As if fighting in what – for now, at least – appears to be a losing battle in Ukraine weren’t enough, the Wagner Group, a private army of Russian mercenaries commanded by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a close associate of Vladimir Putin, is heavily committed in a range of conflicts and security crises in west Africa. Already […]Continue Reading
SEOUL – Washington will exempt top-tier South Korean chipmaker SK hynix from certain US export controls imposed last week on sending high-technology equipment to China, according to a company disclosure revealed today (October 12). The one-year exemption will come as a huge relief for SK hynix, the number-two memory player in both South Korea and […]Continue Reading
Myanmar’s shadow government could lose one of its closest supporters in Southeast Asia after Ismail Sabri Yaakob, the Malaysian prime minister, announced the dissolution of parliament on Monday, setting up a snap general election. In recent months Saifuddin Abdullah, Malaysia’s foreign minister, has emerged as the loudest advocate within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations […]Continue Reading
The US has unveiled its new AbramsX Main Battle Tank (MBT) and Mobile Protected Firepower (MPF) light tank, both purposely designed for expeditionary operations vis-a-vis China in Asia and Russia in Europe. The Warzone reported that General Dynamics Land Systems (GDLS) revealed its anticipated AbramsX MBT prototype, which marks a deep modernization of the long-serving […]Continue Reading
An inflationary tsunami is passing through the world economy, creating economic disorder – in some cases acute political crisis – in every country it touches. This is gathering momentum as the US attempts to control inflation by rapidly raising interest rates, forcing the other Global North economies into recession. The Global South economies have been thereby struck […]Continue Reading
SEOUL – The 50th anniversary of the establishment of China-Japan diplomatic relations did not cross Haruko Satoh’s radar screen. Granted, such occasions are hardly at the top of everyone’s viewing agenda. But Satoh might have been expected to tune in: She is a professor of international relations at the Osaka School of International Public Policy, […]Continue Reading
In its long history, Europe has rarely been as united as has been during the current Ukraine war. Nearly all European countries support Ukraine, as do their mainstream media. Dissenting views are rare, as are anti-war protests of the kind we saw during the wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq. Equally notable, European policies […]Continue Reading
The regime in Pyongyang has been conducting high-intensity military exercises recently. Diplomatic commentators see this as evidence of an alliance with Russia and China. However, if we look at the trends of South Korea’s military development, we can have a different analysis. South Korea’s apparent willingness to develop its military arsenal may worry the North […]Continue Reading
Russia’s “nuclear war” in Ukraine has already started, but it is not with “normal” nuclear weapons. Russia’s nuclear strategy is to take down a large part of Ukraine’s critical infrastructure, leaving it a country in ruins or, as some Americans say, bombing it back to the stone age. For Russia, attacking critical infrastructure means hitting the vulnerable […]Continue Reading
In a major escalation of the US-China tech war, China’s memory chip sector is expected to be particularly hard hit by new export restrictions imposed by the United States, according to Chinese analysts and commentators. That bleak assessment comes after Yangtze Memory Technologies Co (YMTC), China’s top memory chipmaker, and 30 other Chinese “entities” were […]Continue Reading