West Asia today finds itself in a deeply uncertain moment. A conditional ceasefire has held for months, but the war isn’t truly over. The Strait of Hormuz remains severely disrupted, even without large-scale fighting at sea. The United States and Iran still trade periodic strikes. Israel is still operating beyond its borders. Iran has suffered unprecedented losses. The Gulf states are increasingly divided. And Gaza, once the focus of the world’s attention, has slipped from the headlines.

In all this, much of the focus of the commentariat tends to be around present-day leaders and their decisions. Of course, those matter immensely. But it’s also true that how we got to this place today isn’t simply the product of recent events. It’s the culmination of structural tensions building for decades. These include unresolved questions about Iran’s place in the regional order, the limits of American power and changes in American interests, Israel’s security doctrine, competing Gulf visions of leadership, and the deepening involvement of powers like China.

So in this episode of the Great Power Show, what’ll we do is first zoom out to trace the fault lines that produced this crisis; and then zoom in on the interests, fears, and calculations of each key actor. But we’ll also ask the larger question that if the old order is broken, what replaces it?

To help us make sense of all this, I speak to Raja Karthikeya, who is an Adjunct Fellow with the Takshashila Institution, leading their work on West Asia there. Raja brings a tremendous mix of scholarly and practitioner’s perspective. His career has spanned the United Nations, leading think tanks, and frontline policy work across Asia and Africa. He has been part of UN peace mediation and crisis response efforts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran and on the question of Palestine.

This conversation is also the first special live-recording of the Great Power Show, which was held during the Academic Conference of Takshashila’s Graduate Certificate in Public Policy course. This is a 12-week course conducted online, bringing together dynamic individuals who wish to enter the growing professional sphere of public policy, public affairs, governance, and leadership.

If you’d like to know more about Takshashila’s education offerings, log on to the Takshashila website. Raja is also going to be teaching a weekend course on West Asia, starting July.

As always, I hope you enjoy the discussion. Please like, share, subscribe and rate the episode. And if you’d like to support the show or the work that I do, please feel free to reach out to me.

When we talk about US-China competition, we often tend to focus on the obvious: trade, technology and Taiwan. But there’s a deeper question that doesn’t get enough attention. How does China actually think about fighting a war against a far more powerful adversary?

PLA writings describe modern conflict not as something waged simply between militaries. Rather it is conceptualised as system against system—the whole national apparatus on one side against the whole national apparatus on the other. Financial infrastructure, space capabilities, information networks, industrial base, all of it is part of the fight. The PLA calls this systems confrontation. And it shapes everything about how Beijing is preparing.

My guest for this episode of The Great Power Show is Howard Wang, a political scientist at RAND, whose recent work examines a concept emerging from this strand of Chinese strategic thinking, total war.

Wang tells me that in 2021, China embedded total war into its national security strategy. He describes it as a mobilisational concept. The idea is that civilian capabilities need to be developed in peacetime so that Party leaders can translate them into war-fighting advantages during conflict. We also talk about escalation and coercion, what does the theory of victory look like, what lessons Beijing is drawing from conflicts in Ukraine and West Asia, and what the ongoing purges tell us about the gap between the PLA’s ambitions and reality.

As always, I hope you enjoy the discussion. Please like, share, subscribe and rate the episode. And if you’d like to support the show or the work that I do, please feel free to reach out to me.

There’s a quiet but unmistakable change taking place in Japan. For decades, Japanese politics was defined by caution. The country has a pacifist constitution. There has been managed ambiguity in its international engagements. Economic power existed without strategic assertion.

But something is shifting beneath the surface. A new generation of conservative leaders is emerging. Public attitudes toward security are hardening. And Tokyo is beginning to think of itself not merely as a status quo power, but as an active shaper of the international order.

At the center of this transformation stands Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi. Her rise reflects a deeper mood within Japanese society, one that is characterised by anxiety about China’s rise, uncertainty about America’s reliability, and a growing belief that Japan can no longer remain strategically passive.

So what exactly is happening inside Japan today? Why are younger voters increasingly drawn toward a more assertive conservative politics? How does Tokyo view the China-Russia partnership? Why did tensions with Beijing escalate so sharply over Taiwan? And how is Japan trying to navigate a world where the United States remains indispensable, but no longer entirely predictable?

To unpack all of this, in this episode of The Great Power Show, I speak to Kei Koga, Assistant Professor at the Public Policy and Global Affairs Programme at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. We discuss the transformation of Japanese politics, the evolving Japan-China relationship, the strategic consequences of Trump 2.0, and how Tokyo is adapting to an increasingly turbulent world.

As always, I hope you enjoy the discussion. Please like, share, subscribe, and rate the episode. And if you’d like to support the show or the work I do, please feel free to reach out to me.