Dougal Robinson is a project research assistant in the Lowy Institute's International Security program.
- Andrew Erickson from the US Naval War College and his two co-authors have emphasised the enduring importance of Diego Garcia in America’s Indo-Pacific strategic concept.
- This western end of the Indo-Pacific is also the location for some surprisingly pragmatic US-China maritime security cooperation, in the fight against piracy in the Gulf of Aden.
- At the other end of the Indo-Pacific, strategic competition remains the name of the game: PLA Navy units have converged somewhere in the western Pacific for what Chinese officials are calling their first ever 'joint actual-troop confrontation' exercise. Chinese rhetoric boasts of thus breaking 'the first-island chain'.
- For his part, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is vowing to assert Japan’s sovereignty and interests, in a strongly-worded speech to Japan’s Self Defence Forces and an interview in the Wall Street Journal.
- The Sierra Madre, unlikely battleground for the geopolitical struggle over the future of the South China Sea, as explained in this extraordinary interactive New York Times Magazine essay.
- North Korea's economy has grown for the past two years and exports have reportedly leapt by something like 90% over that period. This may prove more important than nuclear weapons when it comes to keeping Kim Jong-Un in power.
- Although Pakistan has repeatedly denounced the CIA’s drone program, top-secret CIA documents and Pakistani memos obtained by the Washington Post suggest that top officials in Pakistan’s government have endorsed that same program for years (map).
The Lowy Institute International Security Program's work on Indo-Pacific security is supported by two grants from the John D and Catherine T MacArthur Foundation.
