The Lowy Institute

How should the US and Australia plan for a future of both strategic competition and cooperation with China? How do we get the balance between them right? The distinguished American diplomat Nicholas Burns, the Lowy Institute’s 2019 Rothschild & Co Distinguished International Fellow, addressed these questions in the 2019 Owen Harries Lecture. The annual Owen Harries Lecture honours the enormous contribution Mr Harries, a Nonresident Fellow at the Lowy Institute, has made to the international policy debate in Australia.Nicholas Burns is a Professor at the Harvard Kennedy School and served for 27 years in the US Foreign Service. Ambassador Burns was Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, US Ambassador to NATO for President George W Bush and to Greece for President Bill Clinton, and State Department spokesman for Secretaries Warren Christopher and Madeleine Albright.The Lowy Institute acknowledges the generous support of Rothschild & Co for the Fellowship.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy i

The next phase of China's massive Belt and Road Initiative is shifting emphasis after foreign criticism about debt-trap diplomacy, and concerns about corruption, local impacts and environmental issues. Less talk about grand infrastructure projects like ports and rail; more about ‘soft infrastructure’ like special economic zones and people to people exchanges. The new BRI, China says, will be ‘lean, clean and green'. But how much in the BRI has really changed, and is there any harm in the West embracing China’s vision for an interconnected world? Episode 11 of the Lowy Institute’s podcast takes a look at the second phase of the BRI, from two perspectives. Chinese foreign policy expert and former Chinese diplomat to the EU, Professor Wang Yiwei outlines China's perspective; and the US-based, French BRI expert Nadège Rolland (at 15:30) takes a more critical view. Rules Based Audio is hosted by Kelsey Munro and powered by the Lowy Institute.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Australia finds itself in an increasingly precarious position. The relationship between Australia’s traditional ally, the United States, and its largest trading partner, China, continues its precipitous decline. Four out of Australia’s top five trading partners are embroiled in trade wars, and a global economic slowdown is underway. At the same time, Beijing’s deepening embrace of authoritarianism and expanding global ambitions continue to rattle Australia’s regional allies and partners.As our political leaders grapple with new and daunting foreign policy challenges, what do Australians think about the world? The Lowy Institute Poll has surveyed Australians on their views for the past 15 years. In the span of a generation, the Poll has uncovered striking changes in public opinion about Australia’s most important neighbours and partners as well as the challenges to national security and prosperity.What is driving these changing views? And how should our political leaders respond?The Lowy Institute hosted a pan

The Washington Post Beijing bureau chief and author Anna Fifield talks with host Kelsey Munro about life and politics in North Korea today. Kim Jong-un has permitted strategic changes to the economy of the isolated country, even as he keeps an iron grip on politics and citizens' freedoms. These days, for the wealthy urban dwellers in Pyongyang, there are gleaming apartment towers, yoga classes and craft beer bars - even if they don't have a reliable electricity supply. Fifield argues the dictator’s grandson, who few thought would last a year in the job, has surprisingly proved a ruthless, adept and confident leader and diplomat, forcing China and the US to the table without giving up anything, including his nukes. Anna Fifield is the author of the new book ‘The Great Successor: The Secret Rise and Rule of Kim Jong-un’. She has been to North Korea over a dozen times, and interviewed hundreds of escapees from the country, including tracking down members of the Kim family and former inner circle living in exile.

