If it weren’t quite so serious it would be funny. A man who styles himself as a champion of the common people, who he claims have been shamefully neglected by out-of-touch, uncaring elites, plans to stuff…
- Adjunct Professor, Australia-China Relations Institute, University of Technology Sydney
Of all President-elect Donald Trump’s election promises, “draining the swamp” in Washington was one of the most popular. It is also likely to prove one of the most difficult to fulfil. Thinking about why…
Even the most pessimistic of commentators must be astounded by US President-elect Donald Trump’s capacity to destabilise some of the most important elements of the existing international order – even before…
Fidel Castro’s life and times illustrate how much the world has and hasn’t changed.
How times change. A decade or so ago, former World Bank president and deputy secretary of state Robert Zoellick suggested to China that it needed to become a “responsible stakeholder”. Even at the time…
America’s allies around the world are still trying to digest what a Donald Trump presidency will mean for them. Even in Australia, where supporters of the US don’t get much more rusted-on, there are signs…
Whatever happens over the next four years it won’t be boring. Let’s hope we get through it.
How WA managed to emerge from the mining boom with an estimated debt burden of $40 billion is one of the West’s great mysteries. Or not, if you bother to look more closely.
The idea of effective world governance seems highly unlikely, but it’s an idea we must keep returning to.
Of all the indicators of Australia’s evolving relationship with China, Crown Casino’s current problems are some of the most striking, unexpected and revealing. They present an unflattering but painfully…
It was almost inevitable that there would be chorus of – not even rhyming – moaning from the guardians of high culture when Bob Dylan was announced as the winner of this year’s Nobel Prize for Literature…
We live in remarkable times. It has become almost obligatory to recite the seemingly unprecedented range of problems that confront us. It has become equally commonplace to bemoan the inability of policymakers…
Despite growing concerns about possible declining American power and influence, the US still dominates the region upon which Australia has increasingly come to depend.
Nations can choose their friends – and their enemies – but they can’t choose their geography. Australia is fortunate to enjoy one of the most strategically benign locations in the world, but this hasn’t…
There are some rather remarkable aspects of the increasingly heated debate about China’s influence in Australia. First, the idea that China actually has any “soft power” to exert is actually rather surprising…
China’s leaders like to put on a good show. Whether it’s the Olympics or the Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation meeting, not losing face is paramount. Every country likes to put its best diplomatic foot…
One thing became dramatically apparent in the economic sphere following the Cold War: capitalism was ubiquitous, but it looked very different in Japan, Germany, the US and China.
Football isn’t what it used to be. In Australia, they don’t even know what football is actually called (it’s not soccer). But what’s even stranger is football has become very popular in countries that…
They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Perhaps so, but let me add another 800 or so on the image above, which has cut through the media deluge like no other of late. The fact that we know the name…
Poor Scott Morrison. Public policy storms don’t get more perfect than this. Nor are they generally quite as revealing of the increasingly complex environment in which policies are made these days. The…
Unless they start giving Olympic gongs for curmudgeonly whinging, I don’t think I’m in the running “to medal”, as we apparently say these days. I realise I should be feeling a surge of patriotic pride…
All politics is local. It’s a cliché but one that never goes out of style. Malcolm Turnbull’s unwillingness to endorse Kevin Rudd for the world’s top diplomatic post, the secretary-general of the United…
For decades the polite fiction in East Asia has been that the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has been “in the driving seat” as far as regional diplomacy was concerned. Only the Southeast…
With the Nice attack and other terrorist events continuing to occur, the freedoms built on trust and confidence may not be sustainable.
China has no legal basis for its territorial claims in the South China Sea. The ruling by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, an arm of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea…
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