Leveraging Middle Powers By Mehmet Enes Beşer Southeast Asia is uncomfortably in the middle of 21st-century great power rivalry. China-US competition speeding up with military interventions, economic decoupling, and competing visions of the region has placed ASEAN countries uncomfortably in the middle. With the South China Sea, cyberspace, and sea lanes as the fulcrums, regional strategic contours are increasingly defined ...
It needs deeper habits of cooperation—institutions, bureaucratic routines, long-term coordination that outlives individual leaders and news cycles. By Mehmet Enes Beşer Let’s be honest: the old “one sheriff in town” story is tired. You still hear it in policy speeches—usually delivered with a straight face—but it doesn’t describe how the world actually behaves anymore. Power is scattered. Influence is negotiated. ...
If China it thinks that by “wooing” the business sector and the right-wing governments that hate them, it will gain ground in Latin America and the Caribbean, it confirms that it understands little to nothing about what is happening in the region and what the Monroe Doctrine and the Trump Corollary mean. The process of containing China’s economic presence in ...
Bridges Over Balance Sheets By Mehmet Enes Beşer The United States likes to cite one number boastfully in its relations with Southeast Asia: it is still ASEAN’s single largest foreign investor. On paper, the statistic verifies Washington’s economic significance to a place that is central to global trade and geopolitics. Behind the balance sheets, however, is a more nuanced—and growingly ...
From defense rhetoric and petroleum exports to arm sales and diplomatic maneuvers, Southeast Asia is a region near and dear to Moscow’s heart upon which to make inroads internationally. By Mehmet Enes Beşer Russian strategic thinking has historically been motivated by the desire to project power beyond its near-abroad and secure a seat at the table of a multipolar world ...
If you are not at the table, you are on the menu. Once again, the world’s rulers failed to grasp the world! The same issues, the same panels, the same sentences, once again, fell short of tangible benefits for the planet. This year, from January 19 to 23, the World Economic Forum convened in Davos under the theme of “The ...
An approach that disrupts the status quo, the construction of strategic depth, the ability to maintain multiple balances. By Adem Kılıç, Political Scientist The global arena is facing the reality that the liberal order, which has dominated for decades and was established after the Second World War, has collapsed, and that the Western countries that owned this order, primarily the ...
Only when acting alone can the EU establish a multipolar, rule-based, and inclusive international system. By Mehmet Enes Beşer For much of the past decade, the European Union has struggled to formulate a clear and independent policy toward China. Struggling between the gravitational force of its historic bond with the United States and the multidimensional realities of its economic dependence ...
While the US tries to impose unipolarity, what limits will it face? The world is racing toward the Great War. Let’s list the developments of the past month that can be seen as warning signs of a major war: – Russian President Putin’s residence was targeted. In response, Russia struck Ukraine’s energy infrastructure and military bases with various missiles, with ...
UWI author and historian and political scientist Associate Professor Mehmet Perinçek’s assessment on the US attack on Venezuela The attack on Venezuela once again laid bare a fact: the Western world, the Atlantic world, has completely abandoned its founding principles. With this attack, the death of a liberalism that has long been on life support is effectively being declared. Western ...
Sudan, Gaza, conflicts, competitive authoritarianism, dysfunctional global institutions, and the end of the era of exceptionalism! By Adem Kılıç, Political Scientist 2025 was not only a challenging year geopolitically, but also a year that could be described as the most chaotic threshold of the last quarter-century. In summary, 2025 was a breaking point where the unsustainability of the Western-centric global ...
Leveraging the Divide By Mehmet Enes Beşer In the heightening United States–China trade war, global focus has shifted primarily to tariff schedules, supply chains shattered, and factories rebalanced. Beyond overt economic impact, though, lies a more sophisticated strategic actor edging its way into the openings. Sanctioned by the West, diplomatically isolated but globally ambitious, Russia is more than a disinterested ...