There was a time when I thought I was witnessing a political transformation in real time. Anwar Ibrahim, a man many believed carried UMNO’s DNA in his political bloodstream, seemed to be breaking free of it when he broke with his mentor, Mahathir Mohamad. I reported on his tria…

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By all accounts, Japan is on the road to full militarization. The evidence is everywhere: its military budget has reached a record high, exceeding ¥9 trillion ($68 billion) and hitting the target of 2 percent of GDP. By comparison, the US spends close to $1 trillion and China about $340 billion on defense.

Japan has overhauled its post-Worl…

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Vietnam’s new Strategic Partnership with Canada is ambitious. The Joint Statement issued on September 24 covers everything from trade, digital technologies and energy to defence, security, justice and people-to-people ties.

The breadth i…

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Pakistan and China formally launched their Boundary Joint Commission in Islamabad on September 16-17, activating a mechanism provided for under their 2013 Agreement on the Boundary Management System but left dormant for more than a decade. The commission will deal with seemingly mu…

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On paper, the Lancang-Mekong Cooperation (LMC) mechanism is a success. Since its launch in 2016, trade between China and Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam has risen sharply, reaching a record $500.9 billion in 2025 – 150 percent above the level a decade earlier. Railways, roads, investment and people-to-people exchanges als…

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The new Saudi-Pakistan-Turkey defense pact may look like the beginnings of an “Islamic NATO,” but it is much more a political signal than a functioning military alliance.

The Mecca Joint Defence Agreement, signed by Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Turkey on Aug. 7, immediately attracted comparisons with NATO. Turkish Foreign Minister Hak…

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On July 2, began a livestream from his phone, broadcasting the final moments of his life. The frame captured the United Nations Headquarters on the right as he walked forward, carrying the Tibetan national flag. He was wearing his chuba, the Tibetan traditional dress, which had been doused in a flammable liquid. …

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The relationship between Pakistan and Afghanistan has officially shifted from fragile diplomacy into an outbreak of direct confrontation and open war. Since February 27, when Pakistan’s defense minister declared open war and Pakistani aircraft struck Kabul, Kandahar, Paktia and Jalalabad, the two neighbors have been locked in a …

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In 1789, the framers of the American Constitution returned to Philadelphia to draft a Bill of Rights to protect the new country’s citizens from the government they had just created. James Madison, drawing inspiration from the English Bill of Rights, the Magna Carta and the Virginia Declaration of Rights, wrote the 10 amendments, which contained some of …

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When Indonesia’s most recognizable tech entrepreneur accepted the job of education minister in the Indonesian government of Joko Widodo in 2019, many people at the time warned him that the stultifying bureaucracy of a ministry that presides over mostly second-rate primary and secondary schools would smother fresh ideas.

But Nadiem Makarim, a sometimes brash and cocky tech-savvy businessman, told friends he could make a difference by using his technology background to modernize and improve a school system that still relies on rote learning and churns out graduates who, by most accounts, are ill-equipped for modern industry.

He was wrong.

At the end of a 10-month-long criminal trial, Nadiem, the Harvard-educated co-founder of GoJek, the ride-hailing, delivery and payments app that has transformed urban life in Indonesia, was sentenced on June 30 to 10 years in prison on corruption charges related to the procurement of Chromebook laptop computers to aid in remote learning during the Covid 19 pandemic. Prosecutors said the Chromebook deal caused 1.57 trillion (US$87.6 million) in state losses. State losses are the usual measure of corruption in Indonesian law.

The case hinged on the problem that Chromebooks require a reliable internet connection to function, something that doesn’t exist in some remote parts of the country. Allegedly, Nadiem and his ministry ignored this issue, and in doing so, both caused state losses and enriched themselves. Prosecutors contended that the procurement of Chromebook laptops from the IT giant Google was in exchange for Google investing US$60 million in Nadiem’s Gojek technology group when he was education minister.

No Google executives were charged – just Nadiem and a handful of ministry aides and consultants.

While the Attorney General’s Office initially wanted Nadiem to pay Rp5.6 trillion in restitution to the state, the court instead ordered him to pay Rp809 billion, or US$45 million, in restitution and a Rp1 billion fine. Nadiem has said he cannot afford to pay that amount, but if he doesn’t, the court will add 5 years to his sentence.

