Lowy Institute

The new year has seen tensions between the United States and Iran increase to levels rarely seen before. The assassination of Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, the ballistic missile response from Iran, and then the tragic downing of Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752, have yet again focused the world’s attention on this region. The vision of enormous crowds that turned out for Soleimani’s funeral...

With the threat of armed conflict looming more seriously over Asia than it has in decades, Oriana Skylar Mastro discussed Asian approaches to diplomacy during war. Professor Mastro’s new book, 'The Costs of Conversation', covers the diplomatic decisions of China and India in past conflicts in Asia and provides signposts for crisis management and conflicts in the future. After a war breaks out, wha...

Digital authoritarianism is the use of digital technology by authoritarian regimes to monitor, manipulate and control both domestic and foreign populations. China and Russia are at the forefront, representing two distinct but related models. There are many dimensions to it, from the recent revelations China is developing facial recognition technology to sort people by ethnicity, to Russia’s attemp...

The elections in Taiwan in January promise to be one of the region’s most consequential polls in recent decades. With Beijing increasingly vocal about using force to unify the island with China, voters face a choice between a president determined to resist Beijing and an opponent struggling to articulate an alternative. The polls on the self-governing island, which has a pivotal role in high-tech...

Rules Based Audio takes a look at China's interests, influence and intentions in the Pacific. Reports of a planned Chinese naval base in Vanuatu in 2018 helped focus policy makers’ attention on China’s strategic intentions and economic influence in the island nations of the south Pacific. But in many ways, the debate in Australia and the US lagged far behind the reality on the ground. These days t...

Australia faces no more difficult international challenge than managing its relationship with the People’s Republic of China, our largest trading partner and a peer competitor of our great ally the United States. Former prime minister Tony Abbott gave an address on China, followed by a Q&A session chaired by Dr Michael Fullilove, Executive Director of the Lowy Institute. The Hon. Tony Abbott was t...

Hyperpartisan and foreign-state sponsored disinformation targeted at voters through social media is undermining democracy and interfering with elections from the US to India, from Indonesia to Taiwan. Authoritarian adversaries, partisan domestic actors, and weak democratic governments are using the platforms and the extensive data they hold on individuals to manipulate voters and spread false narr...

The Lowy Institute hosted the Aus–PNG Network Melbourne social evening at the State Library of Victoria. Opening remarks for the evening were delivered by Mr Bruce Davis, Australian High Commissioner to PNG. Lowy Institute Research Fellow Shane McLeod chaired a panel discussion, 'PNG-Australia Education Links: Empowering girls and women in science and technology'. The panel included: Mary Mulcahy...

Since 2012 several hundred Australians have travelled to Syria and Iraq to undertake jihad with Islamic State, al-Qaeda or other radical Islamist groups. Dozens more supported them financially or in the planning of attacks. There are many preconceptions about the types of people in Australia attracted to jihad, but there has been little data publicly available on which to base these assumptions. F...

“The fog of Australian politics on climate change has obscured a fateful reality: Australia has the potential to be an economic superpower of the future post-carbon world,” argues Dr Ross Garnaut in his new book Superpower: Australia’s low-carbon opportunity. The Lowy Institute hosted a conversation between Dr Garnaut and Roland Rajah, Director of the Lowy Institute International Economy Program,...

The mass commercialisation of artificial intelligence, machine learning technologies and automation, combined with outsourcing to lower income countries is about to cause massive upheavals and hundreds of millions of job losses in developed economies, according to my guest this episode of Rules Based Audio, economist and globalisation expert Professor Richard Baldwin. He warns that the next phase...

The Lowy Institute’s Sam Roggeveen has written a provocative new book, 'Our Very Own Brexit', arguing that the political conditions which created Brexit also exist in Australia. But forget what you have read about populism and the rise of right-wing xenophobia. What Australia has in common with Britain and other Western democracies is something we rarely talk about: the steady decline of our big p...

As the United Kingdom faces a divisive but potentially decisive election framed around Brexit, the European Union is contemplating a future without the UK. If British voters back Prime Minister Boris Johnson's Brexit plan, what sort of future relationship will the EU look to build with the UK? What will be the impact on Ireland and Northern Ireland? And how will Brexit affect Australia's ties with...

