A large screen displays President Prabowo Subianto as he delivers his speech on economic policies and the 2027 fiscal plan House of Representatives members at the Senayan Legislative Complex in Central Jakarta on May 20, 2026.

Prepare strong buffers as a perfect global storm is brewing

Armed with solid GDP growth and well-capitalized banks, Indonesia has the foundation to protect its economy and navigate looming global pressures through swift policy action.

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Can the climate crisis unite Europe?

Dismissing environmental priorities as outdated misunderstands both the crisis they represent and their significance for Europe’s political union. ...

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Rupiah, BI rate and the illusion of stability

Defending the rupiah with high interest rates and short-term "hot money" buys immediate stability, but it leaves the real economy resting on a fragile foundation. ...

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The Latest

Pupils of Pardomuan state elementary school in Bandung, West Java, take an eye test on Aug. 14, 2024 during the government-sponsored School Immunization Month.

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2026: Perfect start for routine eye health screening among Indonesia's children

Globally, two out of three people who need glasses do not have them, especially in low-income countries.

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An employee works on an aluminum piston ring production line at a factory that produces car parts in Binzhou, in eastern China's Shandong province on Oct. 14, 2024.

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Warning lights flash as aluminum reels from Gulf shock

The Iran war is shaping up to be one of the biggest supply shocks in the history of the aluminum market.

1 week ago

Employees arrange fruit and vegetables at the TaniHub distribution center in Kedung Halang, Bogor, West Java, on Aug. 16, 2019. Tanihub recently laid off a number of workers amid global woes in the digital economy.

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Indonesia’s start-up boom and what we refuse to measure

As prosecution of digital pioneers has become commonplace, a deeper crisis emerges: a nation that enthusiastically celebrates start-up hypergrowth but lacks the analytical tools to distinguish strategic risk from structural failure.

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NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte delivers a speech during a meeting of the Security and Defense Commission on Jan. 26, 2026, at the European Parliament in Brussels.

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NATO must die: The European sovereignty crisis

To become sovereign in defense matters (and more generally), Europe must terminate NATO.

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(left to right) Foreign Minister Sugiono, Iran's Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, South Africa's Foreign Minister Ronald Lamola, Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, India's Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, Brazil's Foreign Minister Mauro Vieira, Egypt's Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty, and Ethiopia's Foreign Minister Gedion Timothewos pose for a family photograph during the BRICS Foreign Ministers Meeting at the Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi on May 14, 2026.

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BRICS meeting in India brings rivals to the table

By bringing fierce regional rivals to the same negotiating table, the BRICS ministerial in New Delhi positions the expanding bloc not as an anti-Western alliance, but as a crucial diplomatic hedging mechanism for a multipolar world.

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Nadiem Makarim, former education minister and cofounder of ride-hailing firm Gojek, speaks with his legal team during a hearing at the Jakarta Corruption Court on May 13, 2026, over alleged corruption related to the procurement of Google Chromebook laptops. Prosecutors from the Attorney General’s Office (AGO) are seeking an 18-year prison sentence, alleging that Nadiem manipulated the procurement process and enriched himself during his tenure as education minister.

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Prosecuting young citizens for loving their nation

From the mass arrest of student protesters to the high-profile prosecution of a former minister, Indonesia’s judicial system is being systematically weaponized to crush dissent and pave the way for an institutionalized autocracy.

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People buy and sell goats on May 21 at the Ambarawa Animal Market in Semarang regency, Central Java. Local authorities have tightened health inspections of livestock, particularly cattle, ahead of Idul Adha celebrations to ensure animals traded at the market are healthy and free from contagious diseases.

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Idul Adha and Indonesia’s protein intake paradox

Indonesian households want to consume more animal-source foods but are systematically constrained by price, local availability and logistical bottlenecks.

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Coal is unloaded from a barge on June 20, 2024, at a coal terminal near the Batanghari River in Muaro Jambi regency, Jambi.

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Plugging export leaks and safeguarding the nation’s economic lifeline

To unlock true economic sovereignty, Indonesia must plug the systemic leaks of trade misinvoicing through a transparent, tech-driven single-gate export system.

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President Prabowo Subianto delivers a speech on the macroeconomic framework to lawmakers on May 20, 2026 at the House of Representatives building in Jakarta.

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Revenue losses in palm and coal: The price of weak control

President Prabowo Subianto's new plan to fight billion-dollar commodity fraud through a centralized state gatekeeper risks creating a monopoly far worse than the corruption it aims to cure.

2 weeks ago

Finance Minister Purbaya Yudhi Sadewa pauses during an interview with Reuters in Jakarta on March 3, 2026.

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Promising ‘no new tax amnesty’ is not enough

The anxiety over Indonesia's tax amnesty is that the policy created a kind of legal catch-22: In its aim to close a past legal problem, it left the legal consequences open-ended, potentially creating a new legal past for the state.

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Human connection: Local members of Operation Madago Raya, a deradicalization and counterterrorism public security initiative run jointly by the National Police and the Indonesian Military, provides basic staples to a former terrorist (second right) on Nov. 3, 2025, during a social assistance handover event in Poso, Central Sulawesi.

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Security operations: A willful repeat of gross crimes against civilians

Driven by land and resource grabs masked as counterterrorism operations, the escalation of military operations in Poso and Papua are willfully exposing Indonesian citizens to a brutal campaign of violence and forced displacement.

