This month, Zsuzsa and Richard are joined by David MacSweeney to reflect on the year just past and assess the key political, economic, and strategic issues set to shape EU–ASEAN relations and the wider Indo-Pacific in 2026, including five priority areas to watch as regional and external actors navigate an increasingly complex strategic environment.

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Written by Luana Correia

Influence in climate diplomacy is becoming increasingly dispersed, as traditional agenda-setters fail to consolidate their authority, creating space for competing interests — and claims to leadership — to shape outcomes.  

Written by Faye Simanjuntak

Malaysia’s National AI Roadmap reveals tension between its stated ambitions and the industrial reality taking shape. Although Malaysia has courted notable investments into AI datacentres, there is limited focus on cultivating the upstream capabilities that Malaysia identifies as central to its long-term competitiveness.

This month’s briefs examine an Indo-Pacific shaped by hybrid insecurity: as the United States retreats from development leadership, middle powers step in to fill the void, while escalating climate disasters are redefining resilience, influence, and regional power.

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Written by Stefania Benaglia

If the EU and India choose realism over rhetoric and build trust not only between governments but also among businesses, innovators, and people, the 2026 Summit could mark a genuine turning point — one where strategic clarity finally replaces political symbolism.

Written by Federica Cidale

While she broke a significant glass ceiling, her policy positions, from historical revisionism and expanded national security powers to restrictive immigration policies, reinforce existing conservative structures.

Written by Jia Yin Chen and Luc van de Goor

Crucially, countering cognitive warfare is not just about timely dissemination of factual counter-narratives. It must also build each citizen’s defences against disinformation — making them more skeptical of the information they receive and willing to actively verify it or debunk it.

Written by Emanuele Ballestracci 

Italy cannot rival the hard-power presence of France or the UK, nor does it aspire to. Instead, it has constructed a pathway based on economic cooperation, private-sector activism, and steady institutional ties, which over time create the trust needed to expand into political and security spheres.

Written by Stefania Benaglia

If the EU and India choose realism over rhetoric and build trust not only between governments but also among businesses, innovators, and people, the 2026 Summit could mark a genuine turning point — one where strategic clarity finally replaces political symbolism.

Written by Adhiraaj Anand

Deeper and more sustained transnational exchanges could foster new regional identities and solidarities between national protest movements, as well as increase their resilience and capacity for innovation.

Written by Dr Imran Khurshid

In the end, this agreement is less a stabilising alliance than a strategic gamble — one that risks drawing Pakistan into conflicts beyond its capacity, while further complicating the already turbulent geopolitical landscape of South Asia and the Middle East.

Written by Farwa Aamer

India’s position as a global leader on climate adaptation and sustainable development, especially as the voice of the global south, could be undermined by any perception of using water coercively.

Written by Marcus Andreopoulos

While dealing with the military-backed government may assist Trump in reaching short-term agreements, constant disorder and popular uprisings will make it impossible for the benefits of such agreements to ever be felt.

Written by Eerishika Pankaj and Rahul Karan Reddy

The concern Beijing has with an India-Philippines strategic partnership lies in its signalling of the rise of layered, maritime-centric, military cooperation emerging in China’s periphery — designed to reinforce a rules-based order and deter unilateral changes to the status quo in the global commons.

Written by Arun Teja Polcumpally

To safeguard its internet infrastructure, India must invest in indigenous undersea cable maintenance capabilities, including commissioning Indian-flagged vessels for rapid response within its territorial waters and exclusive economic zone.

Written by Mansoor Sadat

Options for returnees are limited. Faced with a repressive regime in Afghanistan, many risk fleeing once again, potentially taking dangerous, illegal routes to other countries in search of safety.

Written by Federica Cidale

While she broke a significant glass ceiling, her policy positions, from historical revisionism and expanded national security powers to restrictive immigration policies, reinforce existing conservative structures.

Written by Shin Kawashima

Japan and other US allies must strengthen ties with Southeast Asian countries to address US retrenchment, positioning themselves as credible alternatives for countries seeking to avoid over-reliance on China.

Written by Geo Dzakwan Arshali

Jakarta has never been aimless in its approach to the Koreas — it seeks to de-escalate tensions on the peninsula by keeping dialogue alive, even with an isolated Pyongyang, while simultaneously deepening cooperation with a democratic Seoul and its Western allies.

Written by Vincent K.L. Chang

China and the United States should be willing to make concessions; treating compromises not as a sign of weakness, but as strategic wisdom. The rest of the world should ask what it can do to prevent escalation and avoid self-fulfilling threat perceptions, rather than contribute to them.

