Global think tanks (ASPI The Strategist; Chatham House; East Asia Forum; Lowy The Interpreter; RUSI; The Jamestown Foundation; The Soufan Center)
Argentina
(Bruno Binetti) Since becoming Argentina’s president in December 2023, Javier Milei has defied political gravity. A self-described anarcho-capitalist with no prior executive experience, he came to power promising to upend decades of interventionist policies and slash public spending with his famous chainsaw. In doing so, he defeated the Peronist movement, long synonymous with Argentina’s political system but weakened by economic crisis and political dysfunction during Alberto Fernández’s presidency. The surprises did not stop there. Milei enacted one of the most ambitious fiscal adjustments in modern history, eliminating the fiscal deficit and restoring a budget surplus. He passed significant reforms and brought down triple-digit inflation despite controlling only a small minority in Congress. His success in the 2025 midterm elections strengthened his legislative position and paved the way for further reforms, including a major overhaul of labour regulations. In the process, he became an international celebrity and a reference point for the global libertarian right. – Can Argentina’s Javier Milei evolve from disruptor to political leader? | Chatham House – International Affairs Think Tank
Armenia, Georgia
(Giorgi Menabde – The Jamestown Foundation) Georgian officials congratulated Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan on his victory in the parliamentary elections in Armenia, expressing hope for strengthening Georgian–Armenian ties. Many Georgians followed the Armenian elections with great attention, even excitement, as these elections largely determine the future of peace and Western integration of the entire South Caucasus, including Georgia. Pro-Western forces in Georgia view the victory of pro-Western forces in neighboring Armenia as an argument for restoring Georgia’s trajectory toward integration with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the European Union and further distancing itself from Russia. – Armenian Election Results Inspire Pro-Western Forces in Georgia – Jamestown
Artificial Intelligence
(Lord Des Browne – RUSI) For much of my career in government, including my years serving as the UK’s Defence Secretary, I believed that the prospect of nuclear war was the most dangerous threat facing humanity. The information I was privy to regarding the scale of destruction that nuclear war would bring made me feel the immense responsibility that nuclear powers have to avoid nuclear conflict at all costs. Now, however, as I retire from the House of Lords, increasingly it is clear that the development of superintelligent AI constitutes a threat analogous in scale to that of nuclear war. Indeed, world-leading AI scientists and even the CEOs of the top AI companies warn that a fully developed superintelligent AI would pose an existential risk to humanity. Despite this, the largest AI companies are continuing to develop superintelligent AI that would be vastly more capable than humans across every domain and capable of evading human oversight and control. Such AIs autonomously would compromise the UK’s sovereignty and national security, and upend international stability. – The Case for Banning Superintelligent AI, Before It’s Too Late | Royal United Services Institute
Australia
(Debomita Dasgupta – Lowy The Interpreter) In October, Fiji will host the pre-COP talks leading into this year’s global climate negotiations, offering delegates a chance to see first-hand what climate change looks like from sea level. Eroding coastlines, bleached reefs, and fisheries in decline. Australia’s Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen will be in the room, holding the pen on the summit’s cover text as President of Negotiations. Will Bowen have anything to say about what is happening on the ocean floor beneath those islands? Expect silence. That’s because of a gap in the way Australia has chosen to position itself –simultaneously at the centre of the Indo-Pacific’s critical minerals rush and at the helm of its most consequential climate moment, but with no policy connecting the two. The gap is documented. The government’s Critical Minerals Strategy 2023–30, the framework governing Australia’s approach in the region’s extraction economy, commits to environmental approvals yet contains no reference to the ocean that makes the Indo-Pacific what it is. No mention of seabed governance, and nothing about what responsible extraction looks like in the marine environments of the Indo-Pacific’s most climate vulnerable states. – Australia’s deep-sea problem | Lowy Institute
China
