My employers think I know something about the practice and theory of international relations. Perhaps I shouldn’t draw attention to my shortcomings in this area given that my university is currently in…
The United Nations was born 70 years ago, emerging from the horrors of World War II. After the failure of its predecessor, the League of Nations, the UN heralded the dawn of a new era, with the promise…
Critics of the nuclear deal with Iran have good reasons to be skeptical, but blocking the deal would make the United States and its allies less secure.
Surveying the current world order, one might be forgiven for thinking that it is essentially ungovernable. Chaos, conflict and crises seem to be the order of the day. The phrase “international order” seems…
Like him or loathe him, the late Samuel Huntington was one of the towering figures in political science and international relations. Even those who disagreed with his ideas were forced to engage with them…
Writing from Kiev, the city is boiling with rage. And now all Europeans too may boil with rage as 189 Dutch and smaller numbers of Belgians, British, French and Germans perished, when their Malaysian Airlines…
Ashok Sharma, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau
In the coming days, India’s new prime minister, Narendra Modi, will have to set out exactly how he plans to fix the economy and address many domestic issues. But politics doesn’t stop at the border. Modi’s…
When we agree to send our young men and women to war, we expect the reasons why to be made clear. At least some of us will want to subject that explanation to scrutiny at the time, and often even more…
Ashok Sharma, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau
Barack Obama’s weeklong visit to Asia took in Japan, South Korea, Malaysia and the Philippines. His trip was supposedly focused on economic issues and in particular on enhancing trade links across the…
When Malaysian Airlines flight 370 failed to arrive, authorities at first concluded it had crashed in a relatively shallow part of the Gulf of Thailand. As the days passed more countries dispatched ships…