Written by Yun Kyung Kim

Korea and Japan now have an opportunity to redefine their roles — not as competing spokes but as co-architects of a trilateral framework that can anchor stability in the Indo-Pacific. For Washington, embracing this shift means sharing agenda-setting space with allies to maximise American interests and maintain primacy.

Written by Hunter Slingbaum

In the coming months, South Korea should remain focused on its own presidential election and repairing its domestic fabric, but interim leadership can also explore ways to weather Trump’s demands, including by reframing existing efforts, as Canada did with their border plan.

Written by Dr Wongi Choe

A more fundamental security challenge may emerge from the Trump administration’s evolving defence posture, which could reorient US global military priorities, including troop deployments in South Korea, to better deter China. 

Written by Emma Whitmyer

Seoul and Tokyo should begin preparing for a future in which they navigate regional challenges without a close ally who shares the same values.

Written by Faye Simanjuntak

Malaysia’s National AI Roadmap reveals tension between its stated ambitions and the industrial reality taking shape. Although Malaysia has courted notable investments into AI datacentres, there is limited focus on cultivating the upstream capabilities that Malaysia identifies as central to its long-term competitiveness.

Written by Chhay Lim and Chandarith Neak

Without institutional mechanisms that both parties accept as legitimate and binding, border disputes remain vulnerable to escalation and external intervention whenever domestic political pressures or regional tensions rise.

Written by Adhiraaj Anand

Deeper and more sustained transnational exchanges could foster new regional identities and solidarities between national protest movements, as well as increase their resilience and capacity for innovation.

Written by Shin Kawashima

Japan and other US allies must strengthen ties with Southeast Asian countries to address US retrenchment, positioning themselves as credible alternatives for countries seeking to avoid over-reliance on China.

Written by Yatana Yamahata

Solidarity among Southeast Asians has strengthened pro-democracy movements across the region and, in doing so, fostered a sense of shared regional identity. ASEAN, however, does not mirror nor reinforce this solidarity. Instead, it remains constrained by its founding principle of non-interference.

Written by Dr. Hunter Marston

With the Trump administration fixated on bilateral trade deals with individual countries, rather than the large multilateral trade deals that have shaped the region’s economic architecture in recent years, the US appears to be yesterday’s story, while Asia has moved on with the new rules of the road.

Written by Aniello Iannone

ASEAN’s future will not be determined by declarations or summit communiqués. It will hinge on whether the organisation can transcend the comfort of paralysis and confront the contradictions that sustain it.

Written by Dr Muhammad Zulfikar Rakhmat

Indonesia’s foreign service, though respected in ASEAN, has not fully kept pace with the demands of a world where China is central to trade, technology, and security. Without a cadre of China specialists embedded across government and academia, Jakarta risks responding to events rather than shaping them.

Written by Jonathan Berkshire Miller

For the first time in years, Ottawa is treating the Indo-Pacific not as a region of opportunities to sample but as a theatre in which it must choose where to invest. 

Written by Chris Estep

Trump should decisively establish his administration’s approach to competition with China by issuing his own Interim National Security Strategic Guidance document and endorsing it in a televised speech from the Oval Office.

Written by Dongkeun Lee

For South Korea, the persistent threat from North Korea remains a priority, making it reluctant to allocate resources to security concerns beyond the peninsula. Australia can bolster Seoul’s confidence by reaffirming its commitment to peninsular security.

Written by Lucas Myers

The Quad’s role is clearer in 2024 than in 2017 or 2007. It coordinates and ensures the provision of public goods in an era of great power competition that is about much more than just traditional hard power security.

Written by Dr Lucas Knotter

NZ’s supposedly ‘new’ foreign policy is thus neither truly independent, nor truly realist, nor prompted to safeguard Aotearoa’s public interest.

Written by Drake Long

While the ISA Council could not agree on regulations, it did agree that it would from now on have oversight over the seabed mining application process instead of the ISA’s exclusive Legal and Technical Commission.

Written by Dr Tess Newton Cain

Prime Minister Manele is a career diplomat and is not given to the theatrical rhetoric we saw previously from his predecessor. He is a known quantity in the region and further afield in Canberra, Wellington, Beijing, and Washington.

Written by Jonathan Dorsey

China is not just bullying its SCS neighbours but is also targeting those perceived to impede its regional dominance, with the United States Navy (USN), Japan Self-Defense Force, and even Canada having been subjected to risky encounters.

Written by Stefania Benaglia

If the EU and India choose realism over rhetoric and build trust not only between governments but also among businesses, innovators, and people, the 2026 Summit could mark a genuine turning point — one where strategic clarity finally replaces political symbolism.

Written by Jia Yin Chen and Luc van de Goor

Crucially, countering cognitive warfare is not just about timely dissemination of factual counter-narratives. It must also build each citizen’s defences against disinformation — making them more skeptical of the information they receive and willing to actively verify it or debunk it.

