I have yet to meet an Australian voter willing to go to war over Taiwan. Further, I haven’t heard of any Australian military leader with a clear idea of Australia’s role in a showdown between China and the US. Earlier this year, NASA’s survey satellite discovered an Earth-sized world within the habitable zone of a Continue reading »
International Relations
“Over 56 years, Israel has governed the occupied Palestinian territory through stifling criminalisation of basic rights and mass incarcerations,” said Albanese in a report to the UN Human Rights Council on 10 July. GENEVA (10 July 2023) – Israel’s military occupation has morphed the entire occupied Palestinian territory into an open-air prison, where Palestinians are constantly confined, Continue reading »
Geo-politics is played on a world chessboard often by sad oldies in sober suits. To keep membership exclusive the polymath gamers use polysyllables and foreign tongues. Clearly not the place for a perky American doll. Yet Barbie has made it to the top without studying at the Sorbonne. She’s getting into the space of Xi Continue reading »
The Australian Defence Department’s new Frigates project is a jobs merry-go-round for former military officers, bureaucrats, and weapons makers. Integrity concerns with Australia’s $46 billion procurement from BAE Systems of nine warships were examined in Part One of Declassified Australia’s special ‘Sinking Billions’. The Defence contract management process was revealed to be flawed and suffering what the Australian Continue reading »
Defeat for the Voice referendum will reverberate internationally. Surviving suspicions about our racist past will be refreshed. It will come at the same time as our renewed embrace of our ‘forever friends’ in Britain and the United States and our growing enthusiasm for closer ties with NATO. Race is constantly referred to by both sides Continue reading »
When will Australians realise, as Paul Keating has been unerringly consistent in arguing, that they are part of the cosmopolitanism and complexity of Asia, and not a Western imagined community presided over by a fast declining America? During the maligned years of the Morrison-Turnbull-Abbott governments, Australia’s international reputation fell on a number of significant measures Continue reading »
"Trying to spread fear at home, abroad, and travelling in between. Further incentive to fight for the #rights, #freedom, and #democracy that we deserve"
On China, Biden is faced with both a political problem, represented by his secretary of state, and an economic reality, represented by the Treasury secretary. Yellen’s visit suggests economics may be starting to play a larger role in the bilateral relationship, but the US will need to demonstrate consistent sincerity to see improvement in ties. Continue reading »
According to the UN Human Rights Office, 9,083 civilians have been killed in 500 days of fighting in Ukraine, and 15,779 wounded. These figures are likely to increase dramatically once American cluster munitions are deployed. Invented by Germany and deployed in World War Two, cluster bomb technology spread to the United States, Russia and Italy Continue reading »
The world has just spent two decades paralysed by fear. Ever since 11 September 2001, the ‘war on terror’ has changed the lives of most people for the worse. Millions have been killed, either by terrorists or by militarists fighting them. Fearing violence, many people have fled their homelands as refugees. Others have absorbed repeated Continue reading »