“The Chromebook laptop procurement was not optimal because the devices could not be used due to the lack of internet access in many regions in Indonesia,” said a judge reading out the verdict. “As a result, many Chromebooks could not function as intended, meaning the state budget did not generate benefits in line with the amount spent.”

Two of the judges on the five-judge panel dissented, with one, Judge Andi Saputra, saying he saw no evidence that Nadiem was corrupt.

In a normal world, getting the Chromebook limitations wrong might be a policy error at worst. Maybe somebody gets fired. But in Indonesia, it became a crime. A tech entrepreneur who has been hailed as a hero for creating Indonesia’s first billion-dollar start-up is being treated like a common criminal and a threat to the nation. Nadiem has denied all charges and at one point called the case “crazy”.

In his defense in early June, Nadiem asked the judges to acquit him, arguing that the case was a matter of bureaucratic resentment rather than criminal intent. He denied enriching himself and said that the Chromebook project had actually saved the state Rp3.9 trillion.

“Today, we are asking a big question of our legal system. Do truth and justice still matter? Today, it has been answered; all the court facts were ignored,” Nadiem told reporters after hearing the verdict.

Attending the sentencing hearing in support of Nadiem were former finance minister Chatib Basri, prominent lawyer Todung Mulya Lubis and human rights activist Delpedro Marhaen. Dozens of GoJek motorcycle-taxi drivers staged a rally supporting Nadiem outside the court and filled the court’s lobby. Out of sight, prominent Indonesian business leaders and others bitterly lamented the sentencing. Many people in Jakarta have been asking throughout the entire, deeply embarrassing ordeal who Nadiem pissed off to get hit with such a legal sledgehammer. Nadiem has not commented about why the case was brought, other than to point to an angry bureaucracy.

But the case has echoes of the 2025 conviction and sentencing to four years in prison of former Trade Minister Thomas Lembong, another Harvard graduate, on charges related to sugar imports from a decade earlier when he was serving under Jokowi, or the conviction of Hasto Kristiyanto, an official of the opposition Indonesia Democratic Party of Struggle (PDIP), on bribery charges. Lembong and Hasto, however, had both bitterly split with Widodo over politics and those cases reeked of revenge. Current President Prabowo Subianto pardoned the two men in 2025, shortly after they were sentenced, supposedly to calm a public backlash against the prosecutions. That may be an option in Nadiem’s case and would allow Prabowo, who has not commented on the case, to appear magnanimous.

In addition, Nadiem is not openly political and he doesn’t appear to have done anything to upset the famously thin-skinned Prabowo, although some say Nadiem is perceived in political circles as “arrogant,” which is not a crime even in Indonesia. But a case like this, which has focused the worries of investors on the Indonesian justice system and kicked off bad publicity worldwide, could not have ended up in court without the imprimatur of someone powerful.

In the end, regardless of whether Nadiem languishes in prison or is pardoned, the damage the case has done to Indonesia’s reputation is substantial. That the co-founder of one of the country’s most recognizable and iconic companies should end up in the dock on charges that appear questionable on the surface, sends a message to other bright young people who may be tempted to try and do good by serving the country: proceed at your own risk.

Prof. Robert Thurman, an American Buddhist scholar and activist who passed away recently, epitomized the optimum synthesis of Buddhist scholarship with activism for the Tibetan cause. His Holiness the Dalai Lama, in his condolence letter to the family, wrote that Thurman “understood profoundly that the survival of Tibetan Buddhist culture is inseparably linked to the future of Tibet itself.”

In other words, Buddhism is the foundation of Tibetan civilization, and without it, there would be no Tibetan nation. In the 65 years since the Dalai Lama’s arrival in India in 1959, the Tibetan prelate has won international respect and much sympathy for a Tibetan cause to which he is central, as a spiritual leader, as an international statesman, and as an essential figurehead uniting Tibetans. Without him, there would have been no Tibetan nation in exile, just a trickle of refugees vanishing into India’s vastness. In those years, a vibrant “Little Tibet” has formed—based on shared memory, language, narrative, and myth. And as more Tibetans have migrated from India to the West over the past two decades, this exiled community has morphed into a true diaspora.

