Today Trends

Timor-Leste’s last political cycle had two electoral episodes — the presidential elections in 2022 and the parliamentary elections in 2023. In both elections, the public vehemently rejected the main tenets of former president Francisco ‘Lu Olo’ Guterres’ term and returned candidates to key state positions aligned with the revival of conventions established with independence. When the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste became an independent state on 20 May 2002, a long period of Portuguese colonial and Indonesian neo-colonial rule drew to a close. The emerging nation made a unique decision: to build a democratic polity alongside state-building and reinforcing a national identity. This was all the more extraordinary as Timor-Leste had no memory or tradition of any form of democratic governance. The configuration of the democratic institutions created ‘rational-legal’ legitimacy through free, fair and regular elections based on universal suffrage. Yet, charismatic and traditional form...

Middle powers such as Australia and Japan have leveraged minilateral relationships to achieve shared security and economic objectives. But since the minilateralism pursued by Canberra and Tokyo has largely been a response to the rise of China, this raises the question of how Beijing practices minilateralism and what this might reveal about the effectiveness of the Japanese and Australian approach. The appeal of China’s approach in the Global South should give Canberra and Tokyo pause. Australian and Japanese minilateralism, while containing governance and economic elements, is widely perceived as being dominated by ‘hard security’. This means that their minilateralism has less appeal to developing countries, since it does less to support the lives of the vulnerable through the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Australia and Japan must uncover ways to engage with these countries outside traditional security issues. The Partners in the Blue Pacific initiative is the most obv...

Pacific Islanders, stewards of the world’s largest ocean, are staring down the dire effects of climate change as ocean warming, severe cyclones and mass coral reef bleaching jeopardise their livelihoods. The United Nations’ International Seabed Authority (ISA) has been charting a course to balance interests among all stakeholders — mining companies, investors, scientists, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and nations around the world — in the pursuit of critical metals and the equal distribution of benefits. The drive to develop this new source of key energy transition metals found in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ), a deep abyssal plain midway between Mexico and Hawaii, is greatly influenced by the global shift away from fossil fuels and toward green technologies. The area has large deposits of nickel and cobalt-rich polymetallic nodules, resources in heavy demand as virtually all the world is involved in the quest for a net zero future. ISA, founded in 1994, has uphe...

The rise of minilateral initiatives in the Indo-Pacific has attracted worldwide attention as it appears to be a response to the region’s changing balance of power. Yet such groupings can come with their own challenges, particularly when they bring together countries with distinct or only partially converging strategic outlooks. This is especially the case with the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or the Quad, which brings together Japan, Australia, India and the United States. Unlike the US–Japan–Australia Trilateral Strategy Dialogue (TSD), which is likely to strengthen the US strategic position and the alliance system by connecting allies with each other, the Quad represents a looser consortium of ‘like-minded’ states. The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami disaster created initial contact in the maritime sphere between the would-be Quad powers. In 2007, then Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe proposed the Quad, but meetings were later suspended due to a lack of momentum. But as each cou...

Myanmar remains fundamentally damaged by the military coup that took place in 2021. Nearly half of the population has been forced below the poverty line. Meagre growth of  2 to 3 per cent  in 2023 does little to claw back the double-digit economic contraction inflicted by the junta. Many factors are impeding   a more robust recovery, including weak consumer demand due to low employment and high prices. Businesses suffer from perpetual shortages because of  foreign currency constraints , depressing exports and hiking inflation.  International asset freezes and sanctions, such as the United States’ designation of two state-owned banks  in mid-2023 , are designed to impede the military and its close associates. The blacklisting of Myanmar by the Financial Action Task Force in  October 2022  has disrupted  regime access  to the international financial system, damaged Myanmar’s reputation and deterred investment. Sanctions on state-owne...

According to the 2018 Composite Water Management Index report by the National Institution for Transforming India, India is facing the worst water crisis in its history. Approximately 600 million people experience high to extreme water stress. Inadequate access to safe water is estimated to cause 200,000 deaths annually. Yale University’s 2022 unsafe drinking water index ranked India 141 out of 180 countries. Nearly 70 per cent of India’s water is contaminated. By 2030, India’s water demand is projected to be double the amount available as reiterated by the Interconnected Disaster Risks Report in October 2023. The potential scarcity would affect millions and adversely impact the country’s GDP. Groundwater is vital for India’s agriculture , industry and population needs. Groundwater is a primary irrigation source, crucial for food security . In rural areas, groundwater is a primary source of drinking water through community wells and boreholes. Industries depend on it, particularly wh...

Since invading Ukraine, Russia has used a combination of incentives and threats to align Central Asian countries with its interests. Russia has also converged with China as an adamant opponent to Western development cooperation programs that they perceive as masked initiatives aimed at infiltrating Central Asia and steering the region to support Ukraine. Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan are reorienting their multi-vector foreign policy with varying degrees of urgency to strike a balance , distancing themselves from Russia’s aggression while avoiding the Kremlin’s wrath. Meanwhile, often overlooked Afghanistan is poised to demonstrate its influence in the region due to an impending water assess crisis, large-scale migration and increased assertiveness from the Islamic State of Khorasan Province (ISKP). Central Asian countries have observed the Taliban’s efforts to solidify its grip on power and Iran’s proxy conflict with Israel with anxiety, revealin...

If re-elected, Donald Trump has promised a 10 per cent tariff on all goods coming into the United States — a tax on imports — and a 60 per cent tariff on Chinese goods. That’s not quite the shock to the system of the US Smoot-Hawley tariffs of close to 20 per cent that exacerbated and prolonged the Great Depression in the 1930s, but it’s very close. What made things worse in the 1930s was the retaliation from much of the rest of the world, ratcheting up tariffs and restrictions on global trade. The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, which later became the World Trade Organization (WTO), was created in the aftermath of the Second World War to avoid a repeat of this beggar-thy-neighbour protectionism that fed rivalry and conflict in the lead up to war. To date, that system has avoided what is called a prisoner’s dilemma outcome — where every nation acts in its narrow self-interest to produce collectively worse outcomes for everybody. But the system is under threat and internat...

The World Trade Organisation’s (WTO) 13th Ministerial Conference takes place in Abu Dhabi on 26–29 February. It is expected to include a deal providing transparency and predictability in electronic commerce, endorse an agreement on investment facilitation for development and admit two least developed countries, Timor Leste and the Comoros, as WTO members. Though welcome, these are modest expectations. This is particularly so given the promises from the 12th Ministerial Conference — tackling fisheries subsidies and offering the hope of restoring a ‘ fully functioning dispute settlement mechanism no later than 2024 ’. On fisheries subsidies the differences between parties have been widening. There is also little sign of progress in restoring the dispute settlement mechanism. No progress will be made in the reform of agricultural trade given discord over whether India’s grain stockholding policy constitutes an illegal subsidy. Deadlock in dispute settlement — disabled since December ...

Fragmentation in global trade is not new. With the slow development of multilateral trade rules at the World Trade Organization (WTO), governments have turned to free trade agreements (FTAs). As of 2023, almost 600 bilateral and regional trade agreements have been notified to the WTO, leading to growing fragmentation in trade rules, business activities and international relations. But until recently, trade dispute settlements have predominantly remained within the WTO. Governments historically used the WTO as their preferred forum but this changed after the WTO’s appellate court, the Appellate Body, stopped functioning in December 2019 because the United States blocked the appointment of new Appellate Body judges. Appeal judges must be nominated by consensus, meaning objection by one WTO Member is sufficient to prevent the Appellate Body from being restaffed. The lack of a functional Appellate Body has stalled the WTO’s dispute settlement system as panel reports can now be app...