Gina Athena Ulysse’s Why Haiti Needs New Narratives: A Post-Quake Chronicle fundamentally interrogates which stories are told of Haiti, and who tells them. Not only is it extremely engaging and thought-provoking, but Ulysse writes in English, Haitian Creole, and French to enhance universal accessibility and bridge educational knowledge hierarchies.

She has carefully curated thirty chronological non-academic articles, op-eds, and blog posts written and/or published between 2010 and 2012 into the book. In this way, the book is simultaneously thoroughly scholarly and widely accessible. By distributing her works unevenly across all three sections of the volume, Ulysse challenges the traditional rigidity of academic structure while simultaneously reflecting her evolving perspective on the multiplicity of Haiti’s post-earthquake realities.

She elaborately weaves together interrelated essays on international aid, development, race, gender, colonisation, media representation, performance, politics, and Vodou. Doing this creates a nuanced and holistic account of how several themes intersect to construct narratives about Haiti. Repeated foreign interventions, debt repayments, diplomatic isolation, and global discourse reducing Haiti to a hallmark of dysfunction have all contributed to its historical incarceration, diminishing both Haiti’s material development and the ways in which it is perceived. Ulysse’s repetition across pieces arguably articulates her most pressing insights. Among the most compelling is how Ulysse challenges the historical incarceration of Haiti through her personal diasporic identity and via wider media narratives that reduce Haitians to stereotypes, empowering readers to reflect on the very notion of “disaster”, and how disasters permeate beyond the physical.

Ulysse’s Unique Perspective

Ulysse’s positionality as both an “insider” and “outsider” in her anthropological work provides a uniquely insightful angle. Born in Haiti and raised in the United States from age eleven, Ulysse discusses her navigation of the nuances of lived experience and diasporic identity, an experience many marginalised individuals may resonate with. These reflections, often given little space in academia, highlight the fluidity of identity, as Ulysse passionately advocates making space for herself in spheres not designed for her. It is a testament to the contradictions of diasporic identity and the lifelong journey traversing privilege, (un)comfort, and socially internalised borders. Ulysse epitomises these themes by dispersing her evocative poetry and performance art throughout the book, refreshingly dismantling traditional academic boundaries through a variety of storytelling approaches. Meanwhile, the recurring theme of embodied trauma illustrates the spectrum of ways in which suffering can be portrayed while also collapsing distinctions between public and private spheres.

By exploring the intimately subjective journey of continual (un)learning, hurting, and healing, her creative storytelling additions contribute a restorative refinement to the book. Eloquently, Ulysse’s exploration of the entanglement of pasts, presents, and futures unifies her personal experience with popular portrayals of Haitians.

The Complexities of Haiti

Using her unique positionality, Ulysse problematises the media’s post-earthquake reinforcement of singular narratives that exclude Haitian voices and perpetuate historical stereotypes. In her earliest pieces, her sense of urgency alongside the initial shock of the earthquake is palpable. Readers feel the tangible shift when Ulysse’s hope for post-quake transformation falters as she realises the extent to which old narratives have not only persisted but intensified.

Ulysse argues that Haiti’s history as the first independent Black state necessitated its suppression because it threatened Black slave uprisings in slave-dependent nations. Ulysse illustrates how this legacy persists in contemporary media representations which dehumanise Haitians by reducing them to mere subjects of “Blackness” or “poverty” while ignoring influences of colonisation and oppression, as well as human agency and autonomy. She repeatedly invokes the media’s portrayal of Haitians as disembodied spirits that require an intermediary as a key driver that sustains the narrative of a fragmented Haiti that needs saving. Ulysse instead artfully disentangles the hegemonic reiteration of a world order in which Haiti is objectively portrayed as the poorest nation in the Western hemisphere.

