Asia

Milton Osborne mischaracterises the Mekong River Commission when writing last month in The Interpreter that the regional organisation “ignores reality”. To say we were “celebrating” the health of the river at our Mekong Day event on 5 April overlooks the fact that on that day I continued to

Book Review: The Avoidable War: The Dangers of a Catastrophic Conflict between the US and Xi Jinping’s China, by Kevin Rudd (Hatchette 2022)  The rise of a strong and confident China has had more implications for Australia than perhaps any other advanced country apart from the United States

As the relationship between longtime allies Saudi Arabia and the United States becomes increasingly strained, China could cultivate a stronger bond with the Middle Eastern kingdom. In a recent phone call between Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (colloquially known as MBS) and China’s

On 19 April, a suicide bomber struck as students were coming out of school in Kabul, Afghanistan, leaving dozens injured and at least six dead. The brutality of the attack – and others that occurred later that week – shook Afghanistan and the Afghan diaspora in Australia. The youngest victim

The sun baked the concrete and tarmac as mourners walked behind a hearse carrying Nagaenthran K Dharmalingam, wailing and crying out for the life that had been lost. Over 200 people attended his funeral, sending him off on the final leg of a horrific journey that had begun 13 years ago, when

A military parade in the streets of Pyongyang last month gave North Korea another chance to show off its new Hwasong-17 intercontinental ballistic missile while marking the 90th anniversary of the foundation of the Korean People’s Revolution Army. Kim Jong-un, lauding the country’s nuclear

Solomon Islands has signed a security pact with China and set off a flurry of foreign policy chatter in Australia and the region. Understandably, the focus of the discussion is on why this has happened, what this means, what to do next, and of course, because Australia is in the midst of an election

On 12 April, the Indonesian parliament announced plans to establish three new provinces in West Papua. Currently, the western part of the island of New Guinea consists of two provinces: West Papua Province and Papua Province. The plan is to break down these two administrative regions into five, with

Following Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in February, there has been ongoing controversy over the response by the Vietnamese government, which has refrained from naming Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war an “invasion”, abstained from the United Nations resolution condemning Russia’s

Australia’s election campaign has been consumed by the Solomon-China security pact in recent days. Labor has cried “Pacific stuff up”, mocking the Coalition government’s Pacific Step-up policy to strengthen neighbourhood ties. In turn, the Coalition has seized on past comments about foreign

Labor has described Solomon Islands’ security pact with China as Australia’s biggest foreign policy failure in the Pacific since the Second World War, but this is hyperbole. Australia’s biggest foreign policy failure in the region – ever – is its failure to address (at both a national and

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has led to a food shortage – or crisis for some – in unexpected places across the world. For wheat, maize, barley and sunflower oil, Russia and Ukraine are among the biggest global producers. Russia is also the world’s top exporter of fertiliser and

Timorese voters head to the polls again on Tuesday 19 April for the second round of the country’s presidential election. The campaign, following a first round of voting last month, pits two long-standing political figures against each other – incumbent president Francisco “Lú-Olo” Guterres

Myanmar is fortunate to have extraordinary travel destinations within its borders. But these tourist jewels have been denied to most foreigners since the pandemic began and then the coup in February 2021. But, after years of closed borders, Myanmar is once again opening up to foreign tourists from

Do South Koreans view North Korea’s nuclear weapons as a threat? In addition to North Korea ratcheting up missile tests this year, including the first by an intercontinental ballistic missile since 2017, there has also been an increase in aggressive rhetoric from Kim Yo-jong, sister to North

Vietnam recently banned the film Uncharted from domestic distribution due to a scene depicting an “illegal image” of China’s infamous “nine-dash line”. This is not the first time popular culture has become embroiled in the politics of the South China Sea. In 2021, the Philippines’

The Southeast Asian maritime domain continues to be fraught. The Covid-19 pandemic brought about an observable increase in transnational crimes such as smuggling – at first, pandemic-related medical material, then later food – as well as illegal drug trading and human trafficking. Piracy and

The United Kingdom became ASEAN’s newest dialogue partner in 2021 soon after launching its Indo-Pacific tilt. In the new diplomatic life after Brexit, the UK’s renewed attention to the broader two oceans, and ASEAN in particular, needed reframing. The dialogue partner status presents a

Back to the future The Morrison government gave the development aid sector an unexpected surprise with a budget spending increase mostly in the Pacific, just as the latest crisis in Solomon Islands was occurring. There is still plenty of grumbling that this – perhaps parting gift given the

In recent years, the rise of illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing activities, transnational organised crime at sea, expansion of terrorist networks and activities by sea, and increasingly belligerent assertions of unilateral maritime claims have prompted coastal states in the East Asian

Maritime scholars and practitioners often wrestle with the question of what a “desirable” architecture for maritime security should be, and how must it be properly implemented? The issue is complex, because although security is best delivered in collective and cooperative settings, there is

Anxieties about the fate of liberalism are everywhere rising, as Francis Fukuyama makes clear in his latest defence of ideals he once described as “the endpoint of mankind’s ideological evolution”. Discontent with liberalism’s double standards and political resistance to the wealth

Someone famous once reputedly quipped “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.” So there is a certain echo to the AUKUS arrangement, which brings together Australia, United Kingdom and United States to share vital defence technologies in an effort to stabilise the Indo Pacific