Richard Broinowski
Richard Broinowski is an Adjunct Professor in Media and Communications at the University of Sydney. He was an Australian diplomat in Asia, the Middle East, and Central America.
Early in his book, Rod Barton describes his reaction to two events that showed what kind of intelligence officer he would become. In the late 1970s he was asked by the Joint Intelligence Organisation to deter-mine the winners and losers in a nuclear exchange between the superpowers. But how, he asked, could this be done without taking into account environmental, political, medical and psychologica ... (read more)
The publisher’s blurb that accompanied my review copy of Joseph Nevins’s book makes two prominent assertions. One is that the United Nations has given Indonesia a six-month deadline to prosecute war crimes committed in East Timor in 1999. The other is that Paul Wolfowitz, a former US ambassador to Indonesia and an architect of the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, was complicit in East Timor atrocitie ... (read more)
Milton Osborne began his observations of Phnom Penh as a junior Australian diplomat from 1959 to 1961. Norodom Sihanouk presided over a town influenced by a powerful French cultural presence, a buoyant Chinese commercial sector, Vietnamese clerks, Cambodian civil servants, teachers and bonzes, and free-spending Americans. Osborne returned in April 1966 as a Cornell graduate student, then each year ... (read more)
One of the legacies of the Bush years has been the creation in the United States of an image of Iran as a monster, a dangerous rogue state that sponsors world terror and is bent on acquiring nuclear weapons with which to attack Israel. The image is encouraged by disgruntled Iranian expatriates who promote their personal interests by peddling out-of-date ‘expertise’ to grateful think-tanks alon ... (read more)
Andrew Bacevich is a former West Point graduate, a principled man on the conservative side of politics who considered it wrong for wealthy citizens to leave the fighting of America’s wars to the poor and disadvantaged. He had fought in Vietnam, and his son, a newly commissioned second lieutenant in the United States Army, had volunteered for duty in Iraq. Just before Bacevich Sr was to attend th ... (read more)
In their introduction to this collection of essays, the editors state that Australia’s war experiences in Vietnam left some lasting legacies, but ones that were either unexpected or unintended: a loss of moral authority on the part of Australian conservative governments, a breakdown in the defence and foreign policy consensus about the ‘threat’ to Australia, the revival of populist politics ... (read more)
North Korea always gets media attention for negative reasons: a border skirmish with its southern neighbour; a missile trial launch or nuclear test; vitriolic propaganda attacks on South Korea, Japan, or the United States; or the appalling findings of some human rights group like Michael Kirby’s recent UN Commission of Inquiry on North Korea’s human rights abuses. The picture that emerges is o ... (read more)
In the 1890s the six Australian colonies were preoccupied not only with getting a fair deal over tariffs and customs – and maintaining the purity of the Anglo-Saxon race – but also with the location of the national capital. Denizens of Melbourne and Sydney felt that it should be one of them. The compromise was a capital in New South Wales, closer to Sydney than Melbourne, but with Melbourne as ... (read more)
When I became an adjunct professor at the University of Sydney in 2004, I knew nothing of its history, and little of the ideological battles that had taken place there. These two books provide a rich narrative of both, and made me appreciate the privilege I have, even as a marginal player, in belonging to such a significant institution.
... (read more)