The implications of China’s “Belt and Road” initiative can’t be ignored

Now five years into its existence, China’s Belt and Road Initiative appears to be attracting both new supporters and opponents on a daily basis.

Australia’s Rules-Based International Order

The ‘rules-based international order’ has become a rhetorical centrepiece of Australian international policy. One of the challenges in the current moment is that the rules and principles that were built on the foundation of American primacy are being questioned as power shifts.

The rise and fall of the liberal international order

The broad shape of the international order after the Second World War was that of a liberal internationalist system that would embrace collective security, economic openness and social progress. The central tenets of that liberal order are now all in doubt.

China’s Uyghurs face an Orwellian future

China’s mistreatment of its Uyghur minority in the Xinjiang autonomous region has garnered increased attention in recent months, due to Beijing’s policy of mass arbitrary detention of Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in ‘political re-education centres’.

The widening gap between ethics and international relations

In 1918 prominent American philosopher James H. Tufts asked, ‘Is there, can there be, any ethics of international relations?’ In the turbulent century since, that question has inspired many attempts at an answer and contemporary events press the issue again.