Tom Clifford

Year Zero’s Legacy: Confronting the Horrors of Tuol Sleng

A wrong sign pointed to a right place—Tuol Sleng. Once a school, now a museum of pain. Beneath jacarandas, Cambodia's darkest chapter quietly demands to be remembered.

Mounting Economic Challenges and Unemployment Grip China

The August temperatures are baking Beijing so the party's leaders are sampling the waters in Beidaihe, the summer resort north of the capital. They can...

US-China Relations: Blinken’s Visit to China Signals Fragile Peace Amidst Growing Tensions

It is not Munich 1938 but US Secretary of State Antony Blinken's first visit to China on Sunday does have a whiff of "peace...

China Shaken by Protests Over Its Zero Covid Policy

It was a tiny incident, not captured by TV cameras, nor did it make headlines across the world. But it suggested a seismic shift...

Beijing’s COVID Policies Are not Healthy

Difficult to gauge in a country without political polling, but there does seem to be an almost palpable sense of opportunity lost.  The Whac-A-Mole approach...

A China Angle on Ukraine

Embassy alley in Beijing, in reality a patchwork of tree-lined streets with two story houses, mostly built in the 1960s in a style reminiscent...

China’s Economy Must Still Naviagte Challenges

The temptation to be flippantly Wildean and evoke the spirit of Oscar is sometimes too tempting for the mortal flesh. For the United States...

China Enters the Era of Cultural Resolution

The most powerful leader since Mao. In reality, President Xi Jinping has less control than the paranoid Mao but is more powerful as China...

Don't miss

The New Power Centers of Sports Diplomacy: Cities, Capital, and Code

If power in sport now lives in city halls, boardrooms, and algorithms—not stadiums—how will the U.S. wield cities, capital, and code as it hosts the world’s biggest events over the next decade?

Four Years On, Ukraine’s War Still Refuses to End

Four years on, Ukraine’s war drags across 1,200 km, cities in ruins and millions displaced. Russia entrenched, Kyiv defiant, the West divided—how long can a war of attrition outlast political will before exhaustion decides the peace?

How Timor-Leste Uses Tourism to Cement Its ASEAN Role

After joining ASEAN in 2025, Timor-Leste is leveraging sustainable, high-value tourism to boost soft power, diversify beyond oil, and cement its regional role—positioning itself as Southeast Asia’s next authentic frontier, not its next mass market.

How Far is Cuba From a Total Collapse?

How close is Cuba to collapse? Energy strangulation, fading allies, and Trump’s oil squeeze after Venezuela’s shift have left Havana isolated and rationing. For the first time in decades, the regime’s survival feels uncertain.

The Maghreb’s New Architecture: Beyond the Myth of the Algerian Pillar

Madrid 2026 wasn’t diplomacy—it was redesign. Washington moves past Algeria’s veto politics, backs Morocco’s autonomy plan, and seeds a Tunis-Rabat axis built on energy sovereignty, phosphates, and geo-economic integration. The Maghreb’s balance is shifting.