Global Issues

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Are we ready for a rare earths trade war?

Rare earth minerals have emerged as the latest front in the escalating US-China trade war. Nearly a decade after the Chinese government controversially suspended rare earth exports to Japan during the 2010 Senkaku dispute, similar threats are now being made if the bilateral trade dispute with the US

By Jeffrey Wilson

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That Trump phone call to Australia and what it means to refugees today

When US President Donald Trump and former Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull held their infamous, protocol-smashing phone call in the president’s first week in office in January 2017, largely lost in the international headlines about the exchange was the actual topic of conversation. Now,

By Alex Vedovi

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The Pacific’s social politics

When the news broke that Peter O’Neill had finally resigned from PNG’s top job last Thursday, it spread instantaneously, lighting up mobile phone screens across the country. It was social media, much more than PNG’s traditional news outlets, that had bored away relentlessly at O’Neill’s

By Alastair Davis

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Episode 2 of Rules Based Audio, “The Terrorist’s Wife” out now

Episode 2 of the Lowy Institute’s brand new podcast, Rules Based Audio, is out today. In The Terrorist’s Wife – the role of women in jihad, Lowy Research Fellow Lydia Khalil discusses women who join Islamist extremist groups and lays out the risks involved if we continue to make gendered

By Kelsey Munro

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The relativity of the death penalty

Opposition to the death penalty has a long and quite public history in Australia. Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan of the so-called “Bali Nine” drug smugglers received support from artists, singers, actors, media personalities and sports stars, while a crowd of about a thousand people

By Rodger Shanahan

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Book review: unruly waters shape South Asia’s history

Book Review: Unruly Waters: How Mountains, Rivers and Monsoons Have Shaped South Asia’s History, by Sunil Amrith (Penguin, 2018) As Sunil Amrith explains in this new book, South Asia is not the only Asian region with a water problem. The whole continent has issues. Asia is

By Ruth Gamble

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Huawei and the decoupling dilemma

In two dramatic policy announcements this month, the Trump administration effectively barred US companies and government agencies from buying telecommunications equipment or services from – or selling any components to –Chinese technology champion, Huawei. President Donald Trump signed a broadly

By Victor Ferguson

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Tackling the global danger of drug-resistance: how far have we come?

Nearly five years since an international call went out for a greater global effort to combat the threat of so-called “superbugs”, what is better described as antimicrobial resistance (AMR) continues to pose a substantial danger to Australia’s health security. A recent national survey has

By Kirsty Buising

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China’s Digital Silk Road and stopping divergent technology standards

China’s Belt and Road Initiative is best known for big infrastructure projects such as train lines and ports, but in this age of omnipresence online, there is a communications counterpart running in parallel, known as the Digital Silk Road. But as with the physical manifestations of China’s big

By Chan Jia Hao

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Trash talk in the Philippines reveals waste trails in Southeast Asia

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte is notorious for exhibiting an unconventional diplomatic style and in recent weeks, ahead of local elections, he has picked a new foe. Duterte has been trash-talking the Canadian government – quite literally – insisting that containers of rubbish sent from

By Alexine Sanchez

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Measles outbreaks are rising across the world: what can Australia do?

A recent surge of measles cases in the United States has seen outbreaks in 23 states and the declaration of a public health emergency in New York City. While measles was declared eliminated in the US in 2000, this latest upswing is part of an almost 300% rise in global measles cases this year.

