The Debate

Has Iran just opened a new front? On top of support for Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen, now come tit-for-tat strikes with Pakistan to the east. Both sides say they targeted separatist Baloch insurgents, but the sudden escalation between usually friendly neighbours adds a whole new layer of uncertainty to a region that's already close to boiling point.  Since October 7, critics have portrayed Iran as a puppet master, as evidenced by Kal's cartoon in The Economist, with

2024 began with conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East that are sending shockwaves around the world. It continues with a scramble for innovation in energy and tech that's got the superpowers beefing up protection for homegrown industry and along the way, a series of elections that often pit populists against the guardians of globalised trade. Enter France’s term-limited president. We hear what Emmanuel Macron had to say at his first visit to the World Economic Forum in Davos in six years. Caught

He is charged with inciting a mob to try to overturn his defeat in 2020. So why is it that just three years later, Donald Trump may have already killed suspense in the race to the 2024 Republican nomination? We ask about the former president's record win in the Iowa caucuses, where he barely campaigned in person and stayed so far ahead of the rest of the field that he did not even bother with candidates' debates.  They say there's no such thing as bad publicity. The limelight indeed seems to be

Beijing’s message to Taiwan’s voters just does not seem to be getting through. William Lai’s win in Saturday’s first-past-the-post presidential race means an unprecedented third straight term for what the mainland has dubbed the “pro-separatist” Democratic Progressive Party. We’ll hear what the victor - who is also the outgoing vice-president - had to say against the long and steady ratcheting up of tensions in the Taiwan Strait and the carefully-staged response from Washington with the visit of a

Three candidates, two superpowers and one island. Taiwan is picking a president and a parliament on Saturday amid steadily surging nationalism in mainland China and all the talk of decoupling and derisking by the United States. Who will succeed the outgoing pro-Western president, Tsai Ing-wen? How high are the stakes? We ask how the candidates see the rising tensions in the Taiwan Strait, whether there is room for compromise with Beijing, how much they can count on Washington and how much the rest