INSIGHTS

YAIA's blog, Insights, is a platform aimed at promoting the voice of emerging young Australians in the analysis and commentary of international affairs. We accept submissions for articles for publication on Insights on a rolling basis.

Jul 27, 2019
3 min

No time for neutrality: Australia must consider backing US sanctions on Iran

US President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in 2018 and the subsequent series of sanctions that have followed, has triggered a series of events that have put Australia in a difficult position. Relations between the US and Iran have worsened following increased Iranian aggression in the region, with Iran recently seizing a British oil tanker in the Strait of Hormuz. President Trump has responded by among other things, in

Jul 27, 2019
3 min

Steering the European Union through populist waters

The European Commission will be led for the first time in its history by a woman, Germany’s Defence Minister, Ursula von der Leyen. Von der Leyen has outlined her vision for a “United States of Europe” and will be the first German in 50 years to sit as Commission President. This nomination caused a stir within the European Union (EU) parliament with some members of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats (S&D) concerned her nomination was illegitimate. Her nomina

Jul 26, 2019
4 min

BP Statistical Review 2019 – it’s time to shift climate adaptation higher up the international agend

In his remarks at the June launch of the 68th annual edition of the BP Statistical Review, BP’s chief economist Spencer Dale pointed out a growing mismatch between hopes for a global transition to a carbon-neutral economy, and the stark reality of actual trends in global energy consumption. According to Dale, the global economy is on an “unsustainable path” - an obvious but strikingly honest and direct statement from a man who is perhaps the global oil and gas industry’s most

Jul 24, 2019
4 min

What happened to the Asia-Africa Growth Corridor?

Since 2014, under the leadership of Prime Ministers Abe Shinzō and Narendra Modi respectively, there has been a notable and growing synergy between Japan’s Free and Open Indo-Pacific Strategy and India’s ‘Act East’ policy. However, unlike the Indo-Pacific outlooks of the United States, Australia and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), both India and Japan have placed great emphasis on the development of stronger economic links and ‘industrial corridors’ betwee

Jul 15, 2019
3 min

Asia’s 'World City' threatened as Beijing tightens its grip

In late June, thousands of anti-extradition protestors surrounded the Hong Kong Police Headquarters and began laying siege to the station. The protestors were demanding that the Hong Kong government condemn what they perceive to be the use of excessive force against protestors demonstrating against controversial extradition legislation which has now been withdrawn from the Legislative Council’s agenda. However, anti-extradition protestors have pledged to continue to demonstra

Jul 11, 2019
3 min

Rings of Exploitation: Sex Trafficking Beyond Epstein

The emerging scandal of wealthy financier Jeffrey Epstein’s arrest over sex trafficking claims is not an isolated case, rather it is symptomatic of broader patterns abroad. Epstein was charged this week with sex trafficking and sex trafficking conspiracy by federal prosecutors, abuses which were largely perpetrated in his New York home and Palm Beach mansion. Although news coverage has focused on the 2008 plea deal orchestrated by now-US Secretary of Labour Alexander Acosta,

Jul 11, 2019
3 min

For Facebook, perception is reality

There's a comparison to be made between Facebook’s COO, Sheryl Sandberg, and the former US Vice President Dick Cheney. Cheney was characterised as the Washington veteran, a seasoned counsel to the untried President Bush. Likewise, when Sandberg joined Facebook from Google in 2008 as an experienced inside-the-beltway operator, she was portrayed as the adult that would guide the young but naive Zuckerberg. However, the resemblances go beyond cosmetic similarities. Cheney’s prin

Jul 9, 2019
4 min

On US-Iran relations, Europe finds itself between a rock and a hard place

Increasingly, the US and Europe are not seeing eye-to-eye in their approach to Iran. The complex relationship between Iran and the US has been strained for over half a century with recent escalations in the Strait of Hormuz renewing fears of conflict. European leaders are urging restraint from Washington and Tehran to avoid dismantling the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, also known as the Iran Deal. Europe’s desperate attempts to save the dying agreement are being met by

Jul 8, 2019
4 min

The paradox of energy security in the developing world

In 2019, almost one billion people worldwide live without access to electricity. This is about 13 per cent of the global population, most of whom are in Sub-Saharan Africa and developing areas of Asia. The United Nations has a development goal of providing the world’s entire population with reliable electricity by 2030. But can this goal be met sustainably? This is one of the most important questions facing the developing world at present, not least because these areas are so

Jul 8, 2019
4 min

The case for CANZUK British Foreign Policy Post-Brexit: How Australia Could Stand to Benefit.

