Countering coercive politics
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s two week foreign mission to Europe and Australia was by all accounts a success. She met with business and government leaders, signed and co-signed several commercial and...
View ArticleConsidering Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan.
I have said this in other forums, but here is the deal: PRC military exercises after Pelosi’s visit are akin to silverback male gorillas who run around thrashing branches and beating their chests when...
View ArticleMedia Link: “A View from Afar” on China, Taiwan and future implications.
The “A View from Afar” podcast with Selwyn Manning and I resumed after a months hiatus. We discussed the PRC-Taiwan tensions in the wake of Nancy Pelosi’s visit and what pathways, good and bad, may...
View ArticleMedia Link: AVFA on the Ruso-Ukrainian conflict and what is to come.
I have not been up to blogging that much as of late for various reasons but continue to do the “A View from Afar” podcast series with Selwyn Manning. This week we reviewed the current status of the...
View ArticleSystemic Realignment and the Long Transition.
The last few decades have seen a world in increasing turmoil. Technological advances, climate deterioration, sharpening domestic and international political conflict and global pandemics are just some...
View ArticleBrutality as a Russian fighting characteristic–and a mistake.
One of my intellectual interests is the study of fighting cultures—Asian (in all of its varieties), Arab (same), European (same), North American, Israeli and, more broadly, Maori, Zulu, Greek, Roman...
View ArticleOn NZ foreign policy “independence.”
For many years New Zealand elites have claimed to have an “independent” foreign policy, so much so that it has become a truism of NZ politics that transcends the partisan divide in parliament and is a...
View ArticleMedia Link: It’s a wrap.
The last episode of season 3 of “A View from Afar” aired yesterday. It discusses the concept of hostage diplomacy and how it applies to the recent US-Russia prisoner exchange as well as the collective...
View ArticleThe return to Big Wars.
After the Cold War the consensus among Western military strategists was that the era of Big Wars, defined as peer conflict between large states with full spectrum military technologies, was at an end,...
View Article” A View from Afar” returns.
On Thursday May 11, 2023 at 12PM (noon) NZ time/8PM Wed 10th May US East Coast time/1AM Thursday London time/8 AM Thursday Singapore time and 10AM Thursday Sydney time, the A View from Afar podcast...
View ArticleNZ and AUKUS PIllar 2.
As part of our preparations for the resumption of the “A View from Afar” podcasts, Selwyn Manning and I have been discussing topics for the first show. We have agreed on a micro/near-macro/far focus,...
View ArticleMedia Link: ” A View from Afar” first show of 2023.
After considerable delays related to the impact on Cyclone Gabrielle on both North Island coasts, the “A View from Afar” podcast with Selwyn Manning and I has resumed. After a brief introduction...
View ArticleGeopolitical balancing in the W/SW Pacific.
Last year the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the Solomon Islands signed a bilateral security agreement that includes police training and port visits by Chinese security advisors and naval...
View ArticleMedia Link: Disinformation at RNZ.
I was fighting a head cold when I did this interview so was not as lucid as I would have liked to be, but credit to RNZ for giving me the airtime. It has to do with the placing of … Continue reading →
View ArticleMedia Link: “AVFA” on disinformation and Global South perspectives on the...
In the latest “A View from Afar” podcast Selwyn Manning and I talk about how to approach disinformation in the contemporary media landscape and Global South neutrality or support for Russia in the...
View ArticleWhen a “coup” is not a coup.
In the wake of the short-lived Wagner Group incursion into Russia I decided to tweet some basic definitions of various irregular collective action taken against political regimes and ruling elites....
View ArticleMedia Link: “AVFA” on NZ-PRC trade and Prigozhin’s “pronouncement.”
In this week’s “A View from Afar” podcast Selwyn Manning and I decided to do a “near-far” sequence and look at the recent NZ trade mission to the PRC in broader context before turning our attention a...
View ArticleMedia Link: “AVFA” on Oppenheimer’s Nightmare.
Last week former President and Prime Minister, now Deputy Chair of the Russian Security Council Dimtry Medvedev warned that Russia would use nuclear weapons if its forces in Southeastern Ukraine were...
View ArticleBenign Strategic Nostalgia.
It has been interesting to observe reactions to the release of a cluster of national security-related documents by the NZ government last week. They include threat assessments and forecasts, defense...
View ArticleMedia Link: “AVFA” on regional realignment in the Sahel.
In this week’s “A View from Afar” podcast Selwyn Manning and I discuss regional realignment in the Sahel region of Africa. Subjects include the Nigerian coup, the new dictatorship belt stretching from...
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