The heavy rains of late November 2025 devastated many countries in South East Asia. Indonesia was hit the hardest, with more than 953 lives lost in Aceh, Sumatra Utara, and Sumatra Barat in the floods and landslides. The tragedy kindled public anger, and social media has been flooded after the resurfacing of a 2024 speech by President Prabowo, where the President undermined the risks that result from increasing oil palm production as well as the deforestation that has been happening in Sumatra. Beyond momentary outrage, these events have signaled a deep reflection for Indonesia about palm oil and the international political economy of our everyday lives. 

Opportunity & Meeting Global Demands 

Ever since 1970, the demand for palm oil has increased fortyfold. In 2024, Indonesia had the largest consumption of palm oil in the world at 20.35 million metric tons. To meet such demands, not to mention the export-led growth targets, Indonesia has rapidly increased its palm oil production, and now is the largest producer in the world. However, alongside this change game a range of social and environmental grievances. Sumatra, the region hit hardest by the recent floods, contains the most extensive palm oil plantation area in Indonesia. This is no coincidence.

Palm oil production in Indonesia is complex interplay between state corporations, private corporations and smallholders. The majority of palm oil production in Indonesia is controlled by private corporations. The state has supported plantation expansion and eased trade barriers since the post Soeharto era of private corporations who can produce faster with their technology, to increase foreign-exchange earnings. Moreover, private corporations rely heavily on monoculture systems. Given that private corporations operate on large-scale areas of land, monoculture significantly reduces biodiversity and weakens soil stability as oil palm trees have shallow roots. Therefore, it increases the risk of flooding and soil erosion. 

Environmental Responsibility

The environmental consequences of Indonesia’s massive palm oil production play out alongside a shifting global political economy agenda that is more climate-conscious. On one hand, China, one of Indonesia’s largest importers of palm oil, has begun an ambitious path towards greener supply chains. On the other hand, Indonesia faced a trade dispute with the European Union over environmental concerns of palm oil production. Although Indonesia recently won the dispute, it cannot ignore the mounting global expectations for sustainability. Many countries have also developed more international environmental standardization in trade. For instance, the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), a voluntary internationally recognized certification, has also gained more usage in Indonesia, but its reach remains limited. 

To raise environmental standards and international competitiveness, Indonesia currently has the Indonesian Sustainable Palm Oil (ISPO), a certification regulation introduced in 2009. Although the number or certificate holders have increased, as of 2025, only 39.33% have obtained ISPO certification. Additionally, Presidential Decree No. 16 of 2025 has pushed for stronger implementation, however overall compliance remains low and slow. However, critics argue that the ISPO falls short in addressing key issues such as post-plantation land rehabilitation. 

The moratorium regulation aimed at halting the expansion of palm oil plantations in Indonesia between 2018-2021 was deemed as a step forward in sustainability efforts. However, the policy was not renewed, and expansion in regions such as Sumatra has continued.

Overlooking the Smallholders & Everyday Lives

Smallholders, defined as those who own less than 25 hectares of land, make up roughly 40% of oil production in Indonesia. Despite this, they are often overlooked and occupy a precarious position. Some smallholders are associated with private corporations, while others are fully independent. The latter has less financial capacity, knowledge and technology, making them vulnerable within the supply chain compared to private corporations. Moreover, they do not have the access to the markets that private corporations do.

A study on palm oil justice movements in Indonesia highlights how the dominating practices of state elites and private corporations have not only weakened smallholders’ political and economic aspirations, but also cause the most environmental damage. 

The November floods pose a strong reminder that the government’s negligence to govern palm oil production has ultimately impacted the lives of the grassroots communities such as smallholder farmers. The palm oil sector supports more than 16 million workers, whose livelihoods bear the immediate heaviest burden—losing homes, schools, and roads to the very mud of private corporations misconduct and policies. 

As consumers, without realising, palm oil is embedded in our everyday lives whether it be the food we eat or the products in our bathroom cabinets. Hence, we cannot simply stop consuming it, especially since many people depend on the industry for their livelihoods. While we can make more mindful choices, the government must make a more strategic position.

Moving Forward

Several research studies have suggested that the “bottom-up” approach of supporting smallholders may be a practical solution to reconcile higher output with environmental protection. Approaches include investing in capacity building and exposure to international markets. Evidence also shows that the adoption of sustainable practices leads to increased productivity.In light of the hundreds of lives lost, focusing on the narrative of the palm oil industry as a ‘blessing from the almighty’ that should be expanded ignores the failure of the government to empower and protect those who contribute the most. Focusing on corporate expansion while ignoring the power asymmetry of smallholders undermines environmental implications, long-term competitiveness and rural welfare. If the government lacks the political will to empower and protect those at the base of the supply chain, the cost of the next flood will be even higher.

Featured/Headline Image Caption and Citation: Menstrual Products, Image sourced from Roboflow Universe | CC License, no changes made

691,300 Palestinian women face a burden gravely ignored by the international community: period poverty. This condition is a symptom of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and a perpetrator of human rights violations. Even before the renewed tensions, Palestinian women struggled to manage their cycles. However, as Israel denies Palestinians essential humanitarian aid, women must resort to coping mechanisms that risk medical complications and strip them of their dignity. Though international doctrines condemn this callous deprivation, aid still ignores and even endangers menstruating Palestinians. Thankfully, United Nations sectors combat these issues by disproving misconceptions about the frivolity of menstrual hygiene. These actors emphasize an important policy measure: the need to teach the world that menstrual hygiene is a human right. This discourse will highlight the detriment of Palestinian period poverty, the doctrines that denounce these violations, the need to replace substandard aid practices, and the educational movements that eradicate this suffering from its core.

A 2023 National Institute of Health investigation on Birzeit University provides precedent for Palestinian menstrual inequity. In a survey of 400 female students, ‘‘…14.5% reported that menstrual hygiene products are expensive, and 15.3% reported that they always/sometimes had to use menstrual products that they do not like because they are cheaper. Most (71.9%) of the respondents reported that they used menstrual products for [a] longer time than recommended due to inadequate washing facilities at the university campus.” Period poverty is not a new phenomenon for Palestinian citizens. Pre-war circumstances reveal that societal infrastructures routinely underperform. The women of Palestine are left unsupported and defenseless, whether in wartime or in peacetime.

Israel continues to increase its military presence in Palestine following October 7th. These changes forcibly displace the majority of the Palestinian population. Women who relocate to refugee camps often encounter deficiencies in menstrual hygiene. As a result, their health quickly deteriorates. A 2025 report by the UNFPA, titled “Silent Struggles,” describes how female refugees reconcile this destitution. The report states, ‘‘In the face of these conditions, women and girls have turned to coping strategies that compromise their dignity and well-being. Many use old clothes, torn fabric, or sponges in place of sanitary pads. Without clean water, they cannot wash or reuse materials safely, increasing the risk of infection… In overcrowded shelters with no privacy, managing menstruation becomes a risk in itself.’’ Sadly, this health insecurity permeates beyond Birzeit University. War’s impoverishment aggravates the scarcity of menstrual hygiene. Women, therefore, must use strategies that counteract healthy bodily function. These healthcare choices not only risk their current well-being, but they also subject women to the potential for long-term ailments. And, without the means to keep this process private, their corporal vulnerability becomes a target of public scorn.

This insufficiency not only causes feminine health to deteriorate, but it also threatens Palestinian women with immense indignity. A 2025 United Nations study features testimonies from female refugees. In this piece, an anonymous girl recounts the shame she experienced while menstruating. The girl laments, “‘I only had one pad, so I wrapped it in toilet paper to make it last. I couldn’t wash, and the pain was horrible. I sat in silence, crying until the end of the day.’” Unfortunately, alleviation from shame is similarly scant—relief only comes with the arrival of a hygiene package. Another female refugee, Maysa, also appreciates the immense impact of this aid, as reflected in her testimony. Maysa wisely concludes that, “‘Food keeps us alive, but pads, soap, and privacy let us live with dignity…When we receive hygiene kits, it feels like someone finally sees us.’” Menstrual hygiene upholds a fundamental human rights principle: The idea that people deserve to be viewed and treated as equals. Feminine hygiene aid represents, to many Palestinian women, a long-overdue affirmation of their equal worth. That idea of equality disappears without hygienic aid, and this natural process devolves into an unbearable ordeal. Menstruation becomes endowed with a sense of ostracism and shame, causing these women to feel inhuman.

Staggering evidence indicates a need for period poverty relief. Yet, the majority of Palestinian-focused aid fails to address this issue. As reported by the BBC, on March 2nd, 2025, the Israeli government implemented severe blockades on NGO activity in Palestine. Though some aid activities were allowed to resume, these efforts overlooked menstrual hygiene. The 2025 report by UNFPA, titled “Silent Struggles,” documents the inefficiencies of new aid. The piece recounts, ‘‘While aid convoys have recently resumed, they focus primarily on food and medical supplies, with no hygiene materials included.’’ This neglect reveals a flaw in the foundation of current aid practices: relief operates on the false assumption that menstrual hygiene does not promote human rights. In reality, hunger and medical relief are not fundamentally different from menstrual hygiene aid. They serve the same purpose: promoting human rights through an exemplary quality of life. Nevertheless, humanitarian actors assign arbitrary values to both, misjudging their worth in the process. The needs of Palestinian women remain gravely unfulfilled, and blatant violations of human rights continue unimpeded.

