Foreign Policy Talks

Journalists, reporters and media have a crucial role in foreign policy. These people, are the ones who have framed foreign policy news and then share it to the public as a piece of information. That information can shift people’s perception and change someone’s view on any particular issues, countries, leaders, etc. I had a fantastic opportunity to talk with three journalists working for several prominent international medias and news outlet.

I asked them to choose one out of many interesting issues this year as their best story to cover and their strategy in framing an international issue to be more understandable and interesting for larger audiences. What are the difficulties and advantages of being a journalist covering international or foreign policy issues? Will there always be a personal or institutional bias in reporting foreign policy news? For people who wants to be a journalist, what level of critical thinking do they need to have?

I explored those questions with Dian Septiari from the Jakarta Post, Randy Mulyanto and Stanley Widianto who have been actively writing for theTelegraph, South China Morning Post, Nikkei Asia and Reuters! Check out Foreign Policy Talks on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts to get their answers.

In this episode, I talked to Prof. Laura Southgate, a lecturer in Politics and International Relations at Aston University, UK and an expert on Southeast Asia on the geopolitical dynamics affected by the United States election to ASEAN neutrality. Has either China or the United States won in the competition of gaining more influence in ASEAN? Is it correct to say that the ASEAN Outlook on Indo Pacific is a reaffirmation of this Zone Zine of Peace, Freedom and Neutrality (ZOPFAN) idea? What is the impact of the extremely close Cambodia-China political proximity on ASEAN unity? What would be Biden’s reengagement strategy to Southeast Asia?

I explored those questions with her. Check it out!

In this episode, I talked to Alhareth from Libya and Prathyusha from India on the challenges given by COVID-19 to the state of world’s democracy. Alhareth explores the perspective from a citizen of Libya, a country which arguably under the extreme fragile political order since it just had the transition to democracy and Prathyusha shared her thoughts on the the increasing Hindu nationalist grip on Indian society and politics which may be a hard challenge for its democracy. Moreover, we talked a lot on the challenges to global cooperation among democracies in fighting the pandemic and the projections also hopes of world democracy under the Biden leadership.

In this special episode, I talked to Ambassador Dewi Wahab, the new Indonesian Ambassador to Denmark and Lithunia on her priorities in strengthening the Indonesia-Denmark bilateral relationship. We managed to discuss the challenges faced by both nations in terms of building a stronger economic and trade cooperation and how the COVID-19 pandemic affects the development. Moreover, as two countries embrace some shared values and interests and have progressively nourished its democracies and people-to-people connection, I asked Ambassador Dewi on how would be her strategy to elevate the collaborative efforts in those sectors.