Asia and Pacific

Paul Cotton responds to Wendy Jarvie, who wrote about the lack of Australian aid to Latin America: Your article could be read as stating that 20 million people in the Pacific are poor (living under $2 per day). This is misleading and would not be acceptable to all the people of the Pacific

Did you know China is planning to build 45 new airports in the next five years? Granted, some of this capacity is probably going to be excessive or at least misplaced. Chinese provincial governments have form when it comes to building white-elephant prestige projects, and airports are

I\'m sympathetic to Paul Dibb\'s broad point that commentary about China\'s military build-up is a bit overwrought, though when he closes his recent op-ed by saying that we should not \'frighten ourselves to death by drumming up the next military threat to Australia and basing our defence policy

Of all the reasons I had for writing There Goes the Neighbourhood, giving offense to Australia\'s former and serving diplomats was not one of them. Yet something about the book has caused Geoff Miller to take such personal and collective umbrage as to drag him into a reading of its

Dr Khalid Koser is a Lowy Institute Non-Resident Fellow and Academic Dean at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy. In his post for The Interpreter last week, Andrew Carr identified as a principal assumption behind the Malaysia deal that asylum seekers will learn about the new policy and decide

Shashank Joshi is a PhD candidate at Harvard University and an Associate Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London. This post is part of the New Voices series. Over the past twenty years, India has become reacquainted with greater Asia. The story is well-known; it runs from the

Geopolitics wasn\'t meant to be easy. But former Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser does himself, China and sensible strategic analysis a triple disservice in this recent Asia policy speech at the Australian National University. The short version — an equally ill-structured blog post 

Jeffrey Wilson argues that the China market, while big, is not that big, so our economy would get by OK without it. He concludes that we need not worry too much about having to choose between the America and China. He suggests, therefore, that we need not be too anxious about the risk that US-

Philipp Ivanov is an education consultant, formerly with the University of Sydney Research Institute for Asia and the Pacific. This post is part of the New Voices series.In May this year, China\'s Suzhou University announced plans to open a campus in Laos — the first

Robert Ayson, Director of the Centre for Strategic Studies at Victoria University, Wellington, writes: Graeme Dobell\'s draft for an Australia-China pact recognises the gap in Australia\'s growing stable of bilateral concords: it does not have one with its leading trade partner, with the

It\'s rare that an institution with as dull a title or vague a mandate as the Association of South-East Asian Nations Regional Forum makes headline news. But tomorrow\'s meeting of the ARF in Bali is likely to do just that. It will be a critical test of Asia\'s ability to manage maritime security

I have been hesitant to use my long-ago experience in Vietnam as a basis to enter the debate about Australia\'s role in Afghanistan, not least because of the great differences between the two countries. But General Peter Leahy\'s suggestion that Australia is pursuing the wrong Afghan strategy and

Dr Nicholas Farrelly is a Southeast Asia specialist at ANU. In 2006 he co-founded New Mandala, which deals with Southeast Asian regional affairs.This post is part of the New Voices series. In June 2011 a 17-year ceasefire between the ethnic minority Kachin Independence Army (KIA) and the

While Australians have been rightly charged with apathy about the momentous changes taking place to our north, there is a growing wealth of expertise on Asia among the young professionals and scholars of this country. On Friday 8 July, the Lowy Institute hosted its 8th annual New Voices

To me, the most fruitful line of questioning in response to my recent Wednesday Lowy Lunch presentation on conservatism in international relations was on the subject of change. Several questions came from the audience on this point, and it\'s also Richard Green\'s theme in his Reader

Greta Nabbs-Keller is writing a PhD at Griffith Asia Institute on the impact of democratisation on Indonesia\'s foreign policy. I read with anticipation Natalie Sambhi\'s reply to my post about the promotion of Lieutenant General Pramono Edhie Wibowo to Indonesian Army Chief of Staff,

Dr Giora Eliraz is an Associate Researcher at the Harry S Truman Institute for the Advancement of Peace at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In his article, \'Indonesian democracy: The myth of \'98\', Stephen Grenville argues that my post, \'Indonesia\'s role in Egypt\'s democratisation

In the analysis that has followed the election victory of Pheu Thai, led by Yingluck Shinawatra, commentators have repeatedly identified the support that she and the party received as coming from \'the rural and urban poor\' (see The Australian and various articles in The Economist as examples

What to make of the mess that the Australia Network tender process has become? Yesterday, Liberal Senator Simon Birmingham, who has been assiduously probing the progress of Australia Network tender in Estimates hearings, moved that all the reports and briefings prepared by the \'assessment

Stephan Fruehling is a lecturer in the Strategic and Defence Studies Program, ANU. Hugh\'s post continues a fruitful debate about the Asian order, US policy and the rise of China. I think the future of Asia should not, and does not have to be, a new Cold War — but a

Andrew Carr has distilled an important question out of our recent paper on maritime security in Indo-Pacific Asia: what accounts for Beijing\'s ambivalence about maritime confidence building, something which seems so conducive to Chinese interests? After all, such confidence building

Gordon Peake worked in Timor-Leste from 2007-11. He is Visiting Fellow at the State, Society and Governance in Melanesia Program, Australian National University. I can still remember my first teenage disco and how, well, just plain awkward I felt. I wanted to interact with these mysterious