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Community vibing: Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim (center left, front) attends an event on April 4, 2026 in Ipoh, Perak state, Malaysia.

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The clock is ticking for Malaysian politics

Whether the national polls are triggered by the explosive multibillion-ringgit fuel subsidy crisis or accelerated by cascading state-level collapses, the political alignment is fluidly shaping up.

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Leaders attend a plenary session on the opening day of the G20 leaders' summit on Nov. 22 at the Nasrec Expo Centre in Johannesburg, South Africa.

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G20 must remain central to global economic governance

From the crisis-driven boardrooms of the Global North to a historic shift in Global South leadership, discover how the G20 is being fundamentally rewritten to steer a fractured world through a relentless modern polycrisis.

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High-rise buildings in the Sudirman Central Business District (SCBD) in South Jakarta are illuminated by the sunset on Aug. 2, 2024.

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From batik to botox: A brief history of status signaling in Indonesia

From an earlier age of Balinese tooth filing and Javanese courtly refinement to today’s SCBD culture of lip fillers and jawline contouring, the history of Indonesian status signaling reveals how power is continually rewritten onto the human body.

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A coal barge sails the western Java Sea on Oct. 31, 2023, as it heads to a coal terminal near the Suralaya coal-fired power plant in Cilegon, Banten.

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Article 33 and Indonesia’s natural resource governance test

Indonesia's new export regulations on natural resources is a test of governance that draws upon a constitutional provision that mandates their use to ensure the prosperity of its citizens.

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An attendant looks at a semiconductor wafer on March 25 at the SEMICON China 2026 trade fair in Shanghai.

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A cold shower for the AI mania

Although generative AI tools have improved rapidly and now outperform humans across many tasks, the market's current euphoria may not be justified. With AI firms increasingly resorting to debt financing, it is worth pausing to consider all the things that could go wrong.

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A man in Nicosia walks on May 4, 2026, in front of a large screen displaying vessel movements in the Strait of Hormuz on a ship-tracking website.

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Opaque oil deals around Hormuz test the petrodollar

There are growing signs that major Asian importers are adapting to the new reality by striking direct arrangements with Gulf producers.

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A Maritime and Security Agency (Bakamla) high-speed boat moves on June 23, 2023, in the Tanjung Uncang waters in Batam, Riau Islands.

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Setting the right course on maritime law enforcement discourse

An ongoing judicial review before the Constitutional Court concerning the criminal investigation power of the Indonesian Maritime Security Agency (Bakamla) exposes a structural problem of thinking upon maritime law enforcement.

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President Prabowo Subianto delivers a speech to mark the launch of a rural cooperative under the Red and White Cooperatives program in Nganjuk regency, East Java, on May 16, 2026.

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Why presidential banter fuels public anxiety

The humor, sarcasm and barbed language utilized on stage represent a deliberate cultural attempt to construct a new form of state-approved common sense.

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A new planting area for palm oil plantations is seen in Lamno village, Aceh Jaya regency, Aceh on Jan. 18, 2026.

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Risky reawakening of state-controlled commodity exports

it remains to be seen whether President Prabowo’s ambitious "single window" export policy will turn Indonesia into a global price maker, or will tight state centralization trigger a historic crisis of market trust.

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United States President Donald Trump (left) takes part in a welcome ceremony with China's President Xi Jinping at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on May 14, 2026.

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The US and China must learn to coexist

The Beijing summit between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping showed that competition between the United States and China need not become a zero-sum struggle for supremacy.

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Vietnam's Prime Minister Le Minh Hung (left) is greeted by Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. (center) and his wife Liza Araneta Marcos during a welcome ceremony for the 48th ASEAN Summit in Cebu, central Philippines, on May 8, 2026.

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ASEAN’s historic Marcos–Hung rice agreement

The year-long staple food agreement signed at the ASEAN Summit marked a major breakthrough for the region in facing the global energy and food crises.

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A man throws water in an attempt to douse a wildfire in Pemulutan district, Ogan Ilir regency, South Sumatra, on Sept. 12, 2023.

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Super El Niño? Prepare, but do not panic yet

Twin cyclones helped trigger massive ocean warming in the Pacific. But whether that leads to a strong El Niño is still uncertain.

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Passengers walk past check-in counters on Oct. 18, 2022, in Terminal 3 at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport in Tangerang, Banten.

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Balancing passengers' rights and airlines' survival in ASEAN

To save Southeast Asia's aviation sector from collapse due to geopolitical and economic crises, regulators must scrap outdated price controls and shift from penalizing airlines to sharing the responsibility of passenger care.

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A test tube labelled “Hantavirus positive“ is held in this illustration taken on May 7, 2026.

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From coronavirus to hantavirus: Ecosystems in crisis

As human activity shatters ecological boundaries, viruses once confined to the wild are finding dangerous new pathways into our world.

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Families of victims in extrajudicial killings of former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte's drug war watch a live stream on Feb. 26 of Duterte's confirmation hearing from The Hague, in Quezon City, Metro Manila.

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From sovereignty to accountability: Southeast Asia’s ICC moment

The case signals that Southeast Asia’s long-standing reliance on sovereignty and non-interference is increasingly colliding with growing demands for accountability.

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Workers lift solar panels onto their frames on Aug. 1, 2024, at a solar farm on old farmland in Oxfordshire, the United Kingdom.

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Sustainable economies will own the future

Though the political and cultural backlash against “sustainability” is real, so is the global economic transition toward cleaner energy technologies and electrification.

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