In many Australian policy circles, nation-building is an archaic 1970s term—a throwback to a time when the federal government built infrastructure to encourage national prosperity. Today, cash-strapped federal, state, territory and local governments often have …
With China increasing the pressure both on land and at sea, Vietnam is facing a hard choice: should it continue its maritime tilt adopted since the early 2000s or should it pivot back to the …
Fixing issues at the expense of positioning Australia for the future is likely to be a theme of the 2022–23 federal budget to be released later this month. It’s a case of focusing on the …
As Cambodia, Indonesia and Thailand gear up to host major world summits next month, the 55-year-old Association of Southeast Asian Nations is facing an existential crisis, owing to severe internal splits over Russia’s invasion of …
In 2016, I wrote a report on Australia’s defence and security partnership with Singapore, a few months after bilateral ties were upgraded to a comprehensive strategic partnership. I concluded then that the ‘lion and kangaroo’ …
As Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong visits Canberra this week for the annual Australia–Singapore leaders’ dialogue and meets Anthony Albanese for the first time since the Labor leader became prime minister, the focus should …
China has overtaken the United States to top the world in the number of high-quality scientific papers it is producing. Analysis by Japan’s National Institute of Science and Technology Policy indicates a marked improvement in …
For decades, Australians’ faith in globalisation and economic liberalism ensured that discussions about resilience focussed on recovery from short-term disasters. But the impacts of Covid-19 and the exponential decline in global security in recent years …
On 29 September, member states of the International Telecommunications Union voted to elect Doreen Bogdan-Martin as the organisation’s next secretary-general. Bogdan-Martin—a US national who’s served in the ITU since 1994—was in contention for the top …
The terms of reference for the defence strategic review provided by the government to the independent leads are just short of two pages long. The length of this document doesn’t do justice to all that …
One of the significant challenges with commodity investments is knowing when to buy and sell. Some view such investments as a form of institutionalised gambling. However, an understanding of the market, and a firm plan …
The Western media will focus its coverage of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit beginning today in Uzbekistan on the dynamic between three of the most powerful leaders in the world—Chinese President Xi Jinping, Indian Prime …
