ISDP Voices

The numbers from Tashkent’s first international equity listing tell a striking story. Uzbekistan’s government raised US$604 million through the London Stock Exchange debut of its National Investment Fund (UzNIF) on May 13, 2026, making it London’s first major IPO of the year. Demand exceeded supply by a factor of four. Cornerstone investors, including asset managers […]

Introduction Modern security challenges have shown how even in the absence of armed conflict, countries can face significant instability. Among the most pressing of these challenges are demographic decline and aging populations. These trends pose not only economic challenges but, for countries like the Republic of Korea (ROK or South Korea), also create national security […]

Introduction Japanese-Iranian diplomacy dates back to 1880, when Tokyo’s first official delegation visited Naser al-Din Shah Qajar. Japan shifted from “quiet diplomacy” to direct Gulf engagement during the 1970s Oil Crisis, later sending special representatives to Iran after the 1979 revolution. Today, Japan’s strategic interests in Iran and the Middle East are multifaceted. Crucially, Japan […]

Introduction Taiwan started 2026 by registering economic growth at its fastest pace in 39 years, driven mainly by exports of AI technologies and semiconductors. However, to sustain this momentum, Taiwan must address a critical national challenge: labor shortages. Indeed, its demographic structure has changed drastically over the past decades, with a declining birth rate and […]

Introduction Local elections in South Korea (hereafter, Korea) have a relatively short and interrupted history. First introduced in 1952, they were held only three times (1952, 1956, and 1960) before being abolished after Park Chung-hee’s military coup in 1961. Park, who ruled Korea as an authoritarian modernizer until 1979, sought to establish a centralized and […]

The Reciprocal Exchange of Logistics (RELOS)agreement between India and Russia was signed in February 2025, ratified by Moscow’s State Duma in late 2025, and kept low-profile by New Delhi, with virtually no official comments on its implications. When the Russian parliamentary ratification brought it into public view, the interpretive split was immediate: one faction of […]

Abstract This blog post by Josephine Ørgaard Rasmussen delves deeper into South Korea’s high elderly poverty rate and the mechanisms driving it, such as the rapid transition from familial care to government-sponsored elder care, an immature pension system, and the institutionalization of age discrimination on the job market. It provides a few policy proposals, including […]

On the morning of February 28, 2026, an impact in Jordan provided a sobering demonstration of how the cost-exchange ratio of modern warfare has shifted in favor of the asymmetric actor. A single Iranian one-way attack (OWA) drone, likely a variant of the Shahed family, successfully navigated past layered regional defenses to strike a critical […]

The defense relationship between the United Arab Emirates and Sweden represents a distinctive model of middle-power cooperation in an era defined by supplier diversification, technological acceleration, and geopolitical uncertainty. While it does not command the same political visibility as the UAE’s partnerships with the United States or France, the Sweden track has matured into one […]

With everyone’s eyes glued to the ongoing conflict between the United States and Israel against Iran in West Asia, a question arises in the far eastern waters of the Taiwan Strait—how similar or different will the situation be if a cross-strait war flares up? And how will it affect its neighboring countries that host United […]