Online Edition
The online-only edition of The Sydney Globalist.
China’s Century: Preparedness or Paranoia?
Will Rickard anticipates Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s future challenges in dealing with China’s rise.
Twenty years after Deng Xiaoping made his famous proclamation “To get rich is glorious”, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has grown to become the third-largest economy in the world, behind only the U.S. and Japan. With China’s economy growing at an average rate of nine per cent per year since 1978, it is unsurprising that there has been a similar increase in its military expenditure. Today, China’s military spending is second only to the United States, and China controls the largest standing military in the world. This raises an important question: does China pose a threat to Australia? [...]
Opium Dreams
Anna Solar-Bassett analyses the corrupt reality of the ‘promise’ of poppy crops in Afghanistan’s poverty-stricken south.
Barack Obama came to power with an overriding foreign policy goal: to move the focus of America’s war in the Middle East from Iraq to Afghanistan. The removal of Iraqi forces was swift: 17,000 additional troops were pledged to Afghanistan. An increase of more than 300 per cent in U.S. aid to Afghanistan has also been requested for the next budget. The atmosphere is distinctly anxious. So why the panic? [...]
Rethinking Crisis
Peter Son discusses the power of the term ‘crisis’ to initiate action, both for better and worse.
When one hears the word ‘crisis’, alarm bells start to ring. To be in crisis mode means to border on anarchy. There is no rationality and no governance. There is no clear resolution to a crisis. At least this is what the mass media portrays. We are often the victims of such sensationalism. The truth is sometimes distorted and we are misled into believing that an ‘issue’ of global magnitude is an undeniable ‘crisis’. However, whilst adopting a cynical approach to this label of ‘crisis’, it seems almost foolish to not tag a global ‘issue’ as a ‘crisis’, as anything else would seem a rather dangerous euphemism. [...]
The Afghan Surge
Tim Mooney asks whether the strategy of the ‘troop surge’ used in Iraq will also be effective in Afghanistan.
In November 2006, President Bush and his Republican Party suffered a heavy defeat in the mid-term elections. In victory, Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said that “this election is about Iraq” and that the American people had “rejected the course of action the President is on”. The voters seemed to agree. As Democrats were swept to power, 75 per cent of Americans believed that the government would swiftly withdraw troops. [...]
The Ethics of International Relations
Rebecca Beard offers clarification on the supposed clash between the ‘practical’ and the ‘moral’.
According to Aristotle, politics is ethics: both in terms of the ends it attempts to serve, and the means by which this should be achieved. Because politics deals with the fundamental question of what we ‘ought’ to do, it is intimately intertwined with the ethical conception of the ‘good’ and the behaviours that must be attributed to its achievement. Misunderstandings of the nature of ethics and politics attempt to construct a clear line between issues deemed to be ‘practical’ and therefore external, and those considered ‘moral’ and therefore belonging to the ethical realm. [...]
Genocide by any Other Name
Patrick J. Lewis argues that the current definition of genocide is an inadequate description for the Darfur conflict in western Sudan.
Since 2003, more than 300,000 people have died in a bloody war in west Sudan’s Darfur region, situated in the heart of Africa. Decades of drought, desertification, and overpopulation caused the pastoralist Baggara nomads to take their livestock further south in search of water, causing conflict in land primarily occupied by ‘black African’ farming communities. In 2003, there was a violent rebel uprising by the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) and the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army (SLA), which accused the government of oppressing non-Arabs in favour of Arabs. The Sudanese government responded by destroying entire villages suspected of harbouring rebels, with a devastating impact on civilians. [...]
Nuclear Proliferation: Crisis, Destiny, or an Excuse for Using Force?
Flora Ho explores the different narratives of crisis associated with nuclear proliferation.
As North Korea pre-emptively launched its three-stage rocket on April 5, 2009, and subsequently ordered the departure of all American IAEA inspectors, the international community felt a heightened sense of crisis associated with the growing nuclear ambitions of Kim Jong-il. The U.S. described the launch as a “threat to the safety and security of other countries”, which could not go unpunished. Meanwhile, China and Russia dismissed such anxiety by blocking all rebuke of the actions at the UN Security Council. [...]
Straddling the Border
Genevieve Curtis explores the plight of those straddling the U.S.-Mexican border.
A new global order has forged power blocs that transcend the limits of national boundaries. In a world of cultural collision and intense economic integration, the ebb and flow of the global economic system plays out in real time on the United States-Mexico border, with little regard for the human element that suffers in the elusive pursuit of the American Dream. [...]
A Path for Avoiding Nuclear Disaster
Holly Crain makes the case for nuclear non-proliferation.
Global society is currently in the midst of numerous, challenging and complex crises, ranging from the ongoing devastation caused by the financial crisis, to the various humanitarian crises plaguing the developing world. However, none is more devastating than the crisis being produced by the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Despite the inconceivable humanitarian threat posed by the use of nuclear weapons, world leaders have continued to respond to this danger with political rhetoric alone, ignoring the urgent need for policy reform from states and international organisations alike. [...]
Russian Capitalism in Transition
Ignatius Forbes and Ilya Popov consider the difficulties facing Russia as it journeys towards a fully functioning market-based society.
It was a moment in history that former Russian President Vladimir Putin called “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth century”: the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. There it was, a socialist, military superpower that in its last years had a non-existent GDP, chronic ethnic tensions, and an ideology that had failed to fulfil the prophecies spun by its creators. [...]
