A multipolar world is being forged by the Global South. Tectonic shifts are taking place between the “collective West” led by the United States and the “Global South” with China in this camp. Hong Kong’s predicament is that it lies on a fault line of the geopolitical plates. Political transitions are never easy for the Continue reading »
Defence and Security
Mainstream media frequently describes Taiwan as “an island that the PRC claims, but has never ruled”. This has given rise to an increasing perception of Taiwan as a separate sovereign entity. In both historical and legal terms it is not. Most countries and the United Nations Organisation have long accepted that Taiwan, despite being internally Continue reading »
In 2016, President Obama visited Hiroshima. He was the first US President to do so since the bombing in 1945. He said that he would not be apologising for the dropping of the bomb and would not try and second-guess President Harry Truman’s decision. A repost from May 27, 2016 The widely accepted moral justification Continue reading »
America and the West are more isolated from the rest of the world than at any time since WWII. From May 22–23, the Toda Peace Institute convened a brainstorming retreat at its Tokyo office with 16 high-level international participants. One of the key themes was the changing global power structure and normative architecture, with the Continue reading »
The ugly situation developing in Kosovo, formerly a province of Serbia, has parallels with Ukraine. The result could be just as bloody. But is anyone listening? The legal status of Kosovo remains obscure. Originally it was an autonomous province within Serbia. But the Albanian majority in the province claimed Serb victimisation. Their militants had long Continue reading »
Australia’s capacity to protect its sovereignty lies not in accession to US interests but in a broad diplomatic and security effort with our Asian neighbours, writes Paul Keating in a letter delivered to Prime Minister Albanese on 24 January, seven weeks before the San Diego AUKUS announcement and obtained by the Guardian Australia under FOI Continue reading »
The US military has released video footage of a Chinese navy ship cutting across the path of an American Destroyer in the Taiwan Strait over the weekend, reportedly forcing the US vessel to slow down to avoid a collision. A statement on the incident from US Indo-Pacific Command says the Chinese ship “executed maneuvers in Continue reading »
Today, there are strong arguments that Australian security and defence thinking, which was historically race based, is now culturally embedded; that the current situation is close to what race theory describes as ‘racism without racists.’ How, then, might Australian colonial racism have conditioned our security culture to put the ‘A’ in the AUKUS nuclear powered Continue reading »
The hubris and arrogance of the nuclear-armed states leaves the world exposed to the risk of sleepwalking into a nuclear disaster. The case for nuclear weapons rests on a superstitious magical Realism that puts faith in the utility of the bomb and the theory of deterrence. Here are four myths about the utility of nuclear 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 »