With the Brexit deadline on the horizon, Australia could enter a new beneficial relationship with Britain and other Anglosphere countries in a movement that is slowly gaining traction. On February 11, several prominent UK MP’s called for the prioritisation of a free-movement area – similar to the free movement of persons provision in the European Economic Area – between Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Britain, after the UK eventually exits the EU. This was following the re

Jul 3, 2019
4 min

Bolstering civilian protection in Sudan

The #BlueforSudan movement has drawn worldwide attention to the ongoing political crisis in Sudan. Blue was the reported favourite colour of 26-year-old Mohamed Hashim Mattar, one of more than 100 civilians killed during the violent crackdown on a sit-in protest on 3 June by government security forces in the Sudanese capital Khartoum. The sit-in was the culmination of months of protests since December 2018 against Sudan’s president Omar al-Bashir and his government’s austerit

Jul 2, 2019
4 min

Protestors stormed the legislative building in Hong Kong. What are they fighting for?

Protests in Hong Kong took a turn this week as the city marked the anniversary of the city’s return to Chinese rule. In contrast to a much-larger peaceful demonstration, a breakaway group of protestors stormed and vandalised Hong Kong’s Legislative Council Building. This marks the first significant act of aggression from members of what has otherwise been a remarkably peaceful mass of protestors. These protests are now weeks old and showing no sign of slowing down. So what ar

Jun 23, 2019
3 min

The Politics of Memory: Tiananmen’s 30th Anniversary

In Tiananmen Square, over the course of two days from June 3-4 1989, the Chinese Government deployed 300,000 troops to brutally quell student protests calling for political reform. Estimates of the death toll range from a few hundred to 10,000. Thirty years on, civilians gathered in Hong Kong and Taiwan to mark the 30th anniversary of this horrific moment in world history. Instead of acknowledging the massacre, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) goes to great lengths to remove

Jun 20, 2019
4 min

Australia's four 'first order' relationships

With the announcement of the ‘Pacific Step-Up’ last year, it is unsurprising that recent discussion of Australian foreign policy has focused largely on its activities in the South Pacific. But the Morrison government’s reelection also provides an opportunity to refresh Australia’s profile across the broader Indo-Pacific. In a Pacific Forum discussion paper earlier this year, I outlined several aspects of what might be termed an Australian Indo-Pacific Strategy. While the Paci

Jun 18, 2019
4 min

Resource disputes on the high seas

Much of the world’s fossil fuel supply has been depleted, however large deposits still remain under the ocean, where organic matter from millennia gone by has been transformed under immense pressure into oil and natural gas. These offshore resources represent a modern Wild West in many ways. The enforcement of maritime borders, demarcating a country’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) from international waters, is a murky area of policy. Convention laid out in 1982’s United Natio

Jun 17, 2019
4 min

Three reasons US tariffs on Mexico would not curb illegal immigration

After over a week of uncertainty and a twelve hour meeting at the US State Department, Mexico and the US have finally reached an agreement to curb immigration and avert punitive US tariffs on Mexican exports. Earlier this month, President Trump insisted that Mexico was not doing enough to tackle immigration flows. In retaliation, he threatened to impose a 5 per cent duty on all Mexican goods that would rise by 5 per cent every month until it reached 25 per cent in October. Ta

Jun 16, 2019
3 min

All eyes on the G20 as US-China talks stall

Hopes for a resolution to the US-China trade war were dashed in early May after the Chinese government sent the US a revised draft of the trade deal. The 150-page draft assembled over five months of intense negotiations had been cut down to 105 pages. The reason that the Chinese government gave for scrapping the deal was that the century of humiliation was over and that China would never sign another unequal treaty. Whatever the reason, negotiations have broken down, and now

Jun 16, 2019
4 min

Turkey’s troubled European Union ambitions

Turkey’s long-awaited hopes of accession to the European Union have taken a further backslide as the country’s strongman leader, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, steers his country away from EU membership. After municipal elections took place on March 31st in Turkey’s two largest cities, Ankara and Istanbul, opposition-coalition leader Ekrem İmamoğlu declared a narrow victory in Istanbul in what would have ended the 25-year rule of Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP). The resu

Jun 15, 2019
4 min

The open source future of intelligence

In this information technology age, access to sensitive information is increasingly open to groups and individuals outside the intelligence community. In early May a satellite owned by Planet Labs, a private Earth imaging company, captured a “one in a million” shot of a North Korean Missile launch east of Pyongyang. Not all discoveries from open source information come down to luck. Careful analysis of data drawn from open sources can bring revelations out into the public dom

Jun 15, 2019
4 min

What’s next for Xinjiang?

In China’s north-west lies the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region: a vast, remote area that has become the setting of a contemporary cultural cleansing exercise conducted by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The Uyghurs, a predominantly Muslim, Turkic people group, have resided in the Tarim Basin region of Xinjiang for millennia, and today make up roughly half of Xinjiang’s population. Owing to strong Islamic influences and its remote locale in the borderlands of Central Asia