There are growing signs that Islamic State cells are preparing for violent insurgencies in southern Philippines to build a prized so-called caliphate on Australia’s backdoor.
The establishment of an entrenched caliphate in the Philippines, at worst, brings the risk of suicide bombers and chemical weapons attacks in Australian cities, a leading Australian expert has warned. Read more
Quote: “Dr Dupont, chief executive of strategic risk consultancy The Cognoscenti Group, said the scale of the Marawi uprising, which has seen almost 100 troops, 50 civilians and 400 terrorists killed showed it was significantly planned and financed. He said whether it would be enough to inspire other uprisings was still unknown but a groundswell of Islamic conservatism made for fertile ground for fundamentalist teachings and ultimately extremism.”
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With exquisite political timing, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un effectively gatecrashed this week’s G20 summit and US Independence Day celebrations by test-firing his country’s first genuinely intercontinental ballistic missile on July 4.
We have become so used to Kim’s provocative missile diplomacy and the impotency of the international response it’s easy to dismiss this latest missile test as likely to elicit nothing more than the customary ineffectual hand-wringing.
But this time it’s different.
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“It’s pretty clear they’re trying to emulate what ISIS has done in the Middle East,” said Alan Dupont, a strategic analyst at the Lowy Institute, a foreign-policy think tank in Sydney. “Marawi would be a magnet for disaffected people in Southeast Asia, including in Australia.” Australia has more at stake in the Philippines conflict than the U.S., Dr. Dupont added, because it is much closer.
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The assassination of Kim Jong-nam, half-brother of the unhinged North Korean despot Kim Jong-un, adds a dangerous dimension to deepening concerns about a seriously deranged regime in Pyongyang that is increasingly fanatical, fragile and has nuclear weapons. Read more
Professor Aaron Friedberg of Princeton University, spoke at The Institute of World Politics on the growing great-power rivalry in the Pacific.
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Dr Jonathan Spyer discusses Kofi Annan’s six-point peace plan. Read more
On 1 November at the Wednesday Lunch at Lowy, Professor Alan Dupont, the Michael Hintze Chair of International Security at the University of Sydney, explored the implications of North Korea’s nuclear weapons program for global and regional security following Pyongyang’s provocative nuclear test on 9 October.
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ESCALATING tensions between China and its Southeast Asian neighbours over disputed islands in the South China Sea are the latest, worrying sign that China’s rise is ushering in a new era of strategic volatility and geo-political competition in Asia, that will be at its most dangerous in the Western Pacific. Read more