Ramesh Thakur

Australia is leading the Western world in enacting tough new laws to curb foreign interference and influence-peddling in domestic affairs. The primary intended target is China. (more…)

US President Donald Trump has been widely criticised for his supposed fawning performance in Helsinki at the summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin. But a minority of commentators have made three countervailing arguments to explain and justify Trump’s statements: preventing a US–Russia nuclear war by calming bilateral tensions that have arisen from the dangerous infection of Russophobia is a transcendental goal that should override all other considerations; if the main strategic rival in the foreseeable future is going to be China, then improving relations with Russia is a strategic move on the geopolitical chessboard; and Russian cooperation is essential to extricating the US from the mess created by the Obama administration’s pursuit of incoherent and inconsistent goals in the Middle East. (more…)

China is on the march to a dominant military footprint while American policy lacks strategic intent. (more…)

On 18 January, admirals from Australia, India, Japan and the US sat together on stage at the high-profile Raisina Dialogue in New Delhi. Their presence reflected the shared strategic assessment that China has become a disruptive force in the Indo-Pacific. Taking time out to deliver a lecture at India’s National Defence College, Australian Defence Industry Minister Christopher Pyne echoed remarks by Indian PM Narendra Modi to the Australian Parliament in 2014, affirming that India had shifted from the periphery to the centre of Canberra’s strategic frame. (more…)

Had former U.S. President Barack Obama “done a Trump” with North Korea — agreed to a summit with Kim Jong Un without requiring denuclearization first, secretly sent his secretary of state to Pyongyang, described Kim as “honorable.” canceled joint military exercises with South Korea, been prepared to consider pulling U.S. troops out of Korea — the right-wing establishment and populace would have branded him a traitor. President Donald Trump earned multiple nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize for the same — until his National Security Adviser John Bolton nearly cost him any chance of that treasured award. (more…)

When the Iran deal was signed three years ago, it met with stiff opposition from hardliners in Tehran and Washington. The former were infuriated at closing off possible pathways to the bomb while the agreement lasts in return for sipping from the poisoned chalice of an untrustworthy Satan. The American neocons were frustrated that regime change by all means necessary was closed off as long as the agreement held. (more…)

The leaders of North and South Korea have met, shaken hands, taken symbolic yet hugely consequential steps across into each other’s territory, talked about possible pathways to peace on the peninsula, issued a joint communique, and returned home well satisfied with the breakneck speed of progress thus far. Who deserves the most credit for this outbreak of goodwill induced by the spring of summits?  (more…)

With Donald Trump in favor of abandoning the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, the world has been reminded once again how fragile the nuclear non-proliferation regime is. For this reason, it is more important than ever that the international community upholds existing treaty obligations, starting with the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. (more…)

It takes chutzpah for a country that has an unacknowledged nuclear arsenal to point the finger at another country for clandestine nuclear activities and to demand military action to halt them.  (more…)

In justifying her decision to commit the UK to joining the US and France in the unilateral air strikes on Syria on 14 April, PM Theresa May said in Parliament on 16 April that a requirement for UN authorisation would effectively give Russia a veto on British foreign policy. Opposition Leader Jeremy Corbyn called for a new War Powers Act to force the government to get parliamentary approval before launching military action instead of going along with the ‘whims’ of the US president. ‘There is no more serious issue than the life and death matters of military action’, he said. Australia’s Labor Party should take note. (more…)

Last Saturday US, British and French forces bombed three chemical weapons facilities in Damascus in retaliation for the alleged use of chemical weapons by Syrian forces in Douma on 6–8 April that killed around 70 people. (more…)

‘Fake news’ seems unavoidably associated with Donald Trump. He insists on casting himself as the victim of fake news even as any resemblance between his compulsive tweeting and facts seems largely coincidental. Still, it seems a pity that the rumours proved false of the Pentagon having increased the nuclear launch codes to more than 150 characters in order to stop the president from tweeting them. (more…)

CANBERRA – The pieces of the jigsaw are falling into place on the Korean Peninsula. But the overall picture — a denuclearized North Korea, a nuclear-weapon-free zone for all of Northeast Asia and/or a U.S. withdrawal from East Asia — remains fuzzy.

 Reaction to the March 8 announcement of a summit between Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un was mixed. Some thought Trump’s threats of “fire and fury” had spooked Kim into a climbdown. Others argued a one-on-one meeting with the U.S. president will confer legitimacy on the North Korean leader as an equal. (more…)

On 4 March a former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia, who came from Moscow on 3 March to visit her father, were found slumped unconscious on a bench outside a shopping centre in Salisbury. Both remain in critical condition in hospital. Prime Minister Theresa May said the two had been poisoned with Novichok and pointed the finger of criminality at Russia. Moscow dismissed and mocked the accusation as entirely without foundation. The two countries have since carried out tit-for-tat expulsions of 27 diplomats each.  (more…)

The non-use of nuclear weapons since 1945 is largely explained by the strong moral taboo. There have been many occasions when they could have been used without fear of retaliation but were not, even at the price of defeat on the battlefield, as in Vietnam and Afghanistan. Norms, not deterrence, have anathematised the use of nuclear weapons as morally unacceptable. The force of the norm is buttressed by operational disutility: the very destructiveness of nuclear weapons robs them of military or political utility. Their lethal destructiveness constitutes an existential threat to all human beings, not just to the leaders, soldiers and citizens of the countries fighting a nuclear war. (more…)

The Kim–Trump summit is an opportunity that will be difficult to seize and easy to squander. For example, if Trump decertifies the Iran nuclear deal on May 12, ahead of the summit, the move would almost certainly call into question America’s good faith and ability to honour negotiated international agreements. (more…)

On 17 February, The Australian published an article by former Australian ambassador to the EU and former adviser to Tony Abbott Mark Higgie that was sharply critical of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Unfortunately, the initial takeaway from reading it was that it is more of a rant than a critical analysis of all that ails DFAT. (more…)