The question is: what will become of this Tibetan nation in exile in the years to come?

At the heart of this collective identity lies Buddhism, in all its variations. For Tibetans, Buddhism is not simply a religion—it is a way of life, the essence of their culture and the foundation of their civilization. Without it, Tibetans risk becoming just another displaced ethnic group. With it, they remain a living, breathing civilization.

In exile, spirituality—alongside common narratives—is often the last thread that holds a people together. That thread becomes more vital as elders with a lived memory of Tibet pass away. Today, few Tibetans in exile have any direct experience of their homeland; many are now welcoming fourth-generation descendants, some of whom do not speak the language.

This shift demands a transition—from memory to imagination. In the language of political scientist Benedict Anderson, the Tibetan nation must become an imagined community, held together not by borders but by shared memory, myth, and ritual.

Just as Judaism preserved the Jewish people during centuries of exile, Tibetan Buddhism, and the language that carries it, is essential for sustaining the Tibetan nation through its long, uncertain exile.

Yet Buddhism faces threats from two directions: from Chinese communists on one side, and Tibetan secular nationalists on the other. The former seeks to dismantle it within Tibet. The latter, influenced by Western ideas of progress, often scapegoats Buddhism and theocracy for Tibet’s past failures. This camp’s well-intentioned but arguably misguided view is that for Tibet to become a modern nation-state, Buddhism must be cast aside, a belief that, ironically, mirrors the logic of the Chinese Communist Party. Where Beijing sees Buddhism as a political threat, some Tibetan secularists view it as a cultural liability—an outdated vestige of a theocratic past.

While secular Tibetans are right to emphasize democracy, education, and modernization, many underestimate the extent to which Buddhism remains the vessel through which Tibetan language, culture, ethics, and collective memory are transmitted.

Meanwhile, in highly developed societies such as Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and even in China, Tibetan Buddhism is embraced as a sophisticated alternative to modernity and materialism. As modern Tibetans turn away from their heritage, others in the world are turning toward it.

Thanks to the foresight of the Dalai Lama, hundreds of monasteries and institutions in India and Nepal continue to preserve Tibetan Buddhism, language, ritual, and philosophy. These are now the subject of growing academic and scientific research, well beyond exotic fascination.

Tibetan nationalists also forget that the heroes of the Tibetan resistance—the Chushi Gangdruk fighters—drew inspiration from Buddhism and called themselves The Voluntary Force for the Protection of Dharma. It is that dharma (Tibetan faith and spirituality), now the essence of our collective cultural memory, that must continue to be protected.

Political activism and democratic participation are important and will help Tibetans respond to immediate geopolitical challenges and continuing Chinese repression. But it is the cultural memory of Tibet that will allow its people to imagine a nation in exile in the long haul. And there is one more quiet certainty: Buddhism will outlive communism.

This does not mean that young Tibetans need to become monks, meditators, or scholars, nor is it a call to reinstate theocracy or religious rule, which the exile community has long outgrown. Bhutan is a good example of this synthesis between Buddhism and modernity. It’s hard to imagine Bhutan without Tibetan Buddhism. Similarly, Tibetans might consider looking at Tibetan Buddhism as an alternative form of modernity and take pride in their rich spiritual inheritance and values. In it, they may find not only memory, but meaning. Through Buddhism, they rediscover their language—the soul of the Tibetan nation.

In doing so, they ensure that Tibet remains not only a political cause, but a living civilization in diaspora. And history teaches us this: no civilization that has sustained its memory and meaning has ever vanished from the earth.

Tsering Namgyal Khortsa is a writer and and occasional contributor to Asia Sentinel. He is the author of three books, most recently, of novel ‘Tibetan Suitcase’ (Speaking Tiger, 2024). His novella about Buddhism and modernity ‘A Season of Retreat’ is forthcoming from Speaking Tiger later in the summer.

In April 1975, a small group of people sat in a closed room and decided the fate of millions of Vietnamese. No one asked for their opinion. No one told them in advance. Like so many others, I suddenly found myself boarding a ship leaving Vietnam — because of a decision made by people I had never met.

