If Australia’s relationship with China continues to deteriorate, part of Beijing’s response could be to put more effort into challenging our strategic interests in our immediate region—the South Pacific. This is happening already in Papua …
After an unseemly scramble that raised concerns about cronyism, economic nationalism and Sino-American tensions, it appears as though the Trump administration’s threat to ban TikTok in the US will result in a new ‘partnership’ with …
Amid the many political crises of 2020, progress towards the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership has attracted practically no attention. Yet this ‘mega-regional’ free trade agreement is of massive significance for the Indo-Pacific. On arrival, RCEP …
After the outbreak of Covid-19 earlier this year, some predicted that the pandemic’s economic reverberations in Sri Lanka would lead China to increase its already considerable funding to the island state. Indeed, as early as …
An open letter signed by 103 experts recently called for the US to re-embrace its Cold War strategy for dealing with Russia. It argued that competition should be balanced with diplomacy and identified arenas for …
Australia started the journalist war with China. Tit-for-tat logic made it inevitable that Australian journalists in China would pay the price. Hard questions should be asked about Canberra’s thinking on the costs and consequences of …
Watching mob violence in the streets of America, I recalled an encounter in Kosovo in 1999. Driving through the country one day in a UN vehicle, I stopped at the house of a man who, …
In this episode, ASPI’s Leanne Close and Elise Thomas discuss right-wing extremism, conspiracy theories and some of the different groups disseminating them. They consider the responses from social media companies and offer suggestions on how …
It’s true that Australia is underinvesting in diplomacy given the type of world we are living in. But it’s wrongheaded to blame MPs and ministers for not simply understanding the intrinsic value of the Department …
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s unexpected resignation last month for health reasons has raised many questions about the legacy of the country’s longest-serving premier. One of them is whether his successor, Yoshihide Suga, will be …
Welcome to ‘The threat spectrum’, a twice-monthly update focusing on non-traditional security threats. It’s divided into five sections covering climate change (Planet A), trends in democracy and authoritarianism (Democracy watch), mis- and disinformation (Information operations), …
In what seems like another age, back in August 2018 in the midst of yet another change in prime ministers, Australia made a world-first decision to exclude high-risk vendors from its 5G networks. Others, such …