Shaping a New Alliance: Japan’s Defense Evolution and Strategic Shift towards NATO and Europe

In recent years, Japan has identified several major risks to its national security and perceives its strategic environment as becoming increasingly unstable. As a result, Japan has enacted transformative defense reforms, including the 2022 National Security Strategy, National Defense Strategy, and Defense Buildup Plan. These call for the doubling of defense spending by 2027. This […]

Towards a UN-Centric Cybercrime Treaty

Since 2021, an international convention on tackling cybercrime is being negotiated at the UN. As positions of states for the UN Cybercrime Treaty vary, this report focuses on China’s role at the negotiations. While there is a long list of issues at stake at the current AHC negotiations, this report focuses on Chinese positions on […]

Undercurrents: essays below the surface of China’s geopolitics

The tide of great power strife is rising once again. When tensions between rivals increase, the need to understand each other becomes greater. Where newspapers write about geopolitical considerations, Undercurrents dives deeper below the surface. It argues that we need to persist in our attempt to comprehend what is obscured and asks: what undercurrents are […]

Disciplined Democracies and Japan’s values-based diplomacy

This report examines the Japanese government’s contribution to the liberal international order and assesses this contribution against what critics have identified as democratic backsliding under the Prime Ministership of Abe Shinzō. The report finds that: – Contrary to the Japanese government’s rhetoric of a ‘values-based diplomacy’, the Japanese government’s commitment to the spread of democracy […]

Factsheets: Historische Betrekkingen Nederland-Taiwan & Het Één-Chinabeleid en Taiwan

Factsheet historische betrekkingenFactsheet één-Chinabeleid De vaste commissie voor Buitenlandse Handel en Ontwikkelingssamenwerking van de Tweede Kamer heeft gevraagd om wetenschappelijke factsheets waarin de historische relatie tussen Nederland en Taiwan wordt, en waarin dieper in wordt gegaan op de positie van en de relatie met Taiwan tegen de achtergrond van het Nederlandse één-Chinabeleid. Deze factsheets zijn […]

Sino-Russian Global Reordering?

There is a widespread perception, particularly in parts of Europe and North America, that an unprecedented Sino-Russian strategic objective of cooperation and world reordering has emerged since China’s President Xi and Russia’s President Putin met in February 2022 preceding the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This brief report assesses this perception’s accuracy by comparing Chinese and […]