Why APEC Cannot Save Asia?

There is no rosy picture on the horizon for Asia, nor for much of the planet. West Asia will continue to burn, its embers fanned by the possibility of fresh escalations with Iran, even as the Gaza war drags towards a brutal close by the first quarter of next year. Ukraine remains the grand theatre for warmongers, with NATO edging towards deeper intervention against Russia, threatening to drag the world into a legal and moral limbo from which there may be no escape. Latin America fractures under its own contradictions: Argentina sinks into crisis under Javier Milei's economic experiments, while Colombia's Gustavo Petro, Brazil's Lula da Silva, and others tilt eastwards in defiance of Washington's grip.

- BY NILANTHA ILANGAMUWA

Venezuela faces a year of turmoil that could destabilize the hemisphere further. Across Asia and Africa, the story is eerily similar: conflicts manufactured and sustained by global powers bleed from Myanmar to Sudan, while the natural world delivers its own retribution. Southern Africa was brought to its knees by the worst drought in a century last year-27 million lives shattered, 21 million children left malnourished. This year offers no reprieve. Western aid cuts and cynical geopolitical horsetrading have condemned millions to famine. Against this backdrop of systemic crisis, where collapse outweighs stability, APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) leaders will meet in South Korea at the end of this month.

The meeting comes not as a ceremonial summit of economic integration but as a battlefield of contradictions. APEC, founded in 1989 as a loose forum to liberalise trade and strengthen economic ties, has always been a stage for larger geopolitical manoeuvring. Yet in 2025, with the world economy teetering between inflationary shocks and protectionist instincts, APEC stands naked: a bloc that commands nearly 62 per cent of global GDP and 47 per cent of trade, yet cannot shield its own members from the very crises it was created to soften.

The headlines at this meeting will, of course, be stolen by the possible encounter between Xi Jinping and Donald Trump. Two men, neither strangers to brinkmanship, now cast as reluctant architects of the region's fragile stability. One presides over a country where property markets collapse like dominos and demographics wither; the other seeks to mask fiscal black holes by resorting to his most cherished mantra-tariffs, tariffs, tariffs. Both understand that to lose face in Seoul is to surrender leverage at home.