Ramesh Thakur

Ramesh Thakur is emeritus professor at the Australian National University and a former United Nations Assistant Secretary-General. Of Indian origin, he is a citizen of Canada, New Zealand and Australia.

Ramesh's recent articles

Thinking aloud: Imagine if the reservations mania extended to the selection of Team India (The Times of India).

In 1990 British politician Norman Tebbit proclaimed his cricket loyalty test: In a match between England and their country of origin, whom did immigrants support? Alas, like most Indians in Australia and England, I would comprehensively fail the Tebbit test.

Reasons for cautious optimism in Hanoi (The Japan Times).

Americans seem to be afflicted by a curious historical amnesia. The facts are indisputable. The number of non-nuclear countries to have been attacked and invaded by the United States since 1945 is legion. Conversely, not one country with the bomb has been attacked. This equation, more than any other, drives the decision-making calculus of countries fearful of U.S. aggression. Kim may be paranoid about U.S. military strikes. The cause of his paranoia lies not in any internal psychoses, but in the history of belligerent U.S. militarism.

Being The Australian means never having to say sorry

For a paper that is quick to moralise about the failings of competitors, critics and ideological opponents, The Australian seems remarkably reluctant to admit to any errors, shortcomings or moral failings of its own.

Canada, China, the US and the Rule of Law A Postscript

It will be recalled that on 1 December, Meng Wanzhou, chief financial officer of Huwaei Technologies, was arrested at Vancouver airport by Canadian authorities at the request of US prosecutors seeking her extradition to face charges of breaching sanctions imposed by President Donald Trump on Iran.I argued earlier that the mantra of the rule of law must prevail had been instrumentalised as part of US lawfare against China and Ottawa had ignored the need for a carefully considered policy that located the best settling point for Canada between legal processes, geopolitical interests and bilateral relations with the US and China.

Arrested Diplomacy (Project Syndicate).

The Japanese and Canadian governments have failed to manage effectively the reputational, economic, and geopolitical implications of the legal cases against Nissan chairman Carlos Ghosn and Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou. And, in a globalized world, the risks posed by such cases are likely to grow.

When rule of law becomes a slogan, not a policy The Huwaei saga- A repost

On 1 December, Meng Wanzhou, chief financial officer of Huwaei Technologies and daughter of its founder, was arrested at Vancouver airport by Canadian authorities. In October, Cubas ambassador to Japan and a colleague were refused rooms by the Hilton hotel in Fukuoaka in western Japan. As a US-based firm, a company official explained, Hilton is obliged to comply with worldwide US sanctions on Cuban officials. City authorities retaliated that Hiltons actions were in violation of Japanese law. Of course, no foreign owned hotel operating in the US would go unpunished if it violated US laws.

Nuclear arms: A year of living dangerously

Last January, the Doomsday Clock was moved to two minutes to midnight the closest it has ever been, matching the acute sense of crisis of 1953. The primary explanation for the heightened threat alert was disturbing developments in the nuclear realm.

RAMESH THAKUR and MICHAEL KIRBY. The 2018 decision merits a rich tribute for its transformative constitutionalism (The Hindu 30.12.2018)

Trapped in a frozen political process amidst heightened public passions, Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) was out of sync with contemporary values on gender orientation. It is the courts that have been used as the key to unlock social progress. In a historic judgment, inNavtej Singh Johar v. Union of India(2018), the Supreme Court stepped into the public policy void created by the timidity of political parties to strike down Section 377 that had criminalised homosexuality as an unnatural offence.

Trump abandons the cheese to escape the Syria mousetrap

Robert A. Lovett, Secretary of Defense (195153) in the Truman administration, advised that faced with political crises that carried great risks for small gains: Forget the cheese; lets get out of the trap. Since the end of the Cold War and the resulting upsurge of triumphalism and exceptionalism among US policymakers and public intellectuals, America has been serially mousetrapped by the cheesy allure of Pax Americana across North Africa and the Middle East. The era of grand delusions may be drawing to a close.

