Today Trends

Authors: Oyuntugs Davaakhuu, Economic Research Institute and Tuvshintugs Batdelger, Economic Research Institute and National University of Mongolia At the onset of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, it was widely expected that the war would have a profoundly negative impact on the Mongolian economy . Mongolia is Russia’s direct southern neighbour and its economy significantly depends on the import of strategically important goods from Russia. Mongolia imports around 28 per cent of its goods from Russia and is fully dependent on Russian petroleum products. The country’s vulnerability to this dependence has been exposed several times in the past. In 2008, Russian oil and petroleum company Rosneft proposed to build 100 gas stations in Mongolia. Though the Parliament of Mongolia did not approve the plan at first, Ulaanbaatar later recognised the significance of the Russian company as the country’s primary fuel supplier and subsequently signed contracts that were favourable to Rosneft . The...

Authors: Jackson Skinner, ANU and Walter Brenno Colnaghi, LSE The 2022 Australia–United States Ministerial Consultations (AUSMIN) set a significant precedent for the alliance. Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong and Defence Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles wove a climate pillar into the structure of the alliance and, in doing so, signalled a more comprehensive view of security cooperation in the region. The AUSMIN consultations, which occurred in December 2022, led defence commentators to focus on the expanding military cooperation between the United States and Australia. But this commentary misses the emphasis placed on ‘urgent action on climate change’ and the ‘clean energy transition’ in the final joint statement . The decision to include a climate pillar in the US–Australia alliance makes perfect sense from the standpoint of both parties in terms of individual and regional security. The election of Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s centre-left L...

Author: Madoka Fukuda, Hosei University On 16 December 2022, the Japanese government approved three new strategic documents related to national security: the National Security Strategy (NSS), National Defense Strategy and Defense Buildup Program. In the nine years since the enactment of the previous NSS, the most significant changes for Japan have been the growing military threat from China and military tensions in the Taiwan Strait. In response to the evolving security situation in the region, Japan should seek to enhance its deterrence against China and simultaneously engage with China through diplomatic efforts. In the previous NSS , published in 2013, China’s external posture was described as ‘an issue of concern for the international community’. Since China–Taiwan relations were stable at the time, the situation in the Taiwan Strait was described as having ‘both orientations towards stability and potential instability’. The new strategy , though, describes China’s growing pr...

Authors: Scott Rozelle, Stanford University and Dorien Emmers, KU Leuven According to World Bank data , only a handful of economies have risen from middle- to high-income status since 1960, when economic catch-up growth in many developing economies took off. Examples include South Korea, Singapore, Israel and Ireland. Some countries that were high income in 1960 remain so today, such as Denmark and Japan. Others, like Myanmar and North Korea, have stayed poor. Many countries have stayed at middle-income status for decades, seemingly unable to reach high-income status. How does China compare to these other countries stuck at the middle-income level? One key factor that may account for the disparate development paths of countries is education. According to the OECD, in 2015 the average share of workers — people aged 18–65 — that completed secondary education in countries that graduated to high-income status was 72 per cent when they were still at middle-income status. But in countr...

Author: Derek McDougall, University of Melbourne After winning office in December 1972, former Australian Labor prime minister Gough Whitlam established diplomatic relations with the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) in February 1973. While Whitlam is often credited with ending Australian involvement in the Vietnam War, this assessment of history is a misunderstanding. Most Australian troops were withdrawn from the Republic of Vietnam after the Tet Offensive in 1968 — a decision made by former Liberal prime minister John Gorton’s government. The final Australian combat role ended in 1971 under former Liberal prime minister William McMahon’s government. But with electoral success in 1972, Labor was set to make changes to Australia’s Vietnam policy. Whitlam’s government withdrew Australia’s remaining military advisers from the Republic of Vietnam and ended military conscription. Whitlam also distanced Australia from US Vietnam policy, establishing the basis for a new relationship...