Palestinian period poverty constitutes a grave offense against human rights doctrines. For example, Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights enshrines the universal right to medical services. Furthermore, this article underscores the importance of women’s healthcare.  The International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights builds upon these ideas: Under Article 12, states parties must preserve safe and hygienic living conditions to ensure universal physical and mental health. The 12th Article of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women similarly compels states parties to provide satisfactory and nondiscriminatory women’s healthcare. State constitutions do not depart from this virtuous aspiration: the constitutions of Palestine and Israel both advocate for the conservation of human dignity. Article 10 of Palestine’s constitution guarantees the protection of basic human rights and liberties. Finally, under the constitutional section titled Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty, Israel vows to uphold human rights standards that coincide with the sanctity of human life. The standards of Palestinian life starkly contradict the promises proclaimed in these documents. The women of Palestine do not receive adequate and indiscriminate healthcare; women’s healthcare is evidently minimal and infrequent. The women of Palestine do not see their basic socio-economic rights protected: first-hand testimonies reveal circumstances characterized by privation and indignation. The living conditions of female refugees do not exemplify sanctity: during menstruation, these women become the victims of cultural contempt. In truth, the state actors entrusted to women’s protection abandon their vital duties. They stand idly by as the health and pride of Palestinian women withers into nonexistence. Principles should inspire state parties to action, yet the distress of menstruating Palestinian women remains constant.

The ambition to end Palestinian period poverty appears tragically futile. This futility is only perpetuated by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, an Israeli aid organization that provides Palestinian relief. The GHF, like its predecessors, devalues period poverty relief. However, humanitarian scholars condemn this organization as a Trojan horse for geopolitical interests. A UN press release details the startling casualty tolls associated with GHF relief sites. The study reports that ‘‘Nearly 1400 people have been killed and more than 4000 injured while seeking food. At least 859 people have been killed around GHF sites since the beginning of GHF’s operations in late May 2025.’’ The GHF preys on the vulnerable through its guise of philanthropy. The organization persuades Palestinians towards trust only to catalyze irrevocable harm to its recipients. Its tactics ultimately extend Israeli military operations by encouraging mass terror and a Palestinian exodus out of the Levant. The GHF’s inadequacy mandates a response from the global community. International actors cannot act complacently while a masquerader abuses the ideal of human rights to incapacitate Palestine. Instead, the world must demand the swift replacement of the GHF.

Although the gap left by the GHF must be filled, it cannot be replaced by former aid practices that overlook menstrual needs. International blueprints exist to rectify these circumstances. Aid actors should derive inspiration from Human Rights Watch and WASH United. These NGOs conclude, through examining global detention centers, refugee camps, and schools, that this pattern of disregard stems from the intrinsic structure of relief organizations. Previous aid exemplifies the severe underestimation of period poverty’s impacts on human rights. Human Rights Watch and WASH United do not overlook this causality, and their 2017 joint guide advises humanitarian actors on how to do the same. The manual instructs relief groups to attack period poverty from two angles: with resources and with education. Aid organizations must first evaluate whether their services provide adequate menstrual materials, facilities, and education for female recipients. After this analysis is completed, relief groups must attack cultural stigmas embedded in society. Human Rights Watch and WASH United encourage humanitarians to facilitate educational dialogues surrounding menstruation. In combination, these efforts frame menstrual hygiene as a pillar of human rights. Human Rights Watch and WASH United spark a ripple effect. By helping aid organizations dismantle internal misconceptions, these NGOs empower smaller actors to combat false external beliefs. The guidebook serves as tangible proof that, by adopting the techniques of Human Rights Watch and WASH United, humanitarians further their scope to ensure no one is forgotten.

Menstruation comes with social prejudices augmented by ineffective remedies. International aid actors historically ignore the importance of menstrual resources, which endangers women’s health, compromises feminine dignity, and violates countless human rights doctrines. Mass medical disregard and social shame cannot go ignored. NGOs cannot let the complexity of Palestinian period poverty intimidate them into inaction. Progress begins externally: the global community must call for the GHF’s immediate replacement. The realization of progress, however, is internal: NGOs must look inwards, to their past practices and assumptions, to inform future approaches. Only then can aid actors understand and address the systemic issues that promote menstrual inequity and shame. Together, the international community must discard its previous notions about Palestinian period poverty. The world must pursue a greater future where, through collective action, every member of society is truly seen and treated as an equal.

Featured/Headline Image Caption and Citation: Menstrual Products, Image sourced from Flickr | CC License, no changes made

For much of the past two decades, Argentina has enjoyed an outsized reputation among progressive audiences abroad. It was one of the first countries in the world to legalize same-sex marriage, a regional pioneer in transgender rights, and the birthplace of the Marea Verde, the feminist wave that helped normalize abortion rights across Latin America and beyond. Domestically, Argentina appeared as a rare case where democracy, redistribution, and social progress advanced together.

Its foreign policy, however, tells a more contradictory story.

Rather than a simple oscillation between Kirchnerist leftism and Javier Milei’s libertarian radicalism, Argentina’s international trajectory reflects a deeper structural problem: both projects attempted to organize foreign policy through populist logics in a world no longer governed by stable hegemonies. To understand why this strategy worked at home but failed abroad, it is necessary to examine how populist reasoning operates, and where its limits lie.

Why Populism Worked at Home

The Kirchnerist era is inseparable from the theoretical framework developed by Ernesto Laclau. In Hegemony and Socialist Strategy and later On Populist Reason Laclau argued that political identities are constructed through discourse rather than pre-existing social categories.^{1 2} A political “people” emerges by linking heterogeneous demands into a chain of equivalence, unified against a common antagonist.

This logic proved highly effective in Argentina’s domestic politics. Labor unions, human-rights organizations, feminist movements, and economically marginalized groups were articulated into a broad pueblo opposed to neoliberal elites and international financial institutions. Despite internal tensions, these actors shared a fundamental democratic baseline: elections, civil liberties, and constitutional legitimacy were not in dispute.

This shared normative ground is essential. Laclau’s populist logic presupposes a political arena where conflict occurs within democracy. Foreign policy does not operate under these conditions.

Exporting the Chain of Equivalence

Cristina Fernández de Kirchner sought to extend this domestic logic to the international arena by framing Argentina as part of a Global South coalition resisting U.S.-led liberal hegemony. As Pereyra Doval and Colalongo show, Kirchnerist foreign policy was explicitly constructed as counter-hegemonic, grounded in South–South cooperation and opposition to Western financial power.

China fits relatively smoothly into this framework. Beyond its diplomatic support for Argentina’s Malvinas claim, Beijing offered infrastructure investment and alternatives to Washington-based financial institutions, reinforcing its image as a credible counterweight to U.S. dominance. Russia played a similar symbolic role.

The contradictions emerged when the logic of equivalence was stretched beyond strategic balancing and into normative alignment.

Iran and the Moral Limits of Equivalence

The 2013 Memorandum of Understanding with Iran exposed the fragility of Kirchnerist foreign policy. Iran was not merely another state marginalized by the West; it was formally accused by Argentine prosecutors of orchestrating the 1994 AMIA bombing, the deadliest antisemitic attack in the country’s history.

By pursuing diplomatic normalization, the Kirchnerist government attempted to incorporate Iran into a broader anti-imperialist coalition. Yet this move collided sharply with Argentina’s post-dictatorship identity as a defender of human rights and judicial accountability. Critics argued that the agreement subordinated justice to geopolitical expediency, creating the appearance, if not the reality, of complicity.

From a Laclaunian perspective, this was not hypocrisy but conceptual overstretch. A chain of equivalence can unite heterogeneous actors only so long as their differences do not negate the values binding the chain together. Iran’s political system, grounded in religious law, gender inequality, and repression of dissent, could not be reconciled with Argentina’s progressive self-image. The chain snapped.

ALBA and the Democracy Problem

A similar contradiction emerged in Argentina’s alignment with ALBA governments such as Venezuela and Cuba. Framed as expressions of anti-imperialist solidarity, these partnerships associated Argentina with regimes that systematically eroded democratic institutions, repressed opposition, and restricted civil liberties.

As Colalongo and Sezek note, these alignments offered limited strategic benefit while imposing significant reputational costs. Domestically, Kirchnerism championed feminism, LGBTQ+ rights, and the memory politics of Nunca Más. Internationally, it defended governments that criminalized protest and dismantled judicial independence.

Here, the limits of populist foreign policy became evident. Foreign policy lacks the shared normative ground that allows populist equivalence to function domestically. Antagonism alone cannot substitute for institutional compatibility.