Fifty-one years later, sitting in Southern…

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On the morning of June 4, 18 former Philippine marines arrived at the Philippine Senate to testify about a flood control scandal that had allegedly cost the public hundreds of billions of pesos. Getting them inside required senators to physically escort them past a cabinet secretary standing in the corridor.

What follow…

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The Philippine Senate Blue Ribbon Committee, the upper house’s primary investigative arm for handling allegations of corruption and abuse of power, has operated since its founding in 1950 on the kind of logic that led then United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt to appoint Joseph P. Kennedy, a well-known stock market specul…

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Thirteen years ago, Prime Minister Nguyễn Tấn Dũng walked onto the Shangri-La Dialogue stage and delivered one of the most consequential foreign-policy speeches by a Vietnamese leader in the post-Cold War era. He called for “strategic trust-building” while warning against attempts to change the status quo in the South China …

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When General Secretary and State President Tô Lâm steps onto the stage at the 2026 Shangri-La Dialogue, Vietnam’s “bamboo diplomacy” will once again be presented as a model of strategic flexibility. Supporters praise its ability to balance relations with competing powers while preserving national sovereignty and political autonomy. Tô Lâ…

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When Xi Jinping and Donald Trump met in Beijing on May 13 to 15, public attention focused on the familiar “4T” agenda — trade, tariffs, technology, and Taiwan. Yet the more significant development was conceptual. Xi introduced a new framing for U.S.–China relations: “constructive strategic stability.” He also invoke…

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The Association of Southeast Asian Nations next week will hold its 48th Summit at Cebu, the Philippines, amid geopolitical turmoil arising from the torture and killing of international law in Iran. ASEAN’s ability “to navigate its future, together,” the summit’s slogan, will depend on the rules embedded in international law that the Associ…

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The Arab Gulf’s rulers are confronting a paradox of their own making. As Iranian missiles strike their cities and energy infrastructure, some are edging toward a dangerous conclusion: that only the decisive weakening – or even destruction – of Iran can restore security. It is a seductive idea. It is also a deeply flawed one. The current war is already demonstrating a harsher truth: escalation is not containing Iran. It is exposing the Gulf to forms of instability not seen since the brutal takeover of Iraq and Syria by ISIS.

Escalation Without Control

The Gulf states may not have chosen this war, but they are increasingly shaping its trajectory. Recent reporting indicates that some Gulf governments are weighing more direct military involvement or quietly backing a more aggressive US strategy against Iran. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is leading the van, urging US President Donald Trump to continue and intensify military strikes against Iran to finish off the regime. This shift reflects both fear and anger. Iran’s retaliation has been wide-ranging: missiles and drones have struck energy facilities, cities and critical infrastructure across the region. The psychological effect has been profound. Gulf capitals, long insulated from regional wars and most attractive places for foreign capital, are now very much within the battlespace.

At the same time, global markets are already registering the consequences. Gulf stock indices have fluctuated amid escalating tensions, while oil prices have surged on fears of disruption. The Strait of Hormuz—through which a significant share of global energy supplies passes—has again become a strategic chokepoint.

Yet this environment is precisely why escalation is so risky. While military logic suggests that intensifying pressure on Iran could degrade its capabilities, political logic points in the opposite direction. External attacks have historically strengthened, not weakened, the Iranian state by consolidating elite cohesion and legitimizing hardline factions. As it stands, and much to the disappointment of Mossad, no internal rebellion has erupted.

The Illusion of Iran’s Collapse

For Gulf states, the danger lies in misreading escalation as control. The war is not moving toward a clean resolution. It is expanding geographically, economically, and politically enough. The deeper strategic error is the belief that Iran can be solved through force, an assumption with both precedent and a cautionary history. The US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 was famously framed as a decisive intervention that would remove a hostile regime and stabilize the region. Instead, it triggered state collapse, violent insurgencies and the eventual rise of ISIS. The lesson is not simply that intervention can fail. It is that destroying a state in the Middle East often produces outcomes far worse than the status quo.

Iran presents an even more complex case. It is larger, more populous and more institutionally resilient than Iraq was, even with a large part of its population estranged from a brutal and repressive regime. Decades of sanctions have not hollowed it out; they have forced adaptation. Its security apparatus is deeply entrenched, and its regional networks, state and non-state, extend across multiple theaters.

