From global think tanks
The analyses published here do not necessarily reflect the strategic thinking of The Global Eye.
Today’s about: Australia; India; India-China; Indonesia; Indonesia-European Union; Iran; Japan; Taiwan; Timor-Leste; US-Europe
Australia
(Victor Abramowicz – The Interpreter) In December 2025, the Australian government announced “the biggest reform to the defence organisation in 50 years”. It relates to centralising arrangements for capability development (deciding what military equipment to buy), and acquisition and sustainment (actually procuring and then maintaining it). Since 2015, these functions have been spread out across Defence. The responsibility for capability requirements setting – where military personnel determine what levels of performance new equipment needs and identify solutions – has rested with the Chiefs of Navy, Army and Air Force, and the Vice Chief of the Defence Force (VCDF). In turn, capability contestability, where mainly civilian staff provide independent “arm’s-length” critical assessments of the requirements work to assure it makes sense and isn’t “gold plated”, has mainly resided within the Contestability Division, reporting most recently to the civilian Deputy Secretary Strategy, Policy, and Industry. – Keeping Australian Defence contestability independent | Lowy Institute
India
(Tridib Bhattacharjee – Observer Research Foundation) Northeast India, historically viewed as a frontier region, is increasingly emerging as a strategic pivot in India’s Indo-Pacific engagement. With its proximity to key Southeast Asian economies, rich resource base, and evolving trade corridors, the Northeast is positioned to facilitate greater regional integration. It holds distinct geostrategic and economic significance for India’s regional diplomacy and trade ambitions, given that it borders five countries—Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, China, and Myanmar—thus forming a natural corridor linking South Asia with Southeast Asia. It is also in proximity to the Bay of Bengal, a maritime space that hosts some of the world’s most critical trade routes. Despite this potential, decades of underinvestment, conflict, and institutional neglect have kept the region economically marginalised. India’s Act East Policy, launched in 2014, signalled a strategic commitment to unlock the Northeast’s potential through infrastructure, diplomacy, and investment. A decade has passed since then, and it is now necessary to examine Northeast India’s potential within India’s Indo-Pacific framework and outline the policy imperatives to unlock its role as a driver of growth, connectivity, and cooperation. – From Frontier to Fulcrum: Northeast India’s Indo-Pacific Opportunity
(DS Rana – Observer Research Foundation) Islands have long fascinated explorers, with colonial powers claiming distant territories to expand maritime dominance. Overlooking key trade routes and straits, island territories provide diplomatic leverage and military reach. The Andaman and Nicobar Islands (ANI), strategically located near the Malacca Strait, exemplify this advantage for India’s influence, prosperity, and maritime security. Major powers continue to rely on island networks to secure footholds as evident in the United States’ (US) lease of Diego Garcia from the United Kingdom, and France’s control over Réunion, Mayotte, Comoros, and Antarctic territories to extend its military presence and exclusive economic zone (EEZ) claims in the Indian Ocean. This brief contends that Andaman and Nicobar Islands are poised to serve as India’s strategic gateway to Southeast Asia. – The Andaman and Nicobar Islands: A Fulcrum of India’s Pivot to the East
India – China
(Harsh V. Pant – Observer Research Foundation) The cautious reconciliation between India and China, launched at the Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Xi Jinping summit in Kazan, Russia, in October 2024, continued in 2025, with deliberately modest expectations. Both states have enhanced risk reduction on the Line of Actual Control (LAC) by creating non-patrolled and cross-patrolled buffer zones while reopening tourism and direct flights, and reviving business-to-business contacts. Nevertheless, the fundamental structural competition endures. New Delhi and Beijing have divergent strategic ambitions, continued and substantial forward deployments on the LAC, deepening partnerships with rival powers, and recurrent frictions on economic and security issues. This uneasy engagement and rivalry raise two crucial questions: what kind of power disparity is emerging between China and India? Can the disparity aggravate existing structural competition between the two states? – Schrödinger’s Army: The PLA’s Prowess And The Next Crisis
Indonesia
(Pornomo Rovan Astri Yoga – East Asia Forum) Indonesia’s position as an archipelagic state linking the Indian and Pacific Oceans makes its sea lanes strategically valuable in any major conflict in the western Pacific. A declaration of neutrality alone would be insufficient, as belligerents may contest which passageways international law requires Indonesia to keep open, undermining trust in its neutrality. Preserving maritime neutrality therefore requires Indonesia to designate which sea lanes will remain open in a crisis and to manage that choice consistently. – Indonesia’s maritime neutrality under pressure | East Asia Forum
Indonesia – European Union
