Headlines

US stealth fighter surge risks a readiness nosedive

The US military’s fighter fleet is projected to become stealthier but less available, widening the gap between technological sophistication and the combat mass needed for a prolonged war. This month, the US Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released a report showing that a

Asia

Vietnam’s great banking clean-up is only the beginning

Vietnamese banks started deleting more than 86 million bank accounts last September. Of the roughly 200 million accounts on the country’s books, only 113 million personal accounts and some 711,000 organizational ones survived the biometric verification requirements introduced

Asia

Remember the two-state solution? Trump doesn’t

Israel’s right-wing government is intensifying its half-century-long campaign to take over the West Bank fully by unleashing bands of settler militias to harass Palestinian residents, destroy their homes and livelihoods and restrict their movement throughout the occupied

Asia

The world of zero visibility

It is summer in the Northern Hemisphere, and we are attempting an experiment that may not please everyone. With fewer eyes in the peak holiday period, and a lesser appetite for the presumed permabull piece in these bearish weeks, we risk a discussion of the contradictions

Asia

Bank Indonesia drama shows why rupiah is plunging

TOKYO — Investors hoping President Prabowo Subianto might learn from Indonesia’s past economic mistakes should get used to disappointment. Since taking office in October 2024, Prabowo has worked to drag Southeast Asia’s biggest economy back into its past. Which past is

Asia

Hard power, hard choices: UK’s reckoning a lesson for US

Andy Burnham walked into 10 Downing Street last week as Britain’s seventh prime minister in ten years. He takes over a country still absorbing the aftershocks of the Iran conflict, with the Royal Navy stretched thin as it escorts tankers through the Strait of Hormuz. It says

Asia