A fractured Iran wouldn’t resemble a neutralized threat. It would resemble a proliferation of them: competing militias, unsecured weapons systems, refugee flows and chronic instability spilling across borders. In simple words, a fragmented Iran would produce a permanent war in the Persian Gulf. For Gulf states, this would transform a familiar adversary into an unpredictable and fragmented security environment. There are already hints of this dynamic in the current conflict. Iranian retaliation has been asymmetric, targeting infrastructure and leveraging regional networks rather than relying solely on conventional warfare. This approach underscores a key reality: Iran doesn’t need to win decisively to impose costs. It only needs to sustain disruption.

Moreover, this war is exposing vulnerabilities within the Gulf itself. Critical infrastructure from oil facilities to desalination plants is highly concentrated and difficult to defend. Even limited strikes can generate outsized economic and social consequences. The result is a strategic asymmetry. While Iran absorbs punishment and adapts, the Gulf’s economic model – built on stability, predictability and openness – is far more sensitive to prolonged disruption.

Economic Exposure and Strategic Entrapment

If escalation continues, the Gulf states risk undermining the very foundations of their power.

Their economic systems depend on four interlinked pillars: secure energy exports, open shipping lanes, investor confidence, and a large expatriate workforce. Each of these is vulnerable to sustained conflict. The early signals are already visible. Market volatility, infrastructure damage, and rising geopolitical risk premiums are beginning to affect Gulf economies. Even if oil prices rise in the short term, the broader investment climate deteriorates. Capital is mobile—and it tends to flee uncertainty.

There is also a more subtle risk: strategic entrapment. By aligning themselves with maximalist objectives such as the total degradation of Iran, Gulf states are tying their security to outcomes they do not control. If the US fails to achieve decisive results, or if the conflict stalls into a prolonged stalemate, the Gulf will be left exposed. It will have escalated tensions without securing either victory or stability.

Recent rhetoric from Washington underscores this uncertainty. Threats to target Iran’s civilian infrastructure, including energy and water systems, signal a willingness to escalate further. At the same time, Gulf states themselves remain divided. While some are hardening their positions, others continue to emphasize diplomacy as the only sustainable path forward. This divergence reflects a fundamental dilemma: how to respond to immediate security threats without locking the region into a long-term cycle of escalation.

The Geography of Reality

The Gulf’s strategic challenge is not Iran’s existence; it is Iran’s permanence. Geography cannot be bombed away. Iran will remain a central actor in the Gulf regardless of how this war ends. The question is not whether Iran can be eliminated, but how it can be managed.

A strategy built on destruction is unlikely to succeed, and even less likely to produce stability. A strategy built on management, by contrast, acknowledges the constraints of geography and the limits of force. This does not mean accommodation or naivety. It means combining deterrence with diplomacy, containment with engagement, and competition with clear rules of the game.

The alternative is a region locked into perpetual crisis, where each escalation produces new insecurities rather than resolving old ones. The Gulf states have spent decades building islands of stability in a turbulent region. That achievement is now at risk, not because Iran is too strong, but because the response to Iran is strategically misguided and blind to what it can do to the very future Gulf states might be looking to secure. In the end, the most dangerous illusion is not that Iran can be confronted. It is that it can be made to disappear.

Dr. Salman Rafi Sheikh is an Assistant Professor of Politics at the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) in Pakistan. He is a long-time contributor on diplomatic affairs in Asia Sentinel.

The conflict with Iran continues to strain military resources, elevate geopolitical risk and destabilize the Middle East. Policymakers and defense leaders face a strategic environment where conventional tools alone cannot resolve the deeper forces driving hostility. Invincible Defense Technology, a non-religious, field-tested, scientifically validated approach, offers a practical and cost-effective method for reducing societal stress and preventing conflict escalation. The evidence supporting this approach is robust, peer-reviewed, and directly relevant to national security planning.

IDT is not a replacement for conventional defense. It is a force multiplier that reduces the underlying social stress that fuels extremism, insurgency, and interstate conflict. By lowering the ambient level of tension in a population, IDT helps create conditions where diplomacy and stabilization efforts can succeed.