(Ichfan Ramadhan – East Asia Forum) Indonesia’s free trade agreement with the European Union promises tariff reductions across almost all tariff lines. But access to the EU market is increasingly shaped by rules of origin, sustainability, traceability and due diligence. Palm oil and textiles show how sustainability requirements, smallholder supply chains and limited value-added processing can blunt gains from tariff reductions. Real economic benefits will depend on Indonesia’s capacity to meet EU standards. – Standards and sustainability will make or break Indonesia–EU trade deal | East Asia Forum
Iran
(Shadi Rouhshahbaz – The Interpreter) For more than four decades, Iranians and the international community have documented the Islamic Republic’s atrocities. Twenty-three days into the nationwide protests, under a digital blackout and intense security pressures, the verified death toll has reached 3308, with another 4382 cases still under review; 26,015 arrests have also been confirmed, as well as 5811 severe injuries. While the extent of atrocities is most shocking, the pattern remains familiar and deeply gendered: protest, repression, documentation, global outrage, expression of solidarity, followed by diplomatic normalisation with the Islamic Republic. Iranians are victims of the world’s failure to impose real-time costs on state violence. – The international community is failing the Iranian people | Lowy Institute
(Ebtesam AlKetbi – Emirates Policy Center) Gulf states read tensions inside Iran primarily as a regional risk-management challenge, not as a prelude to regime change. The focus is on behavioral consequences, not internal political outcomes. Erosion of legitimacy does not equate to state collapse. Gulf assessments distinguish between social unrest and the Iranian state’s continued capacity for coercive control. The central danger lies in miscalculation rather than deliberate escalation. Limited signals, indirect actions, or symbolic moves may spiral in a highly congested and mistrustful regional environment.
Gulf security is threatened as much by uncertainty as by force. Elevated ambiguity alone can disrupt maritime stability, energy flows, and market confidence without overt conflict. The Gulf response prioritizes strategic restraint and collective risk management. Coordination within the Gulf Cooperation Council aims to contain spillover effects rather than test the limits of deterrence. – Emirates Policy Center | How Gulf States Read Iran’s Current Tensions?
(Emirates Policy Center) The wave of protests that erupted in Iran in early January 2026 is among the most widespread and deadliest movements in the country over the past 50 years. While protesters have maintained their core demands, elements of the movement have shifted toward a royalist agenda. This convergence between the protest movement and royalist forces has exacerbated the regime’s political challenges but also constrained the protests’ ability to expand. While the recent protests in Iran have not bridged longstanding societal divides, they represent a pivotal juncture in Iran’s political trajectory. The protests have attracted significant global attention, accompanied by pledges of unprecedented backing for the movement. – Emirates Policy Center | Protests in Iran: Stuck in Traditional Fault Lines or Marking a Turning Point Toward Political Change
(Roxane Farmanfarmaian and Dr Burcu Ozcelik – RUSI) Since protests erupted on 28 December 2025, Iran’s deepening cost-of-living crisis and renewed US and Israeli rhetoric about ’options on the table‘, have pushed the Islamic Republic back to the top of the international agenda. It is tempting to cast the unrest as an endgame. While the system has historically absorbed shocks through coercion, calibrated concessions and narrative control, this cycle appears qualitatively different. Even if the regime has successfully contained the protests for now, it is confronting a more structural, potentially existential, stress test of state capacity, elite cohesion and deterrence. The initial trigger for the protests was economic: renewed volatility in the Rial and year-end inflation running above 50% on some measures further eroded household purchasing power, this already thin after the years of sanctions and policy mismanagement that followed the 2018 nuclear deal withdrawal by the US. Within days, the protests took a turn toward anti-government, pro-opposition chants. The Iranian regime quickly moved to suppress the unrest through lethal force, mass arrests and executions, with some estimating that more than 2,500 people had been killed – though the true toll remains contested amid the regime-imposed, ongoing internet blackout, with one report of 16,500 feared dead. The regime’s resort to brutality underscores how far its claims to legitimacy have eroded across broad segments of society, and how sharply the gap has widened between the governing elite and the governed. Legitimacy does not need to be universal to sustain an autocracy, but it does need to be sufficient to reduce the everyday costs of rule. The frequency of spontaneous protests over water shortages and electricity, and the scale and intensity of coercion deployed since late December suggests that this reservoir is thinning, forcing the state to rely more heavily on fear and fatigue than consent. – Is Iran at a Tipping Point? Protest, Military Escalation and Regime Survival | Royal United Services Institute
