Global Issues
We’re all losers in the space arms race
Politics does make for unlikely bedfellows. Last month, the Russian Foreign Ministry announced that it had signed a joint declaration with the Republic of Burundi, whereby both…
Covid-19: The need to aid Asia to open up
Two things about the public health and economic impacts of Covid-19 are now clear.
First, with just a few exceptions, most affected countries have suffered egregiously, and in…
Covid-19 chaos creates fertile ground for cyberattacks
Coronavirus-related cyberattacks have proliferated since the first Covid-19 cases emerged in Wuhan, China. According to a recent Microsoft analysis, every country in the world has…
PNG and Covid-19: The costs of economic stress
Papua New Guinea has grappled with economic instability for years, exacerbated by generally declining global commodity prices, increasing national debt and allegations of fiscal…
Diego Garcia: An American perspective
Diego Garcia is the United States’ major geostrategic and logistics support base in the Indian Ocean. Sovereignty over the island is increasingly being challenged by Mauritius,…
Covid-19 is not the biggest threat to UN peacekeeping
Last year, the UN estimated that 168 million people depended on humanitarian relief as a result of conflict, violence, and disasters, and peacekeepers were deployed to 13…
Constitutional questions over Solomon Islands’ coronavirus crackdown
On 25 March, following a government decision, the Solomon Islands Governor General Sir David Vunagi, declared a state of public emergency in response to the Covid-19 pandemic…
Why Vietnam embraces multilateralism at this uncertain time
Today the mere mention of multilateralism leaves many jeering that the heyday of international cooperation has past. Isolationist politics appear preferred. Yet Vietnam’s recent…
Covid-19 exposes the need for a European constitution
As Europe begins to emerge from the worst of the coronavirus pandemic, another crisis seems to be looming.
The German Constitutional Court last week threatened to block the…
In an Olympic-sized challenge, Japan’s golden chance could go begging
There have been plenty of Japanese officials weighing in on Tokyo’s Olympic rescheduling plans over the last few months. At times, it’s been hard to know who to focus on,…