The US' strategic credibility has been dealt a severe blow, and the Gulf states have ended up in an exceptionally unenviable position.

Twenty-two years on the three-percent budget deficit cap has become a self defeating constraint. 

While traditional diplomacy falters in the face of Myanmar’s military violence, a quiet legal revolution is brewing in Southeast Asia: By turning to domestic courts in Timor-Leste and Indonesia, survivors are testing a bold, universal legal theory to ensure that victims of mass atrocities finally have their day in court.

For months, President Prabowo Subianto has been crafting his own strategic approach to the Middle East, often departing from some of Indonesia’s traditional foreign policy principles, including on the question of establishing relations with Israel. Central to this strategy was joining the Board of Peace (BOP) set up by United States President Donald Trump in January, a move widely criticized at home as abandoning Indonesia’s long-held support for Palestinians in their long struggle for an independent state.

While there is no direct attempt at censorship or closure of a media institution, press harassment can be regarded as a threat to undermine journalists, press organizations and press freedom.

The transfer of Andrie Yunus’s acid attack case to a military court threatens to shield perpetrators behind a "wall of impunity." To uphold the rule of law, Indonesia must prioritize civilian jurisdiction and establish an independent fact-finding team.

The Middle East war affecting Doha and the Gulf in general proves that education also depends on peace, stability and institutions capable of protecting learning from violence.

When auditors valued creative concept development and editing at "zero rupiah," they didn't just miscalculate a budget—they criminalized the very nature of artistic work. Amsal Sitepu’s acquittal must now spark a systemic overhaul of how the state values the intangible assets of the creative economy.

With the rupiah continuing to weaken amid an oil and gas shock linked to the United States-Israeli war on Iran, Bank Indonesia (BI) has halved the threshold for monthly purchases of US dollars (USD) using rupiah. The move is intended to give the central bank more room to intervene in the currency market and safeguard foreign exchange reserves, particularly as pressures intensify from ongoing oil and gas supply disruptions. However, the policy may carry unintended consequences for the real economy.

Having successfully improved its environmental compliance under the international spotlight, the Indonesian palm oil industry must now do the same for its workforce.

Unlike wind and solar, tides are governed by the gravitational pull of the moon and sun, making them highly predictable years in advance.

“Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives […] every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every corrupt politician, every ‘supreme leader’.”

The world order that the United States has taken charge of, and that Japan has taken advantage of, is fading away under the Trump 2.0 administration and the growing hegemonic threat from China.

Indonesia is a layered human experience, one that demonstrates how diversity can be a source of enrichment.

As the Strait of Hormuz crisis exposes the fragility of global oil, Indonesia’s path to true energy sovereignty lies not in its oil wells, but in its electric vehicle revolution.

So far China is weathering the United States-Israeli war on Iran better than many of its neighbors and treading a cautious path as opportunities to profit from the fallout emerge.

Indonesia is an archipelago where the sea is not a separator, but the primary connector. Yet, Indonesia’s logistics architecture tells a different story

Mining business permit revocation and asset transfers can strengthen governance, but only if they lead to demonstrable improvements in land-use practices, risk management, and environmental performance.

PT Agrinas Pangan Nusantara is fast becoming one of the most powerful, yet least clearly defined state-owned enterprises under President Prabowo Subianto’s flagship programs. Initially mandated to produce staple foods and manage 425,000 hectares of food estate, Agrinas Pangan has now been entrusted with an even broader role: operating the Red and White Cooperatives (KMP) for the first two years. However, as its mandate expands, its core business becomes increasingly blurred and government liability rises.

As the rupiah breaches the 17,000 mark, Indonesia’s stability now hinges on whether the government can match the central bank’s discipline with a credible fiscal plan.

History and research both show that the ocean can be used as a catalyst for building peace, even in the most unexpected places and amid the sharpest geopolitical tensions.

ASEAN is drowning in its own bureaucracy while the region’s nuclear stability begins to fracture. To survive, the bloc must abandon its "do everything" approach and reinvent itself as a lean, security-focused guardian of a nuclear-free Southeast Asia.

The rush toward EV and biofuel adoption risks shifting Indonesia’s ecological burden from coal chimneys to indigenous forests. True energy sovereignty lays not in massive corporate permits but in the resilient, community-led models already thriving in the heart of the archipelago.

Highly exposed to shocks originating in the US, Global South countries often have to align their monetary policies with America’s, in order to maintain currency stability and manage dollar-denominated debts.

Indonesia’s ambitious vision for a trillion-rupiah creative economy is being strangled by a procurement system that still treats imagination like unskilled labor. The criminalization of videographer Amsal Sitepu exposes a dangerous value blind spot that must be fixed before the state’s bureaucracy bankrupts its own future.

In recent years, Indonesia has witnessed a series of policy reversals that, taken together, raise important questions about the consistency of its reform agenda.

Three weeks after the acid attack on Commission for the Disappeared and Victims of Violence (Kontras) activist Andrie Yunus, investigators have yet to clearly identify who bears ultimate responsibility. What has drawn particular attention is the resignation of the chief of the Strategic Intelligence Agency (BAIS), framed by the Indonesian Military (TNI) as a form of institutional accountability. Yet, this raises the critical question of whether the move reflects genuine responsibility-taking by the state or signals deeper power struggles within the military.