Global Issues

When you have the privilege of working in international relations, there are some experiences that stay with you for life. There are the places you go and the people you meet. Conversations that start at the roundtable, continue into dinner, and often go late into the night. At airports and hotels,

Australia plans to spend a lot more on defence to confront what Prime Minister Scott Morrison says will be “a post-COVID world that is poorer, that is more dangerous, and that is more disorderly”. A chorus of voices have responded that Australian foreign policy risks becoming unbalanced, with

The recently announced $270 billion commitment to expand Australia’s military capability sets the tone for a deteriorating strategic environment. The 2020 Defence Strategic Update and Force Structure Plan are only part of the answer in aligning Australia’s response to this challenging future. It

Celebrity sells – it always has. But in the digital age, the boundaries of celebrity have changed. Once it was the prerogative of movie, sports or music stars to front a fashion label or promote perfume. But nowadays the marketplace is saturated with any number of online lifestyle and wellness “

In this episode of COVIDcast, Lowy Institute senior fellow Richard McGregor sat down with Dexter Roberts to discuss his new book, The Myth of Chinese Capitalism: The Worker, The Factory and the Future of the World. Roberts was based in China for more than two decades reporting for Bloomberg

Multilateralism lives With European leaders having just spent five days in close-contact negotiations in Brussels and now Australia’s first offshore ministerial visit for almost five months to Washington, a post-Covid diplomatic agenda is tentatively taking shape. Just what Covid 19 might

With fewer than 100 days until the next election, US President Donald Trump has made it clear that he’s done with the coronavirus. Last week, he shifted his talking points to align with the advice of public health experts, but he gave no indication that he actually planned to focus on improving

It took four days and a “historical” summit for the heads of states and governments of Europe to finally agree on the recovery plan that should help the European Union face the devastating consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic. Celebrated by a recovery in local stocks, the agreement last week

Did anyone notice that the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement (USMCA), the revised NAFTA, entered into force on 1 July? If not, do not be too concerned, as the Covid-19 crisis has probably affected that as well. Still, this deal is (without getting too much into the weeds of whether it is

Rated as the country with the highest disaster risk worldwide, Vanuatu is no stranger to severe tropical cyclones. When Tropical Cyclone Pam struck the country in 2015, it affected around 166,000 people and left a trail of destruction. Similarly, Tropical Cyclone Harold, a category 5 cyclone that

To understand China, it’s not a bad idea to keep an eye on what is happening inside the country. Much of the current international discussion about China focuses on China’s plans to expand its overseas influence – both in Asia and beyond. But as the legendary American politician Tip O’Neill

On Saturday last week, following weeks of lobbying by humanitarian agencies and difficult diplomatic negotiations, the UN Security Council renewed its authorisation for the UN and its partners to provide humanitarian assistance in north-western Syria from across the Turkish border. The final

Labour pains High-end guest workers play such a big role in Singapore’s carefully constructed economy that they even have their own technocratic acronym: foreign PMETs – for professionals, managers, executives and technicians. But in one of the many deglobalisation cracks wrought by Covid-19

After almost four months of lockdown measures due to Covid-19, the Philippines government in June eased restrictions for the majority of the country. But even as public transport systems slowly got back to running, something was missing: the distinctive jeepneys, still banned from plying their trade

Amid the many consequences of the coronavirus pandemic, thousands of seafarers around the world are now locked onboard their ships with expired contracts and unable to get home. In a normal month, approximately 100,000 seafarers leave their ships and are replaced by others, but travel

On Sunday 5 July, Tokyo goes to the quadrennial polls to elect its governor, the position occupied since 2016 by Yuriko Koike, the city’s first female chief executive. Koike is seeking another term and is the leading candidate among 21 others. The international media typically doesn't pay much

The Covid-19 pandemic is affecting democracies in the Asia-Pacific region in ways that demand Australian attention. The ability to weather a crisis of this magnitude depends upon partnerships and collaboration – economic, social and political – with key countries in the region. These

Indians have been very enthusiastic users of all forms of social media, but TikTok has found them to be an especially eager audience. With 660 million downloads of the app and more than 120 million active users, India represents TikTok’s biggest foreign market. The short-video platform

As the historical development of international law has been dominated by European principles and doctrine, there is an argument that public international law has always been associated with a Western-centric view of the world. Moreover, major public international law judicial organs such

The China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is one of the flagship projects of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). It initially attracted US$46 billion in investment, which was later increased to $62 billion by April 2017, to support large-scale “infrastructure construction” and industrial

The pandemic has both amplified and accelerated the escalating strategic rivalry between the United States and China … which has become much more intense in the last few months. That’s how Hugh White, Emeritus Professor of Strategic Studies at the Australian National University, describes the

The Chagos Archipelago of 54 islands, formerly administered as a dependency of the British Colony of Mauritius, was excised from Mauritius by the UK in 1965, three years before independence. It was renamed the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT), and its inhabitants (about 1500 people) were