May 13, 2015

Cavan Hogue. Australian Foreign Policy

Fairness, Opportunity and Security Policy series edited by Michael Keating and John Menadue

Summary.

Australian Foreign Policy is dominated by fear, defence issues, the American Alliance and the search for votes in marginal electorates. We talk about the importance of Asia but instinctively cleave to Europe and North America who are said to share our values but don’t always do so. We need to look beyond the next election and question some of our basic assumptions like whether the American Alliance gets us into more trouble than it gets us out of. We should also not get involved in peripheral issues which may serve American interests but have nothing to do with Australia. The world is changing and we must look to the future instead of focusing on the past. We need an integrated and independent foreign policy which takes a hard headed view of Australian interests and which keeps in mind the old but true saying that countries don’t have friends, only interests.

June 4, 2015

Cavan Hogue. When elephants fight, kangaroos can be trampled.

Current Affairs

The growing tension in the South China Sea poses a number of problems for Australia. We want to ensure that our access through these important waterway and air routes are not impeded but we want to do so without appearing to take sides in a confrontation between China and the USA. We also need to take into account the concerns of other regional countries which are important to us.

September 30, 2019

JOHN TULLOH. Troubling times for Saudi Arabia

It is an unsettling time for Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s effective leader, or MBS, as he is often referred to. The unchallenged attack on the kingdom’s oil industry made a mockery of the billions it spends to defend it. MBS faces growing international opprobrium about the harrowing war in Yemen which he has presided over since its inception more than four years ago.

January 27, 2019

MUNGO MacCALLUM. Around the twist or navigating around Australia.

Unlike the National Partys deputy leader. Bridget McKenzie, our Prime Minister presumably knows that James Cook and Arthur Phillip were not the same person.

They may have both been dead white male sailors serving the mad King George III, but they did so in different times and different places. Even Scott Morrison learnt that much at school.

And he probably also knows that Cook did not actually circumnavigate Austraiia. But what the hell, he could have if hed wanted to and this close to Australia Day, why waste a marketing opportunity?

October 27, 2015

Paul Collins. The Synod on the Family Success or Failure?

I was talking recently about the Synod with a very experienced parish priest. He said that if the bishops thought we were all waiting with bated breath for their decision regarding the divorced remarried receiving Communion, then they really do live in cloud cuckoo-land. Nowadays divorced Catholics dont just hang around waiting for a bevy of bishops to decide. They follow their consciences and do what they think is right, especially if they have talked to a sensible, pastoral priest. Sure, many have understandably walked away from the church, but many have stayed having made their own decisions about going to Communion - the internal forum solution.

December 25, 2015

Barney Zwartz. Christianity is dying out? Don't count on it.

Repost from 10/10/2015

Recent predictions (and perhaps hopes) about Christianity’s demise in the West have been greatly exaggerated. But to the extent that the faith does disappear, it will be greatly missed, writes Barney Zwartz.

Predicting social trends is usually an inexact science, but England’s influential Spectator magazine has boldly put a precise date on the disappearance of Christianity from Britain: 2067.

If the number of UK-born Christians keeps sinking at the rate it has for the past decade, by 2067 they will be “statistically invisible”, Damian Thompson wrote.

December 2, 2015

John Menadue. Australias Comparative Advantage and Policy Reform

In May and June of this year, Michael Keating and I edited a policy series Fairness, Opportunity and Security. This policy series has now been published in book form.

We were and remain concerned about the policy vacuum in Australia. We are anxious that the debate on policy reform continue.

An important contribution to this debate has now been made by a report Australias Comparative Advantage. This report was sponsored by the Australian Academy of the Humanities, The Australian Academy of Science, the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia, and the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering. The authors of the report were Professor Glenn Withers, Dr Nitin Gupta, Ms Lyndal Curtis and Ms Natalie Larkins. In releasing the report, Professor Glenn Withers said Australia has achieved much over recent decades but there are substantial challenges ahead, including the risk of economic slow-down with the ending of the mining investment boom.

June 21, 2015

James Laurenceson and Hannah Bretherton. What Australians really think about a rising China.

Current Affairs

What does Chinas rise as a major power mean for Australia? The answer depends on who you ask.

