World Affairs
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GEOFF MILLER. The ASEAN meeting in Sydney and the Quad – same same but different.
Singapore and Australia are having to deal with the same set of problems and relationships as the strategic situation in the Asia-Pacific changes. Singapore isn’t a contender for an expanded “Quad” but, as next year’s Chairman of ASEAN, it will have an important role to play in one of the Turnbull Government’s major foreign policy Continue reading »
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JIM COOMBS. The Italian Election: Traditional “Right and Left” parties losing out and elsewhere (except perhaps in Britain) What is going on? The people are asking “What is government for?”
Well, Italy! The usual mess, or something else? Five Star mid 30%, Northern League next, low 30s, with Berlusconi next, but not a sufficient force. 5 Star is nearly anarchist, with “direct democracy” in its platform, and distinct distrust of the Old System. Northern League a little nostalgic for Mussolini certainty. The vast majority of Continue reading »
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GRAHAM FREUDENBERG. American Malaise and Malice.
The key to the Trump presidency is its malice. Trump daily mocks Lincoln’s noble intent: “with malice toward none”. There is now not a country or region in the world untouched by Trumpite malice, defined as the irrational desire to do harm or mischief, fuelled by a sense of imaginary grievances.Australia cannot expect to be exempt. Continue reading »
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JOHN MENADUE. Afghanistan – the graveyard of empires and the opium poppy.
They have all failed to conquer Afghanistan – the Greeks, Indians and more recently, the British in the mid 19th Century and the Soviets in the late 20th Century. And now the US empire is failing to subdue the tribes of Afghanistan despite enormous cost of people and treasure. What has not received much attention Continue reading »
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How liberals can reclaim nationalism.
In this article in the New York Times International Edition of 5 March 2018 Yascha Mounk argues that ‘instead of exhorting their fellow citizens to live out their nations highest ideals, many activists seem content with denouncing past and present injustices.. This has enabled the bigots and racists to bend the meaning of the nation Continue reading »
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Michael Lambert: Trump’s Steel and Aluminium Tariffs
President Trump has foreshadowed tariffs of 25% on all imported steel and 10% on all imported aluminium, reversing America’s historic commitment to free trade and proper governance in trade policy. It is also repeating an action taken by George W Bush in 2002 which completely failed and was reversed in 2003. Continue reading »
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ALLAN PATIENCE. Time to inject some realism into the China debate.
A rising chorus can be heard in Australia voicing fears about China’s alleged intrusions into our domestic affairs. There are disturbing echoes in all this of a narrative about a dangerous China lurking in the interstices of Australia’s society and economy. These echoes need top be addressed before we can have an intelligent debate about Continue reading »
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FRANK BRENNAN. Edging closer to a just regime in the Timor Sea.
On Tuesday the governments of Timor Leste and Australia will sign a maritime boundary treaty in New York in the presence of Antonio Guterres, the Secretary General of the United Nations. This day has been a long time coming. Continue reading »
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MARK BEESON. Can Trump be socialised into good behaviour and policymaking?
Will Donald Trump have a lasting and possibly pernicious impact on American foreign policy, or will the so-called ‘adults’ in his administration educate him and change his ways? Continue reading »
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SCOTT BURCHILL. Class power in the US.
All for ourselves and nothing for other people seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind (Adam Smith). Class is a Communist concept. It groups people together and sets them against each other (Margaret Thatcher). [Current opposition to free trade in the United States is] Continue reading »
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BOB DOUGLAS. Time for Australia to lead in building a safer future
A combination of hazards threatens the continued survival of human civilization on Planet Earth. They are all man-made – and most are being systematically ignored or under-rated by political decision makers everywhere and especially, here in Australia. Continue reading »
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JEFFREY A. BADER. Seven things you need to know about lifting term limits for Xi Jinping
At its annual meeting beginning on March 5, the Chinese National People’s Congress appears poised to adopt a “recommendation” by the Communist Party that the two-term limit for president and vice president be eliminated. The change is of course not an expression of a preferred governance norm for longer terms, but rather a dramatic shift Continue reading »
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STEPHEN FITZGERALD AND LINDA JAKOBSON. Engaging with China does not mean being an agent of China
[A letter published in the Sydney Morning Herald on 27 February 2018] Clive Hamilton conveys a message which must be challenged, namely the insinuation that any person who engages with the Communist Party of China (CPC) should be viewed with suspicion or as belonging to a CPC fifth column (“Powerful relations raises a red flag”, Continue reading »
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DAVID MACILWAIN. Standing up Against America.
Arguing that Australia should cut all support for US forces in Syria, and support the Syrian government and its allies in the fight against the terrorist insurgency. This starts with a recognition that the “White Helmets” are allies of Al Qaeda, supported by the US and UK. Continue reading »
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The rant in The Australian on the Department of Foreign and Trade
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 Continue reading »
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RICHARD TANTER. Joined at the hip with Donald Trump and implications for Pine Gap and Australian sovereignty.
