From global think tanks
The analyses published here do not necessarily reflect the strategic thinking of The Global Eye.
Today’s about: Australia; Belarus-Indonesia; BRICS-Global Climate Diplomacy; China-Taiwan; India; India-Shanghai Cooperation Organisation-China; Indonesia; Russia-Ukraine; US; US-South Korea
Australia
(Sheridan Ward – Lowy The Interpreter) “Australia is the most multicultural country in the world” – a mantra many kids across the nation have heard. Statistically, the claim holds weight. The 2021 census showed that almost 30 per cent of residents in Australia are born overseas, and nearly half have at least one parent who was born overseas. Contrast that with the United Kingdom, where only 16 per cent of people living in Britain were born overseas. Given this diversity, one might assume Australia would be linguistically rich. According to the 2021 census, roughly one in five Australians speak a language other than English at home. But the numbers drop when we look at how many Australians actively choose to learn another language. In the 1960s, around 40 per cent of Australian students graduated with a second language qualification. In 2021, that figure dropped to just 8.6 per cent. – Multicultural but monolingual: Australia’s Pacific disconnect | Lowy Institute
(John Coyne – ASPI The Strategist) There’s no shortage of gas in Australia, just a shortage of vision around how we move it. Gas supply issues on Australia’s east coast are a failure of policy, infrastructure and national resolve. If Australia wants energy security, it must start treating gas infrastructure as a strategic capability, not a market afterthought. For more than a decade, Australia has sold itself the myth that the market will solve its energy problems. But markets only function when the plumbing works, and right now, Australia’s gas transport network is broken. From the Northern Territory to the southern manufacturing zones, the gas system lacks the basic connective tissue that enables efficiency, flexibility and resilience. – Australia’s gas crunch is a sovereignty issue, not a market quirk | The Strategist
Belarus – Indonesia
(Elise Thomas – Lowy The Interpreter) On 15 July, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko found himself with an unexpected house guest: Prabowo Subianto, President of Indonesia. The evening before, Prabowo had abruptly cancelled a planned Bastille Day dinner in Paris with representatives of major French weapons companies, citing a lack of new contracts to discuss. His drop-in to Belarus was so unplanned that no formal reception was held for him in any official building. Instead, Prabowo and Lukashenko spoke for three hours in the unusual setting of Lukashenko’s home, after which Prabowo returned immediately to Indonesia. A report from IntelligenceOnline suggested that the Indonesian leader’s eagerness to meet with Lukashenko may have been to discuss weapons purchases from Belarus, after failing to get what he wanted from the French. Two weeks later, Indonesia’s defence minister arrived in Minsk for negotiations on deepening military cooperation. – Belarus’s military charm offensive in Asia | Lowy Institute
BRICS – Global Climate Diplomacy
(Sharon Sarah Thawaney – Lowy The Interpreter) Confidence is declining in global climate diplomacy. The familiar multilateral institutions in the field are fractured and struggling to remain relevant to address a rapidly worsening climate crisis. The return of Donald Trump to the White House, having again withdrawn the United States from the Paris Agreement, has left a major void. At COP29 last year, the United States had pledged US $11 billion in climate finance, making it the largest bilateral donor. Its withdrawal marks a serious setback for collective climate ambition. Meanwhile, Europe’s climate leadership is also on the decline. The political right is pushing to shelve green policies in favour of reindustrialisation and away from renewable energy, while a military build-up is also drawing on stretched public finances – all suggesting a sharp retreat from the EU’s climate ambitions. This political backsliding is evident in recent climate negotiations. The Bonn Climate Change Conference ended in a deadlock over the agenda, where consensus could not be reached over climate finance. Minimal progress was also made on loss and damage questions. Trust between developed and developing countries remains low, and the outcomes from Bonn did little to suggest that global climate talks later this year will deliver a breakthrough. – How BRICS could become the Global South’s climate voice | Lowy Institute
China – Taiwan
(Mark F. Cancian, Matthew F. Cancian, and Eric Heginbotham – Center for Strategic & International Studies) Since 2022, China has conducted numerous military drills and exercises simulating blockades of the island of Taiwan, a democracy of 23 million that sits astride one of the world’s maritime chokepoints. What would happen if China initiated a blockade of Taiwan in the coming years? To understand the military challenges in countering a blockade, CSIS ran 26 wargames using a wide variety of scenarios. Although China could inflict serious hardships, particularly by targeting Taiwan’s energy sector, this wouldn’t be a low-risk, low-cost option for Beijing. Any blockade creates escalatory pressures that are difficult to contain and could lead to a large-scale war. Building on existing preparations, Taiwan and the United States could strengthen deterrence by demonstrating that a blockade is not feasible. – Lights Out? Wargaming a Chinese Blockade of Taiwan
India