In March 2015 the Sydney Morning Heralds International Editor, Peter Hartcher, described China as a fascist state that bullies its own citizens and neighbouring countries alike. That about sums up the China threat view.

Yet theres also no shortage of CEOs gushing with praise for Chinese government policies that are expected to deliver more than 850 million people into the ranks of the middle class by the end of next decade.

July 14, 2019

TONY SMITH. Two ears, one mouth. Not quite enough listening yet.

While every Australian must wish Ken Wyatt well in the portfolio of Indigenous Australians, he still must operate in a system which has shown itself unsympathetic to the needs of first Australians. His intention to present a referendum on recognition might be a good one, but he will succeed only if political leadership on the issue is strong. While the Uluru Statement languishes, this seems unlikely.

May 11, 2015

Ian Marsh. Part 2. Democratic Renewal: policy-making practice.

Fairness, Opportunity, Security. Policy series edited by Michael Keating and John Menadue.

In Part 1, I pointed out that the Westminster style two-party system is in trouble.

Part 2. Implications for Policy Making Practice.

At least four implications would seem to follow from the above analysis.

The first concerns the need to create systemic capacities to address single issues. As Bernard Crick observed many years ago, the present forms and processes of parliament under the Westminster system are tantamount to a continuing election campaign. This suits majoritarian or winner-takes-all government. This mise-en-scene was designed for an era in which the major parties championed different ideologies and different medium-term agendas. It assumed that these parties enjoyed support from more or less half the community. It also assumed that their approach to particular domestic issues as they arose could be derived from their distinctive overarching programmes.

June 10, 2019

JOCELYN CHEY Hongkongers deserve support.

Sundays march on Hong Kongs Legislative Council brought an estimated million people onto the streets, which if true would make it the largest demonstration in the history of the Special Administrative Region. The reason for the demonstration was the proposed Extradition Treaty, which will be debated on Tuesday 11thJune. Legislators will do well to listen to the voice of the people and the rest of the world has one last chance to put their concerns.

October 4, 2018

GRAHAM ALLISON. The Myth of the Liberal Order: From Historical Accident to Conventional Wisdom.

Among the debates that have swept the U.S. foreign policy community since the beginning of the Trump administration, alarm about the fate of the liberal international rules-based order has emerged as one of the few fixed points. From the international relations scholar G. John Ikenberrys claim that for seven decades the world has been dominated by a western liberal order to U.S. Vice President Joe Bidens call in the final days of the Obama administration to act urgently to defend the liberal international order, this banner waves atop most discussions of the United States role in the world.

June 1, 2017

PAUL COLLINS. Theres Movement at the (Radio) Station

It is not only ABC management that dont take religion and specialist broadcasting seriously. What can you expect from a board that is made up of business people and technocrats. The fault here lies with the federal government that has appointed these people.

September 9, 2015

Rod Tucker. The NBN: why it's slow, expensive and obsolete.

The Abbott Coalition government came to power two years ago this week with a promise to change Labors fibre to the premises (FTTP) National Broadband Network (NBN) to one using less-expensive fibre-to-the-node (FTTN) technologies, spruiking its network with the three-word slogan: Fast. Affordable. Sooner.

But with the release in August of the 2016 NBN corporate plan and in the light of overseas developments, it is clear that the Coalitions broadband network will not provide adequate bandwidth, will be no more affordable than Labors FTTP network and will take almost as long to roll out.

August 15, 2018

NASSRINE AZIMI. Rethinking Our National Holidays?

I often ask my students to think what it means to live in a country with a constitution that prohibits wars of aggression, and removes from national priorities war-mongering discourses, distractions and impulses?

June 28, 2015

Mark Scott. The ABC belongs to all of us.

Current Affairs.

Address byMark Scott Centre for Corporate Public Affairs Annual Corporate Public Affairs Oration Thursday 25 June 2015

From time to time, Im asked to speak to journalism students about what its like working in a news room.

I often reflect that for all the planning you can do around big news eventsan election, a budget, The Olympicsalmost by definition, the biggest stories are those you cant predict, you didnt know were about to erupt.

November 16, 2015

Thanks to Jake Bailey and Christchurch Boys High School.

