Asia
Afghan elections: Impressions from polling day
On 28 September 2019, Afghans again exercised their democratic right to vote in free and fair elections. The September presidential election was the fourth since the toppling of…
Asia’s diversity, made all the same
Book review: The Future is Asian – Commerce, Conflict, and Culture in the 21st Century, by Parag Khanna (Simon & Schuster, 2019)
In The Future is Asian, Parag Khanna provides…
The next phase of the Belt and Road: Podcast out now
After Malaysia became the first country to tear up its corruptly overpriced BRI deals in 2018, this year has seen a shift in the rhetoric around China’s grand strategy. The…
Afghanistan: Water management for peace
In the optimistic view, Afghanistan is closer to peace today than at any time in the past decades. The presidential election last weekend may have been hampered by low turnout,…
Poles apart: The long shadow of US-China competition
From trade to cyber, from the South China Sea to outer space, strategic rivalry between the United States and China is shaping the international order. The polar regions seem no…
Can the ICC bring justice to Myanmar?
More than 700,000 men, women, and children, many identifying as Rohingya, crossed the border from Myanmar’s Rakhine State into Bangladesh in 2017, fleeing violence at the hands of…
Violence in Papua could get worse
Violence has swept across Indonesian Papua in the last six weeks, starting with racist taunts against Papuan students in East Java, and moving back to Papua where protests against…
In Sri Lanka’s election, bumps ahead
The race for Sri Lanka’s presidential election is heating up, with the vote slated for 16 November. On 11 August, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, brother of former president Mahinda Rajapaksa…
India’s RCEP reticence
Despite the modern proliferation of free trade agreements, there is an enormous gap between free trade as it is understood and advocated by those who benefit from it, and free…
Book review: Common enemies
Book review: Common enemies: crime, policy and politics in Australia–Indonesia relations, by Michael McKenzie (Oxford University Press, 2018)
Next month marks the 17th…