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Keywords: Arms Race

  • INTERNATIONAL

    Holy fools and flawed titans: The legacy of Mikhail Gorbachev

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 08 September 2022
    3 Comments

    Greatness for the Soviet Union’s last leader, Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev, was not to be found at home. Commentary on his passing is as much a statement of positions, endorsed by admiring beneficiaries, and loathed by those who fell off the train of history.  The millions who delighted seeing the collapse of the Soviet Union and, as a result, a power vacuum and weaker Russia, toast him, eyes filled with emotion. 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    In praise of complexity

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 21 July 2022

    One of the tests by which we can judge political maturity is whether it gives due weight to complexity. It is easy to reduce political conversation to opposed statements between which we must choose. That will sometimes be appropriate. Often, however, discussion of policy raises several different questions, each of which needs to be considered.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Inconsistency in the treatment of foreign fighters

    • Irfan Yusuf
    • 12 April 2022
    15 Comments

    In a space of 40 years, Russia has been our enemy, then our friend and now is an enemy again. Russia is again attacking Ukraine. We are convinced the Ukrainian cause is just. But we also know that we face a domestic far-Right terrorism threat at home. What if young impressionable foreign fighters with little knowledge of Ukrainian history, politics and internal conflicts find themselves fighting with and influenced by anti-Semitic and Islamophobic neo-Nazi groups?

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Let slip the dogs of war: A tale of futility and bloody-mindedness

    • Dorothy Horsfield
    • 22 March 2022
    8 Comments

    Moscow-based Director of the Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC)Dr Andrei Kortunov warned of its tragic consequences for Russia in an article published four days before the launch of his country’s invasion of Ukraine. The de facto partition of Ukraine, he said, as a result of the Kremlin’s recognition of the independence of the People’s Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, will signify ‘the final formalisation of the division of Europe’ from which there may be no easy retreat.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Australia’s nuclear submarine trade-off

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 20 September 2021
    31 Comments

    Defence is a costly business, and few branches of defence are more costly, and questionable, than a country’s submarine capability. Since 2009, Project SEA 1000, the name for Australia’s Future Submarine program, has fascinated strategists and defence planners.  In 2016, this resulted in an agreement with the French submarine company DCNS (now called Naval Group) to build an un-designed attack class vessel. Other contenders in the competitive tender — Germany and Japan, for instance — had existing models. 

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    After eyes tight shut

    • Tony London
    • 12 May 2020
    1 Comment

    We have always lived thus, in our heads. Bone domes, impenetrable to others, we might project animus, animation, add to Duncan’s questioning. The mind’s construction in the face, enigmatic, Rubik cube with sixteen squares on each face, so any signs I give are laced, graced with ambiguity.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    COVID-19 shopping panic harms seniors

    • Millie Roberts
    • 10 March 2020
    9 Comments

    The stockpiling has left many facing empty aisles and lacking basic necessities. But this doomsday practice extends beyond not being able to buy pasta shells or running out of toilet paper — it also leaves vulnerable populations at risk.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Horse slaughter and the ethics of animal welfare

    • Moira Rayner
    • 21 October 2019
    15 Comments

    When the ABC published footage of cruel treatment of healthy former racehorses in a Qld abattoir, everyone said they were appalled. This revelation has again brought into the public eye the dirty secret about the business of horse breeding and trading, gambling and associated industries. They are vast, and they are important.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Remember Hiroshima as US nixes treaties

    • Tony Smith
    • 06 August 2019
    7 Comments

    The timing of the USA's announcement that it is withdrawing from treaties limiting the nuclear arms race came just a few days before the anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in 1945. The anniversary remains important because it serves as a reminder that nuclear weapons have been used and that they could be used again.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Sudanese Lost Boy's long walk comes to life

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 30 April 2019
    5 Comments

    When refugees write accounts of their lives they usually express gratitude to the nation that has received them. A Child Escapes, in which Francis Deng describes his life from Lost Boy of Sudan to refugee in Kenya to bank employee in Australia, is no exception. Left unsaid, but equally important, is the gift he and other immigrants are to Australia.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Militarising the Moon

    • Barry Gittins
    • 17 April 2019
    4 Comments

    This journey outwards is threatened by demagoguery. The UN's treaty declaring 'celestial bodies shall be used exclusively for peaceful purposes' has been challenged by sabre-rattling by Donald Trump, with his declaration that 'it is not enough to have American presence in space; we must have American dominance'.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Julie Bishop is one hell of a survivor

    • Moira Rayner
    • 25 February 2019
    12 Comments

    After five or so years as a better-than-most foreign minister, and a serial turner-up at branch fundraisers and social events, she has been mourned as 'the prime minister we never had,' and someone who was never fully or adequately appreciated. I think this was inevitable.

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