The Pacific Islands region has vaulted back to the centre of Australian foreign policy thinking. Prime Minister Morrison has positioned Australia’s “step up” in the region as his signature foreign-policy initiative. Other governments have responded with their own “redial”, “pivot”, “uplift”, and “elevation” plans.Much of this reaction is being driven by China’s rise, with analysts fearing China will try to leverage its influence – be it debt, diplomacy, or trade – to achieve strategic outcomes, including setting up a military base. Great power competition has returned to the Pacific.Foreign aid is often the first tool used by nations to engage in this vulnerable region. Each year, more than US$2 billion in foreign aid is invested in the Pacific from more than 60 donors. But aid is often opaque and hard to trace, lacks detail, and is difficult to access. The Lowy Institute Pacific Aid Map fills this gap, providing an analytical too that collates and analyses data on all aid projects in the Pacific.This event l

The news today is dominated by trade issues in a way not seen since perhaps the clash between the United States and Japan in the 1980s. The headlines point to a trade war between the United States and China, and strained trade relations between South Korea and Japan. The trading system has not delivered new multilateral agreements during the last five years. The WTO dispute-settlement system appears to be breaking down. It appears to be getting easier to depart from international agreements. What is the current status of these issues, how do they affect the operations of the WTO, and what (if any) is the good news? What can be achieved by June 2020, when the next formal WTO ministerial meeting will be held? What is the long-term picture for multilateralism? Are regional arrangements going to be the new architecture of the trading system? Is the pendulum swinging permanently away from global value chains?The Lowy Institute hosted Alan Wolff, Deputy Director-General of the WTO, for a discussion of the risks and

Intensifying strategic competition between the US and China is having ramifications around the globe. The risk of military conflict is growing in the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait. Global economic growth is slowing, and supply chains are shifting. China and Russia are forging closer ties in response to commonly perceived threats. Will US-China competition abate or increase? How can Australia best navigate these dangerous shoals?Lowy Institute Nonresident Fellow Bonnie Glaser gave a speech, followed by a Q&A with Michael Fullilove, the Institute’s Executive Director.Bonnie Glaser is a Nonresident Fellow at the Lowy Institute and senior adviser for Asia at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), where she directs the CSIS China Power Project. Ms Glaser is an expert on Chinese foreign and security policy, and has served as a consultant for several US government agencies including the Departments of Defense and State. Ms Glaser has published widely in academic journals such as Washi

The last wave of globalisation delivered enormous economic benefits. But the massive social disruption and displacement fell disproportionately on less-skilled workers, helping to spawn the current populist revolt. The next wave of globalisation, however, might prove different, as emerging technologies combine with global economic forces to create a whole new set of opportunities and challenges.Richard Baldwin, one of the world's leading globalisation experts, argues that the inhuman speed of this transformation threatens to overwhelm our capacity to adapt. Digital technology is allowing talented foreigners to telecommute into our workplaces and compete for service and professional jobs. Instant machine translation is melting language barriers, so the ranks of these "tele-migrants" will soon include almost every educated person in the world. The combination of globalisation and rising automation means the next wave of disruption could risk a globotics upheaval that threatens the very foundations of the libera

Indonesian President Joko Widodo was decisively re-elected in April but his second, and final, term in office looks set to be anything but plain sailing. The election revealed deep divides in the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation, with politics polarised along religious lines. The economy remains sluggish despite promises of structural reforms to unlock rapid growth. And Indonesia’s democratic system, long seen as a beacon of progress, is facing intensifying challenges, from crackdowns on free speech to a deterioration in the protection of minority rights.The Indonesia Update has been an annual event held by the Australian National University in Canberra since 1983; this panel discussion was part of the 14th abbreviated Sydney edition held by the Lowy Institute.Dr Eve Warburton is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the National University of Singapore’s Asia Research Institute. Dr Warburton received her PhD in 2018 from the Australian National University’s Coral Bell School of Asia and Pacific Affairs, where