Author: Imtiaz Gul, CRSS Islamabad Terrorist attacks in Pakistan peaked in 2013, averaging just under four attacks a day, with nearly 2700 total fatalities. The latest trends suggest that 2023 may be worse, with almost 200 terror-related incidents and at least 340 fatalities by March. Is Pakistan reliving the scary spectre of 2013? It may be — the last quarter of 2022 set the tone for the ensuing months, with December ending off the year as the deadliest month for Pakistan’s security forces in over a decade. Around 282 military and police personnel were among the 973 total fatalities in 2022. At the centre of this violence is a new terror triad. It comprises the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), the ethnic Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) and the Islamic State of Khorasan Province (ISKP), the regional chapter of ISIS. One of the immediate explanations for the unprecedented spate of terrorism is the unilateral cancellation of a year-old ceasefire on 28 November 2022 by the TTP, which b...

Author: Diego Fossati, City University of Hong Kong Democratic backsliding — understood as the decline of democratic norms, institutions, and processes — is a well-documented development that has concerned most world regions, and Indonesia offers an apt illustration of how this unsettling phenomenon may unfold. After the breakdown of authoritarianism in the late 1990s, it defied expectations by establishing democratic institutions and implementing several waves of free and fair national and local elections. But Indonesia’s democratic trajectory has since taken a darker turn, marked by illiberalism, polarisation and the rise of radical political Islam. Given these trends it would be reasonable to assume that ordinary Indonesians are increasingly disillusioned with the country’s democratic institutions. Yet public opinion data presents a contrasting picture, as the erosion of democracy has not been accompanied by a rise in public dissatisfaction with democracy. Rather, Indonesians ha...

Author: Will Brehm, UCL Cambodia will hold general elections on 23 July 2023. That means it is once again time for long-standing Prime Minister Hun Sen to exert power to ensure his party, the Cambodian People’s Party, comfortably wins re-election. At the helm for nearly four decades, Hun Sen is an astute political operative who never misses an opportunity to minimise possible threats against him, his family or his party. His political skills and strongman tactics have become even more important in 2023 as he contemplates transferring power to his eldest son, Hun Manet . Independent media has long been in the crosshairs of Hun Sen. His latest target was the Voice of Democracy (VOD), a news agency that began as a radio station in 2003 and then developed into an online news source. It was one of the last bastions of critical media in the country. Forcing VOD shut has further narrowed what Noam Chomsky calls the ‘ spectrum of acceptable opinion ’ in Cambodia. By reducing the scope an...

Author: Sheryn Lee, SDU Since 2000, Taiwan has been a top target of misinformation campaigns largely propagated by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its proxies. China’s primary objective in spreading disinformation is to undermine trust in Taiwan’s democracy and governance. Beijing hopes to convince Taiwanese citizens that the only way to avoid war is to support Beijing’s plans to ‘ peacefully ’ unify Taiwan with mainland China. Taiwan’s robust democracy is underpinned by freedom of speech, press and association — liberties that China seeks to exploit to spread disinformation. In the past few years, numerous CCP-backed campaigns have targeted Taiwan’s commercial news outlets and social media landscape. False stories are often generated by content farms — websites that produce large quantities of low-quality content designed to place highly on search engine results — then republished in Taiwanese media and amplified by state-sponsored accounts. The CCP’s messaging has evol...

Author: Jemma Purdey, Australia-Indonesia Centre As the first Indonesian president in the post-Reformasi era not from the political, military or Islamic establishment, Joko Widodo’s (Jokowi) ascension to the presidency in 2014 was heralded as a milestone. After just a single term, the foundations for his own political family were laid. When Jokowi’s son Gibran Rakabuming Raka was elected Mayor of Surakarta in 2021, Jokowi joined the ranks of Indonesia’s other two living presidents, Megawati Sukarnoputri and Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, as heads of political dynasties. Their children currently occupy positions in regional and central governments, as well as national political parties. Former president Megawati Sukarnoputri, the daughter of Indonesia’s founding president Sukarno, is the matriarch of a dynasty now three generations old which controls Indonesia’s largest political party, the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P). Agus Harimurti Yudhoyono heads the party his fath...