A Counter-Hegemonic Project, Now Closed

With the benefit of hindsight, Kirchnerist foreign policy can be understood as a completed cycle. Its counter-hegemonic ambition was coherent in intent but fragile in execution, and its limits cannot be explained simply by the external pressure of neoliberal globalization.

As Andrés Malamud and Federico Schenoni argue, Latin America’s declining relevance in world politics is best understood as a long-term structural trend, evidenced by the region’s diminishing share of global population, economic output, and diplomatic weight. In their Nueva Sociedad article, this marginality is not treated as the result of a single policy failure or ideological orientation, but as a sustained trajectory shaped by enduring systemic constraints and weak regional coordination. Their analysis thus describes a specific historical configuration in which Latin America’s international influence steadily eroded, regardless of shifts in domestic political orientation.

In a complementary argument developed in Foreign Policy, Malamud and Schenoni further contend that Latin America’s loss of visibility on the global stage was reinforced by the broader international context of the post-Cold War era: a period marked by U.S. unipolarity, limited strategic rivalry in the region, and the absence of issues that would make Latin America central to great-power competition. Within such a system, even ambitious foreign-policy projects faced narrow margins for success.

What has changed since, however, is not merely the orientation of Latin American governments, but the structure of the international system itself, raising new questions about whether the conditions that underpinned this earlier diagnosis of irrelevance continue to hold.

Milei and the Illusion of Restoration

Javier Milei’s foreign policy is often portrayed as a radical rupture, and ideologically it is. He rejects Global South solidarity and seeks explicit alignment with the United States and the Western liberal order, presenting Washington not as an imperial adversary but as a civilizational ally.

Yet this project unfolds in a world fundamentally different from the one Kirchnerism sought to resist. The era of neoliberal globalization as a stable hegemonic order has ended. The rise of explicit great-power competition, reflected in recent U.S. security doctrine, has altered the conditions that once sustained Latin America’s marginality.

This does not mean the region has become powerful or autonomous. Rather, its irrelevance can no longer be assumed.

Milei’s attempted realignment faces structural constraints: Argentina remains commercially tied to China, financially dependent on the IMF, and embedded in regional and institutional relationships that cannot be undone at will. His foreign policy therefore remains an open project, subject to adjustment rather than definitive evaluation.

Conclusion: Populism After Unipolarity

Argentina’s recent foreign policy history reveals a broader lesson about the limits of populism beyond ideology. Populist logics can successfully articulate heterogeneous democratic demands within a shared institutional framework. When projected onto the international system, however, those same logics falter.

Kirchnerism’s counter-hegemonic project collapsed under normative contradictions exposed by alliances with authoritarian regimes. Milei’s neoliberal realignment remains an unfinished reaction to the same structural transformation: the end of unipolarity and the fragmentation of global order.

Both projects sought ideological coherence in a world increasingly resistant to it. Argentina’s foreign policy dilemma, therefore, is not primarily ideological but structural. Resolving Argentina’s foreign policy dilemma will require abandoning the illusion that global politics can be organized through populist equivalence alone.

1. Laclau, Ernesto, and Chantal Mouffe. Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics. Repr. London: Verso, 1999. ↩︎
2. Laclau, Ernesto. On Populist Reason. London: Verso, 2005. ↩︎

Featured/Headline Image Caption and Citation: Javier Milei, Image sourced from Live and Let’s Fly | CC License, no changes made

During the ongoing war in Ukraine, Russia has quietly threatened many of its neighbors, gauging their ability to withstand future Kremlin aggression. The battlefield for global influence between NATO and Russia extends far beyond Ukraine. While reports of Russian drone incursions into Poland made it to front pages across the world in September 2025, far fewer people have heard of the struggles for political dominance in the tiny nation of Georgia, or Russia’s campaign of sabotage against Estonia in Northern Europe. While not as violent or destructive as the full-scale war raging in Eastern Ukraine, each struggle plays an important role in the broader conflicts between world powers. Given the strategic advantage that would be afforded to Putin if he achieves success along these smaller fronts, it is vital for NATO to take decisive action and begin taking these challenges more seriously. The most crucial steps for NATO and its allies in their struggle against Russia include an increased military presence in threatened allied countries, a stronger effort towards leveraging soft power and information campaigns within the various political battlegrounds across Eurasia, and a coordinated initiative to ease Baltic policies against the Russian language that feeds Kremlin narratives of marginalization.  

One of the most important theatres of Russia’s competition with Western powers lies in the local politics of much smaller nations. Georgia, a nation of nearly four million people located south of Russia, has seen a shift in popular support towards NATO and the EU in the last two decades in defiance of Russian aggression. This strategic victory for the West has begun to deteriorate after Georgia’s request to join the EU was halted in protest of what the EU described as democratic backsliding. More recently the Georgian government passed a controversial foreign agents law, sparking massive protests after critics accused it of mimicking Russian legislation targeting NGOs. Georgia is not the only small country that Russia has been making efforts to win over. Russian officials have been paying friendly visits to Kyrgyzstan to solidify friendly relations, despite the fact that the Kyrgyzstani government has passed laws against the Russian language in their home country. These laws closely resemble similar laws passed in the Baltics, which have ignited outrage from the Kremlin and are used as the justification for increased hostilities and aggressive actions against the tiny EU member states Latvia and Estonia. Altogether, while seemingly distant scenarios, these situations share an opportunity for strategic action by NATO and its allies. 

Kyrgyzstani pushback against the degradation of their native tongue represents a perfect opportunity for NATO to leverage the situation to their political advantage. Russian is the second most spoken language in Kyrgyzstan and has been frequently used in broadcasting, business, and governance, leading to legislative pushback seeking to ensure the preservation of Kyrgyz as the dominant language. This effort has gained traction in light of a surge of Russian migrants into Kyrgyzstan due to the invasion of Ukraine, primarily in 2022 and 2023. These migrants are perceived by some locals as a threat. The Kyrgyzstani government passed a law resembling controversial laws in Estonia and Latvia that mandate increased usage of Kyrgyz in broadcasting, government, and the names of various locations. While these laws have sparked Russian outrage against the Baltics, it is interesting to note that Russia has still maintained a cordial relationship with Kyrgyzstan, likely due to Kyrgyzstan’s strategic value to the Russian economy, particularly in its effort to avoid tariffs. Given the fact that some within the Kyrgyz population have voiced frustrations against the prevalence of the Russian language within its borders as well as Russian immigration, this is likely the most effective argument for NATO to convince Kyrgyzstan to expand its relationship with the West. NATO faces an uphill battle to achieve diplomatic wins in a nation bordering Russia, with a high population of ethnic Russians, a significant trade relationship with the Kremlin, and a location isolated from the democratic world, signaling that any potential opportunity cannot be ignored. It would work towards NATO’s benefit to increase public awareness in Kyrgyzstan of this controversial surge of Russian migrants, putting pressure on the Kyrgyz government to become more vocally critical of Russia’s actions. This could be quickly acted upon via American and European state-funded news, NGO funding within Kyrgyzstan, and diplomatic dialogue. 

To the Southeast lies the Caucasus, a region divided by the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, home to the ancient nation of Georgia, which is currently balancing a tightrope between Russia and the West. After a decade of growing popular support for membership in the European Union which signaled a political loss for Russia, the Georgian government enacted a controversial law to the dismay of both the European Union itself and supporters for Georgian membership. This “Foreign Agents Registration Act” has stoked massive protests in the capital of Tbilisi, accused of mirroring a similar Russian law. Given that until recently NATO had been gaining ground in the country which harbored anger against Russia due to the military annexation of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, these recent developments have marked a drastic turn of events. By investing in diplomatic and grassroot efforts aiming to swing the advantage back in their favor, Western powers would be taking the first step towards addressing one of the most contentious power struggles in their competition with Putin. 

An imminent reinforcement of military strength and capability in Estonia is vital for ensuring European security. Estonia is largely considered to be the most vulnerable EU member state to a Russian attack, and constant Russian aggression has proven that this vulnerability is not one to be ignored. Russia has cut internet cables in the Baltic Sea, flown aircraft in Estonian airspace, and even sent a drone over the border, “Estonia now finds itself in what officials describe as a ‘silent war’—a campaign of hostile actions that stop short of open conflict but aim to destabilize and intimidate.” Despite spending an exorbitant portion of their budget on national defense and announcing plans to increase military spending in the future, Estonia’s active-duty armed forces still number fewer than ten thousand. One counterargument against the case for bolstering troops in Estonia is that it is the least tactically important nation in the Baltics. If Russia chose the most anticipated strategy for invasion, Estonia would be cut off from the rest of Western Europe, and any foreign detachments stationed there would become trapped. Despite the truth of this argument, neglecting to increase NATO’s military presence within the country would jeopardize deterrence efforts. By continuing to bolster its meager number of troops in Estonia, NATO would display a powerful and unwavering commitment to its members not only to Russia, but to the entire world. 

