Axel Berkofsky

Minilateralism is already among us, and it is here to stay. The well-known shortcomings of the multilateral system of governance are pushing individual states in the Indo-Pacific to come up with new and different solutions to deal with the security and prosperity issues that current in ...

In December 2022, Japan announced it would drastically increase its defence budget by 2027. The decision came as a wake-up call for the whole region: Japan was gearing up for a world of heightened tensions and rivalry in the Indo-Pacific Region. This Report analyses the present and fut ...

Since Xi Jinping took power in 2012, China's foreign policy has significantly shifted from a defensive to an assertive approach. For decades, Beijing worked to integrate into the liberal international order, presenting itself as a peacefully rising power. By contrast, however, under Xi ...

In 2020, the way we define "insecurity" has drastically changed. Insecurity can now also be invisible and all around us, in the shape of a virus that disrupts people's lives, upends the economy, subverts the core functions of national governments and jeopardises the foundations of inte ...

China's future role on the global stage hinges upon a mixture of strengths and weaknesses. Beijing's meteoric rise in economic terms has been coupled with increasing military expenditures and a more assertive foreign policy stance. But the country is also facing a potential backlash, e ...

Japan is an officially pacifist country but does not have pacifist security and defence policies. Today’s Japan boasts ‘Self-Defence Forces’ equipped with an annual budget of 47 billion US dollars. To be sure, this is not what General Douglas MacArthur had in mind when, in 1945, he set ...