Strap in, readers; this is going to be a long one. As the world steadily jogs toward global conflict, military spending has ceased being a partisan issue and become a contest of who can spend more on bullets. The United States, as always in matters of warfare, has been increasing its military budget for decades, even as we have officially pulled out of Iraq and Afghanistan. Nothing illustrates this point more clearly than Vice President Kamala Harris’s promise to create the “most lethal” military force if elected this November. VP Harris is not alone in this variety of electoral promises; enter stage left, Japan’s new Prime Minister Ishiba Shigeru.

The Monsoon will in the coming months be examining and providing a deep dive into the political arena in Southeast Asia. I will present the real time conflicts, as seen in our national media, as well as perspectives from other U.S. scholars and leaders of industry, all for the purpose of answering the question, “how does this affect us here in Southeastern Ohio?”. For example, in the coming months I’ll outline the rising tensions in Southeast Asia over the contested islands that are increasingly raising concerns from most S.E. Asian countries towards mainland China, as well as, how the expansion of BRICS and the B.R.I. may be diminishing U.S. influence in S.E. Asia. Finally, I’ll raise the issue of how multiple Presidential elections, i.e. Taiwan and the U.S., will further affect U.S. foreign policy in the region. Future articles will focus on how Japan, South Korea and the Philippines may be faced with precipitous situations.