While Estonia is more vulnerable to invasion, Latvia and Lithuania are considered the most likely Russian targets for a major offensive against Europe. The Suwalki Gap is a sparsely populated stretch of Lithuanian and Polish land separating Belarus with Kaliningrad, a small Russian enclave within mainland Europe. Many military strategists believe that Russia would target this gap in the case of an invasion, solidifying this location as well as all of Lithuania as a crucial piece of land to defend. As seemingly straightforward as the need to bolster these defenses may be, the effort to do so has been slow moving. By 2026 NATO will have a Brigade size force stationed within Latvia. Germany also made a significant move by pledging to station a full brigade in Lithuania by 2027, but in the case of a full-scale war the Suwalki Gap would likely need a division sized force (15,000-20,000). If EU lawmakers follow through on increasing defense spending in 2026, stationing a larger force in the Baltics is not only feasible, but vital to European security amid ongoing tensions with Russia.  

The Baltic states’ approach towards handling the Russian language should be softened and humanized to ease domestic tension and prevent handing the Kremlin free political capital, which will in turn benefit Western powers in the information war. When it comes to winning over hearts and minds, Russia has used the Baltic states to its advantage by attacking their policies against the Russian language as harsh and discriminatory. It is not just the Russian government that has been enraged, but the Russian minority has responded harshly to the Estonian government in Tallinn, especially towards the removal of monuments to Soviet soldiers. This is a similar narrative to the position the Kremlin has taken to justify their invasion of Ukraine launched in 2022. The fact that laws dealing with the Russian language in Kyrgyzstan (a country that has been important to Russia in its efforts to survive tariffs) have not met a similar outcry from the Russian government suggest that accusations against the Baltics and Ukraine of marginalizing their Russian minorities are likely as strategically motivated as they are ideological. Russia will likely use these allegations as a justification for force in the event of a conflict in the Baltics regardless of their truth, yet it nonetheless remains vital to ensure that these narratives lack any truth altogether. Any developments dispersed to an international audience that align with Russian claims work to legitimize Russian claims and degrade NATO’s values of freedom and democracy for all. This leaves proper treatment of the Russian minority in Estonia and adherence to their rights as Estonian citizens of paramount importance, regardless that many native Estonians associate this minority with the harsh memories of a Communist past. 

Ukraine is only one sphere of the ongoing struggle between Putin and the West; many smaller post-Soviet countries remain critical in their strategic value. NATO’s position necessitates coordinated and persistent efforts by policymakers, diplomats, and intelligence agencies on behalf of democracies across the world, while also maintaining respect for each nation’s core values and sovereignty. NATO leaders, especially those within mainland Europe, must remember that active efforts towards the defense of member states and the advocation towards Western values of self-determination must be a constant priority to preserve stability. NATO must increase its forces in the Baltics, settle tension with Russian minorities, and capitalize on political opportunity in Georgia and Kyrgyzstan with urgency today to prevent Russia from exploiting vulnerabilities in the future.

Featured/Headline Image Caption and Citation: NATO Headquarters, Image sourced from Flickr | CC License, no changes made

Over the past decade, artificial intelligence has moved from a niche technological frontier to a transformative global force. The number of new AI firms financed globally has increased four times, and investments have increased fifteenfold, a rate of acceleration that is starting to represent the dawn of the fourth stage of production, governing principles, and social existence. Asia-Pacific countries are also trying to ride this wave. However, according to a recent UN report, the initial positions of the countries in this region are highly unequal. The IMF AI Preparedness Index shows this contrast: while advanced economies like Singapore, South Korea, Australia, and China are at ease with scores well above 70 percent, weak or low-income states can barely score above 20. For many, the new AI environment poses an external threat, creating more gaps between countries unless carefully handled.

This gap is not only a result of differences in the level of technological enthusiasm, but is also structural. The nature of some economies has built the foundation of AI based on good digital infrastructure, uninterrupted power supply, good data systems, and high-speed connectivity. On the other hand, some continue to struggle with intermittent power supply, lack of adequate data governance, and low-level internet access services. These concerns define who is part of the AI-controlled change and who is left behind. While Singapore experiments with large-scale AI deployment in finance, healthcare, and public administration, several South Asian and Pacific Island economies still struggle to build reliable data centres or digital authentication systems. The technological race, therefore, begins on an uneven track. 

These inter-regional divisions lie over centuries-old inequalities even within nations. Income and wealth are very concentrated in the upper ten percent in most regions of Asia and the Pacific. Those with access to higher education, urban connectivity, and access to capital are in a better position to reap the benefits as AI tools become part of the workplace and change the forces of demand. At the same time, low-income employees, informal labourers, and rural communities are more vulnerable to these changes. AI is not just a reward for those with skill; it increases existing privilege. Without international policy intervention, the AI revolution may strengthen deeply-rooted structural inequalities.

The aforementioned UN report highlights the fact that the inclusive adoption of AI needs to reinforce both hard and soft infrastructure. Hard infrastructure is defined as the physical infrastructure of digital transformation: cheap internet, reliable and clean power, data center cooling, and sufficient computing power. Though the use of the internet has increased in the region, huge disparities exist. Some economies continue to experience a lack of affordability, lack of equal coverage between rural and urban areas, and gender differences in access. Such gaps are important since AI systems are based on stable high quality connectivity. It is impossible to jump into advanced governance with AI-driven technologies when a high percentage of the population does not have the basic access to high-speed data transmission.

Soft infrastructure also plays an important role in this issue. The capacity of societies to take up the opportunities of AI without falling into its pitfalls is determined by human capital, robust state institutions, and reputable regulatory systems. There is an acute skills shortage in data science, machine learning, cybersecurity, and advanced analytics in many countries in the Asia-Pacific. The education systems in some countries do not yet match the rapidly changing requirements of the AI economy. Meanwhile, public institutions are not able to adopt or establish ethical protection, privacy, and algorithm accountability measures. Unchecked AI adoption is unlikely to deliver sustained growth. Without effective governance, AI will be deployed unevenly and unpredictably, exposing countries to heightened risks of surveillance abuse, labour displacement, and the entrenchment of digital monopolies.

This is due to another dilemma created by AI and gender. In the Asia-Pacific, women are more exposed to AI-based automation than men. This is mainly due to the fact that women are overworked in clerical, administrative, and routine cognitive work-places; these are the areas that are highly prone to algorithmic replacement. This feminine vulnerability is aggravated by the inequalities that exist in access to digital devices, education, and labour participation. Devoid of intentional inclusion policies, the region is prone to establishing a future where technological advancement will replace women more than it empowers them.

The interplay of inequitable infrastructure, institutional underperformance, labor shortage, and gender inequality implies that the AI transition cannot be delegated to the market forces alone. The coming decade of AI uptake in Asia-Pacific will determine the growth direction of the economies, geopolitics, and stability of societies. The countries able to implement AI in manufacturing, services, and governance can gain significant productivity, while the others will become losers in a new technological tier of divergence. More to the point, the social gap between connected and disconnected, skilled and unskilled, and protected and unprotected workers might become even more rigid without early government intervention.

A multilayered solution beyond an increase in infrastructure is necessary to establish a more equal AI future. States should manage AI as a challenge of development and governance and reinforce public institutions, reestablish education systems, and invest in digital rights infrastructure that protects citizens against exploitation and expands access to opportunity. The key to inclusive adoption will be the ability of countries to democratize the benefits of AI, not just allowing them to be concentrated among elites. It is not a question of whether the Asia-Pacific will embrace AI—the actual question is whether the region will permit AI to intensify the existing inequalities or whether it will adopt the course of joint technological development.

If the Asia-Pacific can close its preparedness gaps and build cohesive, inclusive AI ecosystems, the technology has the potential to become a force for development, resilience, and inclusive growth. But if disparities remain unaddressed, the region may soon find itself confronting a new digital divide, one defined not by access to the internet alone, but by access to the future itself.

Featured/Headline Image Caption and Citation: AI, Image sourced from Peak Outsourcing | CC License, no changes made

In October 2025, a South Korean man escaped human trafficking captivity in Cambodia. When he rushed to the Korean Embassy in Phnom Penh for help, he was reportedly turned away—it was outside office hours. There was no 24/7 consular response. The embassy had just one police attaché and two staff to handle a surge in kidnappings, fraud cases, and rescue operations, out of a total of fifteen personnel.

The Cambodia crisis of 2025 saw 513 suspected cases of missing Koreans reported to local police between January and early November. The incident exposed what analysts had long suspected: South Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) lacks the institutional capacity to match the country’s expanding global role. In an effort to ensure adequate responses to future crises, the ministry has promised to expand the consular division with increased funding. However, the incident shed light not only on overseas Korean missions but also on an institutional problem that spans the entire Korean diplomatic apparatus.

Korean diplomats stride onto the global stage with Indo-Pacific initiatives, APEC summits, and nuclear-submarine negotiations. But the very institution tasked with sustaining this momentum has changed far more gradually than the demands placed upon it.

