| Dear Friends and Colleagues,
With 2024 coming to an end, we would like to take this opportunity to reflect on the year’s achievements and express gratitude to our team, funders, members, and partners for their invaluable support of APLN.
Throughout the year, we released 74 publications and welcomed 11 new members to APLN’s network, more than half of whom were women. We launched an open-access APLN Asia-Pacific Women in International Security Database featuring nearly 170 female experts. We have also improved our commissioning practices on gender diversity. In 2020, only 13% of APLN’s authors were women. Today, 48% of our authors are women.
We also continued our research and project work on assessing Strategic Risks in the Asia-Pacific, facilitating Asia Dialogue on US-China Relations, addressing evolving views on Nuclear Order in East Asia, examining strategies to Reduce the Risk of Nuclear Weapon Use in Northeast Asia, and amplifying Voices from the Pacific Islands.
Next year, we aim to build on these achievements by continuing to produce high-quality research and analysis, convene high-level events, foster institutional partnerships, provide a platform for dialogue and debate, and develop credible policy solutions. Our ambition is to raise the level of the Asia-Pacific contribution to global security debates to ensure that the diverse voices from our region are more effectively heard in addressing both global and regional threats.
Expanding our network and advancing our research would not have been possible without your active engagement and support. As we reflect on the past year and prepare for 2025, I extend my heartfelt thanks and wish you a joyful and prosperous new year. |
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| Kind regards,
Shatabhisha Shetty
APLN Executive Director |
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| APLN’s senior network has steadily grown over time. In late 2020, APLN had 93 network members from 16 countries across the Asia-Pacific. This year, we welcomed 11 new members to our network. We are proud to now represent 167 members from 23 countries across the Asia-Pacific, with 7 new additions: Fiji, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, East Timor, Cambodia, Samoa, and Nepal. |
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| This year, we built an open-access APLN Asia-Pacific Women in International Security Database with nearly 170 entries of female experts who are from, or reside in, the Asia-Pacific and work on issues related to foreign policy, defence, and peace and security. The database can be filtered by regional expertise, thematic expertise, language skills, and nationality. We hope that this database serves as a tool for journalists and policy practitioners to use when seeking women in the field of international security to consult with for upcoming articles, interviews, or other related work.
All names were added entirely on an opt-in basis; if you would like to be listed in the database, please fill out this form. We welcome your feedback at apln@apln.network. |
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| In 2024, we have produced 74 publications, including 25 special reports, 9 essays, 3 Pulse series, 2 policy briefs, and 18 commentaries. We continued our partnership with The Korea Times with a special APLN-Korea Times column featuring APLN members on nuclear and security issues and published 17 APLN-Korea Times columns in 2024.
We are deeply grateful to those who contributed to our publications, whether through authoring, participating in the workshops and dialogues that informed the reports, peer-reviewing, translating, or supporting in other ways.
We look forward to sharing even more with you in 2025! |
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Voices from Pacific Island Countries
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| Our Nuclear Disarmament and the Anthropocene project, supported by the Ploughshares Fund, amplifies voices from the Pacific Islands and highlights the inequities and injustices of nuclear weapons policies and practices that exacerbate existential risks.
In the first half of 2024, we published five expert papers and a synthesis report on the project’s key insights to date, and hosted a webinar featuring Pacific experts. Following a grant renewal for the project’s third year, we organised three virtual roundtables to identify key issues and explore potential opportunities for collaboration between the Pacific and Asia, engaging experts from over 20 countries across the region. |
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Asia Dialogue on China-US Relations
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| This year, we published four special reports on US, South Korean, Fijian, and Taiwanese perspectives on regional stability and an end-of-year research report on the project findings, followed by two essays covering recent developments in China-India relations. |
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| In May, we organised a conference in Jakarta with 29 participants from over 10 countries across the region, and we held two webinars to discuss the reports with APLN members and regional experts.
In Washington, we held a briefing with State Department officials to discuss the US report, private briefings with officials from Southeast Asian states, a roundtable discussion with Southeast Asia (SEA) experts at the East-West Center. We also held an event hosted by the State Department with Deputy Assistant Secretary of State (DAS) for Southeast Asia, Andrew Herrup, in discussion with Ambassador Piper Campbell, one of the project’s authors.
This project is supported by the Carnegie Corporation of New York. |
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Nuclear Weapon Use Risk Reduction
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| In 2024, we concluded the APLN-RECNA-Nautilus Institute collaborative 3-year research project “Reducing the Risk of Nuclear Weapon Use in Northeast Asia” (NU-NEA) to explore ways to avoid a nuclear conflict and de-escalate tensions on the Korean Peninsula and in Northeast Asia by developing credible nuclear use cases and proposing policy solutions.