By Jim Buttery

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My mother’s life: faraway dreams, new growth and seeking acceptance

To mark Mother’s Day on Sunday, The Interpreter invited contributors to write about their mothers who shaped world politics or were shaped by it. Too often the “immigration debate” focuses on numbers, questions of infrastructure and congestion, and at its worst a sense of threat to “

By Scott Winter

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Huawei reaches into Britain

Whatever the true situation behind the sacking of Gavin Williamson as British defence secretary over claims (which he strenuously denies) that he leaked information to the Daily Telegraph from a meeting of the National Security Committee on Chinese telecom company Huawei, one thing is crystal clear

By Kerry Brown

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Trafficking in old anxieties

Are the boats back? Once again a reliable fear of “uncontrolled” immigration has been invoked in an Australian federal election. This time current Prime Minister Scott Morrison has framed “border control” as a question of “congestion-busting” in major cities – and instead of the usual

By Claire Higgins

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Film review: On Her Shoulders

On Her Shoulders, a documentary film by Alexandria Bombach, follows young genocide survivor Nadia Murad in her global cause against sexual violence for which she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2018. Women and girls in her community were subjected to widespread and systematic sexual

By Pishko Shamsi

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Atrocities of April

The month of April is littered with reminders of how cruel the world can be and should motivate us to be vigilant about the potential for atrocity crimes in our own time. 24 April marks the start of the Armenian Genocide when, in 1915, hundreds of Armenian community leaders and intellectuals were

By Nikki Marczak

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Visa tussles: here come the Irish again

The Irish campaign to gain access to the E-3 visa in the United States has roared back to life. Currently, Australia is the only country with access to the 10,500 E-3 visa slots. Yet Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House of Representatives, who led a delegation of US legislators on a visit to

By Alan C. Tidwell

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Paradigm shift: Understanding propaganda in the digital age

Influence operations in the digital age are not merely propaganda with new tools. They represent an evolved form of manipulation which present actors with endless possibilities – both benign and malignant. While the origins of this new form are semi-accidental, it has nonetheless opened up

By Maryanne Kelton

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US undermines UN Security Council resolution against wartime rape

Overnight, the UN Security Council held its annual Open Debate on Conflict Related Sexual Violence. As current president of the Council, Germany hosted the debate. It has been preparing all year and held an Arria Formula meeting in February on strengthening accountability for conflict-related sexual

By Susan Hutchinson

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Can technology save ASEAN’s food supplies from climate change?

Climate change is one of the world’s most pressing challenges, and one which impacts humanity as a whole. A recent United Nations study indicates that decreasing biodiversity in our food supply is augmenting the peril posed by climate change and a growing population: nearly a quarter of wild food

By Frederick Kuo

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Refugees are educating themselves abroad. Australia should help

Picture this. At 68.5 million people, it’s the 23rd largest population on earth. There is no healthcare system. Going to school is often illegal. There is no social welfare. Its people have no democratic representation. Many are malnourished, poorly housed and have little access to basic

By Thomas Brown

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Stockholm Syndrome: social media can shape China’s foreign policy

From Bitcoin to YouTube, the internet has greatly altered the way humans behave and interact. This is particularly the case in China – the largest online community in the world where everything from online payments to shopping has been pioneered and taken up with gusto. While foreign policy may be

By Thomas Olsen-Boyd

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Remembering Rwanda: small mercy from the horror of Kibeho

What you don’t expect to see when you arrive at Kibeho are the eucalyptus trees. When Belgium ruled Rwanda, gum trees were planted across the colony to provide firewood. A small country in central Africa, Rwanda is mainly populated by two ethnic groups: the minority Tutsi and the majority Hutu.

By John Connor

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If 5G takes a little longer in Australia, all the better

The fifth generation of cellular network technology promises much higher performance in terms of data throughput, speed, and lower latency. This will unlock a regime of new digital technologies that have been developing on the sidelines for some time. Scholars contributing to the neuroscience in

By Zac Rogers

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An orthodox economic take on climate change shocks

In a debate as politically fractious as climate change, it is useful to have credible voices joining the fray. On Tuesday night, the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) waded into the waters with a speech by Deputy Governor Guy Debelle. It has immediately been seen as an urgent call to action. More

By Roland Rajah

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An Australian model for the renewable-energy transition