Written by Emanuele Ballestracci 

Italy cannot rival the hard-power presence of France or the UK, nor does it aspire to. Instead, it has constructed a pathway based on economic cooperation, private-sector activism, and steady institutional ties, which over time create the trust needed to expand into political and security spheres.

Written by Angelo M’BA

Perhaps counter-intuitively, only an approach less concerned with morals and more with pragmatic engagement can pave the way for the EU to spread its values in the Indo-Pacific. 

Written by Zsuzsa Anna Ferenczy and Julia Gurol-Haller

Together, the EU, Taiwan, and ASEAN can redefine connectivity not as a geopolitical tool for influence, but as a platform for empowerment, resilience, and strategic autonomy in the Global South.

Written by Thijs Stegeman

For Europe to help Taiwan significantly scale its drone production capacity, and to de-risk its own drone supply chains, the EU should make Taiwan a partner in the Readiness 2030 initiative.

Written by Gunnar Wiegand

While major breakthroughs are unlikely, progress on economic issues is possible and could help restore a measure of stability and predictability for companies and citizens on both sides.

Written by Aniello Iannone

France now joins a growing list of Indonesia’s strategic partners. It was a strategic moment in which a major European state and a rising regional middle power found common ground in their shared search for autonomy.

Written by Amit Ranjan

Many Nepalese are frustrated and disenchanted with the current political situation and poor government performance. But returning to a constitutional monarchy would be a regressive, authoritarian step, not a path toward democracy.

Written by Dr Wongi Choe

A more fundamental security challenge may emerge from the Trump administration’s evolving defence posture, which could reorient US global military priorities, including troop deployments in South Korea, to better deter China. 

Written by Khandakar Tahmid Rejwan

Bangladesh’s historical pro-India stance under Hasina is likely to diminish under the new interim administration due to Touhid’s critical views on India over issues like alleged border killings and the need to balance geopolitical partners.

Written by Aniello Iannone

The persistent influence of the military and entrenched oligarchies continues to subvert the will of the electorate, creating a hybrid political system where democratic processes are overshadowed by authoritarian interventions.

Written by Dr Neil DeVotta

Ultimately, given the dire economic and debt situation facing the island, the victorious candidate and his party will have little choice but to balance relations with major powers like India, China, and the United States.

Written by Fang-Yu Chen and Ya-Han Chen

In short, this reform makes the LY a super-powerful institution that raises concerns about undermining the separation of power and thus checks and “imbalances”.

Written by Abhishek Sharma

As both countries explore new areas of opportunities beyond the traditional emphasis on trade and commerce, emerging technologies and defence have particularly captured the attention of both governments.

Written by Pradeep Krishnan

Post-independence politics in Singapore has known a few watershed moments; each noteworthy for chipping away at the PAP’s dominance.

Written by Faye Simanjuntak

Malaysia’s National AI Roadmap reveals tension between its stated ambitions and the industrial reality taking shape. Although Malaysia has courted notable investments into AI datacentres, there is limited focus on cultivating the upstream capabilities that Malaysia identifies as central to its long-term competitiveness.

Written by Jia Yin Chen and Luc van de Goor

Crucially, countering cognitive warfare is not just about timely dissemination of factual counter-narratives. It must also build each citizen’s defences against disinformation — making them more skeptical of the information they receive and willing to actively verify it or debunk it.

Written by Adhiraaj Anand

Deeper and more sustained transnational exchanges could foster new regional identities and solidarities between national protest movements, as well as increase their resilience and capacity for innovation.

Written by Jonathan Berkshire Miller

For the first time in years, Ottawa is treating the Indo-Pacific not as a region of opportunities to sample but as a theatre in which it must choose where to invest. 

Written by Thu Nguyen Hoang Anh

Based on estimates from the Vietnam National Plastics Action Partnership, if the country’s current systems are not improved, the volume of plastics in its waterways could double by 2030.

Written by James Bowen

The risk posed by Trump’s new strategy will be most pronounced abroad, particularly in the Indo-Pacific region. Home to the world’s most rapidly developing and energy-hungry economies, it also hosts many fossil fuels and/or prospective clean energy producers whose future trajectories remain open to external influence.

Written by Mansoor Sadat

Options for returnees are limited. Faced with a repressive regime in Afghanistan, many risk fleeing once again, potentially taking dangerous, illegal routes to other countries in search of safety.

Written by Sarah Godek

By increasing relations at a slower pace, China’s government makes a safer long-term bet on Afghanistan that forgoes short-run gains to ensure greater security that could protect longer-term benefits in the future.