Geopolitics – Here and there

The militarisation of space – can Australia avoid following America?

21 May 2023 Mike Scrafton Australian focus

America’s space policy reveals its hegemonic obsession and exposes the future quandaries for Australia. How will Australia confront the inevitable question of whether to support a peaceful or a militarised exploration of space?

The NATO communique highlights Europe’s strategic concern: Russia

25 June 2021 Mike Scrafton Global

Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison might have gone to Europe with the Indo-Pacific region “is the epicentre of renewed strategic competition” mantra on his lips, but the NATO communique reflects the reality that it is Russia, not China, that fills Europe’s strategic horizon.

Historical amnesia: Great power behaviour and criticism of China

25 May 2020 Mike Scrafton By Mike Scrafton, Global

Positioning the adversarial relationship with China as one of morally superior western democratic nations in competition with a somehow illegitimate and malevolent China is an exercise in historical amnesia. The democratic United State’s 1890 – 1920 trajectory from western hemisphere state to global power has some economic, military and foreign policy parallels with authoritarian China’s growth in the twenty-first century.

Eyes wide open, or a blinkered view? The Australia-China relationship in the Antarctic

13 May 2020 Mike Scrafton Australian focus, By Mike Scrafton

The recent report ‘Eyes Wide Open: Managing the Australia-China Antarctic Relationship’ contains a lot of information about China’s activities in Antarctica and usefully sets out aspects of the Chinese-Australian relationship.
But are the report’s recommendations a disproportionate reaction to a manufactured crisis regarding China’s presence and activities in Antarctica?

Australia’s strategic quandary: political leadership and the abandonment of strategy

15 April 2020 Mike Scrafton Australian focus, By Mike Scrafton

Australia’s strategic quandary emerges from its status as an ally to a great power. If it abrogates its responsibility to set national policy aims by joining in a coalition in which one great power antagonist determines the goals of the war it cannot claim to have a strategy. It cannot claim to be linking Australia’s national priorities to the military actions. Its fate would be in the hands of its great power ally.

Traps, Trump and Thucydides: challenging Allison’s concept of a ‘Thucydides’ Trap’

14 February 2020 Mike Scrafton By Mike Scrafton, Global

Harvard academic Graham Allison finds in Thucydides’ ‘The History of the Peloponnesian War’, some near universal law of international relations where war between established and rising great powers is close to inevitable – the ‘Thucydides’ Trap’. But are there different lessons to be drawn from analysis of the Peloponnesian War?

Geopolitics and the re-election of Donald Trump

12 January 2020 Mike Scrafton By Mike Scrafton, Global

The biggest question in geopolitics is: will President Trump be re-elected? More than any previous presidential election, the 2020 election could presage a very dangerous era in world politics, making the presidential election the most important geopolitical event this year. However, the American presidential election will be determined by domestic issues that swirl around a collection of policy issues as well as identity and values.