In an opinion piece for the Jakarta Post, Lowy Institute Executive Director Michael Fullilove writes about Australian opinions on America and China.  
Below is the third part of my exchange with Joe Studwell, author of How Asia Works. Here's part 1 and part 2.
SR: In your previous answer you took a swipe at the IMF for its behaviour towards Indonesia during the currency crisis, so I wonder if you could say some more about the role of
Dr Philippa Brant is a Lowy Institute Research Associate.
Over the weekend ForeignPolicy.com published an article by Isaac Stone Fish pondering why the US and Japan still provide aid to China, their potential geopolitical rival.
It is legitimate to ask why aid is still being provided to a
My thanks to reader Markus for a link to TimeOut's coverage of Sydney's upcoming Israeli film festival (13-27 August). Among the films on show is a documentary called The Gatekeepers, about Israel's internal security service, Shin Bet. We showed you the trailer back in February.
Here are trailers
While the worrywart commentators are focused on the slowing of China's growth (even though most forecasts still start with a '7', which doubles income in a single decade), they reinforce the drama by implying that China has run out of policy options to maintain growth.
Sure, China may not be
On the measure of FTAs signed, New Zealand's 'Asian Century' project is doing better than that of its larger, louder neighbour.
Last week, New Zealand became the first OECD member to sign an FTA with Taiwan. In 2008 New Zealand was the first OECD member to sign an FTA with Taiwan's larger, louder
Quite an achievement: NZ now has free trade deals with China and Taiwan. (We'll have more on this later in the week.)
I've linked countless times to the New Yorker's China correspondent, Evan Osnos. Here's his farewell to the country.
Kerry Brown examines the China Dream, a phrase 'that seems to
With Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in Papua New Guinea this Sunday and Monday to meet with his counterpart Peter O'Neill, it's useful to recall that the PNG PM gave an address to the Lowy Institute on 29 November last year. Post event, in an interview with the Lowy Institute's Jenny Hayward
Danielle Rajendram is a Research Associate in the Lowy Institute's International Security Program.
Debate over the food security bill continues in India. Here's Devesh Kapur on the wrongs of rights, plus a tongue-in-cheek piece suggesting twenty more rights for the UPA government to legislate
Below is the second part of my exchange with Joe Studwell, whose book, as I said in the intro to part 1, has tested some assumptions about economic development I've been carrying around with me for a long time.
SR: Asia is home to some of the great cautionary tales of industry policy: Malaysia’s
As political unrest and violence hits much of the Arab world, the Gulf states (with the exception of Bahrain) have been able to sit back more or less serenely and use their immense wealth to stave off any serious calls for political reform.
This week it was reported that the Saudi Government
Thanks to reader Olivia for steering me towards this breathtaking piece of writing from Italian journalist Francesca Borri on the front line in Syria. The Italian editors she describes are clearly fools for dismissing Borri's opinions; we need to hear more from her:
People have this romantic image
The Piping Shrike is an anonymous Australian blog with some of the sharpest (if not always most readable) political analysis you will see.
This post from 1 July is the first analysis I've read that finds a plausible reason behind Kevin Rudd's extraordinary claim, in his first media conference
Marta Foresti heads the Overseas Development Institute's Politics and Governance Programme.
Sadly, we know a great deal about violence and conflict. Yet according to recent excellent research on subnational conflicts by the Asia Foundation, when it comes to the relationship between conflict and
Andrew Selth is a research fellow at the Griffith Asia Institute.
The US Treasury's 'designation' of Lieutenant General Thein Htay, Chief of Burma's Directorate of Defence Industries (DDI), for purchasing military goods from North Korea, surprised many. After Barack Obama's visit to Burma in
Bob Bowker is a former Australian ambassador to Jordan and Egypt.
The events of the past week in Egypt raise serious questions about the capacity of the political system in that country and elsewhere in the Arab world to contain, through constitutional means, the struggle between Islamists and
As with so many viral videos, this one's a sleeper. It was recorded in October last year, but has gained significant attention just in the last few weeks and is now up to almost 1 million views on YouTube.