Australia is experiencing a remarkable renewable energy transition. The pipeline for new wind and solar photovoltaic (PV) electricity systems is 6-7 Gigawatts (GW) per year for the period 2019-21. This equates to 250 Watts per person per year compared with about 50 Watts per person per year for the

By Andrew Blakers

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Violence in Myanmar: look elsewhere than Security Council

Last week the UN Security Council was briefed yet again on the situation in Myanmar. This time the message was presented by the Secretary-General’s Special Envoy Christine Schraner Burgener. She talked, among other things, about the importance of accountability for Myanmar’

By Rebecca Barber

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A certain boredom? Taking stock of democracy in 2019

Even in a world “characterised by peaceful and prosperous liberal democracy”, a renowned political theorist once wrote, people will nevertheless “struggle against that peace and prosperity”. Despite relative contentment with the general state of affairs, “a certain boredom” will drive

By Marcus Colla

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The movie moment: how the Oscars reflect the world around us

The Academy Award winners will be announced today, starting at midday on the Australian east coast. For a few of us, this will be the culmination of watching 31 nominated films.* While I’ve occasionally wished I’d chosen a less Type-A summer hobby (I have one word: Seabiscuit), most years I find

By Melissa Conley Tyler

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The new Middle Eastern space race

The launch of the first Israeli mission to the Moon is a milestone for lunar exploration and for private spaceflight. Liftoff! pic.twitter.com/Cd8nGQwrhd — SpaceX (@SpaceX) February 22, 2019 The Bereshet spacecraft is a small lander, carrying a few instruments and some

By Morris Jones

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The tremendous impact of a US-China investment and technology war

This is an edited extract of the opening speech delivered in Sydney this month to the Chief Economists Forum, held annually by the Financial Standard. There are three main dynamics which are shaping the changing global, economic and strategic order. Each is interacting with the other and

By Michael Thawley

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Responding to cyber attacks: resilience and transparency is key

Prime Minister Scott Morrison this week revealed that Australia’s major political parties were the target of a recent cyber attack. The Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC) identified a malicious intrusion in the Parliament House computer network. It was later discovered that the Liberal, Labor

By Dirk van Graver

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Polls apart: how Australian views have changed on “boat people”

Since 2005, the annual Lowy Institute Poll has been tracking the attitudes of Australians to foreign policy issues and their place in the world. The issue of boat people, unauthorised asylum seekers, irregular maritime arrivals, refugees – the politics is so contested that it is difficult to find

By Alex Oliver

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Mark Zuckerberg and the revolt of the public

I joined Facebook in 2010. As if by magic, the lives of ‘friends’ lost in time and space materialised on my laptop, so I could partake of their everyday moods, their exotic vacations, their children’s sporting events. This triumph of intimacy over distance accounted for Facebook’s

By Martin Gurri

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Doctors help the moral case for border security

On Tuesday evening, the House of Representatives passed a bill supporting the transfer of asylum seekers on Manus Island and Nauru to Australia for urgent medical care. The bill, initially put forward by independent MP Kerryn Phelps in late 2018, provides expanded capacities that allow two doctors

By Danielle Fitzpatrick

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Indonesia’s role in multilateral development banks

After Jim Yong Kim resigned last month, President Donald Trump indicated he intends to nominate senior US Treasury official David Malpass to lead the World Bank. Under an unofficial agreement, the World Bank President always comes from the United States. Although the multilateral development

By Retno Maruti

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Blocking asylum, by sea and air

The case of Saudi teen Rahaf Al-Qunun dramatically demonstrates the difficulties many refugees face when attempting to escape the risk of harm at home and find safety elsewhere – whether they travel by leaky boat, or through international airports surrounded by business travellers and holiday-

By Tamara Wood

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Facebook’s first 15 years and lessons for diplomacy

Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook post, marking 15 years since he hatched the social network in his Harvard dorm, claims Facebook has the potential to be “profoundly positive” for years. Certainly, Facebook has changed diplomacy by changing the way people connect and communicate. But, despite

