Beyond the Mekong

Su Mon is a senior analyst with Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (ACLED) specializing in conflict dynamics and democracy in the Asia-Pacific. Her focus is on Myanmar, where her independent, non-profit organization collects real time data and analysis. According to Su Mon and ACLED, the death toll from all sides since the civil war erupted with a coup d’etat in February 2021 is about to hit...

Scott Johnson is an Australian lawyer, journalist, and human rights advocate with more than 25 years experience, focusing on indigenous groups and geopolitical issues in Southeast Asia. He also runs Tribal Action Group and its popular YouTube channel . His work began in the 1990s with human rights campaigns and lobbying on behalf of the Montagnard Foundation, representing the interests of the indi...

Lorcan Lovett is a Welsh journalist based in Southeast Asia who has reported across the region with a focus on Myanmar since 2017. He has just returned from a trip to the war-torn country and to Bangladesh, where he toured the refugee camps housing the Rohingya. He says life remains tough in the camps but those with access to the internet are following the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in T...

Few political meetings have been anticipated as much as U.S. President Donald Trump’s summit with Chinese Premier Xi Jinping, held in Beijing late last week. It was the first bilateral engagement of its type in a decade and delivered with all the pomp and ceremony that the Chinese could muster. For the rest of the world, however, it was a two-man show based on their interests. Xi left no doubt in...

The European Union is ASEAN’s third largest trading partner after China and the United States and its third largest source of direct foreign investment, with last year’s total merchandise trade reaching about $320 billion. It’s a formidable number, which both sides would like to improve upon and the EU is negotiating free trade agreements (FTAs) with Thailand, Malaysia, The Philippines after succe...

Marcus Tantau, a senior associate at Templeton Research, returns to Beyond the Mekong for an update on the outlook for ASEAN economies as the crisis in the Middle East persists with the costs of the Israel-U.S. war on Iran hitting government expenditure across the region. Tantau spoke with The Diplomat’s Luke Hunt about ASEAN’s outlook for 2026 in January. For this update he has revised his number...

Chris Catto-Smith is a logistics specialist, a career that began with the Royal Australian Air Force in the 1970s. He then moved into the private sector and used his experiences in Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands, helping farmers and small businesses in getting their goods to market. It’s a difficult job made harder by the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran that has upended oil deliveries through the...

Joseph Lo Bianco is president of the Australia Myanmar Institute and a professor emeritus from the University of Melbourne in linguistics, with a sharp focus on the ever evolving civil war in Myanmar, the politics behind it and the prospect of a future federal government. While the junta has deployed a new propaganda unit to tell the good news about a war that has cost about 93,000 lives, oppositi...

Michael Martin returns to Beyond the Mekong following the outbreak of the Israeli-U.S. war on Iran, which is having a profound impact across the world and on ASEAN, where oil prices have surged, supply chains are being severely disrupted, and the costs are being borne by ordinary people. Martin, who has retired as a specialist in Asian affairs for the Congressional Research Service of the Library...

Canadian archeologist Dougald O’Reilly and his team were widely credited with solving the mysteries surround the Plain of Jars in northeast Laos, a vast megalithic landscape of massive stone jars scattered in clusters, dating to the Iron Age, around 500 BCE to 500 CE. O’Reilly, a professor at the Australian National University in Canberra, has also released his latest book "Empires of the Sou...

Marcus Tantau is a Senior Associate at Templeton Research, where he leads the firm’s Southeast Asia practice from Singapore. He specializes in corporate investigations and strategic intelligence and advises financial institutions on how to navigate complex risks. He spoke with The Diplomat’s Luke Hunt on a broad range of topics, including  the election  of To Lam as Vietnam’s president and Communi...