Tom Switzer is presenter of the Switzerland podcast and co-editor, with Sue Windybank, of Prudence and Power: The Writings of Owen Harries.
One of the enduring myths about Donald Trump is that he is an isolationist: a president bent on dismantling alliances and hauling up the drawbridge on America’s engagement with the world. The reality is more unsettling. Trump’s instincts may incline toward retrenchment, but they coexist with a pugnacious temperament and a visceral conception of American
In 1969, Charles de Gaulle told his friend André Malraux that America’s “desire – and one day it will satisfy it – is to desert Europe. You will see.” It has taken nearly six decades, but de Gaulle’s prophecy now looks uncomfortably close to fulfillment. After years of diplomatic effort to manage, placate and charm
In the new global order, the US must pivot away from Europe
From our UK edition
When US policy-makers supported Nato expansion in the 1990s, it was widely believed that America, as the sole remaining superpower, could impose its will and leadership across the globe. ‘An American century’, ‘indispensable nation’, ‘the unipolar moment’, ‘benign hegemony’ – these became the new buzz-words of Washington’s political class. The rhetoric turned bellicose after 9/11,
From our UK edition
Sydney Every so often, in the life of nations, there comes a moment when a new political force articulates a sense of frustration at the old orthodoxies, or a yearning for something new. Sometimes, such a force turns into a momentous presence that transforms the national landscape. Australia has reached such a moment in the
Sydney For decades, Australia has been known as ‘the lucky country’. At the end of the world geographically, we are separated from the global troublespots by vast oceans. We have recorded 27 years of uninterrupted growth, partly because of a surge in exports of commodities to China. At the same time, our tough border protection
The Trump era will mark the demise of NATO, but the cause of the collapse of the political West goes beyond The Donald.
From our UK edition
The other day, I went to a boozy barbecue near Sydney’s northern beaches. The guests were all political mates of mine and we chatted about those insurgent populists who threaten to upend established conservative parties across the globe: Donald Trump, Marine Le Pen, Geert Wilders, Beppe Grillo and, of course, Pauline Hanson — Australia’s version
From our UK edition
Australian conservatives just showed their prime minister all the mercy that a pack of hungry hyenas reserves for zebra prey on National Geographic. In a dramatic Liberal party-room leadership vote late this evening – morning in Britain – the former leader Malcolm Turnbull toppled the first-term prime minister in a 54-44 vote. It was done with a
From our UK edition
Sydney Most ordinary Australians are shocked that our immensely civilised country is reviled in polite society here and abroad, when the world has so many blatant human rights abusers. The latest accusation comes from a New York Times article complaining that our policies on asylum-seekers are harsh, insensitive, callous and even brutal, and urges European
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Winston Churchill once said of politics that it’s ‘almost as exciting as war and quite as dangerous. In war you can only be killed once, but in politics — many times.’ Perhaps no one personified this dictum better than Richard Milhous Nixon. From his election to Congress in 1946 to his resignation from the presidency
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A few years ago, the conventional wisdom down under held that Tony Abbott and his centre-right Liberal Party were crazy to oppose the notion of carbon pricing. The view was so commonplace among Canberra press gallery pundits that it seemed reckless to contradict it. Those were the days, remember, when global warming alarmism was all
From our UK edition
Sydney Kevin Rudd had spent so much time out of the limelight since his electoral thrashing two months ago that Australians were beginning to wonder what he was up to. The latest joke about our former two-time prime minister is that his only public appearance recently was at a suburban Brisbane retirement home, where he
From our UK edition
The Economist magazine is beginning to look a lot like the Guardian, the New York Times and the Age in Melbourne: its editorial pages are so dripping wet that one has great difficulty in turning them. How else to account for this endorsement of the Australian Labor government of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd for re-election
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Sometimes only a cliché will do, especially when the subject is the Australian Labor party. Labor is holed beneath the water line and is sinking fast. No one, not even its newly reinstated skipper, Kevin Rudd, is capable of keeping the boat afloat as the nation heads for a general election on 7 September. In
From our UK edition
It wasn’t long ago that the upcoming federal election in Australia seemed to be Tony Abbott’s to lose. With Julia Gillard as damaged goods, the Opposition leader appeared poised to win one of the biggest electoral landslides in political history. Think Clement Atlee and Labour’s demolition of Winston Churchill’s Tories in 1945. But recent polls
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A year or so after the ‘liberation’ of Iraq, an unnamed senior Bush administration official (later revealed to be Karl Rove) boasted: ‘We are an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality.’ Yet a decade later, America’s power and influence has diminished considerably and the American people are suffering from foreign
From our UK edition
This morning a friend from London emailed to find out what the hell has happened to the Australian Labor Party? He was responding to the news overnight that, in a ballot for Labor’s 102-strong legislative caucus, Julia Gillard (the most unpopular prime minister in Australian history) smashed Kevin Rudd (the most popular prime minister in
From our UK edition
Australian politics is all aflutter at the resignation of Kevin Rudd as Foreign Minister. What happens now? Will he challenge Julia Gillard for the job of Prime Minister? Here’s tomorrow’s leader from our sister magazine Spectator Australia (edited by Tom Switzer) for CoffeeHousers’ benefit: It’s an intricate two-step, but one false move now spells death.
