Scott Burchill
Dr Scott Burchill is Honorary Fellow in International Relations at Deakin University. He is the author of The National Interest in International Relations Theory (Palgrave Macmillan 2005), Misunderstanding International Relations (Palgrave Macmillan 2020) and co-author and editor of Theories of International Relations (5th ed Palgrave Macmillan 2013). He has also taught at Monash University, the University of Melbourne and the University of Tasmania.
He is a regular commentator on ABC Radio and TV.
Scott's recent articles
2 April 2025
The personification of politics
Reducing the complexities of international politics to the idiosyncratic personalities of world leaders suggests the Western media believes concision is an antidote to the short attention spans of readers, viewers and listeners. They may be right about this.
16 March 2025
US-Europe relations flipped by Trump
For most of the post-World War II period, relations between Europe and the United States have followed a consistent pattern regardless of changes in government on both sides of the Atlantic.
6 March 2025
WEU redux?
NATO was, in part, established to prevent moves by France and Germany towards independent European defence and foreign policies, such as the West European Union. This has been a geo-political priority for Washington since the end of World War II.
26 February 2025
Explaining Trump’s foreign policy
When analysts seek to explain Donald Trump’s approach to government they inevitably focus on his personality: an unstable and capricious transactional negotiator with no fixed ideology who seems to be a narcissist and a pathological liar.
18 February 2025
The costs of impatience: A psychic disorder of modern capitalism?
In Australia at the federal level of government, we have some of the shortest election cycles in the world: often barely three years. This mitigates against even medium-term planning. A new government takes a year to learn the ropes of office, another year to govern before preparing for re-election in the third. And even if a government survives that long, the odds are its leader won’t.
15 January 2025
How the Israel-Palestine narrative changed in Australia
For most of the post-war years, there was bipartisan support for Israel in Australia, with the ALP especially proud of H.V. Evatt’s role in the establishment of the Jewish state at the United Nations. And there has always been an influential pro-Israel faction within the party. The Liberals were never hostile to Israel but, for most of this period, they were not the natural home for Australian Zionists.
4 January 2025
The dangers of 'victory'
Those currently celebrating the US and Israel’s decisive military victories against Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria and possibly the defeat of Ansar Allah in Yemen may soon discover the pyrrhic nature of “reshaping the Middle East” in the interests of Western civilization.
28 December 2024
Two worlds, different pain
Gaza is now the world capital of child amputation. And that doesn't even cover the true horror, because Israel blocks any anesthesia from entering Gaza as a means of imposing further agony on the population that they are subjecting to genocide. – Former senior United Nations human rights official Craig Mokhiber
27 September 2024
US, not Israel lobby, driving Albanese Government’s Gaza policy
Notwithstanding efforts to censure and bully journalists such as Antoinette Lattouf, Mary Kostakidis, John Lyons and Sophie McNeill, as well as grossly exaggerating anti-semitism on university campuses in an attempt to shut down pro-Palestinian encampments (and divert public attention from the genocide), I think it is a mistake to explain the Albanese Government’s Gaza policy shambles and moral degeneration as a testament to the power of the Israel lobby.
23 August 2024
Australia – the indentured state
At primary schools in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Australian children were prescribed textbooks with titles such as New Worlds to Conquer, and taught to admire the British Empire as a gift to the world.
15 August 2024
History will judge us harshly
Australia’s foreign policy elite has held a romantic view of Israel which extends back to its birth in 1948. By internalising Zionist mythology, Canberra has afforded the Jewish state a latitude it rarely extends to others: the freedom to attack its enemies without mercy and in violation of international law. It does this by casting Israel’s actions as “self-defence” regardless of the provocations and aggression it has regularly initiated.
4 July 2024
When is terrorism justified?
When does politically-motivated violence, or terrorism if you prefer the bastardised term, become legitimate resistance to oppression, occupation and savagery?
19 May 2024
Students throw themselves bodily into the gears of the Western genocide machine
In December it will be 60 years since Mario Savio stood on the steps of Sproul Hall at the Berkeley campus of the University of California and delivered the most powerful speech in the history of student activism:
19 April 2024
Biden, Netanyahu and the golden rule
International politics is frequently conducted in a way that bears little or no resemblance to how it is reported in corporate and state media, nor as it is understood in academic circles.
22 January 2024
The Western club- with its own morals, rules and rewards
Last week the French government joined the German government in claiming that the Genocide Convention does not apply to Israel. Because the convention was created in response to the Shoah, Israel should have legal immunity for any war crimes it commits, including the genocide which it is currently conducting against Palestinians in Gaza.
20 December 2023
America: a rogue state in the twilight of imperial age
For most of the post-WW2 period, Washingtons strength rested on its ability to convince other nations that it was in their vital interests to see the United States prevail in its role as the global leader.
8 December 2023
Explaining the Gaza genocide: Settler colonialism in Palestine
In a settler colonial state, the indigenous population has to be physically erased because they are an ongoing reminder of the violence and injustice that occurred at the foundation of the political community. Their continuing existence constitutes a legal and political challenge to the states legitimacy.
20 November 2023
The right to violent resistance and a false Western morality
If I had lived under a siege all my life in a tiny open air prison camp - if I had no hope for the future - I too might be tempted to violently resist a brutal, unrelenting and illegal occupation, which is my right under international law.
