US presidents are losing their authority as the world’s policemen. Russia fights to keep Ukraine out of NATO. Israel fights in Gaza to wipe out the Palestinians. China and the Global South advance their national interests without fighting at all. All can and do ignore President Biden’s wishes. Then the current, soon-retiring, US policeman wants Continue reading »
World Affairs
CNN’s Clarissa Ward and her crew became the first western journalists to enter Gaza independent from Israeli forces since October 7, briefly visiting a 150-bed hospital that was recently constructed in a soccer stadium by the United Arab Emirates in the southern part of the enclave before leaving to report on the footage from Abu Dhabi. Continue reading »
Henry Kissinger’s role in expediting the Sino-US normalization and recognition process represented one of the greatest feats in modern diplomatic history. The Australian’s conflicted 2-3 December 2023 obituary of Henry Kissinger came under the banner-head, “Flawed Giant of Realpolitik”. Although we are never to see his like again, many in the Western media have left Continue reading »
U.S. President Joe Biden, the Western media, and American academics seek to rally Western democracies against China, allegedly the leader of the world’s authoritarian countries. They charged that China is not democratic. Is this charge true? How so? China is known to have a long history during which scholars played a central role in society Continue reading »
Henry Kissinger’s death has brought a flow of predictable judgements: ‘He created some evils – 1973 Chile, for example. But overall he helped end the Cold War.’ And as a beneficiary – the 1971 opening to China, for example – Australians should be grateful. His non-Anglo background and his experience in dealing closely with a Continue reading »
Western capitals now openly acknowledge the reality that their proxy war in Ukraine has run out of steam. Desperate new policy directions are being discussed in NATO circles. But a decision to end the war will be taken only by Moscow. An article by Big Serge, Russo-Ukrainian War: The reckoning on 16 November 2023 offered an in-depth detailed analysis by a military expert of how the war is Continue reading »
America’s huge role in international affairs is undisputed but one aspect that tends to get overlooked is the way its support of local actors tends to inflame the situation. Indigenous political forces, be they governments or regimes in power, or movements or individuals seeking power, have their own agendas and motivations. If these objectives are Continue reading »
Well, not so if they are Palestinian children that Israelis keep killing time and time again. It is part of what Israelis calls ‘mowing the grass’. I wrote the following nine years ago. At last counting there were 1,230 Palestinians killed in Gaza as a result of 3,000 or more air and artillery strikes. 56 Continue reading »
Henry Kissinger’s death draws to a close the epoch of intellectualism in foreign policy to which he was committed following his early study of and belief in a system of organised strategic balance and restraint of the kind that emerged from the Treaty of Westphalia in the 17th century. I first met Henry Kissinger in Continue reading »
Calling out China for its persecution of Uighurs is not to be a Sinophobic racist. Calling out Myanmar for its crimes against Rohingya people is not to be anti-Buddhist. Calling out Saudi Arabia and Egypt for their murder and suppression of dissidents is not to be Islamophobic or anti-Arab. And calling out Israel for its Continue reading »