Horror videos posted on social media last week of residents of the Ecuadorian coastal metropolis of Guayaquil abandoning corpses in the streets while vultures circled overhead underline the extreme vulnerability of emerging nations to the …
Debate: "General"
As the world contends with Covid-19, Indonesia and Australia have an opportunity to establish deeper ties and cooperation on matters of mutual concern. The secondary states of Asia—Singapore, Taiwan and South Korea—have become exemplars for …
Gender and the Covid-19 pandemic Amid the coronavirus outbreak, a number of commentators have stressed the need for gender analysis of the issue. Writing for The Atlantic, Helen Lewis discusses the ways in which a …
US President Donald Trump has labelled himself a wartime president, and many other leaders around the world are using similar language. It’s a description that raises an obvious question: what do the history and nature …
In Australia’s Covid-19 response, the importance of expertise in medicine, biology and epidemiology has been on display. The pandemic appears to be heralding a pivot back to evidence-based ‘fact’, away from opinion and ‘truthiness’. Universities …
Australians returning from overseas are being met with the uncommon sight of Australian Defence Force personnel at our airports. Even though Prime Minister Morrison has said that the ADF is there in support of the …
Sea state The commander of the coronavirus-hit aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt, Brett Crozier, has been relieved of his post. Crozier wrote a letter to naval command asking for stronger measures to counter the outbreak …
Australia will inevitably be called on to play a leading role in the economic and fiscal rescue package Papua New Guinea desperately needs. The amount required to prevent PNG from becoming a failed state is …
Mark Beeson’s recent piece on the Covid-19 pandemic, ‘The revenge of Gaia?’, was a bewildering read. Beeson suggested that Covid-19 is, like climate change, ‘a product of changes in the natural environment’ and ‘partly a consequence …
The Australian government is properly focused on managing the domestic effects of Covid-19. But we must also think about a changing external environment. Middle powers are not generally prime movers in major international shifts, tending rather …
The novel coronavirus first appeared in Wuhan, China, in December 2019. It spread throughout the nation in January, and then across the world. Now, there are over 1.2 million confirmed cases across more than 183 …
While the United States and China squabble about the origins of the novel coronavirus, a more serious contest is underway over the severe economic sanctions against Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea and, to a …