Showing 1 - 10 of 11
China holds back for now over Taiwan
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 25/07/2025
» 'I hope I am wrong. My gut tells me we [the US and China] will fight in 2025," wrote General Mike Minihan, head of US Air Mobility Command, in a private memo two years ago. There are still five months to go, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say that he's wrong.
Donald Trump buys time with weapons for Kyiv
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 18/07/2025
» There was rejoicing when US President Donald Trump announced that he was going to let Ukraine have weapons after all, but it was conspicuously contained joy. Half-smiles and sighs of relief were plentiful; cheers were absent or faked.
Indonesian poll serves up a curious outcome
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 20/02/2024
» Indonesia's President Joko Widodo concluded his second five-year term last Tuesday with a national election in which his chosen successors won a convincing victory. "Jokowi", as everybody calls him, still enjoys 70% public approval, and he has every right to be proud of his past.
Covid: Digital peasants and the ignorant rich
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 04/12/2021
» The new Omicron variant of the Covid-19 virus was discovered last week by scientists in South Africa and Botswana, the only countries in southern Africa that have the skills and resources to detect a new variant.
Will China actually ever invade Taiwan?
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 13/10/2021
» China's President Xi Jinping promised on Saturday that "The historical task of the complete reunification of the motherland... will definitely be fulfilled." That was a threat to Taiwan, but a threat without a deadline. However Chinese state media, in the form of the ever-rabid Global Times, warned that war "could be triggered at any time".
The Quad and the next Cold War with China
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 28/09/2021
» The creation of an Australia-United Kingdom-United States military alliance last week caused a tempest in a teapot, but the real action was elsewhere. In Washington on Friday the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue ("Quad" for short) held its first-ever face-to-face summit, and defined the sides in the great-power confrontation for the next generation.
Vladimir Putin the immortal hero?
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 21/01/2020
» Five years ago somebody posted photographs on the internet showing a man who looked a lot like Vladimir Putin in photographs from 1920 and 1941. In both shots he was in military uniform, defending the interests of the Russian people then as he still does today.
Kashmir: The 'wounded civilisation' strikes back
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 09/08/2019
» God knows what novelist V S Naipaul really meant half a century ago when he called India "the wounded civilisation" in his travelogue-cum-psychoanalysis book about the home of his ancestors. But it is a handy phrase, because it encapsulates the vision that drove Prime Minister Narendra Modi to destroy the deal that bound Kashmir to India on Monday.
The Chinese People's Republic of Amnesia
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 05/06/2019
» Another of the five-yearly anniversaries has rolled around, and it's time to write another think-piece about the long-term meaning of the massacre on Beijing's Tienanmen Square on 4 June 1989. But 30 years later, what is there left to say?
No real choice in Nigerian election
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 22/02/2019
» Lengthy delays before announcing the results of African elections are commonplace (the Democratic Republic of Congo last month, Zimbabwe last July, etc.). It just means that people voted the wrong way, and the government needs time to re-arrange the results before publishing them. Postponing the vote at the last moment is much less common, and not so easy to explain.