Category: Policy

31 Oct Invitation Only Research Event The Conflict in Syria and Iraq: A Turkish Perspective 31 Oct 2014 – 15:30 to 17:00 Chatham House, London International Security Department Participants Dr Onur Oymen, Defence and...

On December 2013, two years after its independence, South Sudan plunged into civil war. Rooted in a political rivalry between the President Salva Kiir and his former Vice President Riek Machar, the conflict soon...

Yesterday’s liveblog can be found here. An archive of our liveblogs can be found here. For an overview and analysis of this developing story see our latest podcast. Please help The Interpreter to continue...

Was it really necessary for Tony Abbott to promise to ‘shirt-front‘ Vladimir Putin at the upcoming G20 summit in Brisbane? Seasoned public servants often blanch when their political masters make populist remarks about other...

On September 30, Myanmar’s parliament approved the government’s proposal to accede to the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention (BWC). read more …read more

In its latest annual report on arms control compliance (released in July 2014), the State Department formally accused Russia of having violated the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. read more …read more

The People’s Republic of China (PRC) has developed an impressive array of land-based anti-ship missile systems, which are part of a robust sea-denial capability. That growing capability is forcing the United States (US) and...

As socially critical dramas inundate the television screens in South Korea, three figures are emerging as the quintessential characters: the police, the judge and the chaebol (family members of South Korean multimillionaire conglomerates). These...

By Anna Kirk, an intern in the Lowy Institute’s Melanesia program. Solomon Islanders head to the polls on 19 November. The new biometric voter registration process has seen 280,000 voters register and 160,000 invalid...

The New York Times has published a story that reports the exposure of 17 American soldiers and seven Iraqi police officers to chemical and nerve agents in Iraq since 2003. The story is important...

The Indian Ocean littoral region’s resources and economic growth are attracting greater political attention. So it’s surprising there wasn’t more press coverage of last week’s meeting in Perth of the 20 member-states of the...

The suggestion that members of Cambodia’s Islamic minority have joined ISIS —a claim vigorously denied by leaders of this community — has briefly focused attention on a religious group in mainland Southeast Asia that...

Before entering the US Embassy in Monrovia to brief soldiers and reporters on the US military response to the Ebola epidemic, Army Maj. Gen. Daryl Williams washed his hands in chlorine bleach and had...

The US government has tried to hide the extent to which its troops were exposed to chemical weapons in the aftermath of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the New York Times reported Wednesday, citing...

‘They put knives on our throats and threatened to kill us if we resist,’ the deputy captain of a Vietnamese-flagged ship told reporters after his oil tanker was hijacked earlier this month. It was...

The Indo-Pacific is a strategic system encompassing the Indian and Pacific oceans, reflecting the expanding interests and reach of China and India as well as the enduring role of the US. The Lowy Institute’s...

Various recent speculative theories concerning Kim Jong-un have explained his absence from public view as being due to “illness”, “a coup removing him from power”, or “his sister eclipsing him in power”. Some of...

As the Arab Spring got underway, Turkey and Qatar came together on what seemed to be the right side of history. Now, all their regional bets have all but collapsed, after both adopted a...

Staunton, October 15 – Migrantophobia in Russian society is not the same thing as either xenophobia or ethnophobia and must not be confused with them, according to a Moscow sociologist. Instead, it reflects the...

Staunton, October 12 – Pavel Felgengauer, one of Russia’s most widely respected independent defense and security analysts, says that as a result of Moscow’s actions in Ukraine, a new Cold War has begun and...