(Patrick Xue – East Asia Forum) China’s April 2026 emissions assessment measures give stronger administrative force to the country’s emissions goals by allocating targets across ministries and provinces and tightening reporting requirements. Alongside these domestic commitments, China’s dominance in renewable energy supply chains, its role as the world’s largest commodity importer and its consistent climate policy position give it unusual structural influence over global decarbonisation. Yet Beijing has not consolidated these advantages into a deliberate external strategy. Whether it does so will influence the future of global climate governance. – China’s climate toolkit in search of a strategy | East Asia Forum
Cybersecurity, Women
(Renee Burton – ASPI The Strategist) In Australia, women are only 17 percent of the cybersecurity workforce. This long-standing imbalance is a major thorn in the side of the industry and has created a critical gap in digital protection. With AI-driven threats on the rise, diversity in the workplace isn’t just a nice to have; it’s an absolute necessity. There are two sides to this coin: one is that cybersecurity involves complex problem solving, which benefits from differing perspectives; the other is that cyberthreats disproportionately affect women. Women offer diverse perspectives, particularly perspectives that are more commonly confronted with specific types of scams, and the benefits of having them at the decision-making table are numerous. According to reporting by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, women were more likely to report feeling unsafe online. They received more phishing messages, whether by text or email. The study also signalled that women were more likely to be targeted for identity theft. Nearly half of the women surveyed reported that their social media accounts had been hacked at one point or another, compared with 37 percent of men surveyed. – Women in cybersecurity are crucial in the AI era | The Strategist
Europe
(Grégoire Roos – Chatham House) Visitors to the recent exhibitions in Germany commemorating the 250th anniversary of the painter Caspar David Friedrich would have been struck by the peculiar, almost mystical, posture of his solitary figures on the edge of the void. So intent are they on the world dissolving into mist before them that they seem almost to overlook the first light gathering beyond it. Neither simply melancholic nor entirely despairful, those are figures of hesitation – poised between what is fading and what is beginning. Friedrich’s wanderers offer a fitting metaphor for Europe’s predicament today: a civilization pressed to decide whether it wishes merely to remember the world it once shaped, or to help mould the world now coming into view. That question is no longer aesthetic or philosophical alone. It has become brutally strategic for the whole continent. In this regard, Canadian prime minister Mark Carney’s speech at Davos earlier this year was striking not because it told us anything entirely new, but because it said plainly what many European leaders still hesitate to say aloud: we are living through a definite rupture, not a passing disturbance. Finnish president Alexander Stubb, for his part, has moved from describing a ‘triangle of power’, that is, a world order structured around three geopolitical blocs: the Global North, led by the United States and Europe, the Global East, led by China and the Global South, with no leading power. He now admits that it looks more like a ‘rectangle’, since the old transatlantic reflex can no longer be taken for granted given the accelerating split between the United States and Europe. And hovering over both is the bracing admonition of S. Jaishankar, India’s minister of external affairs, that Europe must outgrow the habit of thinking that ‘Europe’s problems are the world’s problems, but the world’s problems are not Europe’s problems ’. Together, these interventions amount to a strategic summons. Europe can afford neither nostalgia nor delusion. The temptation is to respond to this moment in one of two familiar and equally sterile ways. The first is melancholy: to speak as if the answer lay in restoring the vanished certainties of the post‑1945 or post‑1989 order. The second is mimicry: to conclude that, since the age is one of hard power, Europe must simply become colder, harsher, more transactional. Both instincts miss the point. Europe’s opportunity to recover relevance and purpose lies elsewhere. – The Open Centre: Reimagining Europe’s offer to a fractured world | Chatham House – International Affairs Think Tank
Quad
