Richard Javad Heydarian is a lecturer in international affairs and political science at Ateneo De Manila University and a policy adviser at the Philippine House of Representatives. As a specialist on Asian geopolitics and economic affairs, he has written for or been interviewed by Al Jazeera, Asia Times, BBC, Bloomberg, The New York Times, The Huffington Post, The Diplomat, Foreign Policy In Focus and USA TODAY, among other leading international publications.  He is the author of How Capitalism Failed the Arab World: The Economic Roots and Precarious Future of the Middle East Uprisings (Zed, London), and the forthcoming book The Philippines: The U.S., China, and the Struggle for Asia’s Pivot State (Zed, 2015).