For anyone who has visited the Philippines and knows the Filipino people, it is impossible to dislike the people, and as equally impossible to feel anything except deep pessimism about that country’s future. Many people know the phrase “the white man’s burden” without realizing that Rudyard Kipling used the term with a good deal of…
Was it wrong to send troops to Vietnam? No, says Kenneth Gee, despite public reconsiderations by some of those involved. General Cosgrove, who fought in Vietnam, now doubts whether Australia should have been there. Malcolm Fraser also now believes that the Vietnam War had been misguided. This is understandable, since the United States, in its bungled…
Within days, Federal Parliament will commence debate on the contentious Research Involving Embryos and Prohibition of Human Cloning Bill 2002, which will set the ethical and medical ground rules for research on human subjects for years to come. While many of the issues of principle – in particular destructive research on human embryos, and the…
The Bush Administration in the United States has taken the unprecedented step of formally withdrawing the signature attached by the Clinton Administration to the Statute of the International Criminal Court. The Treaty, negotiated in Rome in 1998, recently came into force when the 60th nations signed the International Criminal Court statute. It will commence operation…
The decision of the American President, George Bush, to impose a 30 per cent tariff on imports of flat steel products, and a range of lesser tariffs on other steels, led to anger from two opposing groups: apologists of free market economics, to whom the US has always been the model to which other nations…
China’s accession to the World Trade Organisation and negotiation of a free trade agreement with ASEAN risks leaving Japan out in the cold, says Sharif Shuja. President Bush’s view is that Japan, not China, should be the focus of American security politics in the Asia-Pacific and that Japan was all too often ignored during the Clinton years. The Bush Administration sees Japan as an increasingly important global partner in peacekeeping, in promoting democracy, in protecting the environment, and in addressing major challenges in Northeast Asia. Japan, on the other hand, is reluctant to lead, and its neighbours reluctant, for historical…