Inside Korea’s Foreign Service Shortage

In 1994, MOFA headcount was about 2,092; in 2024, it stands at just 2,896, a mere 30 percent increase over three decades. By comparison, the U.S. Department of State employs nearly 27,230 people, while mid-sized powers like France and Japan field diplomatic corps many times larger. Italy, a country with a comparable population, employs approximately 7,000 career diplomats, more than twice the number Seoul affords. Meanwhile, of Korea’s 193 overseas missions, 102 operate with five or fewer staff. At MOFA headquarters in Seoul, there are 935 staff members in 2025, up from just 814 in 1994. 

Meanwhile, South Korea’s global engagement has exploded over the past 30 years. Trade volume has surged more than sixfold since the early 1990s. Outbound tourists have increased more than twentyfold. Seoul has gone from zero free-trade partners in 1994 to 22 FTAs with 59 countries. As these international linkages broadened, MOFA’s staffing structure changed more slowly.

The Foreign Ministry Is Bleeding Its Mid-Career Core

Voluntary resignations within the foreign ministry have more than doubled, jumping from 34 in 2020 to 75 in 2023, concentrated among mid-career professionals bearing the heaviest workloads. 

The appeal of a foreign service career is fading: the competitiveness ratio for the entry-level diplomat cadet exam fell from 42.8:1 to 36.2:1, converging with other civil service tracks it once far outranked. Experts cite long hours and heavy workloads, coupled with pay that fails to compensate for the intensity of the work.

The Interplay of Personnel and Expertise

On paper, this appears to be a simple personnel shortage. But this has been compounded by a deficit of specialized expertise, creating situations in which a single diplomat handles portfolios across multiple divisions.

The generalist model remains one of MOFA’s defining characteristics in its hiring and retention of personnel. Career diplomats follow a single track: a grueling two-round civil service exam, a year of training at the Korean National Diplomatic Academy, then rotations every two to three years across headquarters and overseas postings.

But as global diplomacy grows more technical, the monolithic hiring process has come under renewed discussion, and Seoul’s foreign ministry has tried to diversify at the margins. It designated “open positions” for mid-career temporary hires and, in 2013, created a separate application track to encourage regional and functional specialists to join the foreign ministry, exempting them from the first-round examination.

The special intake of functional and regional experts peaked at 31 percent of new diplomats in 2013, then plummeted to 8 percent by 2020 before being scrapped. A renewed specialist exam introduced in 2021 yielded five hires in its first year, then none in 2024 or 2025. The regional specialist track was also quietly halted in 2022.

The “open positions” program, intended to source mid-career individuals for temporary, senior-level positions at MOFA for a fixed period, has fared no better. From 2023 to 2024, MOFA converted 10 positions meant for external talent into internal postings filled by career diplomats. Half of those jobs had never once been filled by an outsider; they were repeatedly filled by insiders until MOFA claimed no suitable external candidate could be found.

When Outsourcing Fails

In theory, the foreign ministry can simply “outsource” functions to specialized agencies, making it more efficient. The creation of the Overseas Korean Agency in June 2023 appeared to support this approach. When the new agency launched to handle diaspora programs, MOFA’s Korean Nationals Overseas Protection Division was halved, dropping from 28 staff to 14.

But the Overseas Korean Agency focused on diaspora welfare rather than consular emergencies. The headquarters division it replaced was the ministry’s crisis-management hub—responsible for coordinating surge deployments, triaging overseas incidents, and linking embassies with domestic law enforcement. Halving that unit left missions without an institutional backstop when caseloads surged. Cases involving Korean nationals abroad had already grown from 10,664 in 2014 to 23,596 in 2024, a 121 percent increase.

The consequences surfaced in Cambodia. After reports of deaths in captivity in October 2025, MOFA scrambled to dispatch 40 temporary consular officers to Phnom Penh. The government recently approved a minor amendment to restore—and expand—the previously slashed consular division.

How Other Countries Adapt

Governments elsewhere have moved in the opposite direction. Japan has set a national goal to increase the number of diplomatic personnel from 6,674 in 2024 to 8,000 by 2030, with an emphasis on regional experts and longer-term geographic assignments. According to the Lowy Institute’s 2024 Global Diplomacy Index, Türkiye has recently increased its overseas posts so rapidly that it surpassed Japan and France. India is also enlarging its diplomatic posts as its global role grows.

Several major powers have also institutionalized specialist tracks alongside generalist rotations. Germany’s foreign ministry largely separates headquarters-based policy specialists in the Auswärtiges Amt (Federal Foreign Office) from field-based, operation-heavy diplomats in the Federal Office for Foreign Affairs (BfAA), allowing both to develop distinct competencies. The United States operates a special counsel fellow track for regional experts, and the UK focuses heavily on hiring economic specialists in its foreign service program, separate from generalist diplomats.

A Foreign Policy Without Institutional Muscle

Analysts have long noted that South Korea’s diplomacy swings wildly with domestic political winds, and that bipartisan polarization leads each new administration to reverse or discard its predecessor’s foreign policies, preventing sustained strategies and leaving no consensus on handling key relationships with China, Japan, or North Korea. Some observers question whether Seoul’s diplomacy follows a coherent long-term vision or is simply reactive dealmaking with whichever great power exerts pressure.

In this context, MOFA’s difficulties in retaining talent, cultivating specialists, and incorporating outside expertise may be one factor preventing the ministry from anchoring a consistent line.

To its credit, MOFA has initiated organizational restructuring. In May 2024, it announced the annexation of its Office of Korean Peninsula Policy into a broader Office of Strategy and Intelligence—though the reorganization downgraded the ministry’s only unit specializing in inter-Korean affairs, burying it under a larger office housing three other bureaus. In 2025, MOFA launched an AI Diplomacy Division and signaled interest in external hires.

The ministry is also moving to significantly improve the once-slashed consular division: the official FY2026 budget shows a 6.3% year-on-year increase in funding for working conditions and a 5% increase in capacity-building for overseas mission staff. It also promises to create a subdivision within the current consular division for protecting Korean nationals abroad.

Yet even with recent moves to increase consular staffing after the Cambodia crisis, the overall personnel picture remains stagnant. The ministry’s November budget presentation projected slower growth in ordinary personnel costs, from 4.6 percent in FY2025 to 3.5 percent in FY2026—suggesting little meaningful shift toward a larger or more specialized corps.

During a recent in-flight press conference returning from the G20 summit, President Lee remarked that he felt the need to “reorganize Korea’s foreign-affairs workflow in a much more systematic way,” noting that external relations remain “extremely fragmented.” He had reportedly discussed the matter thoroughly with the foreign minister and national security adviser. Perhaps such reform would position MOFA as a central agency to coordinate the fragmented apparatus. Perhaps it would begin with hiring more diplomats across a wider range of specialties.

After all, Korea’s diplomatic crisis doesn’t begin at the 38th parallel or in the contested West Sea. It begins in the ministry’s own hallways.

Featured/Headline Image Caption and Citation: MOFA Building, Image sourced from Wikimedia Commons | CC License, no changes made

The affirmative asylum system in the United States is designed to function as a linear legal pathway in which applicants file Form I-589, attend biometrics appointments, appear for interviews, and receive decisions within a reasonable period. In principle, time is intended to act as a neutral administrative mechanism. In practice, prolonged interview delays have turned time into a central force that shapes the evidentiary, economic, and psychological dimensions of an applicant’s case. This paper compares the intended structure of the asylum process with the lived outcomes created by extensive interview backlogs. Drawing on work completed at the International Rescue Committee (IRC) in Atlanta, this analysis argues that the formal design of asylum law and the realities generated by delay operate on different timelines, producing consequences the policy framework does not anticipate.

Existing scholarship has long documented how extended asylum adjudication timelines produce predictable harms. Rebecca Hamlin argues that prolonged delays destabilize applicants’ lives and undermine the legitimacy of the asylum system.¹ Jaya Ramji-Nogales, Andrew Schoenholtz, and Philip Schrag similarly show that uncertainty and long waits exacerbate trauma and make it more difficult for asylum seekers to present consistent testimony.² Policy research from the Migration Policy Institute attributes today’s backlog to structural staffing shortages and shifting adjudicatory priorities within U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). Together, these studies provide an academic foundation for understanding how interview delays shape applicants’ experiences, reflecting many of the patterns identified in this analysis.

While the affirmative asylum process is designed around a predictable administrative sequence, interview scheduling practices reveal how quickly that structure breaks down in practice. Affirmative asylum interviews were originally conducted in the order applications were received. In 2018, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services reinstated the “last in, first out” (LIFO) interview scheduling system, prioritizing newer filings over older ones. The stated goal was to deter meritless filings by resolving recent cases quickly. However, legal scholarship shows that LIFO did not operate as intended. Hamlin describes LIFO as producing a two-track adjudication regime, in which new filings move quickly while older cases remain stalled. Migration Policy Institute research similarly finds that LIFO has not reduced the overall backlog but instead redirected limited adjudicatory resources away from long-pending applicants.

