We live in dangerous times. The last week has seen Russia impose trade sanctions on Australia, in a quite understandable response to the sabre rattling over Ukraine by our idiot politicians, and in particular, the enthusiasm displayed by Julie Bishop in backing sanctions against Russia. Sanctions and counter sanctions. The European Union and Russia are […]
01 Feb
Comments Off on With ‘friends’ like Western governments, the Arab Spring doesn’t need enemies
Protesters in Tahrir unfurl the flag of the Syrian rebellion This article first appeared on the ABC Drum website yesterday. One of the abiding images of the Arab Spring has been an aerial view of Tahrir Square in Cairo, brimming with thousands and perhaps hundreds of thousands of protesters. This image has returned most spectacularly on the […]
24 Mar
Comments Off on Western military intervention in Libya: There. Is. No. Alternative. Or is there?
> Egypt’s revolution — why has Libya been so different? If there is one thought experiment that liberal supporters of Western military intervention in Libya ruled out of court (even forbade) it was the possibility that there were other social actors and strategies that could seriously affect the outcome of the battle between forces loyal […]
22 Mar
Comments Off on Barack Obama: How Mr. ‘Change You Can Believe In’ became Mr. ‘More Of The Same’
> Last time at Left Flank we noted that key neoconservative ideologues had encouraged the Obama administration to take action in Libya so that the United States could outflank the Arab revolutions by spreading its particular version of democratic reform. Stephen Walt, one of America’s most prominent realist foreign policy thinkers*, has suggested we shouldn’t […]
21 Mar
Comments Off on Libya, US intervention & the myth of the tail that wagged the dog
> Fissures emerge: abstentions in the Security Council One of the justifications used by liberal and Left supporters of Western intervention in Libya is that the United States has been dragged, kicking and screaming, into this conflict. It is part of painting a picture that here, if only just this time, the situation of a […]
20 Mar
Comments Off on George Galloway on the intervention in Libya
>Don’t agree with everything George says, but this is worth watching. Some of his examples are about Britain, but equally apply elsewhere.
20 Mar
Comments Off on ‘Humanitarian intervention’, the international community and Libya: The leopard has not changed its spots
> Many people have reservations about the UN Security Council authorising the use of “all necessary measures” in Libya. But in spite of this, many also think that something must be done and it would be much worse to do nothing. Leaving aside the more particular question of intervening in response to a call for […]
17 Mar
Comments Off on Guy Rundle, the ‘anti-imperialist Left’ and the calls for a no-fly zone in Libya
> Friends no longer It’s important to give Guy Rundle credit for being one of the few mainstream commentators who still has interesting things to say from a genuinely Left perspective. But his intervention in the debate over whether the Australian Left should back calls for a Western-run no-fly zone in Libya — to save […]
12 Aug
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