Asia
Coronavirus in conflict: The fight has hardly begun
The War on Covid-19
In the face of the Covid-19 pandemic, the mobilising language of war is being used by leaders from UN Secretary-General António Guterres and World Health…
Fighting corona will strain US military capacity in the Indo-Pacific
Captain Brett E. Crozier, the recently deposed commander of America’s pandemic-stricken aircraft carrier the USS Theodore Roosevelt, was absolutely right when he told his…
Indonesia: A health and economic crisis also threatens national unity
The spread of Covid-19 throughout Indonesia is more than a health and economic crisis but a direct challenge to national unity. What began as a problem of resources and hospital…
Covid forces Singapore to confront conditions for its migrant workers
In 2015, a small group of migrant workers gave me a tour of their home, a former factory building that had been retrofitted to house construction workers from Bangladesh. About…
Japan and coronavirus: Abe needs to make bold decisions
The last ten days in Japan have been extraordinary. First, the global Covid-19 pandemic forced the International Olympic Committee to postpone the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics…
US regional leadership: A shot across the bow
For years at the Shangri-La Dialogue, the pre-eminent meeting of defence ministers held in Singapore, successive secretaries of defence from the United States have repeated ad…
Xi Jinping emerges stronger from Covid-19 outbreak
The tardy response by the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) to the Covid-19 outbreak triggered widespread community outrage. But Beijing’s draconian crackdown, paired with…
Commentary
How the virus could stagger Asia's giants
COVID-19 looks set to hit the emerging world hard. For Australia, what happens in India and Indonesia could be most consequential. Originally published in the Australian Financial…
Japanese whaling is down but not out
Even before the coronavirus pandemic began to dominate the news, and as Australia’s bush fires took most of the media oxygen, this past summer was an unusually quiet period in the…
Timor-Leste: The consequences of Covid-19
As of today, Timor-Leste has one confirmed case of Covid-19. Nonetheless, the feeling of panic among the public has been mounting. There is a valid reason for this: Timor-Leste’s…