What does Russia want in the world? The dissident Russian journalist and academic Yevgenia Albats talks to Rules Based Audio host Kelsey Munro about how President Vladimir Putin has successfully dominated Russian politics for two decades; and then former Moscow-based diplomat and veteran analyst Bobo Lo discusses Russian foreign policy and worldview, and whether Russia is forming an authoritarian alliance with China.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Indonesian President Joko Widodo was decisively re-elected in April but his second, and final, term in office looks set to be anything but plain sailing. The election revealed deep divides in the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation, with politics polarised along religious lines. The economy remains sluggish despite promises of structural reforms to unlock rapid growth. And Indonesia’s democratic system, long seen as a beacon of progress, is facing intensifying challenges, from crackdowns on free speech to a deterioration in the protection of minority rights. The Indonesia Update has been an annual event held by the Australian National University in Canberra since 1983; this panel discussion was part of the 14th abbreviated Sydney edition held by the Lowy Institute.Edward Aspinall is a professor in the Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs, Australian National University. He is a specialist in the politics of Southeast Asia, especially Indonesia.Nava Nuraniyah has been an analyst the Jakarta-based

The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) is charged with protecting Australia and its citizens from terrorism, foreign interference, espionage, sabotage, and politically motivated violence.ASIO Director-General Duncan Lewis gave a public address at the Lowy Institute, followed by a Q&A with the Institute’s Executive Director, Dr Michael Fullilove.Duncan Lewis has served as the Director-General of Security since 2014. Mr Lewis served in the Australian Defence Force for 33 years, including as commander of the Special Air Service Regiment and Major General, Special Operations Commander Australia.Since 2005, Mr Lewis has served in a number of Australian Public Service roles, including assistant secretary of the National Security Division within the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, Australia’s inaugural National Security Adviser, and Australia’s Ambassador to Belgium, Luxembourg, the European Union, and NATO. Mr Lewis was appointed Officer of the Order of Australia in 2005.See omn

Modern technologies offer enormous opportunities for police and for criminals. Most crimes have a digital element. Rapid technological advances have led to new tools such as facial recognition, camera-equipped drones, and fingerprint scanners. These advances provide enormous amounts of data to be assessed and interpreted, generating a role for artificial intelligence in modern policing. They also create new tensions between protection of citizens’ safety and protecting personal data, as well as presenting a multitude of challenges for police leaders, policy makers, and those who hold the police to account. Cressida Dick was appointed UK Commissioner of Police in 2017, the first female commissioner in the history of the Metropolitan Police. She leads the United Kingdom’s largest police service, having served as a police officer for most of her 35-year career.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Anna Fifield, a long-time foreign correspondent, is one of the most knowledgeable journalists writing about North Korea, a nation that has largely walled itself off to outsiders. In her new book, 'The Great Successor: The Secret Rise and Rule of Kim Jong Un,' she draws on her dozen-plus trips to the country to penetrate the layers of myth and propaganda surrounding the young leader and his nuclear arsenal. Fifield has gained rare access to Kim’s inner circle (including the aunt and uncle who posed as his parents while he was growing up in Switzerland, members of the entourage that accompanied basketballer Dennis Rodman on his visits, and the Japanese sushi chef who pointed to Kim as the most likely successor to his father) to give a detailed and insightful portrait of one of the world’s most secretive dictators. Fifield, the Beijing bureau chief for The Washington Post and former Seoul correspondent for The Financial Times, had a conversation with Richard McGregor, a Lowy Institute Senior Fellow.See omnystudi

In this wide-ranging conversation, Bobo Lo and Lowy Institute Executive Director Michael Fullilove discussed key themes in Russian domestic and foreign policy, including the stability of the Putin regime, the issue of political succession, and Moscow’s growing activism in the Asia-Pacific region.Dr Bobo Lo is a Nonresident Fellow at the Lowy Institute. He is an independent analyst and an Associate Research Fellow with the Russia/NIS Center at the French Institute of International Relations (IFRI). He was previously Head of the Russia and Eurasia Programme at Chatham House and Deputy Head of Mission at the Australian Embassy in Moscow. Dr Lo’s most recent book, A Wary Embrace: What the China-Russia Relationship Means for the World, was published as a Lowy Institute Paper by Penguin in 2017. His book Russia and the New World Disorder (2015) was described by The Economist as ‘the best attempt yet to explain Russia’s unhappy relationship with the rest of the world’.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy informat

