Debate: "General"
Disinformation threatens evidence-based policymaking

Disinformation often raises concerns about influencing politicians and the outcome of elections and about fostering extremism. Most of us are familiar with the tag ‘fake news’ and with inadvertent or deliberate disinformation spread through social …

Firming up Australia’s soft power in Indonesia

In an earlier Strategist post, I touched on Australia’s aid and soft power—an aspiration too often unfulfilled for all the rhetoric to the contrary. Australia’s efforts on soft power in Indonesia generally fit in the …

Australia–Indonesia relations: keeping it real

Observers of the relationship between Australia and Indonesia can’t have missed Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s declaration a year ago that the two countries enjoyed a level of ‘trust that underpins only the truest of …

Ending the forever war in Afghanistan

Speaking in Kabul on 14 February on the 32nd anniversary of the Soviet Union’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, the country’s president, Ashraf Ghani, made an important distinction. The civil war that devastated Afghanistan after the withdrawal …