In this third year, we published the project’s final report, hosted a project webinar and published five expert papers in a special edition of the Journal for Peace and Nuclear Disarmament.
This project is supported by the Research Center for Nuclear Weapon Abolition-Nagasaki University (RECNA), as well as funding from the MacArthur Foundation and New Land Foundation to the Nautilus Institute. |
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Nuclear Order In East Asia
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| As a part of our Nuclear Order in East Asia project, we have held three roundtables in Seoul, together with the Nuclear Threat Initiative, Heinrich Böll Stiftung, Sasakawa Peace Foundation, and East Asia Foundation.
The project has explored challenges to the regional nuclear order, including views on US extended deterrence, China’s nuclear modernisation, North Korea’s nuclear program, and regional responses to potential South Korean proliferation. Until March next year, APLN will explore these questions further through a grant from the UK Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office. |
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APLN-NTI Workshop on Managing Strategic Risks and Nuclear Dynamics in the Asia-Pacific
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| On 4-5 March, APLN gathered in Seoul for a workshop focused on managing strategic risks and nuclear dynamics in the Asia-Pacific region with the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI). The workshop brought together experts from the US and the region and is part of NTI’s project on the Global Nuclear Order, which considers implications of current geopolitical developments for the global nuclear order and the broader international security environment. |
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| On 21 October, with the support of the East Asia Office of the Heinrich Böll Stiftung in Seoul, we held a workshop focused on strengthening the taboo against nuclear armament in South Korea, exploring how the international community – specifically Indonesia, Japan, Mongolia, and the Philippines – might respond to such a development. We have published four papers authored by experts from these countries. |
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APLN-Sasakawa Peace Foundation Workshop
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| On 28 November, APLN organized a workshop in Seoul with the support of the Sasakawa Peace Foundation and East Asia Foundation. Experts discussed how Japanese and South Korean perspectives on strategic stability have evolved in recent years, how shifting threat perceptions influence new and ongoing proliferation challenges, and which policy solutions could address these issues. |
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Asia-Pacific Strategic Risks
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| This year, we concluded a two-year research project analysing the changing threat perceptions and proliferation challenges in South Korea, Japan, Australia and the UK to encourage restraint, enhance collaboration, and reduce escalation risks. |
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| We convened a conference in Seoul in January 2024 and published three expert papers offering Australian, South Korean, and Japanese perspectives in the first half of 2024. We released a final report on the project’s findings in May.
The project was a collaboration with the European Leadership Network and was funded by the UK Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office. |
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Private Briefing with United Nations
Office for Disarmament Affairs (UNODA)
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| On 25 January, APLN hosted a private briefing with the United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs (UNODA)’s Director & Deputy Adedeji Ebo and Chief of the WMD Branch, Chris King. They urged states to acknowledge the inherent danger of nuclear weapons and unite in preventing their use, testing, and proliferation, emphasising the collective interest in urgent and good faith efforts toward their eventual elimination. |
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APLN-CSIS(PONI) Workshop on Global South Perspectives
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| On 19 September, we co-hosted a workshop on Domestic Perspectives on Disarmament & Deterrence with the Project on Nuclear Issues (PONI) at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), in Bangkok. The workshop explored domestic Southeast Asian perspectives on nuclear deterrence, nonproliferation, and disarmament, as part of a larger effort to understand allied views of US nuclear policy, US extended deterrence, and the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty. |
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APLN 2024 Annual General Meeting
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| On 6 December, APLN held its 2024 Annual General Meeting of Network Members. APLN members Manpreet Sethi, Mely Caballero-Anthony, Robert Hill, and Michiru Nishida opened the discussion with their analyses on the impact of the incoming Trump administration on the Asia-Pacific. This was followed by lively, network-wide discussion with member contributions including from South Korea, Japan, China, New Zealand, India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Australia as well as an update from APLN Executive Director Shatabhisha Shetty on APLN’s 2024 activities. |
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| As a nonprofit, we rely on the generous support of our partners and donors to continue our work. Looking ahead to 2025, we are excited to deepen partnerships, launch new initiatives, and advance meaningful progress in addressing security challenges in the Asia-Pacific. If you’re interested in supporting or collaborating with us, please contact our Executive Director Shatabhisha Shetty at director@apln.network. |
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