Global Issues

Malcolm Turnbull's visit to Jakarta this week did not signal any drastic changes for the direction of the Australia-Indonesia relationship, but it did leave relations considerably warmer than before. So warm, in fact, that both the prime minister and his Indonesian counterpart were forced to remove

The G20’s tenth leaders' summit will take place in Antalya, Turkey at the end of this week. Predictions about what will eventuate from the Summit vary from John Kirton’s declaration that it promises significant success to Matt Goodman’s cautioning against expectations of a substantial summit

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan after his election victory (Photo: Yasin Bulbul/Getty Images) The result of the 1 November election in Turkey is clear but the country's future is not. The character of the new government, its treatment of Turkey's Kurdish minority, and its relations with

A few days ago a suggestion was made on Crikey that DFAT, Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, should be scrapped. I was tempted to ignore it, because as far as I can tell, the author, Jason Murphy, based his call largely on the fact that he just doesn't like free trade agreements

A thousand pages on corporate tax shenanigans is not normally the sort of thing that captures the public imagination. But amid the technical detail of international tax rule changes proposed by the OECD lie some of the most fundamental governance developments of recent years. The aim of the OECD-

Hollywood sci-fi epic The Martian, which opened in cinemas yesterday, is a gripping, solid piece of cinema with some realistic grounding in science and spaceflight. True, there are convenient scientific omissions, but overall this film is closer to the truth than most space movies. I recommend it

By the Lowy Institute's G20 Fellow Tristram Sainsbury and Research Associate Casper Wuite. Chatham House's Paola Subacchi recently asked why the G20 has not addressed the Syrian refugee crisis. She acknowledges that refugee issues have not historically been within the G20's bailiwick. However, she

Having a Catholic Pope and the General Secretary of the Communist Party of China descend on Washington at almost exactly the same time helped illustrate something important about diplomacy. When staging a high-level state visit, there is a simple choice: emphasise either the head or the heart. This

When the rest of the world dealt with Australia in the past, it was familiar figures that emerged from the VIP planes and who stretched out their experienced hands. For over a decade during the Howard years, Australia not only had the same prime minister, but also the same foreign affairs minister,

A recent British drone strike on British citizens in Syria raises troubling legal questions about the use of military force in purported self-defence overseas. In late August, Britain targeted an ISIS member, Reyaad Khan, in Raqqa, collaterally killing two other ISIS members, including British

Global financial markets are on tenterhooks waiting for the US Federal Reserve to decide when to start raising the Fed funds rate – the short-term interest rate which sets the datum for many other interest rates. The media have reported this in portentous tones, exploring every possible downside

Parliament's Joint Standing Committee on Treaties (JSCOT) presented its report on the Australia India nuclear cooperation Agreement on 8 September after ten of months deliberation. JSCOT's advice must be 'taken into account' though not necessarily acted upon. The Kudankulam nuclear power plant in

The staggering dimensions of the migrant flow into Europe prompts me to offer a note on the Cambodian refugee crisis of the late 1970s and early 1980s, in which I played a small part. I am not suggesting that what happened 35 years ago offers any answer to current challenges. Rather, the

First, the good news. We have enough fossil fuel to survive until the century's end. Today's proven reserves of coal, oil and gas combined is about 83 years (at current usage rates), so Spaceship Earth could make 2100 – the exact date that IPCC scientists have set for mankind's plan to moderate

In an attempt to better manage the migration wave to, and through, borderless Europe, the EU Commission is proposing policies on three fronts. The negotiations in the EU Council will not be easy: they involve some very reluctant governments, especially those from Eastern Europe. The first and

The crisis over garbage collection in Lebanon continues to pile up. This weekend thousands of Lebanese gathered again in downtown Beirut to denounce politicians for their failure to resolve this problem and the myriad others that Lebanon faces. These include, but are not limited to: constant water

By Yanmei Xie, International Crisis Group’s Senior China Analyst, and Rachel Vandenbrink, graduate student at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy of Tufts University. China’s unsuccessful invitation to Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to attend the 70th anniversary celebrations of the

Over the weekend an Egypt court found Al-Jazeera journalists Peter Greste, Mohammed Fahmy and Baher Mohamed guilty on charges of operating in Egypt without a press licence and of ‘spreading false news’. Greste and Fahmy were given sentences of three years in prison; Mohamed was given three years

I started my job at the Federal Reserve three weeks before Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy. I wish I had kept a diary of my initial months at the Fed, so I could recall clearly what we thought was happening each day. I do remember there was a discrete point where suddenly everything felt like

The Marrakesh Accords, the Bali Roadmap, the Cancun Agreements, the Durban Outcomes, the Doha Climate Gateway, the Lima Call for Climate Action – the grand names given to decisions taken under the UN's Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) stand in contrast to the meagre progress made on

Arianto Patunru and Sjamsu Rahardja's recent insightful Lowy Institute Analysis, Trade Protectionism in Indonesia: Bad Times and Bad Policy, invokes 'Sadli's Law', named for early New Order technocrat Mohammad Sadli. Perhaps Indonesianists' most well-loved aphorism, it holds that 'bad times may