Nguyen Bao Han Tran is a second-year undergraduate student at the University of Toronto Mississauga pursuing a double major in Political Science and History. She is a Junior Research Fellow with the NATO Association of Canada’s Indo-Pacific and NATO Program.
Her work focuses on Indo-Pacific security, geopolitics, and international cooperation, with particular interests in Northeast and Southeast Asia. Her research on Vietnam’s Formosa environmental disaster and a policy analysis on the South China Sea have been published in Synergy: The Contemporary Asia Studies Journal of the Asian Institute at U of T.
In addition to her policy research, she writes on global affairs, security, and campus issues through student journalism. Han is passionate about international relations, political reporting, and bridging academic research with public-facing policy analysis.
How is the Iran war reshaping China’s strategic calculations toward Taiwan? Nguyen Bao Han Tran examines how the conflict is reinforcing two competing lessons for Beijing: weaker actors can impose serious costs through asymmetric drone warfare, while prolonged U.S. military engagement elsewhere may strain allied deterrence in the Indo-Pacific. As Middle Eastern and Asian security dynamics become increasingly interconnected, this article argues that China may become more cautious about full-scale invasion while finding blockade, gray-zone coercion, and other strategies below the threshold of war increasingly attractive.
How should NATO respond to growing strategic links between the Taiwan Strait and the Euro-Atlantic theatre? In this article, Nguyen Bao Han Tran examines China’s calibrated military pressure on Taiwan and argues that NATO must prepare for the indirect consequences of a Taiwan contingency, from defence-industrial strain to cross-regional deterrence challenges.
The 2025 Thailand–Cambodia border crisis demonstrates how unresolved territorial disputes can quickly escalate when historical grievances, domestic political pressures, and weak conflict-management mechanisms converge. Nguyen Bao Han Tran examines the structural drivers of the crisis and draws broader lessons for NATO on conflict prevention, monitoring, regional diplomacy, and post-conflict stabilization.
As North Korea’s military cooperation with Russia intensifies, security dynamics in the Indo-Pacific and Europe are increasingly intertwined. Nguyen Bao Han Tran analyzes how these developments have accelerated Japan’s defence transformation and prompted NATO to rethink its engagement with Indo-Pacific partners, highlighting the growing importance of transregional security coordination.
