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Standard & Poor's (one of the 'Big Three' credit rating agencies) has put Australia on negative watch, with a one in three chance that our rating will be downgraded before long. On the face of it, this sounds like a big deal that can only be avoided by budget-tightening actions (which the close

By John Gooding, Digital Editor at the Lowy Institute and Associate Editor at The Interpreter. With a handful of seats still in doubt nearly a week after the election, Australia still doesn't know for sure who the next prime minister will be (though, at the time of writing, it appears Malcolm

It's a tough question, with various layers, and might make Putin himself pause. Here's an attempt at an answer. Putin wants to win; he wants victory. So how he would he define victory? First, he must be able to rule securely till 2024, as a constitutional amendment he enacted allows. Securing that

Last night all two million plus words of the Report of the Iraq Inquiry (otherwise known as the Chilcot report) were released to the general public. The Chilcot Inquiry found that Iraq did not present an imminent threat at the time of military action, that diplomatic efforts seeking disarmament had

The southern Philippines is potentially closer to peace than at any time in the four decades since Muslim insurgents started fighting for independence, but the substantial progress over the past six years is also fragile. The new President, Rodrigo Duterte, needs to build quickly on the foundations

The PNG government has secured a US$500 million loan from Credit Suisse. The government has not said what it will be used for, but it is likely to be a mixture of restructuring domestic debt and funding the 2016 budget deficit. Rio Tinto has divested its 53.8% stake in Bougainville Copper. This

The Chilcot report into the invasion of Iraq will be released later this evening (AEST), and it should be a devastating indictment of how Britain was misled into an illegal, unnecessary, unpopular, foolish and ultimately disastrous war in 2003. Why do I say this? Because almost all the relevant

By John Gooding, Digital Editor at the Lowy Institute and Associate Editor at The Interpreter. Today, finally, is polling day for the 2016 Australian election. With polls indicating Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull is likely to return to office, Sam Roggeveen explored what a victory at the

Want to know why the rest of the world is  a bit nervous about the new president of the Philippines? In this quick comment, Lowy Institute nonresident fellow Malcolm Cook discusses the 'known unknowns and unknown unknowns' of the new Duterte administration that are occupying many in

Israel has entered the 'age of the fifth generation combat aircraft'. Its first F-35I 'Adir' was rolled out at Lockheed-Martin's facility in Ft. Worth, Texas. Israel's new Minister of Defense, Avigdor Liberman, attended, and the Israeli media was filled with superlatives: 'deadlier than any other

Unrest continues in PNG with the tragic murder of a first year student, Graham Romanong, at Unitech in Lae over the weekend. Hundreds of people covered themselves in mud and marched through his home town of Mendi in the Southern Highlands to mourn him. The University's Vice Chancellor Albert

The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) announced its first four loans on Saturday at its first annual general meeting, totalling US$509 million. Three of these initial projects are co-financed by conventional aid donors. Photos from the AGM suggest gender isn’t a high priority for the

  Well, today's been a shocker. In what will be my last Weekend Catch-up for The Interpreter, the news that the UK has voted to leave the EU has been demoralising. I can't help but think that a liberal project, perhaps the most significant since the UN was established after World War Two, has

By Jonathan Pryke, Research Fellow and Director of the Aus-PNG Network in the Lowy Institute's Melanesia Program, and Kath Taplin, Senior Development Manager for Femili PNG Rates of gender-based violence in Papua New Guinea (and in the Pacific Islands region more broadly) are among the highest in

By Brittany Betteridge, an intern with the Lowy Institute's East Asia program. When Jakarta Governor Jokowi was elected president of Indonesia in 2014, his vice governor, Ahok, succeeded him. Jokowi and Ahok had been running mates in the Jakarta gubernatorial election in 2012, with millions of

Media attention is back on Tunisia following recent startling declarations by Rached Ghannouchi and his political party, Ennahda, which was in power from late 2011 to early 2014. On 19 May, the eve of Ennahda's 10th Congress, Ghannouchi outlined to Le Monde the ideological changes taking place

There has been a lot of coverage on Nauru in recent weeks. The ABC ran a story on Nauru's secret history while more recently A Current Affair was given exclusive access to Australia's detention facilities on the island nation. The 'expose' from A Current Affair has been criticised for a lack of

With the end of the dry season in the Lower Mekong Basin (LMB) — a period roughly running from November to May — the magnitude of the problems affecting the Mekong River is starkly apparent. With estimates that the river has been at its lowest level in the last 100 years — a circumstance

Today the Lowy Institute launched the 12th annual Lowy Institute Poll, which asks Australians how the feel about issues concerning the world and Australia's place in it. As always, there are many interesting findings; for analysis of this year's results, see Alex Oliver's post from this morning.  

The UN has woefully mismanaged the response to horrific allegations of the sexual abuse of children by UN peacekeepers in the Central African Republic. Citing impunity and lack of accountability, the whistle-blower who originally revealed the incidents has now resigned. According to the UN, of the

Meetings of ASEAN ministers are normally fairly soporific affairs. The organisation's consensus way of making decisions and a strong desire to avoid the diverging interests of its members embarrassing one another or worse creates a dull agenda. When those meetings are with external interlocutors,

The recent success of Warcraft: The Beginning in China (especially compared to the US, where it flopped) hints at how the US and China can peacefully co-exist in a multipolar world. Since the end of the Cold War, the US has been the major cultural, economic and military influence in a unipolar

A global prohibition on nuclear weapons might seem improbable given current geopolitical realities. But, over the past year and a half, a majority of the world's nations have declared their readiness to negotiate just that. Brazil, Mexico, Indonesia and the Philippines are among those proposing work