Ulysse invites us to suspend our belief that disasters are solely physical, revealing the multidimensional nature of the structural intersections between identity, history, and power. She demonstrates that international aid reinforced Haiti’s global subordination instead of offering a human-centred transformation of systemic inequalities. The unprecedented influx of unregulated post-earthquake aid enabled missionaries to use religious conversion as a condition of assistance, repressing traditional Haitian Vodou and deprioritising temple reconstruction. Here, Ulysse further queries superficial allyship and invites more carefully cultivated understandings of solidarity.

Structural neglect further exacerbated already startling figures of mass graves and gender-based violence. As damaging socio-historical narratives remained unchallenged and consistently reproduced in the post-quake period, Ulysse expresses her withering hope for Haiti to “build back better”. Instead, Ulysse asserts that it is time for new narratives and the present enactment of a liberated Haiti.

Final Reflections

Although Ulysse does not explicitly include all possible narratives of Haiti, she intentionally creates space for a wide spectrum of voices to emerge. Because Ulysse’s reflections are deeply personal and cannot possibly be all-encompassing, this is not by any means a disadvantage.

Arguably, the entire book is proof that both popular and personal understandings are constructed through an assortment of fragmented realities and narratives. Ulysse aligns with notions of Queer and Black futures which alter the very possibilities of existence and representation by advocating for a self-defined, pluriversal Haiti that contends deterministic discourse. In this way, though the book may not explicitly offer ‘new narratives’, the powerful renunciation of old narratives makes space for empowering new ones to emerge.

Ultimately, Ulysse calls for readers to interrogate hegemonic bias and make space for more liberating narratives, both specific to Haiti and, more broadly, dominant epistemologies, disaster, identity, and care.

This is a review of Why Haiti Needs New Narratives: A Post-quake Chronicle. By Gina Athena Ulysse. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2015. ISBN 08195-7546-1.

Amber Wright is studying MSc Global Development, Poverty and Inequality at the University of Manchester, UK. She is an aspiring PhD candidate and aims to continue researching global development, peacebuilding, and poverty and inequality through frameworks of feminism, abolition, care, border politics, and more. She places particular attention on social justice for racialised and marginalised communities globally.

This article is published under Creative Commons License and may be republished with attribution.

The book, comprising ten chapters, brings together a diverse range of current academic discussions, spanning artificial intelligence (AI) policies, algorithmic radicalisation, cyberattacks, and data protection law. In addition, it also addresses the political and social impacts of digital infrastructures and digital media, as well as new-generation surveillance tools such as digital government applications and facial recognition technologies. While discussing hybrid regulatory models within the context of global governance, the authors make the normative and ideological dimensions of the digital realm visible through the concepts of internet aesthetics and techno-politics. The work serves as a comprehensive reference source and examines the reciprocal interaction between technology and politics through a multi-layered analysis.

The book appoaches today’s digital transformation not merely as a technical advancement but as a techno-political process that reconstructs the ontological foundation of politics. Its main argument is that technology has ceased to be merely a tool (techne) serving political ends and has transformed into a creative force (poiesis) that constructs new political realities. It examines critical themes such as AI, smart cities, digital sovereignty, and cybersecurity across a broad theoretical spectrum, drawing on thinkers ranging from Carl Schmitt and Langdon Winner to Sheila Jasanoff and Bruno Latour.  

The first part focuses on the philosophical foundations of techno-politics. The opening chapter by Arslan philosophically presents the transition from the instrumental nature of technology (techne) to its constitutive nature (poiesis). The author argues that digital infrastructures are restructuring sovereignty and blurring public-private boundaries, producing new political orders. The section addresses the rise of big technology companies as semi-sovereign actors, whose market values exceed national GDPs and whose user bases rival global populations.  

The second chapter, authored by Jonathan Stein and Matthew Murphy, examines how social values are quietly displaced in AI policies. The authors use examples to show that the deep integration of technology companies with the state prioritises operational values such as efficiency and security over societal values like justice, accountability, and sustainability. Warren Alan Bowles, in contrast, proposes a therapeutic approach to the global AI race, discussing how technology can be restructured within the framework of human-centred values and fundamental rights. At the end of the chapter, Ufuk Ayhan compares and analyses the techno-political dimensions of smart cities, using China and the UK as examples, and questions the ideological neutrality of digital infrastructures.