In practice, LIFO created a dual timeline. Applicants who filed recently may receive interviews within months, while thousands who filed before the policy change remain in multiyear stagnation. Asylum offices themselves acknowledge that pre-LIFO backlogs often remain untouched through USCIS Asylum Division Quarterly Stakeholder Engagement updates. The formal policy timeline envisions predictable progression, while the backlog timeline produces uncertainty and prolonged inactivity. This structural contradiction illustrates how efficiency measures designed to improve processing fail to produce consistent outcomes, particularly for long-pending applicants.

These delays also interact with asylum law’s assumptions about evidence and credibility. The REAL ID Act of 2005 requires applicants to present detailed, internally consistent testimony and to provide corroborating evidence when available. The legal framework assumes that applicants can reasonably access evidence and accurately recall events at the time of interview. Extended delays complicate both assumptions. Applicants interviewed years after filing must recall precise dates, sequences, and details of traumatic experiences. Research in psychiatry and refugee studies demonstrates that trauma and the passage of time affect memory in ways asylum adjudication rarely accounts for.³

Evidence collection is similarly affected by delay. Letters from witnesses, medical documentation, political membership records, and police reports are often easier to obtain shortly after flight and significantly more difficult to secure several years later. The asylum system is structured around timely evidence submission, but prolonged backlogs reshape the evidentiary landscape in ways unrelated to credibility or claim strength. As a result, delay itself becomes a source of disadvantage, weakening cases through procedural time rather than substantive merit.

Economic stability represents another area where policy assumptions diverge from lived experience. The asylum employment authorization clock is intended to allow applicants to work legally after their case has been pending for a defined period. Regulations permit applicants to request an Employment Authorization Document (EAD) after 150 days and to receive one after 180 days, provided no applicant-caused delays occur, as outlined by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. In theory, the clock promotes orderly processing while discouraging premature work authorization.

In practice, the asylum clock is frequently misunderstood, inadvertently paused, or affected by procedural barriers such as biometric rescheduling or notices that applicants never receive. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services policy explicitly states that the clock stops when an applicant is deemed to have caused a delay. Many applicants file without legal representation and are unaware of how easily the clock can be stopped, resulting in extended periods without lawful income. National research reflects these realities. The American Immigration Council and Migration Policy Institute document how delays in work authorization increase risks of housing instability, food insecurity, and exploitative labor conditions for asylum seekers, as documented by the Migration Policy Institute. These findings situate the economic struggles described here within broader national trends.

Some observers argue that longer timelines allow applicants and legal representatives additional time to strengthen their cases. On paper, extended preparation periods might support more complete documentation, expert reports, or corroborating evidence. In practice, however, this time is not strategic but compulsory. Many applicants use delays to gather documents that were inaccessible immediately after fleeing persecution or to secure legal representation after filing pro se to meet the one-year deadline. These adaptations respond to systemic delay rather than reflecting benefits of thoughtful policy design.

Backlogs also transform the role of legal service providers. In theory, providers support applicants through a straightforward sequence of filings and interviews. Under prolonged delay conditions, their responsibilities expand substantially. At IRC Atlanta, routine tasks include assembling evidence packets well in advance of scheduled interviews, drafting declarations that must remain accurate despite multi-year gaps, updating addresses to prevent missed notices, preparing work authorization renewals amid shifting processing times, and explaining the implications of LIFO and the asylum clock. Legal service providers must anticipate risks created by administrative delay, including unexpected interview notices or outdated documentation, effectively operating as long-term case managers rather than short-term legal preparers.

Comparing the formal design of the affirmative asylum system with the lived outcomes produced by prolonged interview delays reveals a persistent misalignment between policy intent and practice. The system envisions timely interviews, stable evidence collection, consistent testimony, and a clear path to lawful employment. Backlogs disrupt these assumptions, constraining economic stability, complicating credibility assessments, and reshaping the responsibilities of legal service providers. Viewed in an international context, these delays are not inevitable. Canada’s asylum system, while also affected by backlogs, generally provides earlier access to work authorization and clearer procedural timelines, reducing some of the economic and evidentiary pressures created by prolonged waiting. Recognizing how administrative time itself produces legal harm is essential for meaningful reform. An asylum system designed to protect people fleeing persecution cannot rely on timelines that undermine fairness, destabilize applicants, and erode the integrity of adjudication.

1. Rebecca Hamlin, Let Me Be a Refugee: Administrative Justice and the Politics of Asylum in the United States, Canada, and Australia (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014). ↩︎
2. Jaya Ramji-Nogales, Andrew I. Schoenholtz, and Philip G. Schrag, Refugee Roulette: Disparities in Asylum Adjudication and Proposals for Reform (New York: New York University Press, 2009). ↩︎
3. Jane Herlihy, Kate Gleeson, and Stuart Turner, “What Assumptions About Memory Lead to Unfairness in Asylum Hearings?” European Journal of Psychotraumatology 1 (2010). https://doi.org/10.3402/ejpt.v1i0.544 ↩︎

Featured/Headline Image Caption and Citation: Hands holding US Flags, Image sourced from RawPixel | CC License, no changes made

It was almost inevitable that Iran would announce its withdrawal from the new inspection arrangement on Thursday. The decision came just hours after the International Atomic Energy Agency asked for details about the country’s enriched uranium stock and the condition of the sites Israel bombed in June. This effectively buries the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the zombified 2015 agreement designed to trade strict verifiable limits on Iran’s nuclear program for the country’s reintegration into the global economy.

The JCPOA will no longer exist because the conditions that sustained it are now relics of the past. The accord relied on three specific pillars to function: coordinated international pressure, a credible enforcement mechanism, and political continuity in Washington and Tehran. In 2015, those conditions existed, but today, not a single one remains. The events of this week confirm that we are interacting with the shell of an agreement rather than a living framework.

Myth of International Unity

The JCPOA was often described as a “masterpiece of diplomacy,” but a closer reading of its origins points instead to a masterpiece of leverage. The deal emerged from a very specific geopolitical alignment that concentrated pressure on Tehran with unusual consistency. Washington operated inside a coalition rather than above it, signaling that the United States had partners willing to translate political commitments into economic pain.

The economic trap set for Iran snapped shut in 2012. Europe implemented a full embargo that removed around 600,000 barrels of Iranian oil from global markets, reshaping the country’s economic horizon. At the same time, China, India, Japan, and South Korea reduced their purchases under U.S. waiver pressure, and Russia supported Security Council resolutions that closed procurement channels. To seal the trap, the SWIFT banking network disconnected Iranian banks, making it nearly impossible for the regime to repatriate the revenue it did manage to generate.

The combined effect of these measures drove Iranian exports from roughly 2.5 million barrels a day to around 1.1 million within a year. Tehran confronted a landscape in which the path toward negotiation carried much more promise than the path toward defiance. This moment of alignment carried extraordinary weight because each actor had separate interests yet acted in concert.

But that arrangement has since faded from relevance. China has become the single most important buyer of Iranian oil, acquiring more than a million barrels a day through channels designed to bypass scrutiny. Beijing capitalized on the deep discounts created by Western sanctions, securing cheap energy for its independent refineries while signaling that American financial power could no longer dictate its strategic inputs. Meanwhile, as the war in Ukraine stretched into its later stages, Moscow turned to Iran for drones and related technology. Shared isolation forced a strategic convergence, as Tehran provided the cheap, mass-producible hardware Moscow needed to sustain its campaign against a NATO-backed Ukraine. This military reliance changed Russia’s incentives; the country that once supported pressure on Tehran now benefits from a deeper partnership.

When France, Germany, and the United Kingdom attempted to initiate snapback sanctions in the summer of 2025, Russia and China moved quickly to block the effort. This is the environment that the IAEA’s request arrived at. Iran just understood the geopolitical equation and responded accordingly.

Enforcement Vacuum

The JCPOA’s architects created snapback to ensure automatic penalties in the event of a violation. The design appeared elegant because it reversed the standard logic of the Security Council: instead of requiring a vote to impose sanctions (which Russia or China could veto), it required a vote to continue lifting them. This meant that any single participant could force the return of penalties, and no great power could stop them.

But this mechanism relied on a premise that collapsed in May 2018: U.S. support. The United States’ withdrawal from the JCPOA exposed Europe’s dependence with clarifying brutality. The moment Washington reimposed secondary sanctions, Europe’s firms reassessed their commitments based on their exposure to the U.S. dollar. Total abandoned a $4.8 billion gas project, Siemens suspended infrastructure investments, and shipping giants like Maersk and MSC halted shipping services at Iranian ports. When companies were forced to choose between the Iranian market and the American banking system, they chose survival.

The consequences of this exodus became obvious in 2019, when Iran responded to the economic pressure by expanding its uranium stockpile, and European leaders recognized the breach but simply hesitated to act. They understood that without the United States, they possessed the legal right to snap back sanctions but lacked the economic weight to make them bite. The enforcement system was designed to be automatic, but in practice, it depended entirely on American participation.

