In October 2000, the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 1325 and created the Women, Peace and Security agenda. To commemorate the resolution’s 25th anniversary, this compendium features a collection of articles published on The Strategist. This series reflects on the progress made since 2000, including the transformative changes in women’s representation across security.

The global development landscape faces profound upheaval as major donors sharply cut back on foreign aid. The Pacific Islands face an especially uncertain outlook as the world’s most aid-dependent region. This edition of the Pacific Aid Map presents five key findings that are critical to understanding the future of development and competition in the region.

This bilingual research reveals how tensions in the South China Sea are misunderstood and misrepresented in Australia. It provides an overview of strategic and economic considerations, recent developments and policy outlook. It finds the often-repeated claim that China is aggressively expanding into the territory of neighbouring countries is an oversimplification of long-running tensions.

The Pacific Islands have become an arena of intensifying geopolitical competition. This policy brief proposes Australia should lead the creation of a formal intelligence-sharing framework – a 'Pacific Eyes agreement' – initially involving Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, and Fiji, the four most closely aligned countries in the region.

The European Union's (EU's) security and defence partnerships (SDP) are non-legally binding documents that provide ‘mutually beneficial frameworks’ to promote defence and security cooperation between like-minded states. The idea of an Australia-EU defence pact was floated in May 2025. This paper outlines what is being proposed, strategic considerations and next steps.