The second section of the book delves into the effects of techno-politics on identity formation and governance through empirical and theoretical case studies.  Atdhe Lila’s fifth chapter analyses different AI governance models in the EU, US, and China, proposing a hybrid regulatory model that balances global interoperability with national sovereignty. Begçecanlı’s sixth chapter, entitled ‘Digital States: The New Frontier in the Techno-Political Power Struggle’, argues that in this era where data has become as valuable as oil, real authority has shifted from states to platform ecosystems. In the seventh chapter, Kılıç evaluates Europe’s pursuit of technological sovereignty through the lens of Kondratieff’s long-wave theory and Schumpeter’s concept of creative destruction. The author describes the EU’s regulatory initiatives, such as the Digital Markets Act and the AI Act, as a strategic resistance to American techno-political influence and the construction of a new paradigm. In the next section, Zeki Can Saroğlu investigates perception management within a psychological framework, focusing on implicit learning processes in digital media. He demonstrates how algorithmic filters and micro-targeting reinforce ideological homogeneity. Zeynep Melike Saroğlu, on the other hand, analyses the depoliticising effect of aesthetic movements in internet curation (cottagecore, balletcore, etc.) on youth identity, drawing attention to the rise of passive identity performance in digital panopticons.

The major contribution of this work to the literature is its holistic approach, which rejects the view of technology as a technical field separate from politics. The book expands on Castells’ ‘network society’ and Zuboff’s ‘surveillance capitalism’ theories, arguing that technology is not merely a tool of surveillance but also a constitutive element of political ontology. The blending of concepts such as ‘techno-diplomacy’ and ‘digital sovereignty’, drawing on both Western-centric perspectives and insights from the Global South, enhances the book’s global inclusivity.

The book’s methodological rigour lies in its ability to combine philosophical abstractions with current political events (the Russia-Ukraine war, the US-China chip wars, and applications of the General Data Protection Regulation). In a world where code becomes law and data defines sovereignty, authors are successfully filling the algorithmic governance gap left by traditional political science. However, while the book occasionally paints a pessimistic picture when discussing the limits of individual and collective agency in the face of technology’s immense transformative power, it balances this dark outlook with the normative futures roadmap presented in the concluding section. The concluding chapter provides a strategic framework for a human-centred, ethical, and participatory digital governance model.

In sum, this book is a significant contribution in the field of technology and security studies. It is a valuable resource for both academic researchers and policymakers seeking to understand how power operates in the digitalising world. The main contribution is its redefinition of the political conditions of the twenty-first century by elevating the technology-politics relationship from an instrumental level to an ontological one. This work offers a notable synthesis that combines theoretical depth with practical strategy for anyone seeking to navigate the complex techno-political landscape of the digital age.

This is a review of Rethinking Techno-Politics in the Digital Age: Global Technology Relations and Security. Edited by Alp Cenk Arslan and Murat Tınas. Hershey, PA: IGI Global. 2026. ISBN 9798337324593.

Seda Çolakoğlu is a PhD researcher in the Department of International Security at the Institute of Security Sciences, Turkish National Police Academy. Her research focuses on critical perspectives related to security, (counter) terrorism, and political violence, as well as various aspects of gender within the contexts of international security and (counter) terrorism.

This article is published under a Creative Commons License and may be republished with attribution.

Dr Albert Palazzo, late of Brooklyn, New York, now an Australian citizen and voice within the latter country’s defense community (or “defence” if we want to maintain a Down Under ambiance), is a prolific writer. He is unfailingly one to, at a minimum, stir readers’ brain cells. He can also incite something akin to frothing-at-the-mouth rage in those who feel their windmills are under assault. But while Don Quixote’s windmills were mistakenly taken for giants, Palazzo’s are giants in reality, ones whose policies are of vital—even survival—importance to their country and broader regional and worldwide actors. Whether his quest to motivate revision of Australia’s political and security strategic thinking succeeds or proves futile remains to be seen. Regardless, this is an important book for what it says as well as for what it implies.

