That is wishful thinking. TTP activity fell straight after Pakistan’s military strikes, but has picked up in the past month. The Taliban’s dominant factions see the TTP as kindred spirits; in the past they have waged jihad together. They also worry that efforts to disarm the TTP could cause fighters to flock to militant groups that are even more extreme, some of which oppose the Taliban. Thus the main effect of Pakistan’s strikes on Afghanistan has been to unite the Taliban—and enrage ordinary Afghans. The UN says 372 Afghan civilians had been killed by Pakistani bombs by the end of March. Thousands more have been displaced. Delawar Khan, a 31-year-old man from the Nari district of Kunar Province, says his family and many others were forced to flee. Finding food and water became difficult. Pakistan has long claimed that India finances the BLA. These days officials also allege that it has been pumping money into Afghanistan, and even indirectly paying the salaries of TTP fighters. India denies this. It has certainly got friendlier with the Taliban in recent years, and both Pakistan and India have long histories of working through proxies. Yet governments often find it easy to blame foreign meddling for insurgencies caused by domestic grievances, says Adam Weinstein of the Quincy Institute, an American think-tank. Western Pakistan, where both the BLA and TTP operate, has been left behind economically and exposed to decades of harsh treatment by the army and the police. Field Marshal Munir’s brute-force approach to the insurgencies has left little space for political conciliation. “It will have hugely negative repercussions,” says a former Pakistani diplomat. In April Pakistan took part in low-level talks with the Taliban, at China’s request. They ended without progress. Pakistan’s response to the latest attacks has been restrained—perhaps because Field Marshal Munir hopes to host more talks between America and Iran, and does not want domestic trouble to mess that up. But what comes next is unclear. Some in Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital, are worried that Pakistan might somehow try to force regime change. Asked if Pakistan would consider targeting not just training camps but Taliban leaders, one Pakistani official looks exasperated. “If they don’t stop killing us.” ■
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Could the tumult produce a new party? June 4th 2026 SEVEN YEARS have passed since Tony Abbott, an arch-conservative who served as Australia’s prime minister from 2013 to 2015, lost his seat to an independent. Last month his stint in the political wilderness came to an end. On May 29th the Liberal Party, now in opposition, elected him as its president. Its members are counting on Mr Abbott and Angus Taylor, the party’s parliamentary leader, to achieve an urgent mission: to help the right- of-centre Liberal-National coalition survive the stunning rise of Pauline Hanson, and her anti-immigration One Nation party. One Nation’s surge continues to smack gobs (see chart). In April Redbridge, a leading pollster, predicted that if an election were held immediately
Anthony Albanese’s ruling Labor Party would win 76 seats in the lower house, out of 150. But One Nation would become Australia’s official opposition, with an astounding 53 seats—up from only two at present. The Liberal-National coalition, for its part, would limp home with a mere dozen. Since that research was published, things have only continued moving in Ms Hanson’s favour. Another poll, capturing public feeling in mid-May, showed support for One Nation eclipsing even that for Labor. One Nation is already proving that it can convert its strong polling into seats. It picked up seven of them at the state election in South Australia in March. In May One Nation’s candidate won a federal by-election in southern New South Wales—in a constituency that had been held by the coalition for some eight decades. A state election in Victoria in November (considered Australia’s most progressive state) will soon show whether One Nation is able to wrest seats from Labor too. The Labor government there is in trouble because of eye-watering state debt and scandals related to public infrastructure projects. Dismayed by the direction of travel, a clutch of independent politicians who in recent years have secured seats in Australia’s parliament are stepping up discussions about forming a new centrist party that might do better than the old guard. These so-called “teals” combine right-of-centre fiscal instincts
with social progressivism and a climate agenda more aligned with the Greens. They already often vote as a bloc. Many have received funding from the same outfit, Climate 200, a vehicle for candidates who promise to cut emissions and restore faith in politics. Zali Steggall, a barrister and former Olympian, is one of those arguing for a new centrist party. She was the novice candidate who managed to boot Mr Abbott from parliament, back in 2019. She says she is “genuinely worried about the rhetoric of One Nation, and where the coalition is moving to meet it”; she says Australian voters deserve more choice at the ballot box. Another factor accelerating things is looming changes to electoral-funding laws, due to go into force next year, which will hobble independent politicians at the next federal election in 2028. The Liberals’ decision to dust off Mr Abbott is a gamble. As prime minister he ditched a carbon price, launched a military operation to intercept asylum- seekers at sea and gave a knighthood to Prince Philip. Whether he can help change the coalition’s fortunes in time for the next big vote is deeply uncertain. One thing is sure: the days when Australian politics were a cosy duopoly are long gone. ■ For exclusive coverage of Asian politics, economics and security, sign up to Asia Bulletin, our weekly subscriber-only newsletter. This article was downloaded by zlibrary from https://www.economist.com//asia/2026/06/04/the-rise-of-one-nation-is-melting- australian-politics
The Pentagon’s strategy for Asia contains a very big hole June 4th 2026 FOR MORE than 20 years America’s secretaries of defence have trekked to the Shangri-La Dialogue—a gathering of defence officials and analysts held annually at a hotel in Singapore—to give speeches that lay out their Asia strategy. When Pete Hegseth, the man currently in that job, spoke at the event last year he was a mere four months into his tenure. Much of the Trump administration’s thinking was at the time still being forged. So on May 30th brass from dozens of countries crowded once again into a ballroom just north of the equator in the hope of understanding, as well as possible, how America’s approach to Asia is developing. They left with only greater doubts about that country’s commitments to its Asian allies, and in particular to Taiwan.
America’s strategy, Mr Hegseth made clear, is one of geographic and diplomatic retrenchment. Under the Biden administration the Pentagon sought to build coalitions across all of what it called the Indo-Pacific, a vast area stretching from South Asia to California. By contrast, the Trump administration’s focus is on the “first island chain”, an archipelago that runs from Japan down to the Philippines. Holding that geographic area, American defence wonks believe, is the key to securing what Mr Hegseth called “a favourable balance of power” in Asia. The second part of the Pentagon’s strategy is a narrower focus on “hard” power, or military force. That again contrasts with the Biden administration, which emphasised the importance of a “rules-based” international order and sought signals of support even from countries that lack much military heft. “You can have all the rules you want, and rules are great, but if you can’t back them up with hard power, the rules are not worth the paper they are written on,” Mr Hegseth told the crowd. To that end, he called on America’s Asian allies to assume more of the burden of their own defence by spending at least 3.5% of GDP on their own armed forces (most of them are nowhere near this). The centrepiece of the Biden administration’s strategy was a bloc made up of America, Australia, India and Japan called the Quad. Mr Trump has dramatically downgraded it. A Quad meeting in late May, in Delhi, attended by Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, achieved nothing of note. That makes sense for the new American approach: the Quad would seem to fit poorly into an Asia strategy focused on the first island chain and military power. India could hardly act in that region. And in any case, much of the Quad’s work to date has skirted around actual military co-operation, due to India’s concerns about appearing too close to America and its allies. Instead the club offered other countries what Mr Biden’s team called “public goods”: things such as vaccines that don’t strike Mr Trump as a whole lot of fun. In his speech in Singapore, Mr Hegseth did not mention the Quad. Yet that was not the most glaring omission. He also avoided any mention of the region’s biggest flashpoint, Taiwan. (Last year he had warned that a Chinese invasion of the self-governing island “could be imminent”, while also adding that it “would result in devastating consequences”.)