By recognising that the question of NATO enlargement is at the centre of this war, we understand why U.S. weaponry will not end this war. Only diplomatic efforts can do that. (more…)
Tag: International relations
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Paths to global prosperity
Two major international conferences concluded in the past week. They demonstrated very different approaches to international relations. The China-Central Asia Summit considered new paths to genuine economic co-operation and development. The G7 reaffirmed its support for the status quo in the face of a changing global environment. (more…)
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60 Minutes Australia keeps churning out war-with-China propaganda
60 Minutes Australia has been playing a leading role in saturating Australian airwaves with consent-manufacturing messaging in support of militarising to participate in a US war against China. (more…)
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Reclaiming Australia’s strategic character
America feels above any need to explain its calamitous geostrategic actions. Of course, it has no obligation to. But its character is revealed as being comfortable with threat fabrication, on a grand scale. It is practised at making war on false premise. And appears energised by it, not repentant. Deception, including of allies, is integral to its geostrategic armoury. (more…)
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The contracting echo chambers of the Transatlantic powers
“Speak softly and carry a big stick.”
The pithy words spoken by US President Theodore Roosevelt in 1901 has been said to be his ideal policy for the US. But in recent years, the “big stick” diplomacy has proven to be too simplistic for the world they used to dominate. (more…)
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While Sullivan and Wang build ‘guardrails’: where is Mr Blinken?
When US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan met face-to-face with Mr Antony Blinken’s China counterpart Mr Wang Yi for eight hours in Vienna on May 10-11, a meeting both sides described as “constructive”, where was America’s top diplomat, Mr Blinken? (more…)
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The precipice: An open letter to the Prime Minister of Papua-New Guinea
The cancellation of Joe Biden’s visit to PNG is a gift. A gift of more time to step back from a precipice. The brutal choice, Mr. Prime Minister, is now between your nation’s finest hour and its flip side, its darkest, its recolonisation, this time, as an American client state, a pawn in America’s plans for nuclear war with China. (more…)
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A grim vision of nuclear warfare in Ukraine
In Ukraine, grim visions of a new age of nuclear warfare are the natural counterpart of western hardliners’ march of folly towards the nuclear brink. Thankfully, there is an alternative, one that has been possible since the very beginning of the conflict and now has growing support among Western publics. (more…)
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In Xi’an, a meeting of five Central-Asian leaders marks a changing world order
It’d be fair to say that there are two competing entities on the world stage right now. One composed of the G7, and the other a less structured group of countries that were once exploited by the G7. (more…)
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Unity: Living together with a more ‘Sympathetic Imagination’
The spirit of the age seems to foster division more than it nurtures unity.
The G7 Summit is meeting in Hiroshima where thousands were killed at breakfast time on a summer’s morning, August 6, 1945. The G7 leaders meet as a hostile imagination fuels a terrifying arms race. How can we yet pull out of this spiral? (more…)
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Long live the Palestinian resistance
A song that goes out to the courageous Palestinian people and their supporters around the world. (more…)
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The creeping shadow of army rule – Asian Media Report
In Asian Media this week: Big economies talk about rules-based order. Plus: empire strikes back in Imran Khan showdown; hot Asian summers will add to climate change; US return to Philippines sparks sex abuse fears; Gandhi bests Modi in latest test; post-poll scenarios after progressive victory in Thailand. (more…)
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Harbinger: US allies low priorities amidst America’s poisonous politics
Joe Biden isn’t coming to Australia. The good news is he hasn’t had a senior moment and forgotten all about an appointment with another interchangeable ‘fella down under’. The bad news is that the United States’ increasingly poisonous domestic politics and crises take priority over everything else, including the long-term security of the Indo-Pacific. (more…)
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The march of death
Ever since the six-day war of 1967, when Israel occupied the whole of Jerusalem, a triumphant march of conquest, called ‘Jerusalem Day March’ takes over the Holy City. How would you feel if this was your home, your neighbourhood and you and your family were faced with hoards of religious fanatics, waving the Israeli flag, chanting ‘Death to all Arabs’ and ‘Your Second Nakba Is Coming’. Last year a new curse was added, “May Your Village Burn” and, of course, the usual cry repeated over and over, “Kill Them All”. (more…)
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Indonesian’s embrace democracy – but do its leaders?