(Sanchari Ghosh – Lowy The Interpreter) The latest Quad foreign ministers’ meeting, held last month in New Delhi, produced an ambitious catalogue of new initiatives. It emphasised that cooperation by the grouping would deliver “tangible benefits to the region” through initiatives on maritime surveillance, port infrastructure, energy security, critical technologies, and humanitarian assistance. Speaking immediately after the gathering, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that the grouping had “real achievements and real accomplishments”. But announcing cooperation is one thing – sustaining it is another. The Quad suffers from an institutional memory problem. It possesses no permanent secretariat, no treaty framework, and no standing implementation body capable of ensuring continuity across political cycles. This may give the Quad flexibility, though that flexibility comes at the cost of durability. This matters because the initiatives announced each year are not one-off projects. They require sustained attention over time if they are to produce results. – The Quad’s accountability gap | Lowy Institute
Russia, Ukraine
(Pavel K. Baev – The Jamestown Foundation) On June 12, RBC-Ukraine, citing a source in the Ukrainian government, reported that the United States had provided Kyiv with information indicating that Russia was preparing a potential Oreshnik strike in the coming days. This warning, which has so far not come to fruition, comes amid a string of Russian setbacks, including a scaled-back May 9 Victory Day parade, Ukrainian drone attacks amid the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, failed influence efforts in Armenia’s elections, and the Oreshnik’s poor performance in previous launches. Russian President Vladimir Putin continues to dismiss evidence of military and economic difficulties, including battlefield communication shortcomings, budget strains, and falling external investment into Russia, reinforcing concerns that Kremlin decision-making is becoming detached from Russia’s worsening realities. – Oreshnik Threat Not Distracting From Kremlin’s Setbacks – Jamestown
US, Iran
(Baroness Ashton – Chatham House) The United States and Iran have announced a deal to end the war and open the Strait of Hormuz. It is expected to be signed in Switzerland on Friday. The text of the agreement has yet to be published, but it’s thought that both sides are extending the ceasefire agreed in April for 60 days, during which time Washington and Tehran will commit to further talks. The announcement is a step forward. Nevertheless, much remains unclear. The pieces of the jigsaw puzzle that could end the US–Israel war with Iran remain scattered. Put together properly, the shape and size of each piece matters less than the picture they form, showing that major issues have been resolved, with no gaps. But pulling the pieces together to turn the deal announced over the weekend into one that lasts requires all participants to know what they are trying to achieve. Uncertainty about the reasons for the war in the first place, combined with a lack of clarity or consistency about its objectives, makes this more difficult. On the crucial points of Iran’s nuclear programme and its ability to develop nuclear weaponry – issues repeatedly prioritized by US president Donald Trump and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu – there are indications that these will be discussed as part of the framework agreement. – Can the deal between US and Iran become a lasting settlement? | Chatham House – International Affairs Think Tank
(Oorja Tapan – East Asia Forum) Iran’s decision to levy renminbi and cryptocurrency tolls at the Strait of Hormuz is an early example of a state converting geographic leverage into pressure on payment channels. The move draws on years of quietly assembled infrastructure that the crisis has repurposed as a toll-collection mechanism. For other actors with similar geography and access to dollar alternatives, the barriers to replication now look lower than before. But the result so far has been a marginal challenge to dollar dominance, not the arrival of a de-dollarisation revolution. – The Hormuz tollbooth is a precedent, not a de-dollarisation revolution | East Asia Forum
(The Soufan Center) Iran and the U.S. are competing to shape the messaging resulting from the three-month war, presenting the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) as a strategic victory that will reorder the regional power structure. President Trump and his aides are focused on presenting the reported agreement as permanently preventing Iran from developing a nuclear weapon and stricter than the Obama Administration’s 2015 nuclear accord with Iran, the JCPOA. By claiming they will continue to manage traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, Iranian leaders are publicly interpreting the MOU as U.S. capitulation to Iran’s demands, in part to blunt domestic criticism of Iranian concessions in the agreement. A main point of contention appears to be the sequencing of relief from U.S. sanctions and the unblocking of Iranian Central Bank assets held abroad. – U.S. and Iran Shape the Optics of an Agreement – The Soufan Center
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