Showing 1 - 10 of 2,499
Orban's fall seen as a populist turning point
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 16/04/2026
» Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk sent a message congratulating Hungary's newly elected prime minister, Peter Magyar, for having evicted long-serving populist leader Viktor Orban (aka "The Viktator") from power. All the usual welcoming words, but Mr Tusk's message ended with two slightly mysterious words in Hungarian: "Ruszkik haza" -- Russians go home.
OECD bid looks far off
Oped, Editorial, Published on 16/04/2026
» When Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul declared in parliament last week that Thailand must become a member of the OECD, his statement reflected both ambition and urgency.
Countering the fallacy of the buffer zone
Oped, Daoud Kuttab, Published on 10/04/2026
» Territorial buffers rarely, if ever, deliver the peace and security their advocates promise. After the collapse of the USSR, Ukraine was seen as a neutral cordon between Russia and Nato. Instead, it became a zone of increasingly fierce geopolitical contention, followed by open war.
Clean Air Bill unites rivals
Oped, Editorial, Published on 10/04/2026
» It is encouraging news that opposition parties -- political rivals who rarely see eye to eye -- have launched a campaign this week to push for clean air legislation. This move comes after the former Clean Air Bill was killed off in its final reading last week by lawmakers led by the Bhumjaithai Party (BJT), which controls the Lower House.
It's a revenue grab
Oped, Postbag, Published on 09/04/2026
» Re: "Thailand plans mandatory accident insurance for foreign visitors", (Business, April 8).
Policy debate a litmus test
Oped, Editorial, Published on 09/04/2026
» A major showdown looks set to take place between the government and the opposition as Parliament begins its policy debate later today.
Isoc role under scrutiny
Oped, Editorial, Published on 08/04/2026
» The shooting of Kamolsak Leewama, a list-MP from the Prachachart Party in Narathiwat on March 20, is not just an ordinary criminal case nor political revenge, as the media has widely speculated. Police investigations have revealed shocking evidence linking the gunmen to a national security office operating in the deep South.
Fanatics, an obsessive, and a belligerent fool
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 07/04/2026
» We don't have to look very far to find a useful historical analogy for the current crisis in the Middle East. In 1967, Egypt closed the Strait of Tiran to Israeli ships, and Israel replied with a surprise air attack that destroyed almost the entire Egyptian air force on the ground.
Iran's water weapon against Gulf
Oped, Michael Christopher Low, Published on 07/04/2026
» The oil-rich monarchies of the Persian Gulf are often described as petrostates. But the US-Israeli war with Iran has highlighted that they are also saltwater kingdoms, societies whose survival depends on desalination, or converting seawater into potable water at industrial scale.
Can alliances with the US be replaced?
Oped, Kavi Chongkittavorn, Published on 07/04/2026
» The increasingly loud debate over the future of alliances -- after reports that the US could scale back or even withdraw from Nato -- is nerve-racking. It has caused alarm across Europe and in Southeast Asia, another node of the US alliance network. Even without any official decision, remarks by US President Donald Trump on social media were enough to shake already fragile US alliances. The question now frequently asked by Thai policymakers is: What comes next if alliances weaken?