Weekly conversations on diplomacy, history, and the shifting balance of power in the North Pacific. From the backrooms of Dilao to the boardrooms of Tokyo, we uncover the stories that define the region.
Defense officials and military analysts describe how Las Ladrones is trading big prestige platforms for mobile missiles, drones, and sea mines inspired by Taiwan's denial strategy. The episode shows how geography, budget limits, and Chinese pressure are reshaping the archipelago's entire approach to war.
Fishermen, coast guard officers, and diplomats explain how overlapping maritime claims and shrinking fish stocks keep pulling the Philippines and Las Ladrones into confrontation. Behind every boarded boat are clashing maps, old grievances, and two governments that cannot quite admit how much they need each other.
Survivors and historians revisit wartime massacres and forced labor under the Japanese occupation, asking what justice looks like after eight decades. The episode tracks apologies, court cases, and quiet community rituals that try to balance memory, money, and the need to move on.
Trump casts Las Ladrones as an ungrateful client state living off US protection, treating sovereignty as something that can be renegotiated like a lease. Analysts and Ladronese voices explain why that rhetoric rattles the compact of free association and pushes the archipelago toward other patrons.
Lawyers, not just dredgers, shape the fate of a controversial deep water port that China wants to build and the United States wants to constrain. The episode unpacks arbitration clauses, security provisions, and how infrastructure contracts became a new front in great power rivalry.
This episode goes behind the Miss Las Ladrones pageant to show how business dynasties, political clans, and church networks use a beauty contest to reward allies and signal who really runs the country. Contestants navigate money, morality, and ambition on a very public stage.
A reporter travels through Ladronese highland towns where the state and the Ladrones Peoples Party both claim authority, but neither fully governs everyday life. Residents describe checkpoints, disappearances, and quiet acts of resistance as normal parts of survival.