Operational Logic of Invincible Defense Technology

IDT is based on a well-documented phenomenon in which large groups practicing the Transcendental Meditation and TM-Sidhi programs generate measurable increases in societal coherence. Peer-reviewed studies have shown reductions in war intensity, terrorism, and crime when these groups reach a specific threshold relative to the surrounding population. For defense planners, the operational value is clear. IDT provides a non-lethal method for reducing hostility before it escalates, a low-cost capability that requires no new weapons systems, and a scalable tool that can be integrated into existing military structures.

The mechanism is supported by physiological research showing increased brain coherence, reduced stress hormones, and improved autonomic stability among practitioners. These individual-level effects scale upward to influence collective behavior, providing a scientifically grounded explanation for the reductions in violence observed in multiple field studies.

Strategic Application to the Iran Conflict

The war with Iran is driven not only by political and military factors, but also by deep-rooted societal stress across the region. High-stress environments increase the probability of miscalculation, radicalization, and escalation. Conventional military operations cannot neutralize these underlying drivers. A dedicated IDT unit (known in military circles as a Prevention Wing of the Military) within the armed forces could serve as a coherence-creating group that reduces regional tension. As societal stress declines, the likelihood of escalation diminishes, diplomatic channels open more easily, and extremist motivations weaken. This approach has been shown to produce measurable effects even in high-conflict environments.

For policymakers, IDT offers a strategic advantage. It reduces the operational tempo required to manage crises and lowers the probability of large-scale conflict. It is a stabilizing capability that reduces the likelihood that adversaries will attack under the influence of high societal stress.

Peer-Reviewed Research Supporting IDT

A substantial body of peer‑reviewed research supports the effectiveness of IDT. Studies published in the Journal of Mind and Behavior and Social Indicators Research have documented notable reductions in crime, terrorism, and international conflict during periods when large groups practiced the TM and TM‑Sidhi programs. Dillbeck, Landrith, and Orme‑Johnson reported that a relatively small portion of the population engaging in these practices seems able to improve overall societal quality of life, emphasizing how scalable the effect may be.

Orme‑Johnson and colleagues found statistically significant decreases in war intensity during large coherence‑creating assemblies and concluded that the findings are consistent with the idea that such groups can lessen societal stress and conflict. More recent work by Cavanaugh, Dillbeck, and Orme‑Johnson in Studies in Asian Social Science identified reductions in homicide rates associated with these practices and described the underlying mechanism as a nonlocalized field of consciousness that influences social behavior.

Research supporting the mechanism behind IDT is equally strong. Studies in the International Journal of Neuroscience have shown increased EEG coherence during TM practice, while research in Psychosomatic Medicine has documented reductions in stress hormones and improved autonomic stability. Sociological analyses published in the Journal of Social Behavior and Personality have linked periods of increased societal coherence to improved economic performance and social well-being.

A particularly relevant contribution comes from the Journal of Conflict Resolution, which published a study examining the relationship between societal stress, group coherence, and conflict dynamics in the Middle East. The authors found that reductions in societal stress were associated with measurable decreases in hostility and conflict intensity. Their analysis concluded that societies exhibiting higher levels of collective coherence demonstrate lower levels of violent conflict, a finding that aligns directly with the operational goals of IDT. This research provides an important bridge between the physiological and sociological mechanisms of IDT and the real-world dynamics of Middle Eastern conflict.

Together, these and many other studies form a coherent scientific foundation for understanding how IDT reduces violence and enhances stability.

A Strategic Path Forward

Ending the war with Iran and stabilizing the Middle East will require more than military strength. It will require a strategy that reduces the underlying stress that fuels conflict. IDT offers such a strategy. It is practical, affordable, and supported by decades of peer-reviewed research. For policymakers and military leaders, the question is no longer whether IDT works. The question is how quickly it can be integrated into existing defense structures to reduce conflict and enhance national security.

Dr. David Leffler earned his Ph.D. in Consciousness-Based Military Defense. He has published extensively on IDT and has presented on this topic at military and security conferences worldwide. He is the Executive Director of the Center for Advanced Military Science (CAMS).