Tag: Jonah Lo
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Thirsty Partition: Water Politics between India and Pakistan
This essay will explore how water plays a critical part in the current India-Pakistan conflict, focusing specifically on the geopolitical element, as well as related key concepts, such as regional balancing, security dilemmas and how to approach “bad” treaties.
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Arctic Opportunity: Russian Roulette in a Warming World
This essay will analyze how Russia benefits from the warming Arctic, the competition it faces from Western interests and its ambiguous Arctic relationship with China. In doing so, it hopes to shed light on how Great Power Competition, geopolitics and international relations change in some ways and yet stays the same in many others in…
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Empire of Dams: China’s Hydroelectric Geostrategy and Conflicts
Capitalizing on its uniquely strong talent for river construction, China has embarked on an aggressive, multidirectional and increasingly predatory strategy of dam construction for strategic advantage, political leverage and economic profit. This essay will aim to explore how China has used this capacity in its foreign policy and geostrategy, and the resultant implications for neighbouring…
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Bucking the Trend: How peaceful protest won in Algeria
In Algeria, a pro-democracy movement used strategic tact and tactical innovation to overcome a seemingly unassailable hardened regime which had survived the Arab Spring. This essay will break down what, why and how events happened.
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Freikorps meets Mujahideen: How Russian invasion created Neo-Nazi Incubators in Ukraine
Driven into a corner by Russian aggression and European indifference, Ukraine was forced to seek help from an old enemy – the spectre of ultra-nationalism. Today, swastika adorned factions and warlords have become normalized as parts of Ukrainian military and political structure and increasingly entrench themselves further into the Ukrainian state. To export their nazi…
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Frozen Catastrophe: Venezuela’s Neverending Nightmare
There is a certain reassuring assumption in politics, that the absolutely despicable and incompetent should never be able to sustain control over a state. After all, the assumption posits, a weak government should be able to be easily replaced by other civil or military powers or actors. However, this is not always the case. In…
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Mindless Behemoth: The Tragedy of Leaderlessness in Hong Kong
It must have seemed such a wonderful utopian ideal. A movement of and by the people, bravely marching against the establishment, with no greedy ambitious men at the top seeking to exploit or subvert the revolution, in a grand collective struggle for shared goals. However, such a movement, structured in such a leaderless manner, is…
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Why Historical Claims are bad logic and bad policy
From the Elgin Marbles to Jerusalem to South China Sea islands, claims on territory, artefacts or sites based on history are rampant. Rather than pointing to tangible and more easily measurable indicators of competency or popularity, states have often resorted to waving old maps and descriptions at each other to justify a right to rule…
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Rising Sun over Red Ocean: Japanese Power in a Chinese Asia
In the brutal world of geopolitics, it might seem like the rook’s existence is a sorry one. Acting as a key pillar of the US-centric liberal order, after all, often drags one into the treacherous conflicts arising from superpower competition without granting it the decision-making space to set the terms and context of such engagements.…
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Shrinking Pacific: Australia’s Struggle for the Status Quo
When it comes to the politics of the Asia-Pacific, it is often easy to forget Australia, owing to its isolated position at its corner of the South Pacific. This is a reality happily embraced by Australians who have been largely able to pick and choose which conflicts to participate in. However, recent trends point towards…
UnderStated 