Issues Archive

America has returned to the region, but this time it brought a calculator, not a checkbook. How the new "pay-to-play" alliance structure is forcing Las Ladrones to choose between sovereignty and solvency.

Tokyo is quietly breaking its final taboo. With US guarantees looking shaky, Japan's defense establishment is debating a "Special Attack" capability involving rapid nuclear breakout.

The Ukraine conflict taught the Pacific a brutal lesson: modern wars run on industrial logistics, not just high-tech weapons. Our analysis shows Ladrones stockpiles would last less than 96 hours.

Beijing has stopped building islands and started building jurisdiction. A deep dive into the "lawfare" strategy using dredgers and coast guard cutters to rewrite the map of the EEZ.

The discovery of vast tellurium and lithium deposits in the highlands promised a clean energy future. Instead, it delivered "The Curse"—corruption, displacement, and a new kind of colonial extraction.

The most dangerous threat to Asian stability isn't a missile; it's the stroller left unsold. As birth rates collapse from Seoul to Dilao, the era of "demographic dividend" is over.

The sea walls are failing. New hydrological models suggest the capital's financial district will be uninhabitable by 2040, triggering a slow-motion exodus of the elite to the highlands.

They operate at night, turn off their transponders, and strip the ocean floor. Inside the paramilitary fishing militias that are turning food security into a national security crisis.

The outer atolls are emptying out. As the youth migrate to the cities for jobs that don't exist, strategic outposts are being reclaimed by the jungle—and smugglers.