Asia

A curious anomaly in Japan is that official hospital ships have not been built or used since the end of the Second World War. This is despite the fact that Japan has regular disasters, such as earthquakes, typhoons, tsunamis, volcano eruptions, and floods. In such devastating disasters, medical

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has announced his first trip to Africa, 15–19 February, with stops in Senegal, Ethiopia, and Angola. The choice of these three countries demonstrates that the US remains focused on security and economic investment issues in Africa, and, in the case of Angola, is

Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi highlighted the importance of developing what she called “strategic trust” in Australia-Indonesia relations, just ahead of the visit to Canberra this week by President Joko Widodo (“Jokowi”). Retno declared a more trusting Australia-Indonesia

On 10 February, Indonesian President Joko Widodo (“Jokowi”) will address Australia’s parliament. Indonesia is often referred to as the democratic success story of Southeast Asia and a model of Muslim democracy, yet it has been responsible for significant backsliding on human rights in recent

After 47 years of a chaotic marriage, and more than three years of debates and negotiations that have cost two prime ministers, the United Kingdom has finally separated from the European Union. The current conversations on the global consequences of this rupture have largely ignored the Pacific,

If Australians could rely on the US to remain the uncontested most powerful state in our region, and the preferred security partner for our neighbours, we would be mad not to want a future like that. Maintenance of the post-Second World War American-led order in Asia has required major sacrifices

Six months ahead of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, Japan–North Korea relations remain strained. Since September 2018, the Olympic organising committee withheld North Korea’s request to access the Olympics “extranet”, where national Olympic committees can share information, because it had to

In the past decade, Latin America has become one of the venues for the strategic dispute between the United States and China. This is a natural consequence of Beijing’s growing economic and political links with a region that has traditionally been part of Washington’s sphere of influence. Due

On a sunny Tuesday in the third week of January, a cargo ship named Diyala docked at Gwadar seaport, in south-west Pakistan. The enthusiastic port staff quickly unloaded the cargo. When the unloading was finished, Chinese officials operating the port, along with their Pakistani counterparts, posed

Fresh vegetables were gone. Instant noodles, bread, and crackers were nowhere to be seen. Sanitising products like bleach, Dettol hand soap and Clorox wipes were sold out, and many other food products and daily necessities were out of stock. The streets were eerily empty, but long queues for face

Strategic competition between the United States and China has come to dominate US foreign policy debates. That competition is multifaceted – while rooted principally in a quest for economic pre-eminence and technological mastery, it possesses increasingly important military and ideological

Analysis as to how Hanoi might resolve its South China Sea disputes with other claimants has been overshadowed by a near exclusive depiction of its competition with Beijing. Hanoi’s current maritime disputes with Beijing have presented few opportunities for strategic progress. Comparatively, the

Created in 2016, the Raisina Dialogue has quickly become India’s premier event on foreign policy and strategic affairs, with the aim to increase engagement of global actors with Asia and of Asia with the world. It is no coincidence that the dialogue started shortly after the Narendra Modi–led

It is too early to make a definitive judgement about how Beijing has handled the outbreak of the potentially deadly coronavirus in Wuhan, a city of 11 million in central China. But it is already clear that any assessment will have to take into account not just the medical side of the virus’s

Early in the new year, India’s defence industry witnessed a rare moment of glory when the domestically developed light combat aircraft made its first-ever landing on the navy’s aircraft carrier INS Vikramaditya. It was a major achievement for the Indian navy – a force that has spearheaded

“CHINA’S GDP GROWS AT SLOWEST RATE IN 29 YEARS” bellowed the Financial Times headline last week. Never mind that this rate was still three times faster than OECD growth. The past decade has seen a relentlessly alarmist narrative about China’s slowing growth, yet China is still recording over

In an extraordinary development, the government’s revised budget for 2020 failed to pass Timor-Leste’s parliament last Friday, despite the governing alliance having an outright majority. Xanana Gusmão’s CNRT – the largest of the three parties of the Alliance for Change and Progress (AMP

It was supposed to be a routine technical procedure: upgrading telecommunications networks from the old fourth-generation (4G) standard to the newest fifth-generation (5G) technology. But this process quickly became the subject of heated debate in many Western capitals, essentially around one

Change of pace If Australia’s bushfire crisis has done one thing to inadvertently calm the national zeitgeist during the holiday season, it is in the way climate change has suddenly returned to supplant China as the country’s biggest wicked problem. But in reality, these two big-C issues

Moments after Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen secured a second term in a landslide election victory on Saturday, she took six questions from journalists. The first, from a BBC reporter, asked Tsai whether she had Chinese leader Xi Jinping to thank for her victory. The question drew laughter and a

Since the announcement in July last year that the Lao government was notifying the Mekong River Commission (MRC) of its intention to proceed with the construction of a dam due to be completed by 2027, not far from the old royal capital of Luang Prabang, there has been a steady increase in the

Messaging, as anyone knows, is a big part of politics. In Zhongnanhai, the Communist Party headquarters in Beijing, messaging is a form of gospel. A strong storyline, no matter how twisted the truth becomes (e.g., Uighurs and “education camps”), is central to much of what goes on there, and