Japan and Taiwan, Philippines and USA
LAST WEEK while our politicians were having their usual drama, recently-elected Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi proclaimed that any conflict or incident in Taiwan...
Asking existential questions
WHENEVER I read local news, I see that the main issue has always been government corruption. This has been the case all my life,...
What is economic statecraft?
IN MY youth, I was taught that economics comes in two forms: the free market and socialism.
There are hybrids of the two, such...
Autarky and sovereignty
LAST WEEK, while the Asia- Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) discussed multilateral engagement and trade deals, the...
Tech and the nation-state
THE NATION-state as an organizing principle is a concept centuries old, that traces its origins back to the Treaty of Westphalia, but thanks to...
The choice in a bifurcated world
LAST week, the United States - China trade negotiators floated the term decoupling several times.
Basically, decoupling means that the US and China will no...
China’s export controls on rare earths
LAST WEEK, Beijing announced sweeping export controls on various rare earths as well as the technologies for extracting and processing them. These include holmium,...
PH’s falling fertility rate and its implications
WHEN I reviewed the Philippines’ total fertility rate I was surprised to find that it had fallen to 1.88. I had expected it to...
America’s Antifa problem
LAST Month, the United States was wracked by multiple politically-motivated leftwing attacks. The assassination of rightwing figure Charlie Kirk and the failed assault on...
China’s proxy war
IN PREVIOUS articles, I’ve written that Russia has already won the war and that those parts of Eastern Ukraine it has occupied are effectively...