United States
George H W Bush: the internationalist president
George Herbert Walker Bush, who has died at age 94, will not reside in the top rank of American presidents, the Washingtons, the Jeffersons, the Roosevelts the Kennedys to name a…
North Korea’s emerging blackmail strategy
A recent New York Times article has drawn much criticism from the US intelligence community for depicting North Korea’s continued missile development as “a Great Deception.”
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Russia-Ukraine: soggy response to Kerch aggression
With its doctrine of scrupulous media balance – “they said, he said, we don’t know” – Western reporting on the latest phase in Russia’s relentless imperialist aggression against…
Chipping away at trust in democracy
With a series of state elections due and the federal election looming, there are important lessons that Australia needs to learn from the tone of US politics. In particular, there…
More than words needed to meet the China challenge
Newly announced US ambassador-designate to Australia, Arthur Culvahouse, comes to Australia at a moment of significant tension in US-China relations, with a growing consensus in…
The prospect of a “Trumpier” foreign policy
Donald Trump came to office with a more coherent worldview than other recent American presidents. For decades, he has held four core beliefs about the world.
First, Trump scoffs…
The new normal: a close naval encounter in the South China Sea
The release of video footage from the bridge wing of USS Decatur which shows its recent close encounter with the Chinese destroyer Lanzhou in the South China Sea confirms the…
US midterms: the no-joke elections
The US midterm results are rolling in. The House of Representatives appears to have fallen under Democrat control, while former presidential candidate Mitt Romney has won himself…
The cliché is true: this is the most important US midterm, ever
One of the worst clichés of US politics is that the next election is the most important ever/in your lifetime/in recent history, and so on.
When I worked in US politics in the…