Welcome to Eureka Street

back to site
Forgot your password?
Subscribe

Section: International

  • INTERNATIONAL

    Australia’s nuclear submarine trade-off

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 20 September 2021
    29 Comments

    Defence is a costly business, and few branches of defence are more costly, and questionable, than a country’s submarine capability. Since 2009, Project SEA 1000, the name for Australia’s Future Submarine program, has fascinated strategists and defence planners.  In 2016, this resulted in an agreement with the French submarine company DCNS (now called Naval Group) to build an un-designed attack class vessel. Other contenders in the competitive tender — Germany and Japan, for instance — had existing models. 

    READ MORE
  • INTERNATIONAL

    New Yorkers remember 9/11 twenty years later

    • Jim McDermott
    • 14 September 2021
    3 Comments

    Giovanna Slon was just beginning her third year at Fordham University in the Bronx when a plane hit the World Trade Center on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. ‘At 8:47am, my R.A. bangs on my door and tells me “You have to get up. There’s something happening.”’   

    READ MORE
  • INTERNATIONAL

    The Tampa legacy 20 years on

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 07 September 2021
    23 Comments

    It took 438 desperate human beings upon the overladen wooden fishing boat, the KM Palapa, to present Australia’s Howard government in August 2001 with an electoral opportunity. At first, there was feigned ignorance from Canberra about any signs of desperation. The vessel, lacking power, lay some 100km off Christmas Island. Despite a coast guard plane noting men jumping up and down on the roof in a frenzy, nothing was initially done.

    READ MORE
  • INTERNATIONAL

    Why Afghanistan matters

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 24 August 2021
    14 Comments

    Most early commentary on the swift coming to power of the Taliban in Afghanistan has focused on how it happened and who was to blame for it. Much of the blame has been focused on United States President Biden and former President Trump. Increasingly attention has turned to the plight of people in Afghanistan, particularly women and those who helped the occupation forces and women. 

    READ MORE
  • INTERNATIONAL

    Civilization as intervention

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 24 August 2021
    10 Comments

    The New York Times editorial on 15 August was all about tragedy in describing the fall of Kabul to the Taliban. ‘Tragic because the American dream of being the “indispensable nation” in shaping a world where the values of civil rights, women’s empowerment and religious tolerance rule proved to be just that: a dream.’

    READ MORE
  • INTERNATIONAL

    The amoral world of Donald Rumsfeld

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 22 July 2021
    13 Comments

    The late Donald Rumsfeld, twice US Secretary of Defense, a Fortune 500 CEO, and congressman for three terms, did not let evidence and the firmness of facts trouble him. If he had a cause to pursue he would. Morality was merely an impediment to service.

    READ MORE
  • INTERNATIONAL

    The rift with China: a time for harmony

    • Joseph Camilleri
    • 15 July 2021
    17 Comments

    The souring of relations with China is driven not just by prime ministers, foreign and defence ministers, or even by Cabinet. It is the product of converging interests with immense reach and influence.

    READ MORE
  • INTERNATIONAL

    Western withdrawal from Afghanistan marks the beginning of an uncertain future

    • Justin Glyn
    • 13 July 2021
    5 Comments

    The atrocities committed in the Taliban siege of Mazar-i-Sharif in the late 1990s have not been forgotten. Nevertheless, the ‘progress’ brought by the invading forces — after twenty years’ hard fighting against the forces which they themselves had previously armed and trained against the Soviets — is equally debatable.

    READ MORE
  • INTERNATIONAL

    Australia should resist totalising China narratives

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 01 July 2021
    28 Comments

    We should resist the pressure to regard China as our enemy. The pressure to do so is powerful, given the cycle of retaliatory words on both sides that further poison relationships. The impetus to enmity, however, damages both sides. To treat people as enemies means that they become enemies, with the result that both sides will spurn the mutual exchanges that can help each.

    READ MORE
  • INTERNATIONAL

    Palestine remains embroiled in the quagmire of politics and legitimacy

    • Ramona Wadi
    • 14 May 2021
    9 Comments

    Using the term ‘colonisation’ in regard to Israel and its relationship to Palestine and its settlements in the West Bank is contested, with some claiming that the situation is not a perfect parallel to other colonial contexts throughout history. 

    READ MORE
  • INTERNATIONAL

    Truth lies at the heart of communication

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 13 May 2021
    10 Comments

    There are larger and unchanging questions about why we communicate and about the effect of our communications on the way we live. World Communications Day is an opportunity to think about these basic questions.

    READ MORE
  • INTERNATIONAL

    India travel ban: citizenship comes a distant second place

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 11 May 2021
    10 Comments

    While the ban is unique in its severity, it is not divorced from a broader tendencies as to how citizenship has been appraised during pandemic times. Public health and safety have been prioritised over the standard liberties associated with citizenship.

    READ MORE