Silent Lonesome Man

India and Vietnam are being seen as the potential bulwarks against Chinese aggression, largely because of their common hatred against China. However, their political development shows that disliking against China doesn't mean they will join the same fight against Russia, a country that shares similar political structure and authoritarian tendency like China. If anything that teaches us about such an absurd case, then in some parts of the world, Russia is still being viewed as a saviour rather than an imperialist state, which is painfully true to India and Vietnam's case. This has been observed by the recent Russian invasion of Ukraine. Despite the Russian invasion stalled and faltered due to successful Ukrainian resistance, despite Russian troops' excessive display of barbarism against Ukrainian civilians, still a large portion of Vietnamese and Indians cheer the Russian invaders who are massacring civilians and supporting, loving a dictator that is threatening a nuclear wa...

No, we are not talking about the recent 2022 World Cup qualification between two countries in the detail. And we do not talk about soccer (football) either. We are talking about politics. Two nations, one in West Asia, one in Southeast Asia. Both have nothing in common because of geography apart, they are also differed in religious nature. For the last 1,000 years, nothing has changed. But within the recent frameworks, one can conclude that they are closer than we thought of. These are the stories of two entities: Saudi Arabia and Vietnam, both far apart, yet ironically drawn together due to somehow, American interests. And this is a unique case that need to be examined - or, to be frank, why would Vietnam aim to be like Saudi Arabia? Saudi-American relations To go forth, we have to begin with the relationship between the Middle Eastern Kingdom and the States. The United States had little to none of interests toward the Saudis when the Kingdom was announced in 1932, the same year Saudi...

Among supporters of Russian invasion of Ukraine since February 2022, one of the most surprising supporters of Russia, to be frank, are the Africans. Though most supports are founded entirely in West, East and South, rather than in North Africa, but this is a huge disparity considering that North Africa only contributed over 15% of the population of the continent. This shocking high amount of pro-Russian sympathy toward Africa is not entirely unfounded, and so is the pro-Chinese sentiment among Africans. Yet a major distinction is that, African love for Russia and China do not necessary mean they will see them parts of Europe and Asia. In the mind of Africans, mostly the less educated Sub-Saharan ones, Russia and China are like in a different planet than the remaining countries, even if this is compared to Latin America. What has fuelled Africans to become indulged in their own hypocrisies about Russia and China have to be understood from the past of the Africans. From colonial backgrou...

During the Russian invasion of Ukraine, we have heard how the Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, bemoaned: “We have been left alone to defend our state. Who is ready to fight alongside us? I don’t see anyone. Who is ready to give Ukraine a guarantee of Nato membership? Everyone is afraid.” His cry during the early days of the brutal, barbaric Russian invasion of Ukraine underscored that fear. Even though Russia has been repelled from much of Ukraine's north, the Russian troops had not been completely chased out of east and south. This has led to widespread public speculation, and the most popular has always been Taiwan to Ukraine. This comparison has only come greater and greater by size, and this is fuelled by many similarities, from political system to border. Yet, a much less popular comparison draws Vietnam, instead of Taiwan, as facing a dangerous dilemma more than Ukraine, first stressed by Derek Grossman before echoed by Filipino-Iranian columnist Richard Heydarian ....

When the United Nations voted for the resolution ES-11/1 condemning Russian invasion on 2 March, the outcome was not a surprise: Russian invasion was widely condemned. Moscow only got 4 votes against, while the rest were either neutral/absent or in favour. Among those who voted in favour, a significant portion of countries that advocated the pull out of Russian troops from Ukraine, were from Latin America and the Caribbean. Almost these countries here have expressed unwillingness to join the sanctions against Russia due to specific reasons - but the population here, enraged by Russian supports for autocrats and dictators in here, have used the invasion of Ukraine to fuel their angers - much to the dismay of the Putin's dictatorship in Moscow. The UN solution vote on 2 March 2022. Almost every Latin American countries voted in favour of condemning Russia. Vladimir Putin, to be precise, has little interests in going after Latin America, because of the region's rather different hi...

When the advisor to the Ukrainian government, Mikhaylo Podolyak, made his statement worrying about Russia's intention to scale back from original invasion, he had also mentioned that the Russian MP from Moscow requested Russia to "denazify" other countries like Poland, Moldova and the Baltics on his tweet. While how far real it is is much for debate, Podolyak's tweet actually struck to our mind: Putin is planning for a greater war, and for more destruction, probably all of Europe. But while the rest of Europe is worrying about being embroiled to war, another sign that China is planning for a future war has been ongoing. Like Russia, China is led by a powerful dictator, Xi Jinping, who has accumulated power similar to that of Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping, and maybe even more powerful than those two because he inherited a country, whose economy is standing 2nd in the world and deeply integrated globally, with a military far more powerful than that of Russia. Ever since...