The United Nations ‘was not created to take mankind to heaven, but to save humanity from hell’, the UN’s first secretary-general, Dag Hammarskjöld, once said. The hell he had in mind, of course, was World …
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Of the many parting shots that US President Donald Trump’s administration has fired, few can have summed up its characteristics better than its reported offer to increase its development financing to Indonesia by billions of …
On 9 January, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo rescinded a range of restrictions on US government interaction with the government of Taiwan. These restrictions had been in place, with periodic revisions, since the US …
Australia’s strategic outlook in 2021 holds both an unhappy certainty and a deep anxiety. The unhappy certainty is that China’s intent to punish us for failing to bow to its domination will continue and probably …
Covid-19 has offered some tough but useful lessons about governance. Many wealthy countries didn’t manage the crisis as well as anticipated, whereas many poorer, more populous and vulnerable countries exceeded expectations. The difference raises important …
The US government has just declassified one of its most sensitive national security documents—its 2018 strategic framework for the Indo-Pacific, which was formally classified SECRET and not for release to foreign nationals. The full text, …
We can finally state with confidence that US President Donald Trump will leave the White House, however reluctantly, on 20 January. As his four years in office come to an end, it’s not too soon …
Australia’s star in the global space firmament is rising steadily. The Australian government signed the Artemis Accords in October, one of eight nations to commit to the agreement setting out principles for cooperation in civil exploration …
In the Covid era of gloom, doom and Zoom, Australia’s prime minister went to summit meetings while doing 14 days quarantine. And the lockdown PM fronted the cameras with board shorts and thongs just out …
Originally published 1 April 2020. In a world filled with think tanks, shrewd minds and an internet, interesting assessments of the geopolitical ramifications of Covid-19 appear almost daily. From Michel Duclos’s observation that the pandemic …
Originally published 30 March 2020. Remember December 2019? That innocent age before our kids knew how to spell ‘Covid’, when all we were worried about was the terrible bushfires and the ongoing climate crisis? In …
Originally published 3 July 2020. Hong Kong’s first handover to China, in 1997, came with fireworks, lion dances and a mood of cautious optimism that this former British colony would enjoy ‘a high degree of …