More Indonesians than Americans are likely to vote in key presidential elections next year. But Australia is focusing on distant North America, not adjacent Southeast Asia, the zone where the Titans could clash. (more…)
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NZ and China’s Defence Dialogue: no news is bad news
On 10 May New Zealand and Chinese military officials met in Xi’an, China for their 11th Strategic Defence Dialogue, the first after a Covid gap of three years. The press releases from both sides were brief, anodyne and uninformative. (more…)
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Thailand’s new party wins election but has not won power
The progressive Move Forward Party has crushed its pro-military rivals and beaten the party that has won most votes in every other election since 2001. But its anti-establishment policies mean institutional resistance is inevitable as it tries to form a government. (more…)
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As Arab states seek peace, US insists that Syrians suffer
After the Arab League re-admits Syria, Washington threatens new sanctions to prevent reconstruction. (more…)
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The Palestinian catastrophe (Al-Nakba) and Australia’s responsibility
Yesterday, 15th May marked the 75th anniversary of the mass ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their homeland, known as “the Nakba” or “the Catastrophe.” (more…)
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The Australian Foreign Minister, Penny Wong, should speak out
The Australian Jewish Democratic Society (AJDS) stands firmly against the extra-judicial killings of militants by Israel and the high number of civilian casualties- including children – in Gaza. This adds to what the AJDS has been saying for many years with respect to Israel’s disastrous relationship with the people and government of Gaza. (more…)
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Threats to judges an affront to rule of law that shames US
On May 12, the former president of the UN Security Council, Kishore Mahbubani, warned Hong Kong that it faced ongoing turbulence amidst global tensions. It should expect to be “kicked around like a football” over the next decade, although this has already started. (more…)
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Nuremberg trials for imperiling mass extinction of species
While “leaders” fail to protect the people from global warming and nuclear war, they have succeeded splendidly in hiding the truth through the denial of climate change, accounting tricks and claims of reduction in domestic emissions, while in fact opening new coal mines, oil wells and fracked coal seams, exporting hydrocarbons through the entire global atmosphere. (more…)
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The Army we don’t see: The private soldiers who fight in America’s name
The way mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin and his private army have been waging a significant part of Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine has been well covered in the American media, not least of all because his firm, the Wagner Group, draws most of its men from Russia’s prison system. Wagner offers “freedom” from Putin’s labor camps only to send those released convicts to the front lines of the conflict, often on brutal suicide missions. (more…)
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‘Nearly a third of the world economy is now subject to sanctions’
The Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) just published a study about: (more…)
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Australian expat accused of spying for China is no ‘James Bond’, was ‘working innocently’: lawyer
Alexander Csergo, accused of ‘reckless foreign interference’, is being held in a top-security jail cell in Australia. His case is a ‘show trial’, his lawyer says, which reflects ‘an absolute hypocrisy in our approach to doing business with China’. (more…)
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Will America decline peacefully?
There are numerous signs that the United States is undergoing a secular and irreversible process of decline, especially relative to China and other powerful developing nations. (more…)
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War profiteers: Morrison, Sinodinos feed at trough of pro-war organisations
After leading a government that trashed Australia’s relationship with China, Scott Morrison and Arthur Sinodinos have joined Kurt Campbell’s US influence network cashing in on war talk.
[WITH AN URGENT NOTICE AT THE END FOR A CHANCE TO MOBILISE AGAINST AUKUS]. (more…)
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Turkish elections: What if Putin loses Erdogan?
During a 27 April ceremony marking the delivery of Russian-made nuclear fuel to the Akkuyu nuclear power plant in southern Turkiye, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced his support for his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the hotly-contested, upcoming 14 May presidential elections. (more…)
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AUKUS, Assange, and the “seething pathologies” of the American Security State
We are permitting ourselves no character of our own under the architecture of the Alliance. It means we’ve accepted the status of a kind of client state, or American territory. I won’t say the 51st state. It means we’ve got even less independence than a US governor would have, former Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr says in conversation with ABC LNL host Phillip Adams. (more…)
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A worst case scenario for the South China Sea
The increasing militarisation of the South China Sea disputes sets the stage for the worst case scenario—frequent and widespread conflict that eventually results in a military confrontation between China and the US. To avoid this scenario, the reality is that China, its rival claimants and the U.S. have to compromise. (more…)