Earlier works of Palazzo’s books include Planning Not to Lose (a largely theoretical study of victory and political warfare; 2021), Climate Change and National Security (with particular focus on accompanying sea level rise and related disasters; 2022), and Resetting the Australian Army (a look at the country’s defense/defence strategy and army force structure; 2023).

In The Big Fix the author summarizes his objective as “to outline and promote a different and better path for the attainment of Australia’s national defence and security, one in which a policy of dependency on a foreign state is not the central feature.” (5) His “different and better path” is the Strategic Defensive, capitalized given Palazzo believes the term is an appropriate moniker for the country’s formal security policy in addition to its meaning in security literature. In considering the way ahead, Palazzo returns to the earlier discussions in his books on force structure while looking beyond military considerations alone, a later approach he finds remarkably short-sighted for overlooking the threats posed by climate change.

By putting other defense challenges on par with those of the military, Palazzo joins an increasing but still underrepresented group, one that recognizes the inadequacy of circumscribing national security primarily in the context of military capability. He continues along these lines, stating that while he has chosen to focus on climate change as his non-military exemplar, he is aware that “there are many other potential threats deserving consideration by Australia’s security policy practitioners.” These include

the growing income gap between the masses of the poor and the wealthy elites; the possibility of another pandemic, including a weaponized one; the global weakening of democracy and resurgence of authoritarianism; and the potential for cyber and artificial intelligence to destabilise essential systems. (38-39)

No country views security exclusively in terms of military threats, of course. Those who are led similarly can monitor and, when necessary, take action when economic, informational, criminal, or other forms of aggression imperil. Palazzo’s pointedly calling out vulnerabilities to health challenges is notably pertinent both in light of recent COVID-19 experiences and the inexplicable Trump administration policies that increase world exposure to future infections and—arguably—invite deliberate malfeasance in introducing them. Yet too few leaders are preparing for the true scope of looming challenges. Fewer still have effective government structures and national strategies to address them.

In Australia’s case, Palazzo posits, policymakers view existing and future threats through the prisms of the country’s past and present reliance on the United Kingdom and the United States. It is a reliance that repeatedly demands the sacrifice of the nation’s men and women in the interest of maintaining that support. With London’s failure to meet its obligations after the fall of Singapore and sinking of the capital ships Prince of Wales and Repulse, Canberra looked to a partnership with the United States. It was not an immediate transition. Nor was the country ever entirely dependent on either for security. While it partnered with one or the other of the two powers in Malaya, Korea, Vietnam, and elsewhere, Australia has also asserted itself as a regional security power, as actions in late 20^th-century East Timor and early 21^st-century Solomon Islands exemplify.

Palazzo evaluates Australia’s security challenges today in light of the past. Citing the country’s 2023 Defence Strategic Review, he concurs, at least in part, “the defence of Australia’s national interest lies in the protection of our economic connection with the world and the maintenance of the global rules-based order.” (21) The same document overtly recognizes an increasingly regionally-assertive China as chief threat to the world’s rules-based order. It is at this point the author pointedly takes on the difficulties posed by Australia’s choosing to rely on continued American commitment, recognizing “to Australia’s leaders it must seem supremely ironic that under the Trump presidency the greatest threat to the global rules-based order could now turn out to be the United States.” (21) He also pulls no punches in arguing for a broader recognition of the threats Canberra should incorporate in his proposed Strategic Defensive policy. Palazzo takes particular aim at defense budgeting that grossly favors the Royal Australian Navy at the expense of ground, air, and cyber capabilities, the result of commitments to acquiring nuclear-powered submarines and Hunter-class frigates, and an accompanying assurance that national shipyards will maintain viability. This approach, he states, leaves the country with only seven surface warships in the period 2026 to “about 2033.” (104) That current government policymakers limit themselves to an approach only concerning risks “originat[ing] from another state or sub-state actor to the exclusion of other kinds” he finds “can be politely described as immature [and] unimaginative because it is unable to appreciate national security threats [not falling] within narrow and predetermined boundaries.” (54)