By Damien Spry

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Encouraging Trump, the “germaphobe”, to go global on health

How do you get a policymaker who has professed their scepticism about the value of global health programs to support them? The US government is responsible for roughly one-third of all global health aid, significant cuts could have effects on the entire global health system. In the case of the

By Jeremy Youde

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The politics of asylum-seeking: al-Qanun’s route to Canada

The dramatic bid for asylum by Saudi Arabian teenager Rahaf al-Qanun became the focus of international attention this month when she barricaded herself into a hotel room in Bangkok airport after officials had told her that she would be deported to Kuwait. Al-Qanun took to social media, tweeting that

By Shakira Hussein

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Cue the crickets: conspiracies and headaches in Havana

A recording of an alleged “sonic attack” on US diplomats in Cuba has been analysed by scientists and found to be … crickets. Rumours of a mysterious attack on staff at the US embassy in Havana first surfaced in 2016 after diplomats reported hearing loud, piercing noises at night and

By Elise Thomas

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Cracks in walls and Trump’s border with Mexico

The political cracks are widening in Washington, as US President Donald Trump struggles to fulfill his 2016 presidential campaign pledge to build a wall at the US southern border and have Mexico pay for it. Distancing himself from the original promise, with customary chicanery, Trump announced

By Euan Graham

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Book review: Protecting the international order from Trump trauma

Book review: America vs the West, by Kori Schake (Lowy Institute Paper, Penguin, 2018) In a chaotic spectacle that is shaking the world, the Trump administration is putting a wrecking ball to the American-led international order. For 70 years, the United States has been the leader and

By G. John Ikenberry

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How to save one million lives, and then millions more

“Climate change is the greatest health challenge of the 21st century”. Such is the conclusion of the latest report by the World Health Organization (WHO), released last month to coincide with the COP24 climate conference in Katowice, Poland. The report makes clear that immediate action on

By Alexandra Phelan

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Best of The Interpreter 2018: Khashoggi, Skripal, deaths & duels

A worrying recent trend of violence outside of war zones, some of it state-sanctioned, has captured the attention of governments and, increasingly, the public. The Interpreter covered some of the best-known instances, and some sadly overlooked ones. On 4 March, former Russian

By The Interpreter

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Best of The Interpreter 2018: Our top 10

These are the articles that were most popular among our readers in 2018. 10. Turkey must be thinking of the Bomb, by Wayne McLean There are strong incentives for a nuclear pathway given Turkey’s vulnerabilities and strategic position. Turkey has historically eschewed a nuclear program because

By The Interpreter

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Dimly lit renewable energy initiatives for the Pacific

Renewable energy is high on the development agenda for the Pacific. The Lowy Institute’s Pacific Aid Map showed that donors and Pacific Island Countries are making a concerted effort to implement ambitious renewable energy goals. For example, the Cook Islands, Niue, Samoa, Tonga, and Tuvalu aim to

By Michael Nguyen

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Xi and Trump at G20: A tariff truce

This truce is by no means the end of trade tensions between China and the US. Over what was undoubtedly a delicious dinner last Saturday night on the sidelines of the G20 meeting in Buenos Aires, US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed to extend the deadline for the

By Merriden Varrall

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International justice: tackling impunity in Asia

Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan, high ranking officials of the Pol Pot regime, have been sentenced to life imprisonment twice over for their role in the genocide of the Cham Muslim and ethnic Vietnamese minorities during the Khmer Rouge era. The landmark judgment delivered this month by the

By Priya Pillai

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Asia’s space sale

A Chinese rover on the Moon. An Indian satellite at Mars. A Japanese commander of the International Space Station. An imminent launch of a Chinese lander to the far side of the Moon. Future Chinese plans for robot missions to Mars and Indian plans for Venus. Spaceflight across Asia has advanced

By Morris Jones

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