Creating new perspectives since 2009
Items by Kurniawan Arif Maspul
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Macron was right, and the scapegoats were chosen
Emmanuel Macron’s phrase landed like a cracked whip in the stale air of Western politics. “As unacceptable as they are stupid.” The target was not immigration policy, but a lie — the claim, amplified by Donald Trump and a chorus of right-wing figures, that Muslim migrants had set France alight.…
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When diplomacy arrived in Jakarta and justice did not
The paradox has acquired a second dimension, and it is written in the ruins of Gaza. Indonesia, a nation that presents itself to the world as a rising democratic power and an indispensable partner for global stability, now positions itself as a moral voice for Palestine while presiding over a…
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Why Ethiopia and Eritrea’s march to war demands global attention
The distant thunder of drones over Adigrat is not merely another African conflict. It is the sound of a continent’s most fragile peace shattering—and with it, the already slender prospects for stability across the Red Sea corridor that carries twelve per cent of global trade. Barely eight years after Prime…
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When pilgrims became targets, billions could not save them
The white ihram garments of Umrah pilgrims, stained crimson on the departure concourse of King Khalid International Airport. That image, seared into the global consciousness across the first weeks of October 2026, will define this moment for generations. It marks far more than a military operation; it is a definitive…
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How the Mecca pact turns faith into security
In the sweltering heat of an August afternoon, beneath the shadow of the Kaaba, three nations signed a document that may well redefine the political theology of the Islamic world for a generation. The Mecca Joint Defence Agreement, inked on 7 August 2026 by the leaders of Saudi Arabia, Turkey,…
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When Washington buried a war maker
Today, as the flags fly at half-staff over the United States Capitol, Benjamin Netanyahu sits in the pews of Washington’s National Cathedral, paying his respects to the late Senator Lindsey Graham. The irony is as suffocating as the incense: the man who spent decades lobbying for American blood to be…
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The UN returns to Damascus at the edge of reconstruction
Seventeen years. That is how long it has been since a sitting United Nations Secretary-General last set foot in Damascus. When António Guterres’ plane touches down on Syrian soil, it will not be a ceremonial gesture. It is the diplomatic ignition point of Syria’s post‑Assad metamorphosis—a collapsed state now being…
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Riyadh’s energy horizon and the dawn of a more equal future
There are moments in international affairs when the tectonic plates of the global order grind against each other, and the resulting tremor is felt not only in chancelleries but in the very architecture of power that has defined the post-war world. The signing of the US-Saudi nuclear cooperation agreement—a thirty-year…
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Bab el-Mandeb and the coming age of chokepoint warfare
The waters of the Bab el-Mandeb are running red with the blood of a failing international order. For the first time in modern history, two of the world’s most vital maritime chokepoints—the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab el-Mandeb—are under simultaneous, sustained assault. This is not merely a crisis; this…
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The man who made the world need Qatar
The Father Emir is gone. Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, who died on Sunday at 74, was the architect of modern Qatar. But that description, however apt, undersells the magnitude of what he actually achieved. He did not merely modernise a small Gulf state. He rewrote the operating system…
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How Ankara rewired Syria’s future
The Trump–al‑Sharaa summit in Ankara was not diplomacy. It was a structural detonation—one that has dragged Syria out of humanitarian paralysis and into a NATO‑designed reconstruction matrix where sanctions relief, refugee repatriation, militia demobilisation, Gulf capital and digitised property courts fuse into a single Western‑Turkish governance engine. Ankara has become…
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Khamenei’s funeral makes clear the global order is moving on
The United States turned 250 on July 4. The celebrations were spectacular: 850,000 fireworks launched from ten sites across Washington, military flyovers every hour, a speech from a president who promised it would be the “largest fireworks show in history”. At Mount Rushmore the night before, Donald Trump declared America…
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The funeral that reveals a world divided
A casket draped in black makes its slow procession through Tehran, past millions of mourners whose chests beat in unison against the late-summer heat. Red fists—the funeral’s symbol—rise above a sea of black-clad bodies, fists clenched not in grief alone but in defiance. The slogan is stark: “We must rise”.…
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Lebanon’s Washington framework entrenches power, not order
Diplomacy often celebrates the signing of agreements. History judges whether those agreements change realities or merely rename them. The trilateral framework negotiated in Washington between Lebanon, Israel and the United States belongs, at least in its current form, to the latter category. Marketed as the ‘beginning of the beginning’ of…
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Lebanon paid the price for a ceasefire that never existed
There are moments in international affairs when language itself becomes part of the violence. Lebanon’s latest tragedy may be one of them. More than 150 Israeli strikes reportedly hit southern Lebanon overnight, leaving dozens dead and hundreds injured. Entire neighbourhoods were shattered before sunrise. Families fled once again along roads…
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Did the boomerang war prove Iran’s power to endure?
When coercion lacks clarity, the weapon turns back on the hand that threw it. One hundred and ten days of American and Israeli bombardment. A relentless naval blockade. The proclaimed objective: to cripple Iran’s nuclear ambition, shatter its missile arsenal, and break the back of the Islamic Republic. And now?…
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Iran won, power no longer looks the same
The most dangerous mistake in international affairs is to confuse military destruction with strategic success. That mistake now risks obscuring one of the most consequential geopolitical shifts in the modern Middle East. For decades, the United States and its allies defined victory through familiar metrics: air superiority, precision strikes, technological…
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Iran needs its peacemaker, not its hardliners
The world is watching a remarkable possibility emerge from one of the most dangerous geopolitical rivalries of the modern era: a potential US–Iran agreement that could ease regional tensions, reopen economic channels, reduce military escalation, and create a pathway away from perpetual confrontation. Yet as diplomats inch towards compromise, the…
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Can the US host the World Cup while shutting out the Middle East?
In March 2023, FIFA moved with remarkable speed. Indonesia lost the right to host the Under-20 World Cup after political opposition emerged to Israel’s participation, a team that had qualified on merit. The governing body’s message was unmistakable: footballers must not become collateral damage in geopolitical disputes. Players had done…
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Syria’s new buffer zone or the birth of another permanent occupation?
The collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in December 2024 was supposed to mark the end of an era. After more than five decades of dynastic rule and nearly fourteen years of civil war, Syria finally stood before a rare historical opening: the possibility of rebuilding a shattered state, restoring sovereignty,…
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The world watches as Israel turns law into ashes
The latest exchange between Israel and Iran in June 2026 has been widely framed as another dangerous escalation in an already combustible region. Yet focusing solely on Iranian missiles risks obscuring a far more consequential reality. Iran’s strike did not emerge from a geopolitical vacuum. It arrived after months of…
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If Lebanon has no future, neither does the region
Nearly half a century after Israeli tanks first crossed into southern Lebanon, a troubling question hangs over the region: how many times can the same military strategy fail before it is recognised as a political dead end? From Operation Litani in 1978 to the invasion of 1982, from the 2006…
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What happens to the Red Sea when Somaliland is dragged into proxy wars
The world’s attention remains fixed on Gaza, southern Lebanon, and the exchange of fire between Israel and Iran’s network of regional allies. Yet another front is quietly emerging hundreds of kilometres away, on the African shore of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. It is a development receiving far less scrutiny than…
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The Hajj ceasefire the Middle East never expected
As missiles crossed the Gulf and oil traders braced for another regional inferno, an altogether different procession unfolded in Mecca. More than 1.5 million Muslims arrived for the 2026 Hajj under the shadow of a US–Israeli war against Iran, a conflict that had already rattled shipping lanes, shaken energy markets,…