Europe attempted to preserve the illusion of sovereignty by launching INSTEX, a clearinghouse designed to facilitate trade outside the dollar. It was a failure. Over its entire operational life, the mechanism facilitated just a single transaction for medical goods. The pressure system that once surrounded Iran had relied on American financial dominance as its central pillar. Once the facade was removed, “snapback” transformed from a threat into bureaucracy with no real force behind it. 

Domestic Trap

A long-term nonproliferation agreement requires political stability to survive, and the last decade proved that neither Washington, Tehran, nor Jerusalem can offer. 

The roots of this failure lie in the precedent set in May 2018. Although the IAEA verified Iranian compliance repeatedly between 2015 and 2018, the United States withdrew anyway, establishing a fatal new norm: a treaty tethered to American election cycles cannot synergize trust. President Obama signed the deal in 2015; President Trump reversed course three years later; President Biden attempted a revival in 2021 with limited traction. By 2025, Republicans had returned to a posture centered on maximum pressure, confirming the warnings of analysts like Vali Nasr and Trita Parsi that any agreement faces reversal the moment domestic tides shift. 

The JCPOA ceased to be a technical agreement and became a political emblem. In the United States, it evolved into a touchstone for broader debates about America’s role in the world. Republican senators linked it to weakness, conservative commentators described it as “appeasement,” and Donald Trump elevated opposition to the deal to signal a total rejection of Obama-era diplomacy.

Tehran internalized this dynamic. Hardliners used the precedent of the U.S. withdrawal to undermine the arguments of the moderates who had invested their political capital in the agreement. The narrative framing inspections as concessions to imperial powers ceased to be rhetorical leverage. Following the death of Ebrahim Raisi, it calcified into state policy. While his successor, Masoud Pezeshkian, campaigned on engagement, the real power centers, the IRGC and the Supreme National Security Council, consolidated around a doctrine of “resistance economy.” In this new domestic equilibrium, any concession to the IAEA became politically fatal.

This internal logic dictated the events of this week. Following the intensification of security incidents at nuclear facilities, the nuclear file became a primary test of regime legitimacy. The IAEA’s November 20 inquiry had only routine significance within international guidelines, yet the political environment placed on its shoulders a symbolic weight. When conservative lawmaker Mojtaba Zolnour characterized the request as an affront to national dignity, he was drawing a red line for his own government. Tehran’s decision to withdraw followed the logic of that domestic climate: in a system built on defiance, cooperation looks like treason.

A similar hardening of domestic politics transformed Israel’s strategic calculus. For years, the Israeli security establishment operated under the “campaign between wars” (MABAM) doctrine, which is a strategy of covert sabotage designed to delay Iran’s progress without triggering a full-scale conflict. The events of October 7 and the subsequent multi-front war ended that consensus. The prevailing political demand shifted from managing threats to eliminating them. By 2025, the government could no longer justify a policy of quiet containment to a public demanding absolute security guarantees.

This shift forced the country’s leadership to abandon ambiguity in favor of overt action. The strikes in June 2025 were the output of a new domestic mandate that views international agreements as dangerous distractions. Prime Minister Netanyahu’s coalition framed the JCPOA as a shield that allowed Iran to build capacity under diplomatic cover. When the IAEA requested updates this week, Jerusalem viewed the move as proof that the international community remained stuck in a pre-war mindset. Israel’s domestic politics now demand kinetic solutions rather than paper guarantees.

Discussion surrounding the JCPOA often suggests that the agreement can return with enough diplomatic determination, but interpretation understates how deeply the international environment has changed. Iran’s announcement on November 20 carries meaning because it clarifies the state of an arrangement that has relied on memory rather than function. A future agreement requires a different foundation. A durable successor must reflect the geopolitical competition between major powers, the economic architecture that shapes compliance, and the domestic incentives that determine political survival. A structure built around the conditions of 2015 cannot endure in the environment that defines 2025.

Featured/Headline Image Caption and Citation: JCPOA Implementation, Image sourced from Wikimedia Commons | CC License, no changes made

For just one time I would take the Northwest Passage

To find the hand of Franklin reaching for the Beaufort Sea

Tracing one warm line through a land so wide and savage

And make a Northwest Passage to the Sea.

“Northwest Passage,”Stan Rogers, 1981.

During the Age of Sail, countless sailors attempted to traverse the frigid arctic waters of the North Pole in search of a maritime route that would cut down on shipping costs and travel time. However, due to the treacherous conditions, rogue ice sheets, and insufficient advancements in naval technology, all expeditions ended in failure and death. Nevertheless, with modern-day Arctic vessels such as icebreakers and the thawing of polar ice, a “Northwest Passage” may finally be in reach. 

A potential arctic shipping route has appeared attractive for centuries due to its potential to cut shipping costs and travel time by nearly half, or 6,200 miles – roughly the length of the entire Pacific Ocean when measured from Los Angeles to Beijing. Additionally, ships taking this polar express would avoid the conflict-prone Red Sea, where recent Houthi missile attacks on maritime cargo ships have required the armed intervention of the American navy to protect commerce. 

Due to increasing temperatures and the unequal distribution of heat on the Earth’s surface, the poles heat up four times faster on average than the rest of the Earth for an average of 12.8% sea ice decline per decade. However, this does not necessarily mean the Arctic is completely ice-free. Instead, man-made climate change has created brief seasonal windows when the ice retreats just enough to make Arctic maritime shipping viable. Still, in an interview with CNN, the polar geopolitics expert Elizabeth Buchanan remarked, “A new global economic corridor is about to come online… This is a game changer.” 

Additionally, the Arctic Circle is estimated to contain 30% of Earth’s undiscovered natural gas and 13% of its undiscovered oil reserves, potentially making any nation that could control or exert influence over the region very powerful. Consequently, Canada, Denmark, and Russia have all recently invoked an obscure clause in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea to extend their economic claims to the Arctic.

The United States, however, may find it difficult to justify similar economic activity in the Arctic as the United States has yet to sign the aforementioned United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, therefore making any claims outside its 200 mile exclusive economic zone illegitimate in the eyes of international law. Alaskan politicians have since lobbied the federal government to become a signatory, but progress is unlikely to be made due to long-held American fears of loss of sovereignty to the United Nations. Interestingly, if the United States were a signatory to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, not only would it be able to extend its Alaskan Arctic claims by almost 160,000 square miles, it would also potentially be able to stack the scientific panels judging international oceanic claims with American experts. 

Given the highly lucrative potential of the Arctic, the power of influencing territorial arbitration would be especially important due to the many overlapping claims that cover the Arctic. For example, the Lomonosov Ridge, an underwater mountain range stretching 1,100 miles in the extreme North Pole, is claimed by both Russia and Canada. The importance of the Lomonosov Ridge led Russia in 2007 to plant a Russian flag on the seabed around the Lomonosov Ridge using a robotic arm attached to a submarine. It is perhaps also no coincidence that the parts of the Arctic closest to Russia have been described as having “mind-boggling” amounts of oil and natural gas. 

Whereas the interests of countries like China are purely economic in nature, the Arctic has also been militarily important to polar nations like Russia, Canada, and the United States for several decades. For example, during the Cold War, Canada and the United States’ early-warning missile-detection systems were based in the Arctic. Likewise, the Center for Strategic and International Studies has described the purpose of Russia’s Arctic military presence as being to “1. Enhance homeland defense, specifically a forward line of defense against foreign incursion as the Arctic attracts increased international investment; 2. Secure Russia’s economic future; and 3. Create a staging ground to project power, primarily in the North Atlantic.” Predicitably, Russia also has the world’s largest icebreaker fleet, numbering at 50, with some icebreakers nuclear-powered and armed. Comparatively, the United States has two, both of which are decades old. 

In fact, in terms of active economic, legal, and military activity in the North Pole, Russia is the world’s foremost Arctic power. According to U.S. officials, if NATO were to regain the Arctic advantage, it would require the construction of 70 to 90 icebreakers. During the 2024 NATO summit, the United States, Canada, and Finland announced the Icebreaker Collaboration Effort (ICE) to begin negotiations regarding a joint effort to construct new icebreakers. This joint nature of this agreement is notable as the United States is expected to require consistent, deliberate investment spanning decades to bring its shipyards up to global par in icebreaker construction – a problem emblematic of the larger decline of American shipyards as a whole. Inevitably, the United States is relying on polar allies such as Finland to build icebreakers for it, as in the $6.1 billion Finno-American deal announced in October of 2025, under which Finland will build four icebreakers for the United States Coast Guard and assist America in constructing seven additional icebreakers. The first icebreaker is expected to be delivered in 2028. 

