Biden escaped rigorous critical scrutiny that is the normal lot of presidential campaigns with the help of major media and Big Tech platforms that despised Trump. The world is now discovering just how grave the real-world consequences can be when reality bites back. (more…)
While in Iranian territorial waters, USS Vincennes fired two surface-to-air missiles to bring down the Iranian plane with the loss of all 290 on board on 3 July 1988. The captain and crew of the Vincennes were later awarded medals. Vice President George H W Bush insisted he would ‘never apologise for the United States – I don’t care what the facts are’. (more…)
The moral outrage insisting on retaliation over the invasion of Ukraine ennobles the American war machine. (more…)
Three overarching goals have informed the Asia Pacific Leadership Network’s (APLN) approach to nuclear threats since its inception a decade ago: the imperative to hold firm against proliferation, the matching importance of credible steps toward disarmament, and defusing geopolitical tensions that heighten nuclear risks. All three are at play in Ukraine. (more…)
God Created war so the Americans could learn geography (more…)
The brutal reality is NATO played hardball, won in the short term but now finds itself at the receiving end as Putin decides it’s payback time.
Organisations like NATO never die, but reinvent themselves to keep growing. (more…)
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s carefully cultivated competence bubble has been punctured by his government’s ineffectiveness amid the second wave of the COVID-19 virus that has ravaged his country. (more…)
The blanket and punitive travel ban for Australians returning from India is neither justified, nor does it make much sense in the efforts to curb the spreading of the virus. The Indian Coronavirus emergency is also raising many questions of the policies imposed around the world during the pandemic.
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After an attack on its main nuclear facility in Natanz on 11 April, quite likely by Israel, President Hasan Rouhani said that Iran will begin enriching uranium to 60 per cent. From a technical point of view, that would put Iran within a short sprint to full-fledged weapon-grade (90 per cent) uranium enrichment. (more…)
A transformative cricket series will do more to strengthen Australia–India bonds than any amount of public diplomacy.
The value of personal diplomacy was on display in the Morrison-Modi Summit last week – quickly dubbed ‘the ScoMosa’ summit after some culinary Twitter banter between the leaders. But the virtual dialogue had great substance, paving the way for closer bilateral relations against the backdrop of a more aggressive China and less reliable US.
On 5 May, the Norwegian Institute of Public Health published an important report on Norway’s experience of dealing with the Coronavirus crisis. The text that follows is a verbatim extract of the equivalent of the executive summary from the report, using Google translation.
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On 26 May, Chief Medical Officer Brendan Murphy said if Australia’s mortality rate matched the UK’s, we’d have had 14,000 Covid-19 deaths. This is just tautological rubbish. It would be just as true and equally pointless to say if Australia’s mortality rate matched Vietnam’s, we’d have zero deaths.
I strongly encourage all readers of Pearls and Irritations to watch this remarkable new documentary from the National Film Board of Canada on PM Jean Chretien’s decision to say no to the Iraq War in 2003. (more…)
Will the Great Lockdown’s epitaph be ‘The Greatest Mistake in History’? (more…)
Cross-jurisdiction comparisons are notoriously difficult and it’s almost impossible to prove lockdowns have saved lives, except by falling back tautologically on the epidemiological model’s own projections of mortality figures with no lockdown. (more…)
Now is not the time to demonize and defund the WHO (more…)
And the winner is (more…)
Cockwomblette: A neologism coined to describe the lesser antipodean cousin of the cockwomble (see Monday’s Part One). Its natural habitat is the bush capital of the world; the inheritor of an obsequious line of deputy sheriffs. (more…)
Consider the case of India. What exactly does ‘social distancing’ – elegant as it is as an abstract concept – mean in practice in Indian conditions, a country of 1.3bn people with a population density of 464 per km2 compared to 153 in China? (more…)
Cockwomble: A person, usually male, prone to making outrageously stupid statements and/or engaging in inappropriate behaviour while generally having a very high opinion of their own wisdom and importance. Presently exemplified by Agent Orange who dwells in the casa blanca in the geopolitical capital of the world and is the inheritor of a long line of global sheriffs. (more…)
The balance to be struck is to confront China as warranted, compete as necessary, and cooperate when possible (more…)
The pandemic has starkly highlighted the inadequacy of current governance arrangements. In a world in which all politics is stubbornly local but most big-ticket problems are global, the G20 is uniquely placed to bridge the global governance gap.
Coronavirus threatens to overwhelm the health and economies of many developing countries where a billion people subsist in a Hobbesian state of nature and life is ‘nasty, brutish and short’. (more…)
The irony is that a pandemic has been brought into India by people who can afford plane tickets, but while they will buy private health services, the virus will devastate the poor who they infect and who have little access to health care. (more…)
Japan’s strategic environment is shaped by the intersection of three major geopolitical story lines: the rise of China as a comprehensive national power; the Trump administration’s reset of relations with China into full-spectrum strategic competition; and the expansion, consolidation and deepening of India-U.S. ties.
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When did the world’s media and politicians become collective versions of Lance Corporal Jones in the British comedy series Dad’s Army, screaming ‘Don’t panic! Don’t panic!’? Colour me contrarian, but since the 2003 Iraq war, my working motto has been: when you come across excitable exclamation marks, substitute sceptical question marks and you’ll be right. (more…)
Last month’s deadly riots in Delhi were a state-sponsored pogrom. To prevent an uncontrollable mass tragedy that could destabilise the Asia–Pacific region, friendly governments must speak out now. (more…)