Trump, Kurds and America’s original sin

While most fixate on the betrayal in Trump’sdecision to withdraw troops and leave the Kurds to the mercy of Turkey, the real betrayal goes back further – the original sin of US indifference to the Kurds predicament and the whole matter of America’s own self-interest in international relations. During Gulf War 1 in 1991 with American forcesdeep inside Iraq and Saddam Hussein on his knees, the US called on the Kurds – long brutally oppressed by the Saddam regime – to…

Trump-Kim summit before it fell over

My preview of the Trump-Kim summit in Hanoi – before Kim walked out and it all fell over (I didn’t pick that)… Last June’s meeting in Singapore was full of shock and awe with no one really knowing what to expect. As it turned out the sheer vaudeville of that meeting with Kim Jong Un was…

Dismembering diplomacy’s fourth wall

The art of diplomacy has been described as a kind of theatre but what we see now is when the actors themselves discard the diplomatic niceties, break through the fourth wall and reveal the truth directly to the audience. New Spectator Australia piece on the killing of Jamal Khashoggi

Stuff happens in world affairs

Everything is inevitable. Stuff happens. This is how international relations work. The US-North Korea summit was always going to happen and the fact that it was held at a theme park inevitable. It is a metaphor after all and now we can all move on. My latest in Spectator Australia on the inevitability of world…

Trump and the peace summit

My latest on the upcoming US-North Korea summit in the Brisbane Courier-Mail. Scanned version. Trump may be on track for Korean peace summit THE on-again/off-again/on-again nature of the US-North Korea summit has many attacking US President Donald Trump as a “wrecker of peace”. But sometimes orange-haired existential threats to humanity get it right, writes Michael…

Bollards, safe rooms and plastic bags

Spectator Australia latest…. Everyone here is here to help with it be security bollards, safe rooms or shopping bags.  But do we fill any safer? Never mind the bollards