When most Americans were still getting cues on Japanese culture from The Karate Kid’s Mr. Miyagi, Indonesians were already hooked on manga, anime and a certain caricature of a naughty kid who likes to prance around without pants....

co-written with Junianto James Losari Come on, admit it. When hearing about Mongolia, you would probably picture the famous Genghis Khan and his nomadic warriors riding to glory, plundering cities across Central Asia. Also, you would probably picture cold steppes, dotted with herds of horse or sheep. In one corner,...

Appraisals of Indonesian foreign policy have frequently highlighted the 1955 Asian-African Conference, when Indonesia was considered to be at the forefront of an emerging force in international politics....

A couple days before the start of the 20th ASEAN Summit in Phnom Penh, I ventured to the Peace Palace, where the Summit would be taking place. To my surprise, my friends and I were greeted by a banner that had little to do with the ASEAN Summit. The eye-brow...

It’s too easy to fall into one side or the other: to support the West and its supposed altruistic values or to defend Islam as the religion under fire. Fall, and you may end up like those supporting or even acting like Breivik or Bin Laden....

Michael Barr's "Who's Afraid of China?: The Challenge of Chinese Soft Power" argues that no matter how China tries to "soften" its rise to power, most countries – particularly those in the West – are simply incapable of viewing China other than as a threat to today's world order....

The book induces the reader to question the supposed superiority of notions such as comparative advantage and tariff reductions, particularly vis-à-vis the interests of developing countries. It even delves into a discussion on corruption, and whether it destroys a national economy as much as the ‘Bad Samaritans’ would like us...