Charles Scheiner of the Timor-Leste Institute for Reconstruction Monitoring and Analysis (La'o Hamutuk) argues that the next UN mission is being designed in an emergency atmosphere. Although immediate humanitarian and security concerns must be dealt with, there are deeper-seated causes of the current problems, and crises will recur if they are not addressed. The millennium's...

Richard Tanter argues that since the dominant characteristic of the coverage of East Timor in the past two weeks has been utter confusion, both inside and outside the country, this is really a time for a little humility amongst the foreign pundits and experts. He asks ten questions to which we need some substantial answers...

After being evacuated from East Timor, Jacqueline Aquino Siapno writes about the deliberate burning of the house in Dili she built with her husband, Fernando de Araujo, leader of the Democratic Party. Writes Siapno: “Many of the arson attacks witnessed in Dili in the past few days have been ordered by government figures and military...

For the first time in its history Australia is in an interesting place at an interesting time, argues David Martin Jones, as the current ideology driving US foreign policy comes into conflict with developing Chinese reality, which is projecting its soft but essentially illiberal power into the wider region. This, he argues, has profound strategic...

Ron Huisken argues that after a difficult and somewhat unilateralist start, the US-led Proliferation Security Initiative appears to be maturing into a useful and accepted counter-proliferation measure. While the inherent imprecision of the terms of UNSC 1540 “combines with the labyrinth of international law concerning governance of the oceans and seas to produce an arena...