEAN-GCC-China Summit. It brought together Southeast Asian nations, the Gulf states, and China - three pillars of the emerging multipolar order - in a signal moment of strategic realignment. While headlines may focus on trade, energy, and infrastructure cooperation, the deeper story lies in a quiet revolution in how the world’s fastest-growing economies trade, settle, and invest - increasingly without the U.S. dollar.

May 02, 2025

The recent Financial Times editorial by economist Michael Pettis, in which he advocates for U.S. capital controls to achieve balance in its external accounts, is emblematic of a deeper and more troubling reality: American economic policy has entered a conceptual dead end.

Apr 18, 2025

America needs to come to peace with itself before it can come to peace with the rest of the world. Negotiating an economic detente that contributes to American national healing is, arguably, a question of global interest. But there won’t be any free lunches for the Americans.

Mar 18, 2025

The more things change, the more they seem to stay the same.

Feb 27, 2025

If one takes Marco Rubio’s recent remarks on the end of unipolarity at face value, one could be mistaken for believing that the question of a multipolar world is settled. On the contrary, Rubio’s ruminations, together with remarks from members of the new Trump Administration, including the President himself, buttressed with decisions made in the first few weeks of the new administration, suggest that the issue of multipolarity is very much in question.

Feb 13, 2025

In a social media post on January 30, 2025, US President Donald Trump threatened 100% tariffs on BRICs countries unless they committed to “neither create

Jan 07, 2025

The incoming U.S. president must move quickly to avoid being ensnared in the Ukraine debacle, with Russia winning the ground war. For Trump to get a prompt, positive reaction from Vladimir Putin, he needs to throw Europe under the bus and move on. Otherwise, the ultimate defeat won’t just be NATO’s. It will also be Trump’s.

Dec 24, 2024

America’s best-laid plans to change China have clearly failed over the decades. The question now is whether Donald Trump can rise above that history and meet China on its own terms. If not, the incoming occupant of the White House will sadly preside another failed episode of fruitless U.S. ambitions to conquer China.

Nov 29, 2024

Alternative pathways to development are possible, as demonstrated by China. Global institutions are in need of an overhaul. But time waits for no one, and new institutions are being forged.

Nov 22, 2024

The new Japanese prime minister wants to reassert Japan’s standing as a regional power, which will challenge the expectations of Washington elites and further rattle a region that is seeking to skirt the dynamics of great power competition.