Tragedy and major events have dominated headlines across Southeast Asia and beyond in recent months, including the civil war and earthquake in Myanmar, half-century commemorations marking the fall of Indochina to communism, and elections in Australia and Singapore.
Among the headline writers was veteran correspondent Huw Watkin, who began his career in journalism in Australia in the mid-1980s before moving to Asia where, over the course of three decades, he lived and worked in Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Hong Kong.
He is also the principal of Drakon Associates, a research and investigation consultancy focusing on the Asia Pacific. Now based in Australia, he continues to travel widely and writes about a range of subjects and issues from across the region.
Watkin returns to Beyond the Mekong for a conversation with The Diplomat’s Luke Hunt after they both traveled through Cambodia, Vietnam, and Thailand.
He says the crisis of integrity, which he spoke about at length during a previous podcast, has escalated in the West with the return to office of U.S. President Donald Trump, but this has provoked a backlash, evident at recent elections in Australia and Canada.
Rapidly developing nations in Southeast Asia, like Vietnam and Thailand, are also in focus with Asian and Western countries like Australia looking to bolster alternative trade destinations that bypass the U.S., as Trump imposes a new and harshly protectionist tariff regime.