In the immediate aftermath, I was unwilling to speak about my experience of Tiananmen. In Beijing, where I stayed until the end of 1990, there was no need to talk about it. Everyone knew what …
Debate: "General"
We live in an era that lionises a love of beginnings. It is what the media—and through it, imagination—strive for. But discovery, no matter how novel, is never original. It draws on the past. The …
Italy faces a double economic crisis in which two recessions and a banking crisis over the past decade have come on top of a slow structural decline in growth over a far longer period. And …
Elizabeth II may have had her annus horribilis in the early 1990s, but she would—in the minds of many South Africans, at least—be thought to have escaped lightly. The ‘rainbow nation’ went to the polls …
China’s progress towards an open society ended when the People’s Liberation Army slaughtered at least hundreds, if not thousands, of peaceful demonstrators in and around Beijing’s Tiananmen Square on 3-4 June 1989. The crackdown left …
The defence supremos of the US and China had a face-off in Singapore at the weekend. Both sides came for a compare-and-contrast contest conducted as a rhetorical rumble. The two biggest players in the game …
Bob Hawke’s recent death prompted an outpouring of tributes to the Australian Labor Party’s longest-serving prime minister. Few recalled how close his government came to a terminal blow in its first year, largely at the …
The world On Tuesday, The Strategist revealed that Australian helicopter pilots had been targeted by lasers while participating in this year’s Indo-Pacific Endeavour in the South China Sea. Euan Graham, who broke the story, contextualised …
Each of Australia’s border security domains presents unique threats and operating challenges. Whether searching for illicit drugs in Sydney’s mail centre, processing passenger arrivals at Melbourne’s international airport or inspecting shipping containers in Fremantle, the …
I was fortunate enough to work closely with Bob Hawke, initially as his principal private secretary (chief of staff) and later as secretary of two federal government departments responsible for key microeconomic reforms, including telecommunications …
Australia’s new chief defence scientist says she has taken on the role at a time when the Australian Defence Force is becoming increasingly receptive to game-changing capabilities. ‘That, to me, is really critical’, Professor Tanya …
Kim Jong-un’s meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Vladivostok in late April demonstrated conclusively that the North Korean leader has no intention of retreating from the international stage after February’s ill-fated summit with US …