Asia
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A Revolutionary Change in Thailand: Protests Against the Monarchy Signal a Break With the Past (Foreign Affairs Dec 7, 2020)
Since February, protesters have taken to the streets of Thailand to demand reform of the country’s political system. Demonstrations swelled in recent months as activists grew more forthright in criticizing the government and the monarchy—an institution traditionally held sacrosanct…. Continue reading »
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Corruption in Indonesia: Ants after sugar
Corruption is heavy stuff so let’s lighten with an old Indonesian joke: A farmer’s goat is stolen so he reports to the police. They’ll investigate if he pays. The fee is a cow. The theft is neither solved nor the bovines returned. … Continue reading »
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Let them all speak English
Did university administrators know of federal government policies to boost learning about Indonesia before they rushed to slash and burn? Or maybe they knew but are too blinkered to care…. Continue reading »
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Biden and South East Asia (Asialink Nov 24, 2020
Three weeks after the election, there is plenty of evidence that Biden and the emerging Democrat foreign policy team -in-waiting appreciate the strategic challenges facing President Elect Biden both in Europe and the Indo-Pacific…. Continue reading »
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An early test of strength in Indonesia
Just a year into its second five-year term, Indonesian President Joko Widodo’s government is under threat. Opposition is being powered by a hate group led by an incendiary preacher demanding the nation abandons democracy for a sharia state. How serious is the menace? We’ll know next week…. Continue reading »
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Media in the Asian Century. The past week’s regional diplomacy passed through the media in a blur.
Drop-catching in Canberra China’s embassy in Canberra has belatedly woken up to the way things are done in our capital, it seems, and got into the business of “dropping” newsworthy material into the laps of selected press gallery members…. Continue reading »
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A grog ban in Indonesia!
Hard hit by the pandemic, Indonesia is in recession. The government is desperate to revive the economy and draw overseas investors, particularly into the tourist industry which earned almost AUD 20 billion a year before Covid-19. So not the ideal time to tell potential travellers that prohibition is proposed…. Continue reading »
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Ignoring diplomatic advice with disastrous consequences
Remembering Harold David Anderson OBE AO David Anderson was a meritorious Australian who brought great distinction and much honour to his country. Anderson displayed strong ethical and moral courage in his realistic pessimism over Vietnam at a time when his views were not always welcomed in Canberra…. Continue reading »
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Where to now for Myanmar?
Two dysfunctional semi-democracies held national elections in the first week of November. The USA and Myanmar…. Continue reading »
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Australian charity in Indonesia can be a problem.
Until recently Indonesia presented itself to the West not as a Muslim country but through Bali, a land of smiling faces, exotic dancers, paradisiacal landscapes…. Continue reading »
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Asia-Pacific Nations Set to Sign Massive Regional Trade Deal (The Diplomat Nov 12, 2020)
The creation of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership will leave the U.S. sitting on the outside of Asia’s two major free trade blocs.This mega -pact includes China but not the USA…. Continue reading »
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Japan, Australia, and the Rejigging of Asia-Pacific Alliances
The frame of relationships that exist in East Asia today was set around 70-years ago. It needs review…. Continue reading »
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While the US flounders, China plants ideas and friendship in Indonesia
Of all the corroded clichés used in reporting the US election, the rustiest claimed ‘the whole world was watching.’ … Continue reading »
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Papua New Guinea’s Marape Government – a new approach to foreign investment?
The Marape government’s approach to foreign investment – and to governance generally – marks a significant, and welcome, shift away from the sometimes dubious deal-making that marked his predecessor’s approach…. Continue reading »
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Pompeo came to Indonesia, he saw, he scurried
Does anyone in Washington know anything about Indonesia? Clearly not, or White House staff would have urged State Secretary Mike Pompeo to enjoy fall in Washington. So there must be another reason for a 32,000 km round trip other than to escape Trump’s tirades…. Continue reading »
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Indonesia Can Lead the Way for ASEAN on US and China – Just say ‘No’ to both.
