The UK deal on Diego Garcia is positive, but it won’t reverse declining support for the rules-based order China and Russia might argue this is just another example of Western countries gaming the system to suit themselves. This article by Dr Kate O’Shaughnessy was originally published in The Interpreter by The Lowy Institute on 7 […]
Australia needs to boost its engagement with Africa, but not for the reasons advocates say we should Africa’s demographic story won’t necessarily translate to economic opportunities for Australia. But the geopolitical tale matters more. This article by Dr Kate O’Shaughnessy was originally published in The Interpreter by The Lowy Institute on 3 September 2024. Australia’s […]
The View from Australia: Strategic Competition in the Indian Ocean By Dr Kate O’Shaughnessy That the Indo-Pacific region is facing unprecedented strategic uncertainty is now a core tenet of Australian foreign policy. Mostly, Australian policy makers’ attention has been on the places where those uncertainties (code for Chinese military build-up and opaque lending) are being […]
Second, all the countries in attendance were worried about critical and emerging technologies – about the destabilising potential of Artificial Intelligence, mis- and dis-information and cyber warfare, and the challenges of developing renewable energy technologies at a global scale. China was not present but loomed large in all of these conversations. Speakers worried about China’s […]
China’s Western Indian Ocean Step Up By Dr Kate O’Shaughnessy This article was originally published under a Creative Commons Licence by the Australian Institute of International Affairs on 16 October 2023. In the last decade, China’s been steadily increasing its presence in the western Indian Ocean. That worries India and France, and has the potential […]
The future is small: the island states shaping the Indo-Pacific’s next 10 years By Dr Kate O’Shaughnessy Our news cycle is dominated by issues like US-China competition, the war in Ukraine, the rise of India, the threat of climate change, the economic transformation underway in ASEAN. These are big developments, involving big powers, and big trends. But […]