Every word of Anthony Albanese’s address to the Shangri-La dialogue on 2 June was chosen with care. It was a balancing act, with the Prime Minister poised between peace and war, defence and diplomacy, the US and China, in a high-wire performance his Coalition predecessors wouldn’t have attempted. Has Australia’s approach to Asia changed? Does Continue reading »
International Relations
Monday 5 June 2023 was World Environment Day. The campaign this year is for action to eradicate plastics in all its forms which pollute and destroy. The campaign is led by the United Nations Environment Protection agency (UNEP) with the title and hashtag of #BeatPlasticPollution. The UNEP website and its social media messaging proclaim: This Continue reading »
Interpretations are being offered about prime minister Albanese’s speech to the so-called Shangri La Dialogue in Singapore. This sounds like an Asian event but is hosted each year by the International Institute for Strategic Studies of London, an august and AUKUSian institution of such eminence that I was once invited to join. I declined. Life Continue reading »
Such terms and phrases as a rules-based system, de-risking, democracy vs autocracy, and coercive behaviour are not exhaustive but still expose obfuscation and double standards. Politicians campaigning for election love to use buzzwords and catchy phrases to explain what they stand for and what their policies are. They do that because they assume, probably rightly, Continue reading »
The Chinese character for China, denotes China as the middle kingdom and understandably so: It borders 14 sovereign states. To the north- Russia, Mongolia and Korea (since there is no formal separation of North and South Korea). To the west – Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan To the south west – Pakistan, Afghanistan To the south – Continue reading »
Somewhere, somehow, China became the number one enemy of the world, or at least to the world that is run by the USA. For many the ‘reason’ has been the challenge that China poses to US economic hegemony, but might not America’s fear of China be based on ideological causes; a battle of ideas? Why Continue reading »
You could hear, when Biden squibbed the Quad, the Austral-Americans deflate. They watched aghast when Captain Ahab abandoned them, and the sinking big idea of Austral-American grand strategy, the Indo-Pacific, disappeared somewhere in the China Sea. The idea of an international order espoused by the Austral-Americans, to honour Paul Keating’s term, is the free and Continue reading »
In Asian Media this week: India Special: West’s one-two soft-soaping of country’s leader; anti-colonial Modi pushes ‘new’ future; forecasts of Indian century ‘magical thinking’. Plus: tighter US, Japan, South Korea ties; Timor-Leste’s ASEAN ambitions; Bangkok backing key to poll winner’s survival. India I: Anthony Albanese’s gushing greeting last month for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi Continue reading »
Atrocities don’t happen overnight. They ramp up over time. The Nazi death camps, were preceded by at least a decade of smaller, selective and escalating removals of human rights for Jewish and LGBTIQ+ peoples. Similar patterns allowed for the genocides in Rwanda and Cambodia – incremental and selective removals of minority rights built momentum and Continue reading »
The situation in the South China Sea is on the verge of becoming a game of chicken between the U.S. and China with the Philippines in the middle. This would be very dangerous and could cause China to miscalculate. Either one blinks or they clash. More than 60 years ago, the U.S. claimed that on Continue reading »