Rumours that President Xi Jinping was under house arrest amid a military coup in China—apparently driven by Falun Gong–linked social media accounts known for spreading factually problematic information—spread widely in late September. The available facts …
Geography influences the strategic choices of all countries, but Vietnam is an interesting case of a ‘swing’ state in comparative grand-strategy terms. The country occupies the eastern part of the Indochinese Peninsula, with an elongated …
It has now been more than six months since German Chancellor Olaf Scholz stood before a special session of the Bundestag to address Russia’s unprovoked attack on Ukraine. ‘We are living through a watershed era. …
There was a time when well-meaning, if not wishful-thinking, Westerners thought that ‘China’s Gorbachev’ was the highest compliment they could pay a Chinese leader who looked like a reformer. But when Zhu Rongji, the straight-talking …
Great powers don’t die in bed, the realist judgement goes. Empires fall amid flames and war. Not so, answered Mikhail Gorbachev, proving his greatness by achieving the gentle end of the Soviet Union. Gorbachev’s achievement …
As the war in Ukraine rages on, the stability of neighbouring Belarus, which has been backing the Russian invasion, appears to be fracturing. Has Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war of aggression opened a Pandora’s box …
Much of the foreign-policy conversation in the United States over the past two weeks has centred on whether House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi ought to have visited Taiwan. Her backers point out that there …
In a win for democracy, mass protests in Sri Lanka recently led to the resignation of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa. A strongman who won popularity for overseeing the end of Sri …
The Ukraine war is being fought both on the battlefield and in the broader geopolitical context. And Russia seems to have a chance of winning on both fronts. On the battlefield, Russia’s military machine initially …
Before Shinzo Abe, Australia’s vital economic relationship with Japan had only small, slowly evolving defence, strategic and intelligence dimensions. By the time he finished as Japan’s longest-serving prime minister, Australia and Japan were quasi-allies. Before …
Xi Jinping’s visit to Hong Kong during the 25th anniversary of its handing back to China helped confirm that Beijing is committed to fully subjugating the former British colony. In his speech, Xi distorted the …
The issue of whether the religion of Islam is a faith that endorses extremism, and more specifically violent extremism, or is used and abused by extremist groups for notional objectives, is an important one. This …
