• OPINION

  Global disarray as institutions falter

  News, Thitinan Pongsudhirak, Published on 17/08/2015

  » The international system as we know it is unravelling. Rules and institutions that were set up seven decades ago no longer hold the same weight and authority as they used to. As we grapple with an exacerbating global disorder, established powers and players and old rules and institutions need to be revamped and reinvented to accommodate new realities. Otherwise global tensions will mount, most probably accompanied by confrontation and conflict.

• OPINION

  Reversing Myanmar's internal strife

  Oped, Thitinan Pongsudhirak, Published on 10/02/2023

  » This month marks two anniversaries of ongoing conflicts in Europe and Southeast Asia, namely 12 months after Russia invaded Ukraine and two years since Myanmar's military seized power by toppling a democratically elected and civilian-led government under Aung San Suu Kyi.

• OPINION

  Asean/SE Asia and the cycles of history

  Oped, Thitinan Pongsudhirak, Published on 10/06/2022

  » The simmering geopolitical tensions between the United States and China and Russia's ongoing invasion of Ukraine have turned the tide of history back to its historical norm. It is easy to see the global stage today as full of tension, confrontation, and conflict in a recurrent fashion. But it is worth recalling that merely 30 years ago, the world was in a different phase where a lasting peace seemed viable.

• OPINION

  54 years on, Asean needs new modality

  Oped, Thitinan Pongsudhirak, Published on 13/08/2021

  » After 54 years of being together, Asean is at the end of its tether. It has never been more divided than now, split within member states and across all 10 of them, dominated once again by divisive superpower rivalry and competition. In practice, this means Asean will appear increasingly ineffectual and inert. There will be much bureaucratic motion but few substantive organisational and policy outcomes amid unresolved challenges from within and from outside the region. Asean's best way forward may require unprecedented radical thinking towards a multi-track organisation to ensure relevance and momentum where it can be generated.

• OPINION

  Regional vaccine approach is imperative

  Oped, Thitinan Pongsudhirak, Published on 14/05/2021

  » As vaccine diplomacy thrives and vaccine nationalism rears its head, it has become clear that the ideal global solution to the collective action problem of the coronavirus pandemic is for all countries to put their eggs in the same basket. If all countries are forced to rely on the global vaccine alliances' and the World Health Organization's Covid-19 Global Vaccines Access (Covax) plan, whereby any vaccine for one means an available antidote for all, the post-pandemic recovery would arrive faster and smoother with more promising prospects. But short of the ideal solution, the global health system is largely based on self-help, each country mapping its own plan for recovery with a mix of procurement strategies.

• OPINION

  Myanmar: From diplomacy to force

  Oped, Thitinan Pongsudhirak, Published on 30/04/2021

  » At its recent "special" summit in Jakarta on Myanmar's crisis, Asean reached its diplomatic maximum by coming up with a "five-point consensus" that will likely prove too little and too slow. Constrained by consensus and its non-interference principle where any of its 10 members has a virtual veto, Asean's overdue response to Myanmar's fast-escalating violence on the ground is likely to prove ineffective. As Asean's diplomacy faces limitations, more of Myanmar's outcomes are likely to be decided by the use of force in an intensifying civil war.

• OPINION

  Asean's Myanmar crisis out of control

  Oped, Thitinan Pongsudhirak, Published on 26/03/2021

  » Myanmar's spiralling post-coup violence and bloodshed has become Asean's existential crisis. It is customary to pin hopes on an Asean way of fudging and nudging the main protagonists into some workable, face-saving compromise to save the day but this time the situation is dire and dark. Unless the 10-member regional organisation can make a difference in halting Myanmar's descent into uncontrollable violence and potential civil war, Asean is at risk of undermining and perhaps ending its success story.

• OPINION

  Asean's declining common denominator

  Oped, Thitinan Pongsudhirak, Published on 05/03/2021

  » Asean is stuck deeper than ever between a rock and a hard place in view of its political impotence in dealing with the Myanmar armed forces' power grab on Feb 1. In an informal meeting online among its foreign ministers earlier this week, Asean not only failed to come up with common ground to broker a way forward away from the mounting bloodshed in Myanmar but displayed fundamental differences that have lowered the organisation's common denominator to new depths. The implications from Asean's sagging stance is that the pushback against Myanmar's military takeover must be carried out mainly by domestic political forces in the absence of regional effectiveness and with the limitations of global sanctions.

• OPINION

  Thai-Australian ties in the regional mix

  Oped, Thitinan Pongsudhirak, Published on 05/06/2020

  » Unlike the externally originated coronavirus pandemic, the mass protests in the United States in the aftermath of George Floyd's wrongful death at the hands of police officers in Minneapolis are internally driven. Seen from outside, the public fury, street demonstrations and ensuing violence over the fatal suffocation of Floyd, a black man, yield geopolitical ramifications. If the US is socially unwell and geopolitically unreliable, regional states in Asia will have to respond accordingly in view of the US-China rivalry and competition. A case in point is Thailand-Australia relations in the regional mix.

• OPINION

  Thailand's prospects and risks in 2020s

  News, Thitinan Pongsudhirak, Published on 31/01/2020

  » Notwithstanding recent worldwide celebrations to mark the arrival of 2020, Thailand should be seen as having entered not just a new year but a new decade. Since World War II, Thailand's journey over the ensuing decades meandered through ebbs and flows, overcoming critical bumps and barriers along the way. When 2030 arrives, this country of 70 million predominantly happy-go-lucky people will have faced a prolonged reckoning. While its near-term prospects are likely to worsen, Thailand's long-term future will be either better compared to the past two decades or bad for the long term.

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