Geopolitics & international affairs
In early July, Sri Lanka published a government gazette banning imports of goods produced using forced labor. The move was presented as a principled stand against modern slavery. In reality, it was a tariff survival play, and one that may carry a serious diplomatic cost with Beijing. The background is straightforward. In June, Washington announced […]
The numbers are staggering. Iran’s government says total war losses have reached $270 billion. The Foundation for Defense of Democracies, no friend of Tehran, puts the figure at $144 billion as a floor, and admits the real number is likely much higher. Consumer price inflation topped 88 percent in June. The Iranian rial hit 1.9 […]
Keiko Fujimori was sworn in as Peru’s president on Tuesday, completing a narrow victory in the June runoff election and extending a rightward shift that is reshaping Latin American politics. She becomes Peru’s first elected female president: and the latest leader in a string of conservative victories across a region that once seemed to be […]
The Japanese government announced Tuesday that it will present the People’s Honor Award to retired speed skating star Miho Takagi at the Prime Minister’s Office on August 4. She becomes the 28th individual recipient of Japan’s highest civilian honor for athletes and cultural figures: and only the fifth woman to receive it. Chief Cabinet Secretary […]
China has shipped a record number of electric vehicles from Shanghai to Europe, carried by a new generation of Chinese-built car carrier vessels that are themselves a statement of industrial ambition. The shipment, reported by state-affiliated media this week, marks another milestone in China’s drive to dominate the global EV market, and to control the […]
When Lindsey Graham died suddenly on July 11 from a heart ailment at age 71, Washington lost one of its last unreconstructed foreign policy hawks, a Republican who believed the United States should be the world’s policeman, who pushed for intervention in every conflict, and who lobbied relentlessly for Israel and Ukraine. His funeral on […]
Inside the Trump administration, a quiet debate is underway: is the bombing campaign against Iran actually less effective than the economic war that barely anyone is talking about? Senior US officials told Axios that sanctions and a naval blockade are doing more damage to Iran than the nightly airstrikes that have dominated headlines for two […]
On Monday, US diplomats walked out of a United Nations Security Council meeting on Ukraine after France criticized the Trump administration’s human rights record. The gesture: dramatic, deliberate, and televised, was the culmination of a week of escalating exchanges between Washington and one of its oldest allies. The trigger was a UN vote on Friday. […]
The president of the International Criminal Court has turned to Japan for help in fighting off a Trump administration campaign to drive Asian member states out of the court. Tomoko Akane, the ICC president who is Japanese herself, asked Tokyo for cooperation during a lecture in Osaka on Monday. She described Japan as one of […]
Taiwan President Lai Ching-te offered assistance to Japan on Tuesday after a magnitude 7.1 earthquake struck the Kumamoto region of southwestern Japan. Lai wrote on his official X account, posting in both Chinese and Japanese, that Taiwan and Japan are true friends who stand together in times of adversity. On behalf of the people of […]