Was the Philippines Patient Zero of the disinformation era? Democracy expert Dr Nicole Curato unpacks the role networked disinformation has played in the dramatic and fractious political moment we are living in; and discusses how disruptive populists like Duterte and Trump may be the new normal for democracies.Nicole Curato is an Associate Professor at the Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance at the University of Canberra. She is the author of two books published this year: Democracy in a Time of Misery: From Spectacular Tragedies to Deliberative Action and Power in Deliberative Democracy: Norms, Forums, Systems (with Marit Hammond and John Min). She has been published in academic journals in the fields of politics, policy and sociology, and featured in international media including the New York Times, Financial Times, the New Yorker, and CNN. She has just released a study about disinformation in the 2019 mid-term elections in the Philippines.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy informat

The Lowy Institute hosted a discussion with esteemed archaeologist and historian Professor Ian Morris on the forces that drove the rise of the West to global dominance in the 16th–19th centuries and those that now propel China. The Lowy Institute’s Sam Roggeveen chaired this conversation on the patterns of history and what they reveal about the future. Ian Morris is Jean and Rebecca Willard Professor of Classics and a Senior Fellow of the Archaeology Center at Stanford University. He has published 13 books, including Why the West Rules – For Now (2010), War! What Is It Good For? (2014), and most recently Foragers, Farmers, and Fossil Fuels: How Human Values Evolve (2015). He is currently writing a book about Britain’s relations with Europe and the wider world across the last 8000 years. His books have been translated into 16 languages.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It is two decades since a bloody secessionist conflict on Bougainville was settled – first in a truce, and then in a peace agreement that deferred the question of the region’s future political status. In 2019, that question will be answered when the people of Bougainville vote on whether to become independent from Papua New Guinea. Ben Bohane is a photojournalist who has covered Asia and the Pacific for the past 30 years. He reported on Bougainville throughout the conflict and in the years since. He travelled to the Autonomous Region for a forthcoming Lowy Institute research paper to find out how the people of Bougainville are preparing for the coming referendum.The Lowy Institute hosted Ben Bohane for a conversation with Lowy Institute Research Fellow Shane McLeod, to discuss the prospects of a new nation being formed on Australia’s doorstep.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The withdrawal by the Trump administration from the Obama-era nuclear deal (known as the JCPOA) and the subsequent campaign of ‘maximum pressure’ against Iran by the United States in an effort to get a better deal from Tehran, has raised regional tensions to near boiling point. Five ships have been attacked in the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman, a US drone shot down by an Iranian missile, and an Iranian and UK tanker seized. The war of words between Washington and Tehran has been escalating week by week. And the European states have been busy trying to keep the JCPOA alive rather than signing up to President Trump’s ‘maximum pressure’ campaign. It is a difficult policy problem to resolve and even more difficult to gauge how the current American policy is seen by Iranians given the difficulty in gaining press access. In order to provide some insight into these questions, Lowy Institute Research Fellow Dr Rodger Shanahan hosted a panel with Dr Amir Mogadam from the University of Newcastle, Mahmoud Pargoo from th

Hong Kong is facing the deepest political crisis since it was handed back to China by the United Kingdom in 1997. The partially autonomous Chinese territory has been shaken by weeks of huge democracy protests, and violent clashes between activists, the police and supporters of the Chinese Government. The spark for the latest tensions was a now-suspended bill that would have allowed Hong Kongers to be extradited to mainland China. But the protests are being driven by opposition to Beijing’s intensifying pressure on the freedoms and autonomy that were promised to the city for 50 years from 1997. The Lowy Institute hosted a panel discussion about the causes of this crisis, the implications for this global financial centre, and the impact on China’s place in the world.Lai-Ha Chan is a Senior Lecturer in the Social and Political Sciences Program at the School of Communication at the University of Technology Sydney. She studies China’s international relations and its place in the global order. Before coming to Aus