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“Right. So I’m going to pretend that you are the recently voted upon Prime Minister?” Exactly, I reply, smiling across the screen to Dorcas Makgato, High Commissioner for Botswana to Australia. Her Excellency – titles are boring, she laughs – has kindly agreed to an online interview for

Gains for women in diplomacy in recent years indicate we have much to celebrate. Yet, with increasing pressures on diplomats operating in a complex (post-)Covid global environment, marred by instances of gender equality backsliding, how substantive is Australia’s progress for women in diplomacy

Last year, Hilda Heine, former president of the Marshall Islands, congratulated Fiame Naomi Mata’afa on her election as Prime Minister of Samoa. Heine noted that Fiame Mata’afa’s win was “a win for Pacific Women.” Extraordinary, even. Fiame Mata’afa is the first female prime minister

Publishing will be light on Monday for the Queen’s Birthday public holiday in Australia (the present occupant on the throne, Queen Elizabeth II, was actually born on 21 April). By coincidence of timing, this holiday follows soon after the decision by the new Labor government to appoint for the

Book review: Line of Advantage: Japan’s Grand Strategy in the Era of Abe Shinzo, by Michael J Green (Columbia University Press) Michael Green’s examination of Japan’s foreign and security policy in the 21st century elegantly evaluates what was an eight-year effort under Abe Shinzo during his

Papua New Guinea is about to issue the writs for its national elections to formally start a campaign that will culminate with two weeks of voting from 9–22 July. Historically, elections in PNG have been fraught with violence and fraud, the political landscape dominated by male politicians

Solomon Islands has signed a security pact with China and set off a flurry of foreign policy chatter in Australia and the region. Understandably, the focus of the discussion is on why this has happened, what this means, what to do next, and of course, because Australia is in the midst of an election

The Interpreter team is having a break for Anzac Day in Australia. We’ll run a reduced publication schedule today, but we’re back to normal tomorrow

In 2000, the establishment of the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda by the United Nations Security Council created formal institutional space for the recognition and inclusion of women in addressing violence and building peace. Fifteen years later, the establishment of a Youth, Peace and

In a long speech this week, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin crossed the Rubicon by recognising the “independent” republics of Luhansk and Donetsk in eastern Ukraine, creating the pretext for what is now a full-scale Russian invasion of its neighbour. But Putin’s was not the only

Book Review: The Lords of Easy Money: How the Federal Reserve Broke the American Economy, by Christopher Leonard (Simon & Schuster, 2022) A book focused on the failures of American monetary policy in the post-GFC period would have a tiny readership, confined to academics and

Wednesday is a public holiday for Australia Day, and posting will be light on The Interpreter. Normal publishing will resume on Thursday. Main image via Flickr user Albert Straub

In J.K. Galbraith’s entertaining 1954 account of the stock-market collapse of 1929 The Great Crash (re-released by Penguin in paperback last year), the celebrated economist took delight in recording the madness of crowds, responding to the lure of easy wealth. Galbraith observed that, unlike

Here’s a countdown of the top 10 articles you read the most in 2021 – a terrific mix of high-quality analysis of big events and cross-cutting themes. We’re taking a break from the end of this week. Check back over the coming weeks for select highlights from the year. Normal transmission

Our end-of-year series as the Lowy Institute staff offer their favourite books, articles, films or TV programs for 2021. Watch for more recommendations and reflections in the days ahead. –Eds Nobody ever accused me of being an early adopter of new tech. At least a decade

Our end-of-year series as the Lowy Institute staff offer their favourite books, articles, films or TV programs for 2021. Watch for more recommendations and reflections in the days ahead. –Eds. Foreign policy analysts kept up the gastronomical foreign policy metaphors at Lowy

Our end-of-year series as the Lowy Institute staff offer their favourite books, articles, films or TV programs for 2021. Watch for more recommendations and reflections in the days ahead. –Eds Staggering, saturated to the eyeballs in whiskey and cheap ale, a pair of untidy out

Our end-of-year series as the Lowy Institute staff offer their favourite books, articles, films or TV programs for 2021. Watch for more recommendations and reflections in the days ahead. –Eds. Another year of lockdowns. If 2020, was the year of the sourdough ­– which by the way

From 29–30 November, the eighth edition of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) was held in Dakar, Senegal, bringing together the foreign ministers and high-level attendees from African countries and China. This year’s theme was to “Deepen China-Africa Partnership and Promote

Book review: We, the Robots? Regulating Artificial Intelligence and the Limits of the Law, by Simon Chesterman (Cambridge University Press, 2021) From Tesla’s self-driving cars that can comfort your dog, to OpenAI’s large language model that writes decent essays and code, more and more

Twenty years on, there are many different ways to remember 9/11. Many rightly focus on the families of the victims, as Jennifer Senior does in her remarkable article in The Atlantic describing the way grief echoed through the lives of a single family. The Lowy Institute has released a new

Book review: Emma Shortis, Our Exceptional Friend: Australia’s Fatal Alliance with the United States (Hardie Grant, 2021) Depending on your perspective, Australia’s China debate might be relatively sophisticated, or resemble shell-churned ground in a war zone. Either way, it’s noisy and

Book review: Michael Lewis The Premonition: A Pandemic Story (W. W. Norton & Company, 2021) Way back in October 2019, before most anyone had heard of Covid-19, a group of experts from the Nuclear Threat Initiative, Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and The Economist Intelligence