The U.S. has been pressing many Southeast Asian states to join it in its efforts to politically and militarily contain China. Indonesia – the de facto leader of ASEAN – can show the way for ASEAN members by just saying “no” to requests and actions from both the U.S. and China that it judges are contrary… Continue reading »
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The dangers of excessive foreign policy zeal in dealing with China.
We have displayed excessive zeal in embarking on wholesale policing of university agreements with foreign institutions, in the highly publicised raids on a third-tier Labor politician in Sydney who has no access to issues relevant to our national security, in the questioning of Chinese journalists here and, above all, in the much publicised attempt to… Continue reading »
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Securing an ‘Asian NATO’ or destabilising Korea relations? (EAF Oct 15, 2020)
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo intended to meet his South Korean counterpart Kang Kyung-wha on 7 October. But the visit was cancelled after US President Donald Trump contracted Covid-19…. Continue reading »
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Protests against Indonesian economic reform: stability and a minimum wage have gone
Indonesian President Joko Widodo wants to snare foreign investors. They’re a wary lot. Though excited by big markets and the chance of bigger returns, they’re fearful of losing fortunes, and with good reason: Risk…. Continue reading »
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Forgotten East Timor: Island, principles, people
Did Gough Whitlam greenlight Indonesia’s violent seizure of East Timor in 1975? The invasion and 24-year occupation took the lives of up to 300,000 people in a population of 650,000 living on a wretchedly poor leftover from European colonisation…. Continue reading »
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Thailand’s political fault lines grow
The Bangkok student demonstrations over the past few weeks represent another of the manifestations of discontent about Thai governance, which, over the past couple of generations, have burst through the fault lines of the Thai polity…. Continue reading »
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Trump pressures South Korea over China
When most around the world had battened down the hatches for a rough ride through the last days of the US Presidential election campaign, the Republic of Korea (ROK) has become seriously preoccupied again with the Trump administration…. Continue reading »
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Japan’s New Leader, Suga Yoshihide, Will Maintain the Old Regime (Jacobin Sep 27, 2020)
Suga Yoshihide, longtime aide to Abe Shinzo, has now replaced him as Japan’s prime minister. Suga will preserve the main features of Abe’s long stint in power: creeping militarism, subordination to the US, and a high-handed approach to political opposition…. Continue reading »
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Asian voice: Wang Gungwu (East Asia Forum Oct 9, 2020)
Against the backdrop of the current tension between China and the United States, Wang Gungwu’s contribution to mutual understanding between East and West is more essential now than ever…. Continue reading »
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The comeback kid heads to Washington
Champions of Donald Trump’s style of politics will warm to Prabowo Subianto. They’ll understand why Washington is forgetting Indonesia’s Defence Minister was once banned from the US and Australia for alleged human rights abuses, and get onside with another tough…. Continue reading »
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Indonesia: keeping the communist myths flying
It’s that time of the year again when Indonesians look sideways at the neighbours, whisper about family histories, question loyalties…. Continue reading »
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Oh dear, what will the neighbours say?
Widodo’s lacklustre leadership – compounded by going soft on corruption and nuzzling up to the army – is opening space to big business, the military and faith fanatics with no interest in reform. This is worrying indeed and should be flashing alerts, particularly to Australia…. Continue reading »
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War crimes in Afghanistan: where will justice fall?
One year out from the 20th anniversary of the start of the Australian occupation of Afghanistan, a report is about to explode like a cluster bomb, showering shrapnel of guilt, denial, blame and even deep sorrow…. Continue reading »
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Widodo, a man of contradictions; a book review (Inside Indonesia Sep 9, 2020)
The complex research that Bland is demanding has existed for decades, and it is not too difficult to find…… Continue reading »
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The South China Sea: Grasping at Straws and Whistling Past the Graveyard
As their struggle for dominance in the region heats up, China and the U.S. are cranking up pressure on Southeast Asian countries to choose between them. As they become ever more desperate, officials and pundits are now ‘grasping at straws’ and ‘whistling past the graveyard’ in response to the rapidly deteriorating political situation in… Continue reading »
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