Eighty-one years after proclaiming its independence, Indonesia has been fortunate to enjoy relative peace and stability, both at home and across its borders. But that achievement is something we can never afford to take for granted.

After 81 years of independence, how strong are the state institutions tasked with holding this nation together?

Indonesia’s external debt has continued to rise and reached a new high of Rp 8 quadrillion ($444 billion) in May 2026. The increase was primarily driven by government and central bank debt, which accounted for 55.9 percent of total external debt, or US$248.5 billion, after growing 3.89 percent year-on-year (yoy).

ASEAN does not need to reinvent itself. It simply needs to communicate differently.

The Question of the Malvinas Islands embodies Argentina’s territorial integrity, oceanic projection, bicontinental identity, wealth and projection into the South Atlantic.

Millions of people continuously generate the raw material on which AI is trained, yet almost none shares in the wealth it creates.

Southeast Asian countries are likely to judge China's Global Development Initiative on its ability to address real development needs, produce visible benefits and complement existing ASEAN frameworks.

Neither Australia nor Indonesia has fully recognized the myriad ways Australia’s 16th prime minister Ben Chifley used his timely influence to end colonial rule.

What happens when the language used to resist external dependence starts shaping what counts as legitimate disagreement inside the republic itself?

The government's decision to take over the debt restructuring of the Whoosh Jakarta-Bandung high-speed railway marks the end of one of Indonesia's largest business-to-business (B2B) infrastructure experiments. A decade after promising the project would not rely on the state budget, the government has been forced to step in. The rescue raises a broader question: If the existing line has yet to prove financially sustainable, why extend it to Surabaya?

Recent failures can be attributed to years of mismanagement of the national team by the Soccer Association of Indonesia (PSSI), whose officials are apparently more focused on politics off the pitch rather than the advancement of the sport itself.

A false rumor started in the early 20th century that the Japanese emperor would convert to Islam. It helped Japan build alliances with Muslims across Asia.

Do we measure the quality of education or the institution’s ability to prove quality?

As many industry insiders feared, the mining sector's performance has weakened further, locking it into negative territory for the first half of the year. 

When major economies are running at near full capacity, it is not clear that trade deficits should be a cause for concern, since they represent a transfer of purchasing power from surplus countries. Under the current circumstances, then, China’s widely criticized surpluses might as well be called enrich-thy-neighbor.

In practice, recognition that should represent the state’s respect for communities that have existed for generations can instead become an administrative mechanism determining whether a community is worthy of recognition. 

The decision to move the consortium's stake to the fiscal authorities is effectively an admission that the domestic SOE structure has reached its limits.

United States President Donald Trump has revived his tariff agenda under a new legal justification. After the Supreme Court struck down his "Liberation Day" tariffs in February, his administration turned to Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, accusing trading partners of failing to prevent forced labor in their supply chains. Indonesia is among the affected countries, which has raised questions about how effectively it is tackling forced labor at home.

Citizenship is not a favor the state dispenses to useful people. It should be a recognition of a bond that does not expire when it becomes inconvenient.

Investors are focusing more on tangible results: cash flow.

Why must China constantly attempt to prove its stature? What drives it to project superior force at every turn to assert its claims?

Governance gap leaves academic freedom vulnerable to exploitation because academic repositories and open scholarly platforms operate on trust.

For five centuries, raw materials have flowed out of Africa and Brazil at low cost to be used as inputs elsewhere, often returning to their source countries embedded in expensive finished goods.

Rather than delivering justice to victims, authorities have normalized, and often downplayed, their suffering, frequently misclassifying victims as perpetrators.

The Constitutional Court just handed down a much-needed reality check on the country's public finances. By striking the free nutritious meal program out of the national education budget, the court drew a clear line in the sand: money set aside for education needs to go toward education. Now, the government has to figure out a transparent, long-term way to fund its flagship free meals program without taking a bite out of other vital national priorities.

Separating the free meals program from the education budget is an important first step. However, the bigger test now is whether the government will genuinely commit to using the constitutionally mandated 20 percent education allocation to address the country’s perennial education challenges.

The lasting legacy of the Iran war will likely be a renewed impetus for energy-importing nations to lessen their dependence on fossil fuels.