As I listened, it occurred to me that the boy's argument makes for a nice companion piece to
Bob Bowker is a former Australian ambassador to Jordan and Egypt.
Antipathy between those Arabs who engage in politics and adopt lifestyles framed within an Islamic discourse ('Islamists') and those who do not underlies much of the current political contest in Egypt. It has a fundamental impact on
The spike in China's short-term interest rates over the past month sent a shiver through world financial markets, in the same way that Fed Chairman Bernanke's statements on quantitative easing startled financial markets a month earlier. In both cases the market over-reacted, reflecting a
When Cambodians go to the polls on 28 July it's odds-on that Hun Sen's Cambodian People's Party (CPP) will be returned to office. This result will continue the CPP's political dominance, maintained since 1997, and will extend Hun Sen's position as the world's longest-serving prime minister. He took
Nick Alexander, a former UN and Lowy Institute intern, is a University of Sydney Juris Doctor candidate.
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd made it an essential theme of his trip to Indonesia to refocus the Australian people on tapping into Indonesia’s extraordinary business potential rather than
Christopher Lethbridge writes:
The joint communiqué from Friday's discussions between Indonesia's President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd marks a new maturity in both the Australian-Indonesian relationship and the asylum seeker debate. Epitomised by the
Danielle Rajendram is a Research Associate in the Lowy Institute's International Security Program.
How will India fit into the Asian century?
The London School of Economics has been running a blog feature on the importance of India's engagement with Africa. An interesting read.
Do think tanks
Overnight in Egypt the military suspended the country's constitution and removed President Mohammed Morsi from power, following massive popular protests.
It is clearly a coup, even if the military has, I suspect, mounted it reluctantly: on the one hand not wanting to run the country again, on the
Three days after John Garnaut, Fairfax Media's award winning China correspondent, left Beijing, I was fortunate enough to catch up with him before he gave a keynote address to the Lowy Institute's New Voices conference.
John describes the momentous changes he witnessed on both a professional
All those countries (including Australia) that so solemnly call for a 'rules-based order' in Indo-Pacific Asia have a chance today to show they mean it.
At a major gathering in Brunei, the annual ASEAN Regional Forum, Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr and his counterparts have an opportunity to
Professor Jane McAdam is a member of the Consultative Committee of the Nansen Initiative and the author of Climate Change, Forced Migration, and International Law.
Last month, the Norwegian Refugee Council released a report revealing that 32.4 million people were forced to flee their homes in
In Kevin Rudd's victory speech last night, he went out of his way to address young Australians:
Mr Rudd said many young people had not liked or respected much of what they had seen. "As I rock around the place talking to kids, they see it as huge national turn-off," he said. "I understand
I really enjoy reading Hugh White's work on regional security, but as a Middle East analyst, he makes a good China pundit.
While I agree with Hugh that these are troubled times, the Middle East is hardly in the process of disintegrating. Hugh's view that modern state structures are collapsing
Most of us Indonesia groupies have long been nonplussed at how Australians are so luke-warm (and so ill-informed) about Indonesia, as confirmed by the latest Lowy poll.
I agree with Dave McRae that we need more person-to-person links. But there are already quite a few. What about all those
In 1968 a US Army major said of the attack on Ben Tre that 'It became necessary to destroy the town to save it'.
Whatever the accuracy of the quote, it summed up well the popular perception that the US in Vietnam had lost sight of the value of human life, and thought only in terms of short-term
This year's Lowy Institute poll reveals Australians' lack knowledge of Indonesia and a pronounced mistrust of our northern neighbour. Only 33% of Australians agree that Indonesia is a democracy, fifteen years and three rounds of democratic elections after the fall of Suharto's authoritarian regime.
Sarah Phillips, a Senior Lecturer at Sydney University, is in Somaliland conducting research. She is grateful to the Developmental Leadership Program for funding. All photos by Sarah.