Just one week before his final school assembly, Christchurch Boys High School’s Head Boy, Jake Bailey, was told that he may not have long to live.

The 18 year old NZ student was bed-ridden and absent from school for three weeks while undergoing treatment for aggressive cancer.

But during his final school prize-giving ceremony he managed to give an inspirational speech from his wheelchair.

“None of us get out of life alive, so be gallant, be great, be gracious and be grateful for the opportunities you have” Jake told his audience.

October 13, 2015

Nicholas Reece. Falling behind in the innovation stakes

Malcolm Turnbull has promised a new innovation policy for Australia by Christmas. Bill Shorten has pledged to be a “jobs prime minister for the new economy”. For the first time in a long while, the political rhetoric matches a genuinely huge national policy challenge.

In the past 15 years, there have been more than 60 reports on Australia’s national innovation system. They all broadly reach the same finding: Australia suffers from a failure to turn public research into commercial outcomes, to generate higher levels of business research and development, to adapt new technologies and skills, and to participate effectively in global value chains.

June 1, 2015

John Menadue. Health Policy Reform: Part 2 Why reform is difficult. Health ministers are in office but not in power.

Policy Series.

In Part 1 on health policy reform I outlined the main areas where health reform is necessary. In Part 2 I examine the reasons why I think health reform is so hard. In part 3 I will consider ways in which the necessary path of health reform can be quickened.

The major barrier to health reform is the power of providers or at least their assumed power. The most recent budget showed that yet again.

April 7, 2019

JOHN TULLOH. Shalom! Farewell to the Palestinian state.

When it comes to audacious political chutzpah_, few can match Benjamin Netanyahu. The Israeli prime minister, desperate for re-election this week and anything but assured in the polls, frantically tossed a grenade into the campaign at the last minute. If he keeps his job, he said he would annex Jewish settlements in the West Bank. It would effectively mean the end of the prospect of any meaningful Palestinian state._

November 3, 2015

John Menadue. The unfairness and waste in health. Private Health Insurance is the real culprit.

Medibank Pte has been in dispute with the Calvary Hospital Group and now with UnitingCare over performance in their hospitals.

At last our largest private health insurance company, MBP has come to understand that the private providers, hospitals and doctors, are really in control. These private providers determine the quality of care and its cost. The PHI companies like MBP are really powerless to control both the quality and cost of healthcare. They need to lift their game .But they are in a bind.

December 5, 2017

JOHN MENADUE. The Australian Strategic Policy Institute.

Agents of influence,presumably Chinese are in the news. But the really important agents of influence are organisations linked ‘hip to hip’ to the US and its military/industrial complex. One of these is the Australian Strategic Policy Institute which is an enthusiastic supporter of almost all things American. It pretends it is an independent think tank. Yesterday Bob Carr commented that ASPI and the US Studies Centre at the University of Sydney both express ‘consistently pro American positions’ while receiving funding from ‘US corporations including armaments companies’

See below an earlier slightly edited post of mine concerning ASPI .

September 21, 2015

Kieran Tapsell. Keeping the Australian people in the dark.

On 22 April 2013, Francis Sullivan, the CEO of the Truth, Justice and Healing Council (TJHC) that represents the Australian Catholic Church at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, said: The Australian community has been kept in the dark for too long. Indeed it has, and since the setting up of the Royal Commission, the Australian Church has been open and frank about some its own failures. But on one critical issue, it has failed to be frank, and has continued the policy set by Pope Benedict XVI in his 2010 pastoral letter to the people of Ireland, of blaming negligent and misguided bishops for the cover up while ignoring the role of the Vatican and canon law on their behaviour.

December 17, 2019

JOCELYN CHEY. Immutable China?

China is often described as a nation with unchanging values and an alien culture, inscrutable and radically different from our own. Chinese culture is said to be characterised by unquestioning loyalty to the State, emphasis on the group to the prejudice of the individual, networks of personal and business connections (the term guanxi has entered the business lexicon) and high regard for face.

November 5, 2015

Douglas Newton. Australias Leap into the Great War.