Palazzo describes his Strategic Defensive both in terms of what it is not and what it should be:

The Strategic Defensive means neither neutrality, utopian disarmament, nor retreat into isolationism. Australia would continue to maintain…a well-resourced and powerful military. [The Australia-New Zealand-United States] alliance could also remain in effect, although it would no longer serve as the foundation of Australian defence as is presently the case…. Designing, equipping, and training the [Australian Defence Force] for interoperability with a great power partner would no longer be the force’s guiding ambition, as it is now…. Australia would look to itself for its security and, in doing so, become a fully sovereign and independent nation. (7-8)… The weakness in relying on an imperial leader—a foreign state, let us not forget—to define one’s grand strategy is the risk that the senior partner may settle upon a poor or inappropriate one, or even go without. (96)

Palazzo is right to question the continued reliance on a partner that, of late, demonstrates it is anything but reliable. Australia, however, cannot afford to cast aside its relationship with the United States altogether. Difficult as dealing with the current administration is, this, too, shall pass. No single nation can secure the welfare of the Pacific region on its own. Australia is and will remain a necessary partner in this obligation in the service of world peace, countries’ sovereignty, and citizens’ self-determination. He is wise to emphasize that such security—national, regional, and planet-wide—is more than a function of armed forces’ might. He is accurate in stating that climate change is one of the additional threats to those securities. Palazzo’s book is both a reasoned argument for reconsideration of Australia’s security policy and a stick-in-the-eye for those who are self-trapped in a too-limited understanding of what policy should include. This reviewer would argue that Australia, like the United States and much of the world, where populations retain some hold on democracy, is already at war with countries that recognize the broader reality when it comes to what constitutes security. Whether through complacency, ignorance, or—ostrich-like—an unwillingness to confront reality, these nations’ leaders do not comprehend they are being assailed economically, diplomatically, informationally, and—perhaps, but perhaps not—militarily by others seeking to redefine current regional and broader orders.

This is a review of Albert Palazzo’s The Big Fix: Rebuilding Australia’s National Security (Melbourne University Press, 2025), ISBN 9780522881363

Dr Russell W. Glenn spent sixteen years in the think tank community and several more on the faculty of the Australian National University’s Strategic and Defence Studies Centre after 22 years US Army service. He has since retired in Williamsburg, Virginia where he continues to conduct research and write. Recent books include Gods’ War (an American Civil War novel) and Brutal Catalyst: What Ukraine’s Cities Tell Us About Recovery From War.

This article is published under a Creative Commons License and may be republished with attribution.

This development reflects the new international norm that women’s political empowerment is needed to strengthen democracy and promote its proper functioning, as expressed in the Beijing Platform for Action (Art. 183).

This book is one of the most comprehensive studies of foreign aid programs for women’s empowerment that I have read. It covers the last three decades, and its ambition, empirically and theoretically, is global.

The book’s focus is women’s empowerment in political institutions and processes, including elections, political parties, legislatures, and politically oriented civil society organisations, especially women’s/feminist movements (p. 13). The donors included in this analysis are 1) bilateral donations from single countries, such as US, Australia, Sweden, Canada and the Netherlands, 2) donations from multilateral organizations such as the Inter-Parliamentary Union, IPU and UNWomen, and 3) a wide range of international nongovernmental organizations such as International IDEA, National Democratic Institute, NDI and International Women’s Development Agency, IWDA. The importance of the local (meaning national and subnational) women’s movements is mentioned throughout the book, but their actions, unfortunately, are not a real part of the analysis.  

