Tag: war

Trade routes or War Games?: Subs and the geopolitics behind the China threat

Arena Online

Clinton Fernandes

1 Oct 2021

Australian strategic planners are well aware that it would be absurd to protect trade with China from China… In the real world, the military build-up is about whether foreign military and intelligence activities can be conducted in another country’s exclusive economic zone.

AUKUS: It’s about Sovereignty, not Submarines

Arena Online

Binoy Kampmark

30 Sep 2021

AUKUS is also a screeching message to powers in the region that the Anglophone bloc, with its vast historical baggage, intends to police the region against a country never mentioned in the joint statement but crystal clear to all present.

Sub-Imperial Australia

Arena Online

Guy Rundle

16 Sep 2021

Our focus on subs has long been an expression of our idea that any defence would involve us contributing a subordinated part of a giant US-led naval force in the region.

The US defeat in Afghanistan: An epochal moment

Arena Online

John Hinkson

16 Sep 2021

One does not have to be a Taliban supporter to see that this defeat reflects deep changes in not only geopolitical relations but ways of life that are making their mark on what the West can do practically.

The Bloody Trade

Arena Quarterly no. 7

Michelle Fahy

Sep 2021

Can Australians trust bland assurances from the defence department that Australia’s ‘strict export controls’ prevent the illegal use or transfer of Australian weapons?

The Rules-Based Order

Arena Quarterly no. 7

Clinton Fernandes

Sep 2021

Military historians are well aware that Australian governments have not gone to war for sentimental reasons or because they were duped. The organising principle of Australian foreign policy is to remain on the winning side of a worldwide confrontation between the empire and the lands dominated by it. 

The Great Game of smashing countries

Arena Online

John Pilger

25 Aug 2021

As a tsunami of crocodile tears engulfs Western politicians, history is suppressed. More than a generation ago, Afghanistan won its freedom, which the United States, Britain and their "allies" destroyed.

China Games

Arena Quarterly no. 6

Clinton Fernandes

Jun 2021

China responded to the US presence in the Bashi Channel by sending Su-30 and J-16 fighter aircraft and Xian H-6 bombers into the area, where they simulated missile attacks on the US vessels.

We Can Hear the Drums of War, But Who Is Beating Them?

Arena Online

Stuart Rollo

13 May 2021

China has now advanced to the point that it is a serious rival to the United States as both military hegemon in Asia and central pivot of the global economy. This is what the brewing war…is all about.

Nagorno-Karabakh is a place that exists: bitter peace in the Caucasus Mountains

Arena Online

Michael Rose

3 Dec 2020

…there was a non-violent solution to this—not clear or simple or easy, but possible. Instead, a calculated decision was made to use catastrophic violence—the lives and homes of tens of thousands be damned. The result, now clear, will be one unjust state of peace built upon the ruins of another.

Quietly Sacrificing the North? US Marines’ COVID-19 Exemption

Arena Online

Patricia Cahill

4 Aug 2020

Rather than taking a ‘fingers-crossed, let’s-hope-there’s-no-human-error’ gamble on quarantine measures, it would be far safer to prevent US marines from coming to Australia from COVID-19 hot spots.

Will the Australian project end as it began?

Arena Online

Guy Rundle

14 Jul 2020

The counter-narrative would be that it is we, not China, that are isolated in the region: white, settler, a firm US ally, happy to support a US- and Europe-dominated world order at the UN, and to give no real recognition to the narrative that joins billions of East Asians together: that for a century or so they were dominated, exploited and humiliated by white imperial powers, and that they are now on the way to…