Even as a political scientist, sovereignty is not something that captures a lot of my attention in the course of a
In an opinion piece in The Australian newspaper, Michael Fullilove and Alex Oliver describe Australians’ complex attitudes towards important foreign policy issues, and in particular, Australia’s relations with its two most important partners: China as its most important economic partner
Above, some footage from a new documentary called The Impossible Image, interspersed with commentary from photographer Richard Mosse, who took the unusual step of traveling to the Democratic Republic of Congo to photograph the civil war on infrared film.
I loved this quote from Mosse:
Of
Below, the final part of my interview with Kishore Mahbubani, one of Asia's most prominent world-politics commentators and author of The Great Convergence. Part 1 here and part 2 here.
SR: It is sometimes said that Singaporean diplomats, of which you were one, are experts at maintaining a
The Syrian civil war is a land battle. Comparisons with Libya and talk of no-fly zones (NFZ) as some kind of low-risk game changer ignore this fact. As the US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff noted recently, 90% of the casualties inflicted by the regime (and 100% of those killed by the
Katherine Ellena is a Research Associate with the US Naval Postgraduate School and a former New Zealand diplomat. The views expressed here are hers alone.
Two milestones occurred in New Zealand in the last two months with little fanfare, but with interesting implications. Firstly, in April, China
Jim Della-Giacoma is the Asia Program Director for International Crisis Group.
My four year-old daughter recently came home from her Jakarta kindergarten with a story about a visit to the school from the head of our local police station. 'If there is a robber and he's running away, the policeman
This volume contains the proceedings of a conference on Indo-Pacific Maritime Security in the 21st Century, which was convened on February 21 and 22, 2011, at the Royal Australian Navy Heritage Centre on Garden Island in Sydney. The conference resulted from a collaboration of the
Susanne Schmeidl is co-founder of the Afghan NGO, The Liaison Office.
In 2009 Afghan President Hamid Karzai enacted, by presidential decree, a law on the Elimination of Violence Against Women (EVAW). The law, which provided broad protections for for women and girls from a range of violent actions
Hassan Rouhani's first-round success in the Iranian elections has sent an strong message to the regime.
On the face of it, the process went well. Having ensured that the list of candidates was not going to offer any existential threat to the system, Ayatollah Khamenei needed to ensure that this
Paul Harper from Phnom Penh writes:
Further to Janet Magnin's comments and Nick Alexander's article Taxing Australians Abroad, it is unclear to me what services I am receiving from the Australian Government. I pay for my own medical and evacuation services. The only consular service I have used
Danielle Rajendram is a Research Associate in the Lowy Institute's International Security Program.
C Raja Mohan looks at what closer US-China relations would mean for India after Xi Jinping’s visit to California.
What would Indian foreign policy look like should Modi win the 2014 election?
In this article on The Diplomat's Flashpoints blog, Lowy Institute Thawley Scholar Jack Georgieff looks at what it might take for a return to ally status between the United States and New Zealand, arguing that it should not be taken off the table in the years ahead
Cait Storr is a lawyer, writer and academic at University of Melbourne researching Nauru and other Pacific small island states.
On Saturday 8 June, Nauru held a peaceful, indeed almost cheerful, election. Votes were cast and counted and 19 members elected to form the 21st parliament of the
Dr Daniel Woker is the former Swiss Ambassador to Australia and now a Senior Lecturer at the University of St Gallen.
For his first trip abroad as Chinese premier last month, Li Keqiang went to India and Pakistan and then continued to Switzerland and Germany before heading back home.
Germany
Jonathan Pain is author of The Pain Report and has 29 years of international investment experience. He was born in South Africa and lived in Lesotho, Swaziland, England, Bahrain and now Australia.
My first memory of racism was as a young boy in a shop in South Africa.
A very elderly African
The meeting between Presidents Obama and Xi in Palm Springs over the weekend presented another opportunity to berate China for its international economic imbalances, but the two presidents sensibly found more fruitful things to talk about.
It's getting harder to find fault in China's interaction