One clearly evident trend in the last year has been a revival of the QUAD Security Dialogue, consisting of four democratic nations: the USA, Japan, Australia and India. There have been a lot of comments on this process, from politicians, political observers and the media, and a number of commentators seem to be running ahead…
I’ve spent six years alternately begging major NZ journalists to investigate state-sponsored spying on activists including me, and, out of sheer necessity, reporting extensively on it myself from within the vacuum created by their inaction. So it is somewhat bemusing to now observe the belated unfolding of what ex-Member of Parliament and Greenpeace NZ Executive…
After the Berlin wall fell in 1989, the only major divided capital city in the world was Nicosia, split between its southern Greek part and its northern Turkish sector. Entrepreneurship resulted in the opening of a bar at the United Nations-operated crossing point between the Greek and Turkish sectors called “Checkpoint Charlie II,” a reference…
Australia has for years employed a deterrence policy to disincentivize refugees from reaching its shores. However, a new report has found Canberra has played a major hand in creating the very asylum-seekers it despises. Just last week, Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) released a bombshell report that showed the Australian government had approved the export of…
On a very relative scale, Australia can be grouped into the ‘second or third’ level players in terms of significance in the political game unfolding in the Indo-Pacific region. This group could also include Pakistan, Iran, and South Korea. And the main players are undoubtedly the United States and China. The significance ascribed to Australia…
When senior officials from the United States, India, Japan and Australia recently held a rare four-way dialogue in Singapore, the meeting did not produce a single joint statement. Instead, it resulted in four – one for each country. The outcome reflected the ambiguities surrounding the loose grouping that has been both hailed and scorned as…
