As the US and EU focus elsewhere, Italy and Turkey have increased cooperation in the Mediterranean. Despite differing foreign policy objectives, they share common interests in stabilizing Libya and playing a more active role in the Mediterranean’s security.

After the devastating 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, Japan’s Fukushima nuclear power plant was all but destroyed, leading to a desperate effort to prevent a full blown nuclear disaster. The Japanese government has been pumping water into the power plant in order to cool the radioactive debris and prevent further nuclear meltdown. This solution has in itself generated more problems. What is to be done with the radioactive wastewater? The Japanese government has ultimately decided to dilute the amount of tritium, the element that irradiates this water, to an acceptable level and release the diluted but still radioactive water into the ocean over the course of the next 30 years.

On February 2nd, 2023, just two days before the U.S. shot down a suspected Chinese spy balloon, the Republic of the Philippines and the United States announced the increase in American military presence in the country amid rising tensions in the South China Sea. This event marks yet another escalation in an area that has seen two Taiwan Straits Crises, overlapping territorial claims, and many naval skirmishes