Australia and Indonesia are to have new defence cooperation agreement. A big deal for a government whose foreign policy is repeatedly trumped by defence; less of a deal for our northern neighbour which, like us, looks north for its prosperity and security. Continue reading »
International Relations
Sometime in 2016 , soon after I’d joined the Northern Beaches Committee for Palestine, a group of us visited the then premier of New South Wales in his Manly electorate office. It would be safe to say that there weren’t many people on the Northern Beaches then who knew much about Palestine, or cared, but Continue reading »
On 22 August, Rafael Grossi, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, warned of the deadly effect a military attack on Russia’s nuclear power complex at Kursk would have on civilian communities in Russia, Ukraine and potentially across Europe. He had previously warned of the consequences of such attacks on Ukraine’s nuclear reactors at Zaporizhzhia. Continue reading »
It would be fairly uncontroversial to describe Ukraine’s recent military advance into Russia’s Kursk region as a deliberate provocation. Kyiv’s claim that it was intended chiefly to prod Moscow towards a negotiated peace, if true, appears to ignore Vladimir Putin’s tendency to stick to his guns in the face of embarrassments. Emboldened by the initial Continue reading »
Malaysia’s 2025 ASEAN Chairmanship is an opportunity to provide clear regional leadership amid shifting geopolitics, but the country’s strategic goals remain uncertain despite a growing perception of closer alignment with China. Malaysia should focus on enhancing ASEAN centrality, balancing local sentiment against global interests, and sustaining ties with all major regional powers including the US, Continue reading »
_______________________________________________
Stephen M Walt, Professor of International Relations at Harvard University, in “The Dangerous Decline in Israeli Strategy”, argues that Israel, the US and their supporters are wedded to long-honed, conspicuously bad policies. Continue reading »
I write as a child of Holocaust survivors because I am disturbed by the demagoguery engaged by the leader of the Opposition, Peter Dutton, labelling hapless Palestinian refugees as potential terrorists. I quote from The Guardian article: “Peter Dutton has compared Hamas to the Nazis in an opinion piece that calls the registered terrorist organisation Continue reading »
Pillar 2 is a thing that AUKUS created: it appears at different times and with different meanings and possibilities and yet is not entirely, or even at all, predictable because the initial conditions and predicate logic on which it depends are themselves illusions or fabrications of the collective mind of those who constructed it in Continue reading »
A recent article by Michael MacKinley provides an accurate reflection on the (lack of) value placed on human life by those who propagate war. It brings to mind a statement of the past that, to paraphrase, states “a bayonette is a weapon with a working man on either end.” Michael points to two salutary lessons Continue reading »
Ukraine’s invasion (of Kursk) was a major strategic blunder, which will accelerate its defeat. The key determinant of success in a war of attrition is the casualty-exchange ratio, not capturing territory, which Western commentators obsess over. The casualty-exchange ratio in the Kursk offensive decisively favours Russia for two reasons. First, it has caused relatively few Continue reading »