(Simon Gass – RUSI) As I write, it seems probable that the brutal suppression of protests in Iran has, as in the past, achieved its immediate goal. Sadly, this was always the most likely outcome. It took extraordinary courage for Iranians to risk their lives and liberty while in the absence of a credible, organised opposition in Iran and therefore the lack of a foreseeable trajectory from demonstrations to regime change. But even courage has limits. In the end, the regime’s near monopoly of violence is likely to have won out, as it did in 2009, 2018 and 2022. It is tempting, nevertheless, to think that the regime’s days are numbered. It has no answers on the economy, corruption, government incompetence, drought, Iran’s creaking energy infrastructure or even national defence. The latest protests unified people who can no longer afford rocketing food prices with those who have a more political or social agenda. The Iranian people have had enough – surely something has to give? That could be right. But over the last twenty years I have heard so many forecasts of regime change in Iran (and, indeed, of the death of the Supreme Leader) that I have learned to be cautious. The day could come when the Iranian security forces are no longer willing to fire on their own people. And perhaps fault lines within and around the regime will widen to a point where there is a viable alternative. But neither of those eventualities looks imminent. Some members of the security forces did resign rather than join the crack-down. But not, so far as we know, in significant numbers. And there are divided opinions within the regime, not least between the circle around President Pezeshkian and the Supreme Leader and security chiefs. But the differences are about futile ways to make a broken system work better, not how to replace it. – How Does it End? The Iranian Regime | Royal United Services Institute
Japan
(Pratnashree Basu – Observer Research Foundation) The launch of Japan’s Official Security Assistance (OSA) framework in 2023 signalled a step further in the departure from a strictly pacifist aid model toward a more proactive approach to security diplomacy. Rooted in the 2022 revision of Japan’s National Security Strategy, the OSA institutionalises Tokyo’s gradual reinterpretation of constitutional and normative restraints on military assistance, while maintaining an emphasis on transparency and international legitimacy. This brief situates Japan’s OSA within the broader trajectory of the country’s evolving geopolitical role as a more active security actor in the Indo-Pacific. It assesses the policy’s constitutional, financial, and bureaucratic constraints, and discusses domestic opinion that resists remilitarisation despite support for security cooperation. It argues that the OSA is best understood as an incremental yet essential step in Japan’s evolving security diplomacy. – From Pacifism to Strategic Maturity: The Evolution of Japan’s Security Diplomacy
Taiwan
(Erin Hale – The Strategist) While Taiwan’s drone manufacturing program looks ambitious, it is nowhere near ambitious enough, as combat experience in Ukraine is making clear. With the US-identified window when China will be capable of invading Taiwan just a year away, Taipei is not making drones fast enough nor planning to do so. Its drone makers also lack extensive access to battle experience. Another problem is that Taiwan is running low on political unity, an intangible but powerful resource that could give the drone program the boost it needs. – Taiwan’s drone program is far too small | The Strategist
Timor-Leste
(João Boavida, Milena Pires – The Interpreter) Despite a stable constitutional framework, sustained international assistance, and substantial public expenditure, Timor-Leste continues to experience political stagnation. The underlying problem is not institutional design but political behaviour driven by fear — fear of losing power, fear of accountability, and fear of legal consequences arising from years of unchecked corruption and abuse. This fear has come to shape governance itself, distorting institutions and constraining reform. Timor-Leste does not lack capable leaders. Rather, power has increasingly been treated as protection from justice. For segments of the political elite, holding office has ceased to be a temporary public trust and instead functions as insulation from scrutiny. This dynamic alters political incentives. When corruption forecloses the possibility of an honourable exit, political loss becomes existential rather than democratic. Leaders cling to office not to govern, but to survive — producing defensive, risk-averse governance that prioritises loyalty over competence and control over reform. – Timor-Leste’s governance dilemma: Fear, accountability, and risk | Lowy Institute
US – Europe
(Josh Lipsky and Jörn Fleck – Atlantic Council) Relations between Washington and Brussels were upended this weekend after Trump threatened tariffs on several European nations until the United States can acquire Greenland. Many European leaders would still prefer to avoid an open confrontation or rupture with the Trump administration, but the Greenland dispute is testing the limits of this strategy. With no obvious off-ramp that would satisfy both sides, escalation is more likely than at any other time since Trump’s return to the White House. – Greenland, Davos, and a week that could redefine the transatlantic alliance – Atlantic Council