Indias 2019 general election suddenly becomes a lot more interesting

Indias recent elections in five states (Chattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh (MP), Mizoram, Rajasthan, Telengana) were largely a contest between the Congress as the countrys grand old party led by Rahul Gandhi, and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) led by PM Narendra Modi. Congress did not just lose office in 2014, it was routed, winning just 44 of the 543 seats in Parliament. Now it is back as a serious contender once again.

Sino-U.S. clash is a great power competition, not Cold War II (The Japan Times)

CHINA In the Trump administrations most substantial foreign policy speech thus far, delivered at the Hudson Institute on Oct. 4, Vice President Mike Pence accused China of a whole-of-government attack on U.S. interests and vowed the United States will respond with robust countermeasures.

Racial misprofiling

On 9 November, Hassan Khalif Shire Ali crashed a vehicle full of gas cylinders in Bourke Street, Melbourne and stabbed three people, one fatally, before being shot by police. The 30-year old was on multiple watchlists at the time because if his known radical views and links to Islamic State. Yet he was not under active counter-terrorism monitoring at the time and able to embark on his murderous rampage in the heart of Melbourne. One reason may be that our security and law enforcements agencies are drowning in too much intelligence noise and lack the intelligence, common sense and fortitude...

Preventing Mass Atrocities

Tyranny is not restricted to any particular religion, culture, civilisation or gender. Political rule based in terror rather than citizens welfare, safety and security is a universal moral failing. The Westphalian system of sovereign states spread from Europe to cover the whole world after decolonisation. Because it was seen to have sanctified the ability of tyrants to rule by terror - free from external restraints and counter-measures - the need arose for a matching universal norm to ban and stop atrocities.

Farewell to Nuclear Arms Control? (Asia Global Online, 25 October 2018)

The United States has affirmed strategic competition with both Russia and China as the central organizing principle of its national security policy. The announcement on October 20 by President Donald Trump that the U.S. would withdraw from the 30-year-old Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty because of alleged Russian violations might be a key plank of that policy.

The three structural dead weights of IndiaPakistan relations

On 2 September, ahead of Secretary of State Mike Pompeos visit, the Pentagon announced the cancellation of US$300 million in aid to Pakistan for its alleged failure to take effective action against terrorist networks operating from its soil, including the Haqqani network and the Afghan Taliban. This was part of a broader cut announced on 4 January. Meanwhile, the history of unsettled borders, periodic wars and continual armed clashes, combined with growing nuclear arsenals in both countries, makes IndiaPakistan relations a highly critical question for Asia and world security.

President Moon Jae-in is driving the Korea peace train.

The Korean War is 68 years old. Despite a ceasefire in effect since 1953, the heavily militarized border is still patrolled by soldiers, ringed with barbed wire and covered in land mines. Almost seven decades of containing, isolating and embargoing North Korea have demonstrably failed. It is time to pause and reconsider. South Korean President Moon Jae-ins dogged optimism and U.S. President Donald Trumps unconventional diplomacy might be just the synergetic mix required to shake things up.

Of academic freedom and institutional integrity: A Canadian prequel to the ANU rejection of the Ramsay Centre millions

At the University Chancellors 11th national conference in Adelaide on 4 October, the Australian National University Chancellor Gareth Evans delivered the inaugural Chancellors Oration. One section of his speech dealt with the imperative to defend university autonomy.

China and New World Order. North Korea Part 4

The most acute contemporary manifestation of the demand on China to demonstrate responsible leadership is the challenge of North Koreas nuclear weapons. Le Hong Hiep speculated on the prospect of a grand bargain between Trump and Xi when they met at Mar-a-Lago to accommodate US concerns on its massive bilateral trade deficit and on North Koreas nuclear program in return for meeting Chinas concerns on US anti-missile deployments in South Korea. Such a deal was correctly assessed as unlikely.

China and New World Order. Rules Based Global Order Part 5

China recognizes that it has been a major beneficiary of the existing international order and it has proven to be a fast learner in operating as a responsible power within that order. Its primary goal therefore will not be to perturb the order, but to gain greater influence in writing the rules and running the institutions to develop and police the global order. China is not intent on exporting its authoritarian model and has never been enthusiastic about the so-called China model of an authoritarian state, political stability and state-directed development. Rather, its main focus has been on promoting political...

