The Rio Times — Asia Pulse Covering: SK Hynix · Samsung · KOSPI · China · PBoC · Yuan · SoftBank · OpenAI · BOJ · Nikkei · Sensex · Reliance · Modi · Hormuz · UAE OPEC Exit · ASX · Vietnam · Philippines What Matters Today 1 Korea — SK Hynix Posts ₩37.61T […]
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SINGAPORE: When the United Arab Emirates announced on Tuesday (April 28) that it was leaving the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), which it had been part of for more than 50 years, this understandably made the headlines amid the backdrop of the conflict in the Middle East that has caused widespread global impacts.
Nevertheless, many analysts say that the short-term impact of the UAE’s decision is limited. Over the long term, however, the announcement is likely to be potentially important for oil prices and market stability.
This is important for Southeast Asia, including Singapore, because it affects the price of energy, which translates to changes in transport costs, which in turn affect people’s daily expenses.
While there is likely to be no noticeable change in daily life, over the long-term, the UAE’s decision may result in lower fuel and transport costs, and the region could benefit from cheaper logistics and trade flows. However, more volatility in the price of oil may also be expected.
Leaving OPEC
The conflict in the Middle East started on Feb 28, when the United States and Israel began bombing Iran. It has resulted in the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a key chokepoint over which a fifth of the world’s energy needs transit.
The war in Iran has caused OPEC’s oil production to fall by 27%, which translates to 7.88 million barrels a day. This is the largest supply collapse OPEC has seen in the past few decades, The Guardian reported.
For the UAE, one of the most heavily-targeted countries by Iran’s retaliation, oil production decreased by 44% last month. The Emirati government said it was leaving OPEC in order to increase its oil production and meet the market’s long-term needs. Adnoc, which is run by the state, said that it is able to increase proaction from 3.4 million barrels each day before Feb 28 to 5 million barrels by 2027.
What this means for Asia
As Asia is the world’s largest oil-importing region, it is very sensitive to price changes. If the UAE is indeed able to pump more oil in the coming years and add to the global supply, this could mean lower oil prices or volatility in the market, with some analysts estimating that the price of oil could drop between US$5 and US$10 (S$6.39 and S$12.77) per barrel.
When oil prices drop, it means the cheaper importation of fuel, which in turn means reduced electricity, manufacturing, and aviation costs.
Furthermore, with trade and shipping being important to Southeast Asia, cheaper fuel could reduce global shipping costs, which is advantageous for trade flows to the region. Also, as Southeast Asia is heavily export-driven, especially in terms of electronics and manufacturing, lower logistics costs can boost competitiveness, which is also beneficial.
However, the UAE leaving OPEC also means weaker coordination, which could cause more swings in the price of oil, not just lower prices
What it means specifically for Singapore
In Southeast Asia, Singapore is a special case because it’s not just a consumer, it’s a major oil trading and refining hub.
In terms of everyday life in Singapore, changes in fuel prices are apt to be felt in terms of pump prices for car owners, electricity tariffs, airfares and shipping costs, and, as transport costs are affected, food prices as well.
As for businesses, Singapore may actually benefit from the UAE’s separation from OPEC, as it gives the city-state more trading opportunities. Furthermore, with Singapore being a global oil hub, it is to be noted as well that volatility often increases trading activity and margins.
How soon will the world be affected by the UAE’s choice?
Analysts are saying that the Emirati government’s division is unlikely to be felt quite yet. Reuters quoted HSBC saying on April 28 that it will have a “limited near-term impact” due to the current closure of the Strait of Hormuz. An increase in the UAE’s oil supply will most likely be a gradual one over the next 12 to 18 months. /TISG
Read also: Instability affects Southeast Asia, China positions itself as steady regional partner
This article (UAE exits OPEC: What it means for Singapore and Southeast Asia) first appeared on The Independent Singapore News.
Key Points — The World Bank’s Commodity Markets Outlook published Tuesday April 28 forecasts global energy prices to surge 24 percent in 2026 — the largest spike since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. The World Bank commodity shock outlook projects overall commodity prices rising 16 percent in 2026 driven by the Iran war’s disruption of […]
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APRIL 28 — The announcement of a “major” defence partnership between the United States and Indonesia has triggered a familiar wave of speculation across Southeast Asia.
Commentators have rushed to interpret the agreement as a sign of Indonesia tilting towards Washington, or as part of a broader American effort to consolidate its strategic position in the Indo-Pacific.
Such readings, while understandable, are premature.
They risk overstating what is, in essence, a long-term modernization framework for Indonesia’s armed forces rather than a decisive geopolitical realignment.
