Many of the accounts we hear of the current Russia-NATO conflict are deeply flawed. and risk degenerating into pure farce – a crude melodrama, in which an upright, democratic Ukrainian government headed by hero Zelensky is pitted against a corrupt and brutal autocracy led by the deluded ogre, Putin. What is really in question, is Continue reading »
Defence and Security
In Ukraine and in other parts of the world, Western violence and supremacy has been abetted by its educated more than any other group. This has been clear for the history of the British Empire, one of the most violent to traverse the globe along with its offspring; even the warmongering and provocations of the Continue reading »
A group of top US agents, mostly Democrats, pumped hundreds of fake news stories into the mainstream media, it was revealed at the weekend. From 2017, they falsely told major news outlets to print that support for the people they didn’t like (which included Donald Trump and Tulsi Gabbard) came from Russian propaganda operatives working Continue reading »
The United States is not preparing to go to war against China. The United States is preparing Australia to go to war against China. Thank you for inviting me to address the Salon. I am greatly honoured and somewhat daunted, given the long list of eminent scholars, analysts and writers who have preceded me. I Continue reading »
NATO support for the war in Ukraine, designed to degrade the Russian military and drive Vladimir Putin from power, is not going according to plan. The new sophisticated military hardware won’t help. Empires in terminal decline leap from one military fiasco to the next. The war in Ukraine, another bungled attempt to reassert U.S. global Continue reading »
A little over 75 years ago, a Japan-designed Asia-Pacific community collapsed, leaving not only Japan itself but much of the region in chaos, millions dead, cities in ruins. The lesson the world – and the Japanese people – took from the catastrophe was incorporated in the constitution of Japan agreed one year later: under Article Continue reading »
A re-energised peace movement is urgently required. To date, at least $100 billion dollars in armaments has been committed by the US and its NATO allies to press for the continuation of the war in Ukraine. A war initiated through an illegal Russian invasion in February 2022, but a war whose fires are being stoked, Continue reading »
A break away from Australia can do much to restore one’s hope that growing militarism and the militarisation of society does not have to be the way of things. Writing from Costa Rica, I’ve enjoyed the absence of news featuring blatant China-bashing, grandiose but ill-suited plans for nuclear-powered submarines, proud announcements about new military hardware Continue reading »
How has the battle-scarred Ukrainian city of Mariupol changed after eight months under Russian control? These images were taken by photojournalist Arseniy Kotov half a year apart, in summer and in winter, and show efforts to restore the Azov sea pearl It’s now over eight months since Mariupol – the second largest city of the Continue reading »
Western powers appear to have no viable strategy to bring the Ukraine war to an end. The best they can do is keep Ukraine on life support. But, as Sun Tzu put it, tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat. Imagine if Ukraine had capitulated three days after the Russian invasion commenced in February Continue reading »