Global Issues
Antarctica: Working a rules-based system
Panic about China in Antarctica or shoehorning the continent into US-China geostrategic competition risks creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. Australia’s interest in a peaceful…
India, Canada and the new vaccine politics
The threat of wealthy countries hoarding vaccines for themselves and denying access to smaller and poorer countries has become the world’s primary cooperative concern. Yet how…
Australia’s place in a decarbonising world economy
A welcome change is underway in the international effort to combat dangerous global warming. It will have big implications for the Australian economy.
The United States, European…
The power of example: America’s presence in Diego Garcia
In remarks delivered at the US State Department in early February, President Joe Biden championed the rule of law as part of “America’s abiding advantage” and spelled out his…
Vaccine nationalism: Rich nations must also care for the poor
While the Covid-19 pandemic proved to be the perilous equaliser of humankind, regardless of race and nationality, the vaccine for it however revealed the disturbing inequality…
Pacific development outlook for 2021
Pacific nations have mostly escaped the heavy death toll and hospital bed shortages faced by Western countries battling Covid-19, but the pandemic has dealt a disproportionately…
Chagos: A boundary dispute tips over a sovereignty ruling
The decision last month of a Special Chamber of the International Tribunal of the Law of the Sea on a maritime boundary dispute between Mauritius and the Maldives reflects two…
What does America think the rules-based order is for?
This week we launched the latest project to emerge from the Lowy’s Institute’s Australia’s Security and the Rules-Based Order project, a debate feature on America and…
A “beggar-thy-neighbour” approach keeps seafarers stranded
When a business manager is willing to spend US$200,000 to send home five employees whose contracts have expired and bring five colleagues to replace them on the spot, later…
Helping Indonesia’s children in a time of pandemic
While the Indonesian government is taking important steps to improve pandemic management – appointing a new Health Minister and Minister of Social Affairs and preparing to…