It is a difficult time to be a US ally. While nebulous and difficult to measure, credibility is a key component of functioning alliances. An ally must be viewed as having both resolve and capacity to ...

As Australians head to the polls on 3 May, the stakes for foreign policy in the Indo-Pacific are quietly profound. From where I sit in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, the debate in Australia around national ...

What is next in the US trade conflict with the rest of the world? At 25%, US tariffs on most auto imports will see US car prices rising unless those tariffs, too, are paused. Otherwise, with the ...

As Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was about to call a national election on 28 March, a Chinese state-owned marine research vessel Tan Suo Yi Hao was quietly transiting Bass Strait.

Unsurprisingly, many commentators declared 2 April 2025 as the day “globalisation” died. Donald Trump’s “liberation day”, jacking up of barriers to the US market to their highest levels in nearly a ...

The media typically only has enough space to focus on one big story at a time. Trump’s tariffs are dominating now. Last week it was “Signal-gate”, after a journalist was added to a White House-led ...

As the world gears up for COP30 in Brazil and the hopefully soon-to-be-announced COP31 in Australia (co-hosted with the Pacific), the urgency of the climate crisis has never been more apparent. Yet, ...

Whether a long-discussed “pivot” or a new-found competition, there are arguments that the Trump administration is shifting the US focus from Europe to Asia. The reality on the ground contradicts this ...

Two weeks ago, Myanmar was struck by a 7.7 magnitude earthquake that devastated much of the central heartland of the country. Already ravaged by civil war, the destruction and humanitarian crisis ...

What could “victory” realistically look like in this context? Until recently, Ukraine defined “victory” as the liberation of all Russian-occupied territories, including Crimea. President Volodymyr ...

India is approaching Bangladesh’s new caretaker government with caution. Since Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus took over as Chief Advisor in August 2024, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has not held ...

One potentially revealing way of thinking about the respective strengths and weaknesses of the American and Chinese approaches to politics and economics is to consider the performance of their car ...