In this episode of the National Security Podcast, Bridi Rice from the Development Intelligence Lab and Erol Yayboke from the Center for Strategic and International Studies join Will Stoltz to discuss the intersection of security and development issues in the Pacific region.

Recent events in the Pacific, including the signing of the new Solomon Islands-China security agreement and the regional tour of Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, have placed development assistance at the forefront of strategic competition for the region’s future and raised questions about Australia’s current policy settings. With the United States trialing a new approach in Papua New Guinea through its Global Fragility Act, what lessons could Australia learn? What development challenges should Australia focus on in the Pacific? And is geostrategic competition sucking the oxygen from other, more pressing, challenges? Founder and CEO of the Development Intelligence Lab Bridi Rice and Senior Fellow in the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies Erol Yayboke join Policy Director at ANU National Security College Dr Will Stoltz to explore these questions and examine the intersection of development, conflict mitigation, and security for the Pacific. 

Bridi Rice is CEO of the Development Intelligence Lab and currently a Fulbright Visiting Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). At the Lab, Bridi manages agenda-setting research and high-level policy dialogue on critical issues shaping the future of Australian development engagement in the Indo-Pacific.

Erol Yayboke is a Senior Fellow with the International Security Program and director of the Project on Fragility and Mobility at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Dr William A Stoltz is Policy Director at ANU National Security College. He is a Visiting Fellow at the Robert Menzies Institute at the University of Melbourne, and an Associate Member of the Centre for the Study of Subversion, Unconventional Interventions and Terrorism (SUIT) at the University of Nottingham.

More information about the Global Fragility Act is available here and here.

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