Although the Arctic has the potential to be the next frontier of geopolitics, environmentalists warn of the possibility of catastrophic destruction there. Counterintuitively, melting sea ice in the Arctic actually makes transiting to the North Pole more perilous in some respects, as the thawed ice now floats freely and unpredictably rather than being previously locked into unmoving ice sheets. This has the potential to damage oil tankers transiting through the Arctic and cause oil spills. Whereas oil spills in other oceans, such as the Gulf of Mexico, can be relatively manageable to clean up due to their proximity to highly developed and prepared nations like the United States, Arctic oil spills have the potential to be uniquely destructive to the environment, as the desolate and isolated nature of the Arctic Ocean makes cleanup exceptionally difficult. Not only would specialized vessels such as icebreakers be necessary, but the frigid Arctic temperatures might also require specialized cleanup equipment and specially trained crews. Not only would oil stay in the relatively pristine Arctic waters for longer than in other oceans, but the dark, black color of spilled oil would also absorb sunlight, heating the Arctic even further. 

As the climate warms and more Arctic sea ice melts, more human activity accelerating climate change is expected to take place in the Arctic in a positive feedback loop akin to a vicious, environmental death spiral. Consequently, this will further warm the climate, leading to additional climate-change-contributing Arctic activity. This will, of course, lead to even more climate change. 

Instead, it would do the world well to look south for guidance. The 1959 Antarctic Treaty established the South Pole as a demilitarized, environmentally-protected, scientific no-man’s-land, which it has remained to this day. Consequently, Antarctica has stayed relatively untouched. Not only would a scramble for the Arctic spell disaster for the environment, it would also inflame the growing great power competition between the United States and Russia. The Arctic is at a crossroads, and it could either become an additional theater in geopolitical struggle, or a testament to international cooperation and the pursuit of science over extraction. A treaty akin to the 1959 Antarctic Treaty should be enacted that would protect the Arctic, and put posterity before profit.

Featured/Headline Image Caption and Citation: Arctic, Image sourced from RawPixel | CC License, no changes made

In late-May of 2013, Ida Angotigirk, a member of the Salluit community in Northern Quebec, disappeared. After nearly a month of Angotirgirk being missing, it was finally reported to the Kativik Regional Police Force, who immediately suspected foul play in her disappearance. In the same year, another Indigenous woman named Bernice Rich was killed in Sheshatshiu, a reserve in Newfoundland and Labrador, by a man who had a history of violent offenses. Her death is remembered years later in the community alongside the numerous other Indigenous women and girls that have gone missing or been killed over the years. 

These stories are far too common in Canada–those that make the news, at least. Indigenous peoples in Canada, despite only making up around 5% of the population, represent a disproportionate fraction of missing people in Canada, specifically women. In 2014, Indigenous women were six times more likely to be homicide victims than non-Indigenous women. Indigenous women also make up 50% of human trafficking cases in Canada. Victims such as Bernice Rich, Ida Angotigirk, and others who make these headlines, seldom receive justice, and their cases are not treated with the necessary level of urgency. Cases frequently go unpublicized, with many of these women never being found or even reported as missing. Canada needs to implement measures, such as a specific national database to fairly report these cases, rather than continuing to treat the issue as second-class or continue their slow, non-prioritized implementation of these ideas. Without serious and swift action, the crisis that affects Indigenous women in Canada will persist with little consequences and scare consideration from the public. 

The Highway of Tears

Crimes committed against these women are not concentrated in specific areas of the country. Cases of human trafficking of Indigenous women span across the major regions in Canada: British Columbia, Ontario, Alberta, and more. However, a section of the Yellowhead Highway 16, which runs from Winnipeg to the coast of British Columbia, has been notoriously dubbed the “Highway of Tears” due to its “national crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls.” Although many Indigenous women have been found, or taken off of, this route, the national crises affects urban and rural areas alike. 

A 2025 report on human trafficking in Canada found that in the last 14 years, after identifying 185 cases of missing or murdered Indigenous women, 67% of those cases still resulted in the victim’s status being missing. To this date, many of the cases that have been suspected to originate from the Highway of Tears are still unsolved. Women have come to fear the region, with interviews from Human Rights Watch stating that their researchers were “struck by the fear expressed by women they interviewed.” Despite Canada having both a national and regional police force to work on these cases, these institutions have seemingly failed these communities, both in bringing justice to the victims, but also in ensuring that their constituents feel safe to express their concerns. 

Critiques: Colonialism and Socioeconomic Disparities in Canada

Many hypothesize that the largest contributor to these inequalities is Canada’s legacy of colonialism. The Indian Act, which was passed in 1876, established reserved lands and aimed to assimilate the Indigenous people of Canada during the British Colonial Rule. It rigidly structured the Indigenous population, both by forbidding them to leave their reservations and creating strict power dynamics for Indigenous women. For example, if an Indigenous woman married a non-Indigenous man, it would result in them giving up their Indigenous status. Additionally, even if an Indigenous woman married another Indigenous man, the man would be allowed to surrender her status as an Indigenous woman for Canadian citizenship and land. All land and property thus belonged to the men of these reservations, and women had few rights outside of what their husband permitted. Indigenous women were also socially, though reinforced by the Indian Act, to remain “pure and chaste,” with any deviation from this norm resulting in being deemed unworthy of respect. Sexual shaming thus became a frequent issue in these communities, leading to those who experienced sexual violence less likely to come forward with their stories to not seem “impure.”

Socioeconomic disparities also contribute to the lack of reporting and increased targeting of Indigenous women. For example, 18% of Indigenous peoples live in core housing, while only 10% of non-Indigenous households do. Additionally, studies published by the National Library of Medicine have reported that medical institutions in Canada frequently overlook the needs of Indigenous women. Many of these institutions are rooted in discriminatory practices, which decreases the desire for these women to share their experiences. With limited access to safe housing, and a deep mistrust of health resources, Indigenous women are more vulnerable to sexual crimes, with nearly 44% of Indigenous women reporting physical or sexual abuse, which is nearly double the percentage of non-Indigenous women (25%). The continued effects of socioeconomic disparities, which also stem from the issue of colonialism, make it difficult for Indigenous women to protect themselves against the persistent dangers of human trafficking and death.  

In the context of Canada’s complex history with colonialism, and the few efforts to deconstruct the structures that this Act created, it is no surprise that Indigenous women have continued to be victims of crime. While the Canadian government has attempted to interfere less with these Indigenous populations, it also means they no longer adequately protect these groups. The marginalization of Indigenous women, even by their own communities, can lead to crimes of sexual violence, trafficking, and kidnapping to be overlooked. Rather than protect the victims of these crimes, it’s easier to forget about them and shame them for the promiscuous nature of their disappearances. These fundamental social and historical influences have affected present-day Canadian society, with the government and police forces overlooking Indigenous women as victims that deserve fair justice and equal importance. 

The Role of Police and Government

Institutions, such as the Canadian government and their police authorities, have failed the Indigenous populations. From underreporting, to a lack of urgency in fixing these systemic issues, there are various barriers for these Indigenous women to obtain justice in a system that works against them.

The police systems and news sources actively play a role in the continuation of these disproportionate abuses against Indigenous women with their lack of transparency and underreporting of victims. Government officials have hypothesized that the “actual number” of Indigenous women that are victims of disappearing or murder is “far higher.” Studies also find that in the court system itself, “‘language and translation difficulties, inadequate and insensitive defence representation, pressures to plead guilty and racist stereotypes” all are disadvantages that Indigenous people face in the justice system. The issue is not just that Indigenous women are less likely to receive media attention, but that when they do, justice is seldom served in the courts. 

Solutions: Fair Reporting, Urgency, and Transparency

This article is not the first to urge Canada to re-evaluate its approaches to these crimes. Numerous organizations have called upon the government to actively change its procedures and protect the lives of Indigenous people. One organization, now called Red Dress Stories, created a website archive to honor the lives and stories of Indigenous women who have gone missing or murdered. Additionally, the Native Women’s Association of Canada has started numerous initiatives to reduce violence against Indigenous women. Despite these efforts, however, the government has yet to make active efforts to change their policies regarding these issues. 

This article contends that Canada needs to address the fundamental issues in their processes by implementing the following: first, a national public database that promotes transparency and accountability for the police force, and second, a system to enforce news sources to accurately and fairly report missing or murdered Indigenous women.

A national public database would force cases to remain open until solved within a reasonable time, as well as generate awareness on which women are missing or victims of trafficking or murder. It would also allow families of these victims to provide information on their loved ones and be updated on the progress of their cases being solved. Additionally, enforcing news sources to fairly report these cases can include police sending records to these sources for publishing, continued public support for accurate news, and continued accountability by continuously collecting data on the proportion of Indigenous vs. non-Indigenous victims reported on.

These proposed measures target some of the key weaknesses of the current system and seek to strengthen it through transparency, urgency, and accountability. Despite efforts from various groups and years of discussion, reform has been continuously stalled by a lack of urgency. Awareness and continued pressure from civil societies, organizations, and the public are critical to gaining the needed support from the government to implement these suggestions and draw attention to the situation. By making data on these women more transparent and holding their abusers accountable, women like Angotigirk and Rich can finally have a fair chance at seeking justice through a system that has repeatedly let them down.

Featured/Headline Image Caption and Citation: Vigil for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG), Image sourced from Flickr | CC License, no changes made