Professor Simon Lewis draws attention to the need to make carbon accounting trustworthy, and eliminate ‘carbon deceptions’ from approaches to emissions reductions.
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Category: Research and commentary
Is the global shortage of Covid-19 vaccines due to artificial scarcity?
The World Health Organisation has today called for urgent action to ramp up the supply of Covid-19 vaccines, echoing the growing concern of many commentators observing the divergence between what developed countries are doing, and what we know must be done, to avoid prolonging the pandemic and increasing the cost to the global economy. In the article below, in the context of Italy’s decision this week to refuse an export licence for vaccines destined for
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Did Trump gift Biden a more stable Middle East?
Commentators are divided on the nature of the Trump Administration’s legacy in the Middle East. Was it left in a parlous state, or was Trump’s parting gift to Biden a more stable region?
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‘Bloat and warfare’: the trend toward ever-more complicated and expensive weapons
Why do weapons platforms keep getting bigger, more complicated, and more costly? In ‘Bloat and Warfare’ Jacob Parakilas makes some interesting observations about Canada’s new frigates, which are, like Australia’s proposed Hunter class frigates, based on the BAE Systems Type 26 frigate design.
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How should the EU handle Russia’s Grand Strategy?
This Egmont Security Policy Brief notes that for many Western governments, there still is a lot of hesitation and bewilderment on how to deal with Russia. A first step in defining a coherent policy vis-a-vis Russia, is trying to understand the motivation and objectives of Russian foreign policy, as well as its weaknesses.
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Biden’s top foreign policy challenge: avoiding a cold war with China
The Biden administration faces a host of difficult problems, but in foreign policy its thorniest will be its relations with the People’s Republic of China. How the new administration handles issues of trade, security, and human rights will either allow both countries to hammer out a working relationship or pull the U.S. into an expensive — and unwinnable — cold war. But there are a number of moves both countries could make to avoid this.
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The Chinese ‘Debt Trap’ Is a Myth
A well-told lie is worth a thousand facts. And the debt-trap narrative is just that: a lie, and a powerful one. The Sri Lankan port of Hambantota is not an example of China’s strategic use of debt. With a new administration in Washington, the truth about the widely, perhaps willfully, misunderstood case of Hambantota Port is long overdue.
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What explains COVID’s east-west divide? (John Feffer)
COVID-19 has drawn a clear line between Asia and the rest of the world. What’s particularly striking about this latest divergence is the lack of significance in types of governance. The countries that have been successful in Asia have very different forms of government, as well as different histories, religious backgrounds, and relationships with the countries of the West. How can this be explained?
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Document Daze: Understanding Trump’s “Indo-Pacific Strategic Framework” (James Curran)
In the dying days of the most chaotically dysfunctional presidency in living memory, outgoing officials in Washington declassified the Trump administration’s Strategic Framework for the Indo-Pacific. At issue is not only the contents of this document, but the manner and timing of its release and further, what its reception in Australia says about Australia’s relationship with the United States, and whether it shapes expectations for the new Biden presidency.
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A China strategy to reunite America’s allies (Chatham House)
China already has significant geopolitical and economic clout in Asia and beyond – especially through the Belt and Road Initiative, its massive investment program in global infrastructure, and commercial development. Economic decoupling is not in the offing; China is far too integrated into the global economy. So is there a “China strategy” that would reunite the US and its democratic partners?
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What’s the role of hydrogen in the clean energy transition? (UCS)
In energy transition conversations, hydrogen is having a bit of a moment. But, as ever, there’s a catch. So here, from the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Julie McNamara, an introduction to hydrogen as a decarbonisation pathway, to help differentiate between the promise and potential and the distractions and misdirections.
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China to be world’s biggest economy by 2028, five years earlier than expected
A report from the Centre for Economics and Business Research (United Kingdom), released on 26 December 2020, has forecast that China will overtake the United States to become the world’s biggest economy in 2028, five years earlier than previously estimated, due to the contrasting recoveries of the two countries from the COVID-19 pandemic.
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The US-Japan alliance in 2020: an equal alliance with a global agenda (Armitage-Nye)
Richard Armitage and Joseph Nye have led a team to produce a new “bipartisan Armitage-Nye” report on the state of the US-Japan alliance, seen as critical to addressing both regional and global challenges. On the question of China and US strategy in Asia, the report is both entirely predictable and refreshingly surprising.
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US-led global arms sales grew 8.5% in 2019, Australia top host of foreign arms companies (SIPRI)
New data from SIPRI’s Arms Industry Database shows that arms sales by the world’s 25 largest arms companies totalled US$361 billion in 2019, an 8.5 per cent increase over 2018. The top five arms companies were all based in the United States: Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and General Dynamics. Outside of North America and Western Europe, the largest number of foreign arms company entities are hosted by Australia (38).
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China and Brexit drive the UK’s Indo-Pacific ‘tilt’ (Bill Hayton)
Chatham House’s Bill Hayton looks at the UK’s ’tilt’ to the Indo-Pacific – involving trade, military presence and diplomatic efforts, concluding that the overall effect is likely to embed the UK in the Indo-Pacific as a valuable partner for those countries which value a free and open international order.
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How Joe Biden can recalibrate US policy on China (Michael D Swaine)
Michael Swaine suggests that “a Biden presidency will likely correct many of Trump’s most egregious mistakes in handling Beijing while still supporting the bipartisan shift that has occurred toward intensified competition with China”. The article sets out some of the policy shifts that might result, but asks will Biden go far enough?
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Radical pragmatism: policymaking after COVID (Gertz + Kharas)
Contemplating a world after COVID, some are calling for a reset of existing models of policymaking. In this essay the authors outline shortcomings in existing neoliberal economic models, and argue that the radical pragmatism of effective crisis response—a willingness to try whatever works, guided by an experimental mindset and commitment to empiricism and measuring results —represents a policymaking model that can and should be applied more widely, not only in times of crisis.
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China’s grand strategy and Australia’s future in the new global order: Geoff Raby
Diplomatic relations have never been worse with China, the destination of half of Australia’s exports. John West reviews the new book, China’s Grand Strategy and Australia’s Future in the New Global Order, in which Geoff Raby provides hard-hitting analysis and sharp proposals for getting this crucial relationship back on track.
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Sustaining an undersea advantage: Hudson Institute anti-submarine warfare report
The spotlight is back on Australia’s future submarine program, SEA1000. The Hudson Institute report Sustaining the Undersea Advantage: Disrupting Anti-Submarine Warfare Using Autonomous Systems is an excellent introduction to the history of anti-submarine warfare, and to some recent transformational developments in its conduct. It will help readers understand the long history of undersea warfare and how past experience has made older concepts hard to shift.
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What is the end game of US-China competition? (Andy Zelleke)
Something refreshing in the plethora of articles exploring the different dimensions of the current US-China tensions, Harvard Business School’s Andy Zelleke asks, “What ‘yesable proposition,’ fundamentally, is the United States offering China?” What might be the terms of a plausible U.S.-China equilibrium state?
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