China and world order: Navigating the Thucydides and Kindleberger Traps Part 3 AsiaPacific

Former Australian PM Paul Keating holds that as a non-Asian power, the US cannot remain the strategic guarantor of Asia in perpetuity. It remains important to the peace and good order of East Asia [but] as a balancing and conciliating power. The Australians Labor Partys foreign affairs spokesperson, Senator Penny Wong argues that to get its Asia policy right, Australia first has to get its China policy right. Arguably, the reverse may be even truer: relevant external actors will fail to get their China policy right unless they first get their Asia policy right.

China and the New World Order. ChinaUSA Part 2

Westerners may believe that the growing integration and interdependence of China with the regional and international economy makes armed conflict too costly to contemplate and that the Pacific military balance is so heavily in US favour that China would not be foolish enough to challenge Washington. But what if Beijing believes that the costs to Washington would be so high that the US would back down? Along many such misperceptions and miscalculations do the bloody rivers of human history flow into the ocean of oblivion for once-great powers.

China and World Order: Navigating the Thucydides and Kindleberger Traps Part 1

There have been two big geopolitical storylines thus far in this century: the US has suffered a relative decline from its dominant position at the end of the Cold War; and China has acquired impressive power in both relative and absolute terms. How China develops economically and evolves politically, and how it behaves domestically, regionally and globally, are among the most critical questions confronting the world going forward.

Denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula: Explaining the Stalemate

With the conclusion of the third inter-Korean summit last week, the next challenge will be to find common understanding.

America First or America Isolated: The Case of the International Criminal Court.

Donald Trumps national security advisor, John Bolton, has acted on his long-stated distaste for the International Criminal Court by declaring it dead to the US Though a few of Boltons protestations have merit, the US is setting a dangerous precedent in condemning the court.

RAMESH THAKUR. Why Serena Williams owes a triple apology.

CANBERRA Serena Williams, a deserved legend in her own lifetime, owes a public apology to Naomi Osaka, match umpire Carlos Ramos and the worlds tennis fans. She was the perpetrator, not the victim, of unprovoked abuse. Women should be among the first to recognize and condemn blame-shifting from the perpetrator to the victim. Attempts to confuse her on-court behavior with historical injustices to women and the everyone else does it fallacy are an aggravating, not an extenuating, circumstance. Far from advancing, her apologists damage the cause of womens rights and racial equality.

RAMESH THAKUR. Indias VIP culture: Forget Lincolns definition of democracy. Indias government is of VIPs, by VIPs and for VIPs (Times of India, 04.090.18)

Last week, the Madras high court ordered the National Highways Authority of India to separate ordinary citizens from VIPs at toll gates, with a dedicated lane for the latter. Of course, high court judges are included in the list of VIPs. The court held it to be disheartening and very unfortunate that judges are compelled to wait in the toll plaza for 10 to 15 minutes.

RAMESH THAKUR. Importing private sector efficiency or infecting the public service with the greed is good disease

There has never been a more exciting time to be a critic of the greed is good philosophy of the corporate sector. The revelations from the banking and finance royal commission have been gobsmacking. There was also the beat up of my university for having the temerity to weigh the attraction, of substantial funding from the Ramsay Centre, against demands for having voice and veto in academic decisions on staffing and curricula.

RAMESH THAKUR. Challenging the Peter Principle: From Julie Bishop to Marise Payne

Before coming to Julie Bishops record as foreign minister in areas of my particular interest, three preliminary comments.

RAMESH THAKUR. Kofi Annans Achievement

Great chief executives need a guiding vision for the exercise of authority, and all the more so when that authority is international civil authority. As United Nations Secretary-General, Kofi Annan had such a vision and the skills needed to realize it.

RAMESH THAKUR. Japans nuclear options.

Hiroshima was the first city in the world to be attacked by an atomic bomb on Aug. 6, 1945. The last time that an atomic weapon was used was to bomb Nagasaki on Aug. 9, 1945. By the end of that fateful year, an estimated 214,000 people had died from the two bombs. Ever since, a dedicated group of people all around the world have devoted themselves to ensuring that Nagasaki does indeed remain the last place where atomic and nuclear weapons were used.

