East Timor is in for another change of government, less than nine months after the last elections. Xanana Gusmao’s Alliance for Change and Progress (AMP) appears to have secured 35 seats in the 65 seat legislature, ousting the minority Fretilin government which was forced to the poll after having its budget blocked last year. The […]
Author Archives: Damien Kingsbury
About Damien Kingsbury
http://www.deakin.edu.au/profiles/damien-kingsbury
Malaysia’s extraordinary election outcome, in which the six decade old government has been defeated, marks a profound and likely permanent shift for the future of politics in the country. The ruling National Front (Barisan Nasional – BN) government had retained power, particularly in the last decade or so, primarily through a system of rigged electoral […]
Just a couple of short weeks ago, President Donald Trump’s nay-sayers were having to re-think on his Korea strategy and, potentially, his wider unorthodox political style. Perhaps, they were being forced to ask themselves, his brinksmanship really was responsible for what is looking like a rapprochement between North and South Korea and potentially the denuclearization […]
(Originally published by the AIIA http://www.internationalaffairs.org.au/australianoutlook/how-wars-end/) with Richard Iron CMG, OBE. War remains common in the modern world and its devastating effects demand that we try to end it. Why do some negotiations fail and what conditions are required to end war? Some wars are necessary; diplomats could persuade neither Hitler nor al-Baghdadi to halt […]
In response to this question, I offered the brief reply: The UK royal family has rebounded in public interest largely as a result of a strong and well developed public relations campaign that has been aimed at making the family, and especially its third generation, ‘relevant’ and possibly even ‘cool’, while still pressing the buttons […]
After early nay-sayers tipping that he would not see out his first term as president, Donald Trump now looks to be entering genuinely dangerous territory following the FBI raid on the office of his personal lawyer, Michael Cohen. Cohen has admitted paying US$130,000 (AUD$168,000) to ‘porn star’ Stormy Daniels following her alleged affair with Trump […]
China’s formalization this week of Xi Jinping as president0 for life marks that country’s turn away from partially accountable leadership to a model that is, in effect, a dictatorship. This runs counter to not only China’s post-Mao Zedong 10 year changes of leadership but also a more general global trend towards democracy. Yet Xi is […]
There is still some way to go before US President Donald Trump meets North Korean leader Kim Jong-un to discuss the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and, at this stage, the proposed meeting could still be derailed. But some scenarios for the meeting are becoming a clearer. The two leaders will meet in what both […]
For an island that gave its name to the word ‘serendipity’, Sri Lanka is a troubled and often bloodied country. The latest round of communal violence has pitted majority Sinhalese Buddhists against minority Muslims, causing the government to declare a 10 day state of emergency. Sinhalese make up around two-thirds of the population of Sri […]
It’s about Greater Sunrise. It was always about Greater Sunrise. The Timor Sea boundary agreement has now been signed in New York, but the key to the dispute – the $50 billion Greater Sunrise liquid natural gas field – remains unresolved. Timor-Leste has argued for many years that the agreement which saw the joint exploitation […]