(Milan Vaishnav, Caroline Mallory, and Annabel Richter – Carnegie Endowment for International Peace) One of the central motifs of the past decade of governance under Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been the embrace of policy measures that seek to apply uniform solutions to disparate policy dilemmas facing the country. These measures, often termed One Nation policies, are motivated by a desire to replace the existing patchwork of state-specific policies, regulations, and regimes with measures that are identical across the length and breadth of India. There are numerous examples of such One Nation policies being propagated and, in several cases, implemented in the eleven years since Modi came to power. For instance, in 2016, Parliament passed a series of constitutional amendments to introduce a new Goods and Services Tax (GST), which introduced a unified value-added tax in place of state-specific levies. This reform, known informally as One Nation, One Tax, had been debated and discussed for nearly two decades and was widely touted as an important precursor to forging a common market across India’s twenty-eight states. In a similar vein, the government rolled out a new initiative to allow Indian citizens to take advantage of subsidized food rations irrespective of their state of residence. This scheme, commonly termed One Nation, One Ration Card, was intended to increase access to welfare benefits, especially for the millions of internal migrants in India without a fixed place of residence. – Does “One Nation, One Election” Make Sense for India? | Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
India – Shanghai Cooperation Organisation – China
(Shaheli Das – Lowy The Interpreter) It appears likely that India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi will participate in-person at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation leaders summit in China later this month. A visit to China would be Modi’s first trip to the country following the military clashes at Galwan in Eastern Ladakh along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in 2020, which cost the lives of 20 Indian soldiers and at least 4 from China. Modi’s in-person participation at the SCO, his first since 2022, would hint at the evolving importance of the group for India. – What message will Modi take if he attends the SCO Summit in China? | Lowy Institute
Indonesia
(Akhmad Hanan – Lowy The Interpreter) Following a high-stakes negotiation with Indonesia’s President Prabowo Subianto, US President Donald Trump boasted that his tariff policy had delivered a resounding win for the United States: full access to Indonesia’s vast mineral sector, particularly its copper reserves. Yet behind the scenes, deft diplomacy prevailed. For Indonesia, the story is not submission, but a bold assertion of sovereignty through industrial policy. The era of Indonesia supplying raw commodities without added value is ending. Indonesia, with an estimated 21 million metric tons of copper reserves, the seventh-largest in the world, has quietly become a frontline state in the global mineral arms race. In 2024 alone, it matched US copper production at 1.1 million tonnes. Yet unlike the United States, which remains chronically dependent on copper imports from Latin America, Indonesia has begun turning its mineral wealth into national leverage. Jakarta has prohibited the export of raw mineral ores, including copper concentrates. Only refined copper, at minimum cathodes, may be shipped abroad. – The copper gambit: How Indonesia turned a trade war into strategic leverage | Lowy Institute
Russia – Ukraine
(Benjamin Jensen, Yasir Atalan, and Erik Tiersten-Nyman – Center for Strategic & International Studies) Russia has normalized massive, mixed drone‑missile salvos: The average wave size has risen from about 100 munitions in 2022 to nearly 300 in 2025, while intervals between major strikes have compressed from roughly a month to as few as two days. The salvo campaign now leans heavily on Shahed swarms to saturate Ukraine’s air defenses in line with the increasing Russian low-cost drone manufacturing capability. These salvos reflect an attritional punishment strategy—victory through volume, persistence, and psychological strain. Ukraine must counter with layered, cost‑efficient defenses: rapidly field high‑energy lasers and HPMs, expand cross‑domain early‑warning networks, diversify low‑cost interceptors and rapid‑fire guns, and fuse civil‑military tracking to decode salvo patterns in real time. – The New Salvo War
US
(Michael Froman – Council on Foreign Relations) One of the hardest jobs of a policymaker is to weigh trade-offs. Few policies are clean, absolute, and without costs. The art and science of policymaking often comes down to ensuring that the dots between different policy objectives are connected, and the trade-offs are accurately identified and assessed, as part of the decision-making process. Occasionally, policymakers find themselves managing inherent contradictions: the policies they choose to pursue to achieve one of their objectives make another one of their objectives harder or impossible to achieve. Now that the contours of the Trump administration’s trade policy are coming into greater focus—as initial draft frameworks for agreements emerge from the back and forth of escalatory and de-escalatory rhetoric and positioning—those contradictions are coming into stark relief – Trade-Offs in Trump’s Trade Policy | Council on Foreign Relations
US – South Korea
(Victor Cha and Andy Lim – Center for Strategic & International Studies) On July 30, South Korea reached a trade deal with the United States after several months of frenetic negotiations across two different South Korean administrations. The framework agreement averts Trump’s 25 percent tariffs before the August 1 deadline with South Korea’s most important security partner and its second biggest trading partner. Each side can claim some victories from the agreement. South Korean President Lee Jae Myung succeeded in reducing tariffs on auto exports to the United States, which was a top priority. U.S. President Donald Trump could flash a big foreign investment number for U.S. industry. But many details about the deal remain unclear. Like other agreements the Trump administration has signed in recent months, initial agreement and implementation details are minimal. – South Korea Gets Its Trade Deal with the United States
