Europe

It wasn’t so long ago that Azerbaijan was a focus of global attention, the country a rare feature of international headlines after a simmering dispute with neighbouring Armenia over control of Nagorno-Karabakh turned violent. This local standoff had long been feared for potential wider

India’s position on the Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has elicited a surprising amount of scrutiny. As a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council, India along with the United Arab Emirates chose to abstain on resolutions against Russia. At the UN General Assembly, India was the most

No matter what happens in Ukraine, this war has been a key turning point for the European Union. Russia, a divisive issue before the war In order to understand the current situation, it is necessary to go back in time to the years leading to 2021, before Russian President Vladimir Putin started

At the heart of a feminist approach to foreign policy is a commitment to non-violence. Not because the framework is unmoored from the realities of the world we live in, but because a feminist approach does not simply accept the world as it finds it, but rather seeks to unpack the drivers of the

As the West braces for a possible escalation of Russian ransomware attacks in retaliation for support to Ukraine, the first meeting to negotiate a new global cybercrime treaty began quietly last week at the United Nations in New York – a new treaty ironically pushed on the international community

In the midst of an international crisis, it is remarkable when small countries still find the courage to adhere to their democratic principles. This time the Timorese government has chosen to respect its independence history and democratic values by condemning the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This

Until this week, everyone thought the European Union’s Temporary Protection Directive was dead in the water. Drafted 21 years ago in the aftermath of the Yugoslav crisis, it was European countries’ collective call to action if they were ever faced with large-scale refugee arrivals again. But

When the Chinese embassy in Ukraine hastily began the evacuation of its citizens much later than those of other nations, it seemed a sign that Beijing either wasn’t given advance notice of the Russian invasion, or at least failed to grasp the immediacy. In a call with Russian President Vladimir

Though not without precedent against lesser rivals, the decision to impose severe financial sanctions against a major economy – and a nuclear-armed great power – has been a dramatic step. Not only are Russian elites, and Vladimir Putin himself, being economically targeted following the

One week in, the information war that has accompanied, and to an extent framed, the military invasion of Ukraine has not gone as Vladimir Putin may have hoped. But it still might. So far, the use of social media during, and as part of, the conflict has been encouraging for those in Ukraine, in

Six days after Russia invaded Ukraine, a mass exodus has begun. At least half a million people are estimated to have fled Ukraine, around half of them to Poland, and others to Hungary, Moldova and Romania. Hundreds of thousands more are internally displaced, either heading to safer locations within

It wasn’t that long ago that sanctions busting was a relatively straightforward, if risky, gig. As Australian wheat exporter AWB showed when Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was under sanction in the late 1990s and early 2000s, it was a case of lining up a few officials, throwing in some kickbacks and

Russia is a huge producer and exporter of fossil fuels, especially oil and gas. By waging war on Ukraine and all this brings with it for geopolitics, its energy trade will change. It will be a short-term boost to other energy exporters, but the bigger effect will be a fundamental re-think on energy

“Australians always stand up to bullies, and we will be standing up to Russia”, declared Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison last week, announcing a suite of sanctions against Russia after Vladimir Putin’s decision to recognise the separatist regions in eastern Ukraine,

In a long speech this week, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin crossed the Rubicon by recognising the “independent” republics of Luhansk and Donetsk in eastern Ukraine, creating the pretext for what is now a full-scale Russian invasion of its neighbour. But Putin’s was not the only

The 2008 financial crisis accelerated China’s emergence as a global power in ways that Beijing found unsettling. The economic mess in the North Atlantic world thrust the People’s Republic of China into a global position that it had thought would take a generation to reach. Suddenly China could

Lesson 1:  The era of state-on-state conflict is still with us The idea that war between nations has become an anachronism over the last 40 years has some statistical support, but evidence from the post-Cold War period of relative peace needs to be weighed against hundreds of years of

Almost four years ago, I argued in The Interpreter that Vladimir Putin’s decision to pursue a range of weapons specifically designed to defeat America’s Ballistic Missile Defence (BMD) system was irrational behaviour, being an expensive solution to a problem which did not exist. In particular

A remote sandbank in the middle of the Indian Ocean, known as Blenheim Reef, is hitting the international news. The Mauritian government has sponsored an expedition to the reef to embarrass Britain in their long-running dispute over ownership of the Chagos Archipelago – which is home to the US

In President Vladimir Putin’s inauguration speech in 2000 he stated that Russia must “defend Russian citizens everywhere” and create a country which is “respected in the world”. Ever since, Putin has been committed to implementing his geostrategic plan of returning Russia to what he thinks

It is less than two months since Angela Merkel stood down as chancellor of Germany, and a “traffic light” coalition government comprising the Social Democrats, Greens and Free Democrats was installed in Berlin. We are still getting to know the faces in the new administration. One of them,

It could “destroy the future of our children,” claimed Austria’s Environment Minister Leonore Gewessler. “We believe this technology is too dangerous,” said German government spokeswoman Christiane Hoffmann. Luxembourg’s Energy Minister Claude Turmes called it a “provocation”. Were

Global demand for battery-producing lithium is expected to significantly rise over the next decade for use in the storage of renewable energy – so much that the US Geological Survey last year reported “lithium supply security has become a top priority for technology companies in the United