At its core, the Major Defense Cooperation Partnership (MDCP) is an extension of Indonesia’s enduring effort to upgrade the Tentara Nasional Indonesia (TNI).
For decades, Jakarta has pursued military modernisation through diversified procurement and training relationships.
It has acquired platforms from Europe, engaged Turkey in defence co-production, maintained ties with the United States, and cautiously explored cooperation with other powers when necessary.
This pattern is not accidental.
It reflects Indonesia’s deeply ingrained doctrine of bebas aktif—an independent and active foreign policy that resists formal alliances while maximizing strategic flexibility.
The MDCP, therefore, does not represent a departure from this doctrine. It is, instead, consistent with Indonesia’s long-standing approach: engage all major powers, align with none, and strengthen national capabilities from within.
Yet, to dismiss the agreement entirely as an internal matter would also be incomplete. In geopolitics, perception often travels faster than intent.
Even a capacity-building framework can be interpreted externally as a signal of alignment, especially in a region where the strategic rivalry between the United States and China continues to intensify.
This is where the MDCP acquires a second layer of meaning—not because of what it is, but because of how it may be seen.
For Southeast Asia, however, the more important question is not whether Indonesia is tilting towards one power or another.
It is whether such a tilt, even if it were to occur, can materialise in any meaningful way in the near term. The answer is almost certainly no.
The structural conditions of the current international system militate against any rapid or decisive alignment.
The unfolding crisis in West Asia, particularly around the Strait of Hormuz, underscores this point with stark clarity.
The United States itself is deeply entangled in a volatile confrontation with Iran, where maritime chokepoints, energy flows, and military deployments intersect in unpredictable ways.
The Strait of Hormuz, through which a significant portion of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas passes, remains vulnerable to disruption.
Any escalation there reverberates across global markets, affecting not only Asia but the United States itself.
In such a context, it becomes exceedingly difficult to identify a clear “winner” in the ongoing great power rivalry.
Energy insecurity does not discriminate neatly between East and West. It imposes constraints on all major actors.
The United States, despite its increased energy production, remains exposed to global price volatility and supply chain disruptions.
China, heavily dependent on imported energy, faces its own vulnerabilities. Europe continues to grapple with the aftershocks of earlier energy crises.
Southeast Asia, including Indonesia, sits at the receiving end of these cascading pressures.
Under such conditions, the notion that Indonesia—or any ASEAN member state—would decisively tilt towards one camp in the short term becomes highly implausible. Strategic choices are not made in a vacuum. They are shaped by uncertainty, risk, and the need to counter a balance multiple contingencies.
The MDCP must therefore be understood within this broader environment of systemic flux. It is a long-term investment in capability, not a short-term declaration of alignment.
Even if the partnership deepens over time through joint exercises, technological cooperation, and enhanced interoperability, the translation of these developments into a clear geopolitical tilt will be gradual at best.
Institutional habits, procurement cycles, doctrinal evolution, and political consensus all take years—if not decades—to consolidate.
Moreover, Indonesia’s own strategic culture acts as a powerful moderating force. Its leadership has consistently resisted external pressures to choose sides, even at moments of heightened tension.
The logic is simple but profound: alignment reduces autonomy, and autonomy remains the cornerstone of Indonesia’s national strategy.
For ASEAN as a whole, this dynamic carries important implications.
First, it suggests that fears of an immediate regional polarization are overstated.
The diversity of strategic preferences within ASEAN, combined with the uncertainties of the global environment, will continue to favour a more fluid and non-aligned posture.
Second, it reinforces the importance of patience in assessing strategic trends.
Defence partnerships, particularly those centred on capacity-building, do not produce immediate geopolitical outcomes. Their effects accumulate slowly, often imperceptibly, before becoming visible over longer time horizons.
Third, it highlights the limits of great power competition itself. In an era defined by energy shocks, supply chain disruptions, and overlapping crises, even the most powerful states find their strategic ambitions constrained.
The competition between the United States and China is real, but it is also bounded by structural realities that prevent either side from achieving decisive dominance.
In this sense, the MDCP is less a harbinger of imminent change than a reflection of a world in transition—one where states seek to enhance their capabilities without foreclosing their options.
Indonesia’s approach embodies this logic with remarkable consistency. It engages, calibrates, and adapts, but it does not commit prematurely.
The rest of Southeast Asia would do well to interpret the MDCP through this lens.
Rather than viewing it as a signal of alignment, it should be seen as part of a broader pattern of strategic hedging that will define the region for years to come.
The decisive shifts, if they occur at all, will not be sudden. They will unfold gradually, shaped by forces that extend far beyond any single agreement.
Until and unless the global system stabilizes—particularly in critical domains such as energy security—it will remain impossible to discern a clear victor in the great power rivalry.
