Satellite dots and convenient scapegoats won't stop the haze, breaking the country’s fire crisis demands trading assumptions for real accountability on the ground.

From raging wildfires to simmering revolts in the regions, a hyper-centralized Jakarta is driving the country toward a dangerous breaking point that harks back to past policy failures.

For all the horror of the Tiananmen crackdown, this period also brought extraordinary democratic breakthroughs elsewhere in Asia, as entrenched autocratic systems finally began to yield to democratic rule.

The 2026 forest and land fires reveal a paradox: Indonesia can mobilize after ignition, but climate justice depends on institutions that govern risk before smoke appears.

Washington has a multitrillion-dollar fiscal problem. United States Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent's answer, so far, is to look for loose change down the back of the sofa.

For South Korea, the best approach to dealing with Trump is what it has always been: Wait him out.

The 35th Muktamar (congress) should be more than a leadership contest. It should mark a new commitment to integrity, independence and service in the life of Indonesia’s largest Muslim organization.  

Despite years of constitutional reform and judicial intervention, the state's reflexive tendency to criminalize criticism of those in power remains alive and well.

Kalimantan’s land fires aren’t just down to El Niño; they are caused by the soil losing its ability to hold water. Prevention must start by restoring the soil’s natural balance.

Other financial systems have only so much capacity to receive a large and rapid reallocation without destabilizing themselves.

Factories were supposed to build Indonesia’s modern workforce. But as industrial job growth stalls, village spending, not factory floors, is keeping the economy afloat.

India and its biggest neighbor in Southeast Asia, Indonesia, have launched a unique initiative to expand collaboration in start-ups, deep-tech innovation, artificial intelligence and talent development that could lead to joint projects and creative initiatives by youth in the two large democracies of the Global South.  

Beyond the resorts and glossy brochures, the PKP Community Center offers vulnerable Balinese women a lifeline of empowerment, community and hope.

A thirty-year silence from nuclear testing was not an accident of history—it was a fragile choice that the world must urgently choose to keep.

Great-power conflict won’t hit Southeast Asia with battleships first—it will arrive through hollowed-out commodity prices, flooded domestic markets and a battered rupiah.

The puzzle of why the Trump administration is so concerned with a falling yen has historical parallels not to the 1930s or the 1980s, but to the 1960s, when US officials feared that a crisis elsewhere could spread to America. With US bond yields spiking, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is getting desperate.

To turn a historic paper pact into real Indo-Pacific deterrence, Washington and Jakarta must move beyond symbolic drills to build a high-tech, gray-zone defense partnership that respects Indonesia’s strategic nonalignment.

What started with the death of young woman in a traffic accident has escalated into a general protest about a lack of accountability for the powerful.

A capable state must do more than deliver programs, it must ensure that all citizens can hold power accountable and participate as equals.

For those born after the Helsinki agreement, peace is not something remembered as being won through intense political negotiation and sacrifice. It is simply the default baseline of existence.

A great power that loses access to adjudication substitutes its own power. A middle power that loses it has nothing to substitute. 

While framed as a strategy to attract top global talent, Indonesia’s push for dual citizenship hinges not on political vision, but on whether lawmakers can navigate the constitutional and statutory safeguards required to make it work.

As artificial intelligence accelerates, Indonesia’s top ranking in global flourishing challenges our definition of progress, proving that true wellbeing is measured by community and connection, not just technological might.

Disillusioned youth are turning to radical ideologies—and our best defense is restoring purpose through meaningful civic engagement

Beneath Indonesia’s booming headline growth lies a dangerous paradox: its middle class is quietly collapsing, threatening both the nation’s economic dream and its democratic stability.

Prabowo could hope to relive Soeharto’s era by recentralizing the government and strengthening the military, two pillars that had defined Soeharto’s New Order, while slowly erasing regional autonomy and freedom of speech, the two key achievements during the post-Soeharto democratization, also known as the Reform Era.

When the ground violently shifts, the words we choose can either steady a community’s collective courage or trigger a devastating humanitarian aftershock of panic.