One of the great clichs of Australias entry into the Great War is that Australia stepped up to answer the call of the Mother Country. Much of the press coverage of the centenary of Anzac repeats this claim and adds a nationalist frosting: our entry into the Great War was a moment of national awakening. The facts fly in the face of this. Australia did not answer the call in August 1914 Australia jumped the gun. It was not a stand-tall moment of national awakening but of willing imperial subservience.

July 6, 2015

John Menadue. Is the European Project finished?

Perhaps the Greek crisis will force a fundamental rethink and Europe will find the way to rekindle again the idealism and hope that gave rise to the European Project in the aftermath of WWII.

By any means Europe has been a remarkable success in social development, human rights, economic growth, the mobility of people and capital but most importantly of all, a seventy year period of peace. After centuries of war, mainly religious wars, followed by WW1, Hitler, the Holocaust and Stalin, Europe has been at peace.

April 10, 2019

KERRY O'BRIEN. We can't let ourselves off the hook (Part 2)

Part 2 of a speech delivered at The Walkley Fund for Journalism Dinner in Sydney on Friday April 5, 2019.

Every year at the Walkley Awards, we honour a craft that holds power in its various manifestations big and small, to account. We should also, all be prepared to reflect on our own failures.

December 10, 2019

China in a time of change

Contemporary China cannot be comprehended without understanding the role of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). With 85 million members it represents a tiny share of the total population (1.4 billion) but is the worlds largest political party.

January 18, 2018

BOB DOUGLAS. Towards social and political transformation.

British writer and columnist, George Monbiot, has recently published an important book about national and global politics and the need for radical, cultural and political transformation. Entitled Out of the wreckage: a new politics for an age of crisis, the book boldly tackles economics, environmental threats, widespread voter alienation and the political corruption that pervades modern democracies. The author offers a new narrative to replace neoliberalism, which he considers responsible for many of the crises that now confront humans everywhere.

June 16, 2015

Ian McAuley. Inequality matters

Policy Series

Australia has a reputation for egalitarianism, as a country where, in comparison with Old World countries, wages were good and, to quote Lawson, where people call no reason to call no biped lord or sir.

Up to around 1980, Australias distribution of income was becoming more equal, but since then inequality has been on the rise: our income distribution is now back to where it was 80 years ago, in the years before the Pacific War.We still do better than the UK and the USA our usual points of comparison but in comparison with other prosperous countries, particularly those of northern Europe, we have slipped a long way behind.

June 8, 2015

Chris Bonnor. Eroding human capital in our schools

Policy Series

There are a number of givens about schools and their students. Both are critical to economy and society. The level of collective student achievement can create future dividends or deficits. The quality of school education not only matters but the extent to which this quality is distributed around schools also matters. Even the length of time students spend at school impacts on GDP. The experiences of young people at school, who they mix with and what they learn - including about each other - also has implications for our future social and community lives. In short: developing the human capital in our schools must be a national priority.

April 22, 2019

MARRYANNE SLATTERY AND ROD CAMPBELL. Debugging the Watergate complex (The Australian Institute, April 2019)

Interpreting the responses to #Watergate by the Prime Minister and the Department of Agriculture and Water Resources

August 19, 2015

John Menadue. Saving lives at sea!

To justify its harsh refugee policies, the government has been telling us that their policies are designed to save lives at sea. What hypocrisy!

And only last week we saw at the ALP Federal Conference, former Labor ministers justifying their turn-back policies as a means to reduce drownings at sea.

Please spare us this charade.

The objective of our inhuman refugee policies is overwhelmingly political, to be seen to be tough on boat arrivals and win electoral support as a result. The object of the present government has been to deride the Labor party for its alleged softness on refugees and to parade its own toughness on boat arrivals, and particularly towards Muslims. It has been overwhelmingly playing to our fears of the foreigner. It is not about stopping drownings at sea.

August 3, 2018

FINTAN OTOOLE. Yeats Test criteria reveal we are doomed (Irish Times 28/7/2018)

There are many ways to measure the state of the world and economists, ecologists and anthropologists labour mightily over them. Opening the Yeats International Summer School in Sligo last week, I suggested another one: the Yeats Test. The proposition is simple: the more quotable Yeats seems to commentators and politicians, the worse things are. As a counter-example we might try the Heaney Test: if hope and history rhyme, let the good times roll. But these days, it is the older Irish poet who prevails in political discourse and that is not good news.