Dr Rodger Shanahan unpacks the implications of the US withdrawal from Syria and the death of Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in October 2019 in Syria. Are the two events linked? US President Trump’s decision to withdraw US forces from northeast Syria, abandoning the Kurds who fought with the US against Islamic State, allowed Turkey to invade and gave what Dr Shanahan says was “a gift” to...

In March 2019, Islamic State officially lost its caliphate. The last remaining sliver of territory under its control was overtaken by Coalition forces, and US President Donald Trump declared the militant group “100% defeated”. Yet Islamic State remains defiant. Its reclusive leader has made two public pronouncements encouraging his followers since the fall of the caliphate. It retains affiliate ne...

What made America a great power? What is Trump doing to weaken America on the global stage, and what must the US do to revive its global leadership after the Trump presidency? Distinguished American diplomat Nicholas Burns, the Lowy Institute’s 2019 Rothschild & Co Distinguished International Fellow, gave a speech at the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne Nicholas Burns is a Professor at th...

Former US Ambassador to NATO Nicholas Burns talks about the instability of US foreign policy under Trump and how to recover from it, the significance of US alliances in great power competition with China, and also why he rejects former US Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ pointed criticism of Senator Joe Biden’s foreign policy record. Ambassador Burns is the 2019 Rothschild Distinguished Internation...

On October 10, the Lowy Institute hosted Netherlands Prime Minister Mark Rutte for a public address. Mr Rutte spoke about the future of the global rules-based order. Following his speech the Institute’s Executive Director Dr Michael Fullilove conducted a Q&A session with Mr Rutte. Described by the BBC as a “modest but steely liberal”, Netherlands Prime Minister Mark Rutte is an important figure in...

How should the US and Australia plan for a future of both strategic competition and cooperation with China? How do we get the balance between them right? The distinguished American diplomat Nicholas Burns, the Lowy Institute’s 2019 Rothschild & Co Distinguished International Fellow, addressed these questions in the 2019 Owen Harries Lecture. The annual Owen Harries Lecture honours the enormous con...

The next phase of China's massive Belt and Road Initiative is shifting emphasis after foreign criticism about debt-trap diplomacy, and concerns about corruption, local impacts and environmental issues. Less talk about grand infrastructure projects like ports and rail; more about ‘soft infrastructure’ like special economic zones and people to people exchanges. The new BRI, China says, will be ‘lean...

Australia finds itself in an increasingly precarious position. The relationship between Australia’s traditional ally, the United States, and its largest trading partner, China, continues its precipitous decline. Four out of Australia’s top five trading partners are embroiled in trade wars, and a global economic slowdown is underway. At the same time, Beijing’s deepening embrace of authoritarianism...

The Washington Post Beijing bureau chief and author Anna Fifield talks with host Kelsey Munro about life and politics in North Korea today. Kim Jong-un has permitted strategic changes to the economy of the isolated country, even as he keeps an iron grip on politics and citizens' freedoms. These days, for the wealthy urban dwellers in Pyongyang, there are gleaming apartment towers, yoga classes and...

The Pacific Islands region has vaulted back to the centre of Australian foreign policy thinking. Prime Minister Morrison has positioned Australia’s “step up” in the region as his signature foreign-policy initiative. Other governments have responded with their own “redial”, “pivot”, “uplift”, and “elevation” plans. Much of this reaction is being driven by China’s rise, with analysts fearing China w...

The news today is dominated by trade issues in a way not seen since perhaps the clash between the United States and Japan in the 1980s. The headlines point to a trade war between the United States and China, and strained trade relations between South Korea and Japan. The trading system has not delivered new multilateral agreements during the last five years. The WTO dispute-settlement system appea...

Intensifying strategic competition between the US and China is having ramifications around the globe. The risk of military conflict is growing in the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait. Global economic growth is slowing, and supply chains are shifting. China and Russia are forging closer ties in response to commonly perceived threats. Will US-China competition abate or increase? How can Austral...