| Name | Date published | Author |
|---|---|---|
| Policy Approaches to Supply Chain Risk | 15/03/2024 | Samuel Hardwick, Rojan Joshi, Tisha Shah, Jason Tabarias, |
Authors: Niv Horesh, University of Nottingham, and Emilian Kavalski, ACU
One day in June 2013, President Xi Jinping and his wife and First Lady Peng Liyuan touched down in Trinidad and Tobago. As the pair embarked the aircraft and strode down the gangway, there was something unmistakably ostentatious — a swagger even — in Peng’s turquoise attire and Xi’s matching tie. It marked a shift in China’s approach to international relations.
Author: Brad Glosserman, Pacific Forum CSIS
Foreign policy is a search for and an attempt to impose order on an unruly world. That task has become more difficult in recent years, with an ever-lengthening list of threats, challenges and destabilising factors. The rise of Asia in the global system also requires a paradigm shift in thinking about global governance.
Author: Trevor Wilson, ANU
Some may not have noticed when it happened but Julie Bishop, after becoming Australian Foreign Minister in September 2013, directed the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) to use the term ‘Indo-Pacific’ instead of the traditional ‘Asia Pacific’ which has now been in use throughout the world for more than forty years. According to some, Bishop was not initially wedded to ‘Indo-Pacific’ but she seems to have become a convert, although she still occasionally uses ‘Indo-Pacific/Asia Pacific’.
Author: Jean-Pierre Lehmann, IMD
On 26 October 1909 a young Korean nationalist, Ahn Jung-Geun, assassinated Japanese statesman and four-time prime minister Itō Hirobumi on the platform of Harbin railway station. This triggered a number of developments in East Asia. Specifically, it gave Tokyo a pretext for the formal colonisation of Korea the following year and extended Japan’s imperialist reach over the continent. Although Japan had already made its impact as a rising global power — notably in forging an alliance with Great Britain in 1902 and defeating Russia in war in 1905 — beyond East Asia the incident was hardly noticed.
Author: Jean-Pierre Lehmann, IMD
For Asia, the decline of Europe is not necessarily bad news. Though the market will be less buoyant, it will remain large — given the amount of wealth accumulated over centuries. The lack of competitiveness and increasing number of failing European companies will also provide more opportunities for acquisitions by Asian investors.
Author: Peter Dean, ANU
The ‘rebalance’ to the Asia Pacific is alive and well according to the recently released US Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR). If a picture tells a thousand words then the United States Department of Defense’s (DoD) latest strategic policy document has some interesting things to say. Eight of the 22 photos in the document focus on the region, and this outstrips the US homeland — the focus of overall US strategy.
Authors: Melissa Conley Tyler and Aakriti Bachhawat, AIIA
One of the characteristics of today’s Asia is its asymmetric rivalries, including Japan’s rivalry with China, China’s with the United States, Pakistan’s with India and India’s with China.
Author: Hugh White, ANU
Thanks again to Robert and James for raising such key issues in their riposte to my second post in this exchange. I think there are five questions here.
First, there is the question of what China wants, on the one hand, and what it will settle for, on the other. I agree completely with Robert and James that China’s conduct these days does not suggest it wants parity with the United States in Asia: it suggests that China does indeed, as they say, want some kind of ‘21st century neo-tributary system or version of an Asian Monroe Doctrine’.
Author: Maria Monica Wihardja, University of Indonesia
Indonesia has become an unlikely star of the international economy, with its resilient growth in the midst of the US sub-prime mortgage and European sovereign and banking crises. But political, social and environmental conditions at home are not commensurate with the quality of Indonesia’s relatively outstanding growth.