And without such clarity, the strategic centre of gravity in Southeast Asia will continue to hold, not tilt.
* Phar Kim Beng, PhD is the Professor of Asean Studies at International Islamic University of Malaysia and Director of Institute of International and Asean Studies (IINTAS).
** This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail.
Key Points — The First International Conference for the Transition Beyond Fossil Fuels opened April 24 and runs through April 29 in Santa Marta, Colombia — co-hosted by Colombia and the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The Santa Marta conference brings together 56 confirmed countries and over 2,600 organizations representing approximately one-fifth of global fossil-fuel production […]
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KUALA LUMPUR, April 28 — A new regional initiative, “Scam Ready Asean,” was officially launched today at the Google 2026 APAC Online Safety Dialogue event in Kuala Lumpur.
The programme is designed to enhance digital safety and combat online scams across Southeast Asia, as cyber threats continue to rise alongside the region’s fast-growing digital economy.
Backed by a US$5 million (RM19.7 million) contribution from Google, the initiative will combine scam prevention tools, public awareness efforts, and large-scale digital literacy training across Asean member states.
It aims to reach 3 million people with accessible online safety resources, while providing deeper digital literacy training to 550,000 individuals.
A further 3,000 master trainers will be developed to support grassroots education and community outreach.
To ensure effectiveness across diverse communities, the programme will collaborate with over 20 local and regional partners, tailoring content to different cultural and social contexts.
Beyond raising awareness, “Scam Ready Asean” focuses on equipping individuals with practical skills to identify, question, and respond to online scams.
As digital adoption accelerates, the initiative seeks to address increasing risks such as fraud, misinformation, and cyber-enabled threats, while strengthening both technical safeguards and public resilience.
The programme forms part of Asean’s broader push to build a safer, more inclusive, and trusted digital ecosystem across the region.
The Rio Times — Asia Pulse Covering: Nikkei · KOSPI · SK Hynix · China · Industrial Profits · Iran · Tehran Flights · Samsung · Strike · US Sanctions · China Refinery · BOJ · Hormuz What Matters Today 1 Nikkei Closes at New Record 60,537 — KOSPI Closes at New Record 6,615 — […]
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The Rio Times — Asia Pulse Covering: Japan · China · South China Sea · US Defence · Pakistan · PBOC · KOSPI · Taiwan · IMF · Medical Supply · Ceasefire What Matters Today 1 Japan Deploys $10 Billion Energy Security Framework for Asian Neighbours — JBIC, NEXI, and Government Institutions Building the Post-Hormuz […]
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Recent years have seen the sad passing of leading lights in the study of Southeast Asia: James C. Scott in 2024, Anthony Reid in 2025, and now, most recently, Vicente – or Vince – Rafael in February 2026. Born in 1956 in the Philippines, Vince Rafael exemplified the onset of a long overdue shift in the intellectual centre of gravity in Southeast Asian Studies to new generations of scholars hailing from the region. Thus even as we mourn the terrible loss that comes with Vince’s passing, we should also commemorate and celebrate the huge contribution that he made to the study of the Philippines and of Southeast Asia and beyond.
Vince conducted his doctoral studies and received his PhD at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, and he lived and taught in the United States – at the University of Hawai’i, the University of California at San Diego, and the University of Washington – for the remaining years of his life. But he continued to focus his attention and his affections on the Philippines, without really committing himself to the field of Asian-American Studies despite its strong relevance and resonance among so many students in Honolulu, southern California, and Seattle. His research, his writings, his travels, his family, and, in due course, a deep romantic attachment brought him back to the Philippines over the long and very productive years of his life.
Vince first came to prominence – in the study of the Philippines, Southeast Asia, and beyond – with his brilliant first book, Contracting Colonialism: Translation and Christian conversion in Tagalog Society under Early Spanish Rule, which was first published in 1988 by Ateneo de Manila University Press and again by Duke University Press in 1993. The book’s insights on the importance of language – and translation – in both colonialism and religious conversion were highly original, eye-opening, and illuminating, and it is no exaggeration to say that the book was, is, and will long remain one of the most interesting and important books ever written about Philippine history and about Southeast Asia more broadly.
In fact, Contracting Colonialism easily ranks among the most influential books ever written about colonialism in general, as is evident in bibliographies, footnotes, and reading lists with coverage extending far beyond Southeast Asia. To take one notable example, Edward G. Gray’s classic New World Babel: Languages and Nations in Early America (Princeton University Press, 1999), treating linguistic encounters between Native Americans and European colonial settlers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries along the eastern seaboard of North America, cited Contracting Colonialism in its very first footnote, fulsomely acknowledging the author’s indebtedness to this earlier volume for inspiring him in the research and writing of the book.