10 August 2023
Some of these people seek Armageddon": An encounter with Norman Finkelstein
Like his mentor Noam Chomsky, Norman Finkelstein is effectively banned from entering the Palestinian territories by Israeli authorities. This constitutes a very exclusive club: Jews welcome in Ramallah but not in Tel Aviv.
9 May 2023
In international politics, how the worm has turned for the United States
The historian of American foreign policy Gabriel Kolko would often say that those who seek to determine the destiny of humankind were in for surprises and, ultimately, disappointment.
22 March 2023
AUKUS and Military Keynesianism
The nexus between war and capitalism has been extensively explored by historians, particularly those on the political left such as Gabriel Kolko. It is one of the reasons why the term state capitalism, rather than market capitalism, is a more accurate description of the economic structures of advanced industrial societies. War, or more often the threat of it, has long been a necessary economic stimulus.
28 February 2023
Ukraine: Is it almost over?
Despite celebrating 12 months of surviving the Russian onslaught, promises of more money and military equipment (including tanks) from the West, and a chorus of support for the courage and resilience of the people, the war appears almost over for Ukraine.
25 January 2023
Conservatives fight desperate, losing battle against decolonisation of Australia
Conservatives rail against references to invasion day. Ultimately, however, these are the despairing sighs of an old, dying Australia which no longer exists and isnt coming back.
1 November 2022
Sinophobia, Russophobia, mutations of the same political virus
There is no doubt that Russias invasion of Ukraine is a serious war crime regardless of several provocations, including NATOs eastward expansion and the role of the United States in the 2014 Maidan coup. Even so, the West is in no position to lecture Russia on sovereignty violations.
22 September 2022
The Monarchy is facing a legitimation crisis
In monarchical systems there is always a legitimation challenge when the crown passes from one generation to the next. Whether it becomes a legitimation crisis depends on a number of factors.
31 August 2022
Bidens China policy, US business and Australia
Washingtons concern about China is real and not just threat inflation, which seeks an enemy to promote military Keynesianism: the traditional method of transferring public money to private corporations in the military industrial sector.
5 May 2022
Tactical voting and Independents
If you normally vote for the Greens or you are a traditional ALP supporter in a blue-ribbon Liberal seat such as Goldstein, Wentworth, Kooyong, Mackellar or North Sydney, at this election you face a choice between voting for your preferred party candidate or removing the Morrison Government from power. The emergence of popular, intelligent and highly articulate female Independents in these electorates poses a real challenge for Liberal incumbents, particularly if Green and ALP supporters opt to vote tactically this time. In these seats and others, only Independents have any chance of dislodging sitting Liberal members. To do...
13 March 2022
Russian, Western and Ukrainian perspectives on the crisis
It is sometimes said of the war in Syria that there arent even any bad ideas for resolving the conflict, let alone good ones. The war in Ukraine is quickly approaching a similarly intractable state. This is how it looks through Russian, Western and Ukrainian eyes.
28 February 2022
The Russian attacks on Ukraine are both immoral and illegal under international law but we ignore similar attacks by ourselves and our allies.
They should be unconditionally opposed, regardless of how they have been rationalised by the Kremlin. Ukraine is an independent state, its sovereignty has been violated, and there is no self-defence justification for the military strikes. Russia must accept full responsibility for this crime and the consequences that will follow.
22 February 2022
Putin's gamble
Under pressure from pro-Russian separatists in Donbass, a series of incremental Western arms control abrogations, and the failure by both sides to implement the Minsk 2 accords, something eventually had to give.
7 January 2022
Critical thinking shoved aside: wilful blindness rules media
It's not just the Murdoch press. Lack of critical engagement and willingness to act for the powerful has hampered the effectiveness of journalists.
10 November 2021
Diplomatic insanity: Canberra sacrifices China influence for US alliance
Australia continues to damage its most important trading relationship with China by supporting the US's limitless ambition in the region.
11 July 2021
Peak Sinophobia in Australia?
How can the collapse of the Australia-China diplomatic relationship be explained? Despite a recent flurry of articles and books, the answer isnt a mystery nor is it complex.
15 May 2021
Is the tide turning against Israel?
The history of Palestinian nationalism is strewn with false dawns and bitter disappointments.
14 April 2021
Peak Sinophobia in Australia?
Sinophobia in Australia, promoted over recent years by nave MPs, opportunistic academics and jejune journalists, has now entered its neo-McCarthyist phase.
25 August 2020
What would an independent Australian foreign policy look like?
Only in a small number of countries is the idea of an independent foreign policy considered to be a radical approach to international relations. Australia is one of them.
19 February 2018
Class power Australia
If you are someone with power and privilege in a state capitalist society such as Australia, it is vital to maintain class consciousness for yourself, while eliminating it in others. It is particularly important that the broader community does not see themselves as a group exploited by an inequitable economic system. Class solidarity and a concern for others must be driven from their minds.
15 February 2018
Jim Molans delusions
No-one would expect a surgeon to recommend Chinese medicine to his patients. His advice usually involves a scalpel and some nasty cutting. Similarly, it would be surprising for military men to advocate political solutions to global conflicts. Its not their area of professional expertise. By default they lead with their strongest suitorganised violencenot geopolitics or diplomacy.