RAMESH THAKUR and RICHARD BUTLER. A spying scandal exposes Australias immoral behavior toward East Timor (Washington Post, 10.08.18)

Australia is leading theWestern world in enacting tough new lawsto curb foreign interference and influence-peddling in domestic affairs. The primary intended target is China.

RAMESH THAKUR. Syria: what if?

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 Trumps statements: preventing a USRussia 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...

RAMESH THAKUR. Australias invisible Asians

There are three components to any spoken or written act of communication: the intended message (what was meant by the sender); the message as conveyed (what was actually said); and the message as received (how it is interpreted by the recipient). The emphasis on language and inoffensive speech with offence being subjective as per the recipients feelings, not the intention of the author nor the actual content of the message allows the virtue-signalling instinct to be satisfied. The price is a neglect of the advancement of the substance of the inter-group equality agenda.

RAMESH THAKUR. Is the sun setting on the US imperium? (Repost from 15/5/2018)

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

RAMESH THAKUR. Australia and the Quad (The Strategist)

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 Indias 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 Canberras strategic frame.

RAMESH THAKUR. The KimTrump Summit: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly (Australian Outlook. 15/6/2018)

Despite praise for Tuesdays unprecedented meeting, there were good reasons why previous US administrations had refused multiple requests from North Korean leaders to meet. The results of the KimTrump summit so far can be divided into the good, the bad and the ugly. The words historic and unprecedented to describe the meeting between President Donald Trump and Chairman Kim Jong-un are literally true. But there were good reasons why previous US administrations had refused multiple requests from North Korean leaders to meet with the president. Against the historical and strategic backdrop, the results of the KimTrump summit so far...

RAMESH THAKUR. Did John Bolton try to sink the Trump-Kim summit?

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.

RAMESH THAKUR. What Sank the Kim-Trump Summit?

The abrupt cancellation of next month's planned meeting between the North Korean and US leaders should surprise no one. Developments in recent weeks exposed three factors that doomed the initiative to collapse.

RAMESH THAKUR. Attempts to appease Trump will end badly

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.

RAMESH THAKUR. Spring blossoms on the Korean Peninsula.

The leaders of North and South Korea have met, shaken hands, taken symbolic yet hugely consequential steps across into each others 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?

RAMESH THAKUR. VIP culture is a blight on India's democracy - a culture of impunity lies behind India's rape epidemic

Solving Indias sexual violence crisis means holding the perpetrators of wrongdoing accountable no matter their power in society. For Prime Minister Narendra Modi, this means ending the VIP culture within his own party.

RAMESH THAKUR. The Long Road to Nuclear Disarmament

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.

RAMESH THAKUR. Trump is Master of the Art of Making America Grate.

Trumps decision yesterday to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal is a global tragedy likely to unsettle an already volatile Middle East anda world in some disarray. Trump has pulled out of the deal not because it was flawed, but because it was working as intended and this posed an insurmountable obstacle to potential military strikes on Iran. As a consequence, Trumps decision will worsen relations with Europe, destabilise the Middle East, complicate negotiations to reverse North Koreas nuclearisation and damage the global nuclear order.

Iran's nukes redux

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.

Choreographing a wallaby-elephant pas de deux.

In January, Greg Sheridan wrote about a forthcoming report to the government by former foreign secretary Peter Varghese on how toelevate relations with India. Peter, who served also as High Commissioner to India, gives three reasons why Indias economic turnaround is transformational for Australia: its sheer scale, the complementarity between the Australian and Indian economies and the need for Australia to diversify the risk to its trade-dependent economy.

We know where your kids live John Bolton to OPCW DG Jos Bustani, March 2002

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....

Syria a symptom of a broken international order

Last Saturday US, British and French forces bombed three chemical weapons facilities in Damascus in retaliation for thealleged use of chemical weapons by Syrian forces in Doumaon 68April that killed around 70people.

Was DT Mouse-Trapped Into Attacking Syria?

Those of us of a certain age will remember the phrase DTs, short for delirium tremens: a rapid onset of confusion caused by an alcoholics immediate abstinence. Is the world suffering from a different set of DTs: the rapid-fire onset of domestic and global crises by a confused president revelling in his role as the wrecker-in-chief of international law, global norms and diplomatic conventions?

Substituting question marks for exclamation marks

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.

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