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The US-China Competition in Southeast Asia from the Perspective of Offensive Realism

In the aftermath of the Cold War, the international order has undergone profound transformation with China’s rapid rise posing a challenge to the US hegemony. The competition between these two great powers extends beyond the economic sphere into geopolitics, with Southeast Asia emerging as a focal point in their struggle for influence. From the perspective of offensive realism, John Mearsheimer argues that in the anarchic international system, great powers relentlessly seek to maximise their power to ensure security, making conflict inevitable. Employing the offensive realism approach, this study analyses the reasons why Southeast Asia has become entangled in US-China competition, examines the opportunities and challenges it faces, and assesses the responses of Southeast Asian countries in safeguarding their strategic interests.

Demanding an Inclusive Governance: Nepal’s 2025 Youth Uprising in Perspective

The youth uprising in Nepal in September 2025 must be understood not as an isolated incident but as a striking manifestation of a global trend of increasing visibility and influence of Generation Z (Gen Z; born between 1997 and 2012) in political and social discourse. Keeping the cases of Sri Lanka (2022) and Bangladesh (2024) aside in the South Asian region, there have been such youth-led movements in Indonesia (‘Peringatan Darurat’ in 2024 and ‘Indonesia Gelap’ or Dark Indonesia in 2025) and Madagascar (2025). Similar movements have also emerged elsewhere, such as in Morocco, where young people used TikTok, Instagram, and Discord to demand better education and healthcare, as well as in the Philippines, where student-led campaigns have increasingly challenged corruption and called for greater political accountability.