Australian Perspective
Should the West arm Ukraine?
Should the West arm Ukraine against Russian-backed rebels? That's a question guaranteed to generate earnest debate among armchair foreign policy pundits. But it also found its way…
Do multinational corporations pay all the tax they should?
Is this a silly question to ask, given the reported low taxes paid by Google, Apple, Yahoo, Starbucks and others? The G20 and OECD think there is a major problem and have launched…
How much is too much? The debt mystery
The 2008 financial crisis left no doubt that ill-considered debt can cause major damage not just to an individual country, but to the global economy.
You might think that by now,…
Arab Spring lives on as protests give way to new forms of activism
The uprisings that swept across the Arab world from late 2010 are, to put it mildly, faltering.
Egypt has returned to authoritarianism. Syria is a bloodbath. It is getting harder…
A looming succession crisis in Oman and Saudi Arabia
When King Salman bin Abdulaziz succeeded King Abdullah last month, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia edged one step closer towards a succession crisis.
US Secretary of State John Kerry…
Australia is not meeting its IEA oil reserve targets
The plunge in the global oil price is a hot topic. Between June 2014 and January 2015, the price of crude has dropped by 57%. Most of the attention has been on the boon for…
Memo to IMF reformers: Don't let Congress get you down
By Lowy Institute Non-Resident Fellow Mike Callaghan and G20 Research Fellow Tristram Sainsbury
When it comes to IMF quota reform, the words of Yogi Berra come to mind: 'It's like…
India nuclear deal needs serious parliamentary scrutiny
The Australian parliament's Joint Standing Committee on Treaties (JSCOT) will soon review the proposed treaty between Australia and India on Cooperation in the Peaceful Uses of…
Is globalisation slowing?
In the decades leading up to the 2008 financial crisis, international trade typically grew much faster than GDP.
This reflected increasing global economic integration: tariff…
The French Intifada
Nicole George's perceptive pointer to 'La Haine' on The Interpreter as a way into the fraught world of the contemporary France's banlieues is a reminder of the fact that a…