September 3, 2015

Brian McNair. News Corp and the future of public service media.

Ive been teaching students in Hong Kong about the relationship between politics and the media, and wanted to illustrate the sometimes problematic relationship between media and power. So I showed them Robert Pestons BBC Panorama documentary about the industrial-scale criminality of Rupert Murdochs UK red-tops in the era of Andy Coulson and Rebekkah Brooks (* on Friday August 28 Rebekkah was named as CEO for News Corp in the UK).

Like most people with even a passing interest in the part played by News Corporation in British politics, I remember exactly what I was doing when the scandal broke in 2011 and the sense of a seemingly indestructible media behemoth crumbling into chaos and ruin before our eyes. I had been researching and teaching about the News empire for more than two decades by then, frequently using it as a case study of how at least some privately owned media organisations abuse their power in pursuit of competitive success and political influence.

August 21, 2015

David Stephens. 'There will be blood': ministerial remarks on the responsibility of children.

There will be blood from the sword up to the belly of a horse, and the thigh of a human, and the hock of a camel. And there will be great fear and trembling upon the earth. And those who see that wrath will be terrified, and trembling will seize them. (6 Ezra, Old Testament Pseudoepigraphica)

Blood has always fascinated authority figures and their acolytes, from high priests then to ministers now. In ancient Israel, the old men who ran things got so hung up on blood and blood-letting that they invented the cult of Moloch and similar ritualistic practices. Moloch followers supported the passing of children through fire or sacrificing them to idols.

June 9, 2015

Ross Garnaut. Australian Climate Change Policy

Policy Series

I once called climate change policy diabolical, but with a saving grace (Garnaut 2008).

It is diabolical because of the overlapping of four complex issues. While there is high scientific confidence that human action causes warming and that, beyond some limit, warming damages many aspects of human life, perhaps catastrophically, there is uncertainty about the precise consequences. The costs of effective action come now and the benefits much later. Avoidance of dangerous outcomes requires parallel action in all of the larger countries. And effective action is politically difficult because it confronts the interests of large corporations which are accustomed to investing heavily to bend policy to their own ends. When I first started working on the issue 8 years ago I said that it might be too difficult for our political system at this early stage of our development.

June 14, 2015

Fred Chaney. The challenge of providing fairness, opportunity and security for Indigenous Australians.

Policy Series

It is unlikely that at any time since 1788 a sample of Indigenous Australians would agree they have enjoyed fairness opportunity and security.

It is similarly unlikely that any Minister responsible for Indigenous Affairs, past or present, would claim as much progress in achieving those objectives as hoped for. The now obligatory annual report card delivered in Parliament by the Prime Minister of the day confirms the slow and irregular progress in closing the gaps in economic and social circumstances.

November 2, 2014

Michael Keating. Rebalancing government in Australia. Part I.

The Future of Federalism

Tony Abbott recently announced that he wants to create a more rational system of government for the nation that we have undoubtedly become. As Abbott describes it,achievement of this more rational system is dependent on developing a consensus based on a readiness to compromise and mutual acceptance of goodwill.

Understandably the initial reaction of many people was to question whether these lofty (although familiar) aspirations had really been embraced by the most negative and populist politician in living memory. But there is no doubting Abbotts chutzpah, and perhaps the real regret is that he does not seek to bring a similar rational approach to more significant issues, such as climate change or to the many questions still to be answered regarding our re-engagement in Iraq.

March 30, 2018

Good reading and listening for the weekend ...

April 4 will mark 50 years since the assassination of Martin Luther King. In the ABCs Religion and Ethics Report, Andrew West interviews Jonathan Rieder and Anthea Butler, two authors who have written about Kings life, ideas and legacy. West reminds us that King had a very tough message about the poverty and violence that propped up racism, and that made the powerful very uncomfortable.

Its time to finally eradicate all sales incentives for bank staff to push loans on to customers writes Jessica Irvine reporting from the banking inquiry. Warning her story in The Age contains harrowing accounts of exploitation of vulnerable people.

September 28, 2015

Saudi Arabia doesn't 'do' refugees.

