Letter From the Editors

With apologies to Francis Fukuyama, there is no “end of history.” Time continues to pass, and events continue to unfold. Inflection points that seem to decisively end a historical period – like the fall of Saigon, which happened 50 years ago on April 30 – simply mark the beginning of a new phase, with the same players and the same historical grievances. Even when a pivot point is identified in real time, the direction of the turn isn’t always clear. 

In this issue, we revisit the fall of Saigon with the benefit of historical hindsight, and then try to make sense of two trendlines still very much in progress, both of which will be of enormous import for the future of our world: the China-U.S. AI race, and the prolonged transition away from coal in four key Asian countries. 

Our cover story marks the 50th anniversary of the fall of Saigon and the unification of Vietnam under communist rule. At the time, U.S. analysts and officials alike feared the ultimate victory of the Communist Party of Vietnam would set in motion a chain of “dominos,” with more and more countries in Southeast Asia and beyond being conquered by communist forces. But, as Nayan Chanda, who was a journalist in Saigon in April 1975, notes, history proved that theory wrong. Far from backing a united wave of communist expansion, China and Vietnam (in league with the Soviets) returned to their frequent pattern of historical enmity and proxy warfare, explains Chanda, who is now an associate professor of international relations at Ashoka University in India. “Fifty years after the communist victory [in South Vietnam], the old domino theory seems to have been definitively replaced by a conflict a thousand years in the making,” he concludes.

Next we turn to the AI race, which kicked into an even higher gear when China revealed its DeepSeek model in January 2025. Sara Hsu, a professor at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville’s Haslam College of Business, writes that in the AI race between the United States and China, the important features to track include not only semiconductors or model speeds but even more fundamental building blocks: energy, rare earth elements, and human talent. “These critical inputs into the AI industry face vastly different structures in the two countries and may determine the pace and scale of AI innovation,” Hsu explains.

Finally, we turn to an issue of critical importance to our world’s future: the continued use of coal. Asia is home to the largest fleet of coal plants; its industries and economies have been built on the back of the dirty fossil fuel. Amid stated plans to phase out coal, as Ghee Peh of the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) explains, China, Japan, South Korea, and Indonesia have all increased their coal power capacity since 2020 – but utilization hours have fallen too. In each country, a complex mix of demand and supply, domestic policies and regulations, complicate the shift to cleaner, and more efficient, sources of energy. Although renewables are the most cost-effective energy source, Peh notes, these countries are nevertheless finding it difficult to break coal’s grasp. But time is not on coal’s side.

We hope you enjoy these stories and the many more in the following pages.