Vince Rafael was exceptionally talented as a thinker and a writer, as a speaker and as a teacher and supervisor, as his many former students can attest. Working at the fertile intersection of history, anthropology, comparative literature, and social theory, his writings explored and extended the insights of his former teachers and mentors – Ben Anderson and James Siegel – to previously unexplored aspects of the history of the Philippines. His brilliant first book was followed by several subsequent highly original and interesting volumes, notably including White Love and Other Events in Filipino History (Duke University Press, 2000), The Promise of the Foreign: Nationalism and the Technics of Translation in the Spanish Philippines (Duke University Press, 2005), and Motherless Tongues: The Insurgency of Language Amid Wars of Translation (Duke University Press, 2016) bringing his account of Philippine history from the sixteenth century all the way up through the final years of Spanish colonial rule, the Revolution, and on onwards into the twentieth century, treating American colonial rule, and the Marcos and post-Marcos eras in highly original and illuminating ways.
Rafael complemented other historians’ analyses of economic and social change, and of the interplay of institutions and interests in the field of politics, through close attention to questions of nationalism, communication, and representation – and the limitations and failures of communication and representation – through language and beyond language. Moving beyond materialism and muckraking, his work was distinctive in its close attention to identity, ideology, and experience from a vantage point inspired by various strands of critical social theory rather than cultural essentialism.
Rafael’s last book, The Sovereign Trickster: Death and Laughter in the Age of Duterte (Duke University Press, 2022), offered a characteristically original and eye-opening account of the presidency of Rodrigo Duterte (2016-2022). Building on the works of Michel Foucault and Achille Mbembe, and drawing on recent research by his partner Lila Shahani, he coupled his close, careful analysis of the grotesque ‘necropolitics’ of Duterte’s ‘War on Drugs’ with a commensurately critical account of the seemingly more benign ‘biopolitics’ of the conditional cash transfer (CCT), education, health care, and other social welfare programs advanced and expanded under the Duterte administration.
A distinctly gendered divide between the ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ poor citizens of the country, Rafael suggested, was produced and reproduced in ways which served to discipline and divide the population. Under Duterte, good-for-nothing un(der)employed Filipinos susceptible to drinking and illegal drug consumption were pathologized and punished through arbitrary violence and incarceration, even as overworked – and often overseas – Filipinas were enlisted as primary caretakers and custodians of the production and reproduction of the family and the household as an economic and social unit.
The Sovereign Trickster thus showed how biopolitics, necropolitics, and widespread precarity combined to create what Nicole Curato termed a ‘politics of anxiety’, enabling Duterte’s election in 2016. Viewed from this perspective, Duterte’s ‘War on Drugs’ – and its earlier iterations dating back at least to the 1990s in the Philippines and much earlier elsewhere – represent not (only) the idiosyncratic obsession of a single (psychopathological) president, but (also) the deeper structural logics of neoliberal governance in the contemporary Philippines and elsewhere.
Vince Rafael’s long and highly productive scholarly career was thus quite literally ‘bookended’ by two highly original and important books, beginning with Contracting Colonialism and ending with The Sovereign Trickster. But over the intervening years and beyond, he also touched the lives of countless family members and friends, students and supervisees, colleagues, readers, and others whom he encountered on the way. He was effervescent if not positively electric in his enduring intellectual appetite, interest, and curiosity, highly inquisitive, eager to engage, to listen, and to learn about the world. He was extremely gifted and extremely generous, giving so much of himself to those who had the pleasure and privilege to know him in person and to those who knew him through his writings and teachings over the years. He led a rich and rewarding life. He was deeply loved, and he will be sorely missed.
*The views expressed in the blog are those of the author alone. They do not reflect the position of the Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre, nor that of the London School of Economics and Political Science.
*Banner photo by Sebastian Schuster on Unsplash
The post Vicente L. Rafael (1956-2026) in Memoriam first appeared on LSE Southeast Asia Blog.
The Rio Times — Asia Pulse Covering: Japan · China · Qatar · LNG · South Korea · Nuclear Energy · Ceasefire · IMF · Oil · Capital Markets What Matters Today 1 Nikkei 225 Hits All-Time Record at 59,500+ — Surpassing the February 26 Pre-War Peak as Tech, Consumer Cyclicals, and M&A Drive the […]
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This global economy briefing covers Monday, April 13 — the most paradoxical session of the war. The Islamabad talks collapsed over the weekend. Trump ordered a naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. WTI surged above $104 and the Dow fell 400 points at the open. Then Trump said Iran had “called” and “wants a […]
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