Eight Hong Kong dissidents now living abroad are subject to arrest warrants, including Kevin Yam, a Melbourne-based lawyer, and Ted Hui, a former politician who now lives in Adelaide. This is profoundly depressing news. It is certainly not the “rose garden” of wide-ranging freedom and autonomy that some over-optimistically anticipated. The Hong Kong government has Continue reading »
International Relations
The good news is the US can’t sell Australia the three to five used Virginia class nuclear subs that the Albanese government has announced it will buy. Nor will it sell us any new ones. The chief of US Naval operations Admiral Michael Gilday was recently reported from Washington as saying the US shipyards are Continue reading »
The Wagner coup equation doesn’t compute. It just doesn’t add up. Herbert Wulf gave us a concise summary of the surreal 24 hours that gripped the world. But there are missing pieces of the puzzle that we haven’t been given. And now we learn that the Wagner boss is back in St Petersburg, Russia. In his classic The Art of Continue reading »
It probably wasn’t the best time to venture near to the Belarus border. But that’s exactly what I did a month or so ago. I spent a couple of weeks with my extended family in a small Polish town called ‘Azmol’ (not it’s real name). And extended the family certainly is, concentrated in a single Continue reading »
Picture the Western media’s outrage if a Russian helicopter gunship went into an occupied Crimean city neighbourhood and began shooting missiles at civilian homes, claiming a militant lived in one. “War crime” would resound. When this occurred in the Jenin refugee camp nearly two weeks ago, killing seven people, including a teenager, it was framed as a Continue reading »
Does it really matter that Australia’s defence policy has no moorings, and is created unaware of past pain, lessons and policy responses? By agents with unknown interests. And that American influence has been ushered into this void, most recently by Minister Marles? ‘De-risking’ is the latest term in geopolitics. It mostly concerns China. European leaders Continue reading »
Why hasn’t the devastation of almost an entire people been called out for what it is? Where’s the outrage of what is happening in Jenin, Palestinian Territory? One of Australia’s foremost newspapers had an article today on whether it’s best to drink soy, almond or oat milk. Really? Who could have imagined that in 2023 Continue reading »
The recent visit to China by US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken seemed promising, until we learned what he really had in mind: a long war with no finish line. This was not how the Australian media reported what happened during more than seven hours which Blinken spent with Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang and Continue reading »
What is the path to peace for the war in Ukraine? Is America still powerful enough to impose global order? The US has just 4.1% of the world’s population, while the BRICS countries have 41.5%. In this conversation with economist Jeffrey Sachs, we discuss the origins of the conflict in Ukraine and NATO enlargement, US-China Continue reading »
One of the more arcane developments in contemporary trade policy is the recently tabled US proposal for reform of the arrangements for managing trade disputes between members of the World Trade Organisation (WTO). It is a landscape marked by statistics, legal texts, and arguments. However, reflected in the microcosm is a wider universe featuring the Continue reading »