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Latest Policy Briefs and Reports
Pacific Island (Im)Mobilities in the 21st Century: Issues and debates
Policy Brief No.174 - October, 2023 • By John R. Campbell
This Policy Brief focuses on international migration from and within the Pacific region. Its aim is to clarify some of the issues that link climate change with migration as well as to provide a baseline understanding of contemporary migration patterns in the region. Hopefully this will provide some context for considering the role of climate change-influenced migration that may have already occurred in some instances, and which may be anticipated in the future.
Peace and Security in Northeast Asia
Asia-Pacific vs. Indo-Pacific: Paradigm Shift or False Choice?
Policy Brief No.173 - October, 2023 • By Chung-in Moon
This Policy Brief examines an anomaly taking place in international politics: the rise of Indo-Pacific geopolitical thinking, abruptly replacing the discourse constructed around the concept of the Asia-Pacific that has persisted for years. As the United States and Japan have initiated the Indo-Pacific strategy, policymakers and scholars in India, South Korea, Australia and most European countries have uncritically accepted the transition to an Indo-Pacific era without any substantial debate about its appropriateness. In the sense of what the philosopher and historian Thomas Kuhn called a paradigm shift, it is quite incomprehensible, because the Asia-Pacific paradigm is still alive and well.
Follow the Money: The Economics of Media Capture in Backsliding Democracies
Policy Brief No.172 - September, 2023 • By Debasish Roy Chowdhury
This Policy Brief examines the relationship between the Indian government and India’s mainstream national-level media. When we think of the global epidemic of media capture, we usually think of intimidation and coercion by neo-authoritarians to gain control over the narrative. India shows how media can also be co-opted through financial inducements, and how institutional norms internal to the media industry are instrumental in this wilful capitulation rather than the fear of the demagogue. This highly evolved model of media control is far more effective in that it not only makes the media fall in line but turns it into an enthusiastic cheerleader of the government, as India’s once vibrant and now dismal media landscape shows.
Reinvigorating Peace: A Critical Look at the UN’s New Agenda for Peace
Policy Brief No.171 - September, 2023 • By Jordan Ryan
This Policy Brief analyses how the global landscape has shifted from post-Cold War optimism to current fragmentation, requiring changes in the approach of the United Nations to sustaining peace. It examines the priorities and limitations of the proposed New Agenda for Peace, while analysing issues like sovereignty, development, and enhanced UN integration. This Policy Brief offers concrete, practical recommendations to translate the ambitious sustaining peace vision into reality through continued reforms, recommitment to multilateral solidarity and collaboration, and the political courage to upgrade UN mechanisms for peace.
Cooperative Security, Arms Control and Disarmament
“Rent-a-Soldier”: War as Business
Policy Brief No.170 - August, 2023 • By Herbert Wulf
Wars are not only fought by armed forces. Often, different non-state actors are involved. Private or non-state actors were at times more important than state-established armed forces. Armed conflicts became an attractive and profitable business for some of the participants in wars, who offered themselves for political goals for their economic profit. After the end of the Cold War, economic and personnel shortages in the military sector accelerated privatization, and several factors have contributed to a gold rush for private military companies in the 2000s. They operate in a legal grey area and undermine the state's monopoly on the legitimate use of force. Thus, there is a need to regulate them.