Saudi Arabia has shown that it is possible to accommodate three million people for the Haj. See link below. But it is unwilling to provide any sanctuary for refugees from Syria. Syrians must apply for a visa or work permit to enter Saudi Arabia. Under this visa/permit system many Syrians have entered Saudi Arabia, but it is overwhelming for the benefit of obtaining cheap labour. None of the Gulf States have a domestic policy on refugees and none are signatories to the UN Convention on the Status of Refugees.

September 17, 2015

Kenneth Roth. The European refugee crisis is on of politics not capacity.

European leaders may differ about how to respond to the asylum-seekers and migrants surging their way, but they seem to agree they face a crisis of enormous proportions. Germany’s Angela Merkelhas called it“the biggest challenge I have seen in European affairs in my time as chancellor.” Italian Foreign Minister Paolo Gentilonihas warned thatthe migrant crisis could pose a major threat to the “soul” of Europe. But before we get carried away by such apocalyptic rhetoric, we should recognize that if there is a crisis, it is one of politics, not capacity.

June 3, 2015

Australias Health Workforce what needs to be done.

Policy Series.

With a federal election due in 13 months and the Coalition Government not travelling well enough to be confident of re-election, what should an incoming Health Minister focus on to ensure we have a highly skilled, professional and sustainable health workforce to care for the nations future health needs?

The answer is simple. Its all about nurses.

Under current settings, in 10 years we will be experiencing an unprecedented shortage of nurses.

June 10, 2015

Peter Cosier. A Healthy Environment and a Productive Economy

Policy Series

Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists[*]

When faced with significant environmental challenges in the past, Australian governments, businesses, communities and individuals have shown their capacity for responding creatively and energetically to environmental challenges, with positive outcomes for the health of the environment and economic productivity. While there are thousands of examples across Australia every day where individuals, communities and businesses strive to live sustainably, too often, despite best intentions, we place short-term interests over long term benefits.

June 2, 2015

John Menadue. Health Policy Reform: Part 3 Principles for reform

Policy Series

In Part 1 of this series I described the areas in our health sector that need reform. In Part 2 I spoke of the obstacles, particularly those imposed by vested interests in the health sector to protect their own interests by delaying or stopping reform. In this article, I will be suggesting ways in which we can overcome these obstacles to health reform. But make.

Dont rush the process

June 4, 2019

IAN BURUMA. Deng Xiaopings victory. (Asia Times 3.6.2019)

Chinas massive protest movement in the spring of 1989, centered in (but not confined to) Beijings Tiananmen Square, seems to have been the anti-Communist revolt that failed. As the brutal crackdown on and following June 3-4 played out, political freedom was being won in Central Europe first in Poland and Hungary, and then, beginning that autumn, in East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria and, albeit violently and rather undemocratically, Romania. Within the next two years, the Soviet Union, cracked open by Mikhail Gorbachevs reforms, finally imploded.

June 7, 2015

Glenn Withers. A Smarter Australia

Policy Series

Knowledge capital is the real wealth of nations. If you stop to think about it, what matters more for opportunity, fairness and security than the skills, talents and ideas of the people? Yes, other things matter, but in the long haul they are way back in second place. And, yes, we do a lot already to foster our abilities, but we could be even smarter in this endeavour.

May 14, 2018

MUNGO MACCALLUM. Progress taxation or a flat tax

Scott Morrisons budget has been greeted as underwhelming, which is probably the way he likes it. The goodies are unnecessarily complex – the tax cuts arent really tax cuts, they are built in to your 2018-19 return as an offset, which means they will appear in your kick only if and when you are entitled to a net refund. No big sugar hit there.There are no real losers, apart from black marketeers, migrants, the unemployed, climate scientists, recipients of foreign aid, and the ABC, along with a basket of other deplorables who do not normally vote for the coalition, but, as Peter Dutton might say, they are all dead to him.

However, hidden in the low key first bid for election is an almost revolutionary and definitely reactionary overview, which deserves rather more consideration. The centrepiece of the Enterprise Tax Plan, so-called, is to be the abolition of the progressive system of income tax which has endured in Australia for more than a century and its replacement with what is in effect a flat tax plan.

April 11, 2018

All bets off on the Korea summit outcome.

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 Trumps 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.

Pearls and Irritations

John Menadue's Public Policy Journal