This article analyzes activities of defense diplomacy between Vietnam and the US before the Ukraine war. Based on these, the author assesses the possible impacts of the war on US-Vietnam defense cooperation. By clarifying Vietnam’s stance on the Ukraine war as well as the benefits that the US enjoys through its relationship with Vietnam, the author projects an optimistic view of the prospects of US-Vietnam relations in general and the two nations’ defense diplomacy in particular. The article asserts that Russia’s “special military campaign” in Ukraine had short-term impacts on US-Vietnam relations, but in the long term the United States’ strategic interest in cooperating with Vietnam remains unchanged. The fact that the US has actively sanctioned Russia over the Ukraine war does not mean that it has forgotten China, which has been stepping up its unilateral actions in the Indo-Pacific region, where the US is also building up its influence. Moreover, the concern that China may imitate Russia to use force against Taiwan or in the South China Sea will likely further motivate the US to increase cooperation with Vietnam.

The digital economy has become a powerful engine for global economic resurgence in the post-pandemic era. As an ASEAN developing country, Thailand greatly values the digital economy, which facilitates its “Thailand 4.0” Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). By focusing on digitalization trends in Thailand, this article examines whether new technological trends will have beneficial or detrimental impacts on the socioeconomic flowering of the Global South in the digital age. The “Constructive-Sustainable Development Theoretical Framework” is formulated by combining constructivism and the SDGs for conducting analysis. According to empirical research, bridging the digital divide and reducing poverty need to be Thailand’s top priorities. Therefore, Thai policy instruments should promote equal distribution of socioeconomic resources and close the digital divide, accelerate digital talent cultivation to fill the talent gap, build partnership networks that support transnational governance in cyberspace, promote third-party market cooperation, and share the reciprocal profits of development.

This article examines notions of national identity and diversity in Thailand during the twentieth century. It draws on ethnographies, historical fiction, jungle adventure, romance, and official documents to question common notions of Thai identity and of what constitutes socially relevant Thai-language writing. The focus is in part on so-called hill peoples, whom scholarship has generally regarded as irrelevant to an understanding of Thai society. The study suggests a recurring debate among rival Thai perspectives on society, identity, and inequality. I divide the range of social imaginaries into three groups. Some manifest unambiguous pluralism and interethnic equivalence. Others express a class-based critique of the harm that derives from hierarchy and social inequalities. The third view insists on Thai distinction from and superiority over other peoples. The implications of this chauvinism are often elitist, sometimes racist, and also at times authoritarian. Of the three views that I identify, the emphasis on pluralism and interethnic equivalence has never received any notice from scholars of Thai society and culture.

This article proves how the practical implementation of the Gesamtkunstwerk idea in design objects in Indonesia can provide sociopolitical value. The framework of Gesamtkunstwerk in this study is contained in two design projects: the architecture of the Indonesian Legislative Building Complex by Soejoedi Wirjoatmodjo and the design of museum objects in the Electricity and New Energy Museum by Widagdo. The literature review leads to two perspectives of Gesamtkunstwerk—the ideas of Wilhelm Richard Wagner and those of the Bauhaus School—with both implemented together in a design object. Data were collected in April and July 2022 through field observations, supported by interviews. The data were analyzed through both perspectives based on the idea of Gesamtkunstwerk. The results showed that the idea of Gesamtkunstwerk was successfully implemented in the two design projects. The first project aimed to represent the noble values of Indonesia and demonstrate the nation’s proficiency in modern technology, while the second aimed to incorporate interdisciplinary knowledge in the presentation of museum objects, creating a shared experience for visitors. In conclusion, the simultaneous implementation of both Gesamtkunstwerk perspectives—Wagner’s and the Bauhaus—allowed for a surprising amount of meaning in design objects.

The 2020–23 wave of protests in Thailand forever changed the country’s political landscape. While stemming from and inspired by the 2011 protests, its ability to undermine the hegemony of form and the eternal state of Thailand remains unmatched. People no longer act as if everything is normal but have started to acknowledge the underlying problems. Through parodies and cynicism, they expose the fragility of the eternal state. The Internet has made it easier for subversive acts to spread. To evade censorship, subversive acts use metaphorical and paradoxical parody as a tool to disguise messages as innocuous. Thailand has experienced turbulence in the past decades with the interregnum crisis. People who believed in the regime have become ta sawang (disillusioned)—but with the draconian lèse-majesté law, they have no way to voice their dissent except through cynicism and parody.

Printing technologies that arrived in Laos with French colonialism (1893–1945) facilitated the Lao manuscript culture by introducing new writing tools and writing support. When storing and categorizing manuscripts in a repository, librarians began using new technologies such as writing tools and paper labels as well as the Roman alphabet to encode pronunciations for vernacular titles of anisong manuscripts. Monk-preachers began using pen to correct sermonic texts written on palm leaves. Affiliation markers in the precolonial as well as colonial periods were written mostly in the modern script, since monastic lay assistants—who were sometimes responsible for transporting and storing manuscripts in the monastic library—were illiterate in the Dhamma script. Since the modern Lao script was available in modern printing machines, there was a gradual decrease in the use of the traditional Dhamma script. The modern Lao script was thus used to compensate for the dwindling knowledge of the Dhamma script and to accommodate those who could not read the traditional script but were still part of the manuscript culture.