In the repost below from 18 December 2017, Richard Tanter pointed out Apart from the multiple US–Soviet nuclear crises of 1983, there has probably never been a more important time for Australians to consider the immediate implications of hosting Pine Gap. In the event of war on the Korean peninsula, Pine Gap hardwires Australia into Continue reading »
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HENRY REYNOLDS. A hundred years of mateship?
I was astonished! An SBS news report about the Turnbull visit to Washington declared that the two countries were celebrating their hundred years of alliance. Where had this extraordinary snippet of history come from, I wondered? I then discovered that it was the Australian Embassy which had had been talking about 100 years of mateship. Continue reading »
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LESLEY RUSSELL. Ageless At Altitude
Residents of Colorado’s most picturesque mountain towns in Summit, Pitkin and Eagle counties live longer than anyone else in the United States. Recent data collections, research and comparisons with the so-called Blue Zones – those few places where people live longer and healthier than anywhere else on earth – highlight why the Colorado Rocky Mountains Continue reading »
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DUNCAN GRAHAM. Where’s Ozzie – down here or up there?
This month Foreign Minister Julie Bishop spoke at the Menzies Research Centre in London on Australia’s Foreign Policy White Paper published three months earlier. Her theme circled around getting ‘rules-based order’ into Asia, just like Europe where she says nationalism has subsided. Dr Euan Graham (no relation), Director of the Lowy Institute’s International Security Program, Continue reading »
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John Tulloh. Macedonia – What’s in a name?
‘I experienced the most beautiful thing that any Greek soul can offer, by just doing my duty’, said an exhausted Melbourne woman, Zoi Petalidou. ‘Because this is how I see it: as my duty and what my soul needed’. Continue reading »
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CAVAN HOGUE. Report from the Quotidie Praeco Romanum on the visit of the vassal chieftain Flexus Taurus to the Imperial Capital.
Emperor Trumpus Augustus graciously received in audience today a barbarian chieftain named Flexus Taurus representing the vassal province of Terra Australis. Flexus Taurus assured the Emperor that Rome had no more loyal vassal than Terra Australis whose inhabitants were devoted to all aspects of Roman civilisation. Continue reading »
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ANDREW FARRAN. Brexit: How to get it done!
According to a leaked Treasury document, which the Remainers claim was fiddled, the UK would be worse off in any alternative trading arrangement to the present – varying from two to eight percent of GDP over the next 15 years; and that none of the possible third country alternatives, including with the US and Australia, Continue reading »
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GARRY WOODARD. The role of strategic ambiguity in Australia’s China Policy
For half a century, strategic ambiguity about the application of ANZUS to Taiwan served Australia well. Is it time to apply this policy more broadly? Continue reading »
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RICHARD BROINOWSKI- Trump and Turnbull – Shared Values?
Fantasy and emotion were in free play at the White House on Friday 23 February 2018 when President Trump received Prime Minister Turnbull. Trump was well scripted, even getting Turnbull’s name right. He added that Australia was the United States’ closest friend, a claim successive US presidents have made, with variations, about many other countries Continue reading »
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PAUL FRIJTERS. Our Countries Need Us
Humanity is at a high point. What our ancestors dreamed of is slowly becoming a reality: a world without hunger in which the vast majority of mankind live peaceful and long lives. We are not there yet, but in Europe, East Asia, Latin America, and even in Africa (our cradle), mankind is emerging from dark Continue reading »
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JOAN STAPLES. Bill weak on stopping foreign donations, but strong on silencing NGOs.
The current Bill before parliament to reform electoral donations is the most comprehensive attempt I have seen at silencing public advocacy in 30 years. It does not succeed in its supposed aim to restrict foreign donations – an aim that is supported by NGOs. Instead, it is a convoluted, excruciatingly complicated maze that will undoubtedly Continue reading »
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ELIZABETH EVATT. Democracy under challenge.
In their recent book, How Democracies Die, discussed this week on Late Night Live, Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, outlined how democracies can be undermined and ultimately destroyed without the violent coup of Pinochet, but by abuse of the system itself. They address the problems of the United States. But we have to be on guard Continue reading »
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Trump and Turnbull must recognise that China is not going away
Foreshadowed warnings by American spokesmen to the Prime Minister and his party during their coming visit to the United States about the rise of China reflect a belated realisation on America’s part that the China challenge is for real, but do not reflect the position of Australia, which has important links to both competing powers. Continue reading »
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Turnbull and Trump: Meeting of Mates
It is not clear what this weeks US/Australia summit meeting will achieve. Both participants might welcome its optics, but each have other political needs. The critical issue for Australia is likely to be what exactly will Trump ask of Turnbull and will he get it. It is depressingly unlikely that Turnbull will address any of Continue reading »
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Whitlam had it easier on China policy
When Labor statesman Gough Whitlam opened relations with China it was a Maoist tyranny, more like today’s North Korea than today’s China. It was sunk in poverty. Its people could not travel overseas. They couldn’t move from village to village without party permission. It was illegal to own a small business. And China ran revolutionary Continue reading »