As 2025 draws to a close, we would like to take this opportunity to reflect on what we have achieved together and extend our sincere thanks to our team, funders, members, and partners for their invaluable contributions throughout the year.

Throughout the year, we released 50 publications and welcomed 11 new members to APLN’s network, further enhancing the diversity of our membership. We also continued to improve our commissioning practices to advance gender diversity. In 2020, only 13% of APLN’s authors were women; today, that figure stands at 51%.

We also continued our research and project work on facilitating Asia Dialogue on US-China Relations, advancing Nuclear Fail-Safe Practices in the region, developing new Asia-Pacific maritime security CSBMs, addressing evolving views on Nuclear Order in the Asia-Pacific, examining security linkages between the Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific regions to enhance cross-theatre crisis prevention, and amplifying Voices from the Pacific Islands.

Next year, we aim to build on these achievements by continuing to establish regular Track 1.5 dialogues with key regional governments, producing a regional risk tracker, and developing concrete policy recommendations for the 2026 NPT Review Conference. Our ambition is to amplify Asia-Pacific voices in global security discourse, bringing greater balance and regional insight to debates on pressing threats.

We are deeply grateful for your engagement and support, which have been essential to expanding our network and advancing our research. As we turn to 2026, we thank you warmly and wish you a happy and rewarding year.

In April 2025, we brought together leading experts from Asia and the Pacific Islands through three virtual roundtables and an in-person Track II dialogue in Suva, Fiji. For the first time, 20 experts from 13 Asia-Pacific countries participated in the Track II dialogue to shape new pathways for regional cooperation that centre Pacific Island Countries’ perspectives and address nuclear and climate security challenges collaboratively.

These efforts were complemented by the publication of analysis on Marshallese women’s nuclear advocacy, two infographics on regional geopolitical and nuclear risks, and the meeting report of the Track II Suva Dialogue on Security in the Pacific and Asia, released on 10 December 2025.

Supported by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the project has secured funding for an additional two years, with Year 3 focusing on Asia-Pacific futures through 2035, examining potential shocks and black-swan events that concern regional strategic planners.

In China, we held substantive exchanges with senior officials from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, contributing to policy-relevant discussions at a critical moment. Notably, China’s November 2025 White Paper on Arms Control included new language underscoring Beijing’s commitment to fail-safe relevant measures. In India, we engaged multiple senior nuclear force command officials, alongside experienced former national security diplomats and military leaders. In Pakistan, we consulted extensively with former officials from the Strategic Plans Division, responsible for operationalising nuclear policy, posture, and security arrangements. Collectively, these engagements strengthened cross-national dialogue on nuclear risk reduction and informed policy debates in all three countries.

In 2026, APLN will build upon this project work by authoring distinct region-specific commentaries on proposed CSBMs to further promote discussion and foster mutual understanding toward their adoption.

In April, we published a major report on Japanese and South Korean perspectives on strategic stability and US extended deterrence, circulating it to officials across all three countries and briefing them directly. We also released a policy brief on the potential deployment of the US sea-launched cruise missile (SLCM-N), prompting substantive discussion among U.S. and Japanese experts. This policy brief was the most visited page on our website in the second half of 2025.

We recruited emerging experts from Australia, Japan, and New Zealand as Risk Reduction Fellows and core members of the project team, held working groups with leading experts and former security officials from the Asia-Pacific and Euro-Atlantic regions, and compiled a new dataset of Indo-Pacific and Euro-Atlantic cooperation activities, which will be launched as an interactive visualisation on our website.

We extend our sincere thanks to everyone who contributed to our publications through writing, participating in workshops and dialogues, peer reviewing, translating, or supporting our work in other ways.

We look forward to continuing this engagement and sharing more with you in 2026!

APLN hosted its first event in India since 2017, bringing together our New Delhi-based network members for a dinner reception on 3 February 2025. Ambassador Shyam Saran gave an engaging keynote address on “Are We in a New Cold War – An Indian Perspective on Shifting Geopolitics”.

Seen in the photo are APLN Members R Rajaraman, Shyam Saran, SP Tyagi, Sujata Mehta, C Uday Bhaskar, Amit Sharma, Siddharth Varadarajan, Manpreet Sethi (APLN Acting Director) and staff members Frank O’Donnell and Tanvi Kulkarni.