How Does Donor Aid Actually Work?

Aiding Empowerment poses these highly relevant questions: Who are these donors? What types of projects have they been engaged in? And – most importantly, but also most challenging to answer – with what effects?

The analysis is critical, but also constructive. After the book was written, the Trump administration brutally shut down one of the world’s largest donor organisations, USAID. At the same time, democratic backsliding has spread further worldwide. However, Aiding Empowerment’s wide-ranging analysis is still highly valuable. It is a scientific work, yet it is declared to inform practitioners and women’s movements about what works and what doesn’t when “aiding empowerment.” The authors see themselves as “feminist critical fiends” vis-à-vis the aid programs (p.17).

In 1997, the world average of women in parliament was 12%; in 2025, it had increased to 27%. Around 20% of the world’s cabinet ministers today are women, and around 50% of the world’s present population have experienced having a woman as head of state or prime minister. An all-male political institution has, during this period, lost its democratic legitimacy. Yet, gender equity is still far away, and political life is still dominated by middle-aged men from the ethnic dominating groups and the socio-economic elites in a country, and even more so in international governance.

Four Case Studies

The method used is case studies on Kenya, Myanmar, Nepal and Morocco, combined with thematic discussions based on extensive literature reviews. Under each theme, scattered experiences from the four countries are presented. The authors have an impressive knowledge of the literature (40 pages of notes), including both theoretical works and reports from actual programs. However, the overall conclusions for each of these four countries are primarily drawn from previous literature, which is not always up-to-date and may rely on different approaches. One could have wanted more comprehensive analyses of the four countries, showing the major programs in place in each. Such an overview, combined with policy tracing, could allow for a discussion of the effects of various foreign programs on actual changes in women’s political empowerment, in relation to actions and political structures in each country. Did the foreign aid matter? Because each thematic chapter uses different sources, one can find conflicting conclusions about aid and its effects in countries such as Kenya or Morocco. In addition, the authors sometimes rely on sources that present sweeping generalisations about women’s power in the country.

Critique of International Donor Aid

The book presents an essential general critique of international aid targeting the political empowerment of women, among these are:

• Donor programs are usually too short, 1, 2 or 3 years and are constructed to give measurable, thus narrow effects.
• Donor programs often work in ‘silos’, e.g. stand-alone programs for women only, not involving societal changes at large.
• Donor programs are often top-down projects, which do not, or only insufficiently, involve local women’s organisations.
• Donor programs are usually pragmatic, not ‘transformative’ of the social structures in authoritarian or semi-authoritarian regimes, since they depend on the approval of the authorities in the recipient countries.

Two Generations of Empowerment Aid

The book constructs an interesting, though not entirely convincing, distinction between a first and a second generation of donor programs for women’s political empowerment, following, it is argued, changes in feminist (development) theory.

The first generation: “Getting women in the Room” (see chap. 4, overview in table 4.1) rests on the supply-demand model and focuses its programs on bolstering women’s participation in formal political institutions, whether as voters, candidates, or elected officials. Stand-alone programs, e.g. targeting women only, were the usual format, it is argued in a rather rigid way. Yet, it is correct that the adoption of electoral gender quotas has become a widespread tool in many post-conflict countries and in old democracies, either as voluntary party quotas, legislated candidate quotas, or reserved seats for women. Today, legislated gender quotas for elections are adopted by more than half of countries worldwide (see International IDEA’s Gender Quota Database).

The second generation of women’s empowerment is said to have a more ambitious aim. Rather than “inserting women into the existing structures”, the objective is now “Transforming systems” (chap. 5, overview table 5.1), i.e. an emphasis on transforming patriarchal processes, norms and institutions to make them more inclusive. Instead of ‘standing-alone initiatives, second generation aims at integrating gender perspectives into wider areas of aid, not least democratic assistance programs. Gender mainstreaming is one of the tools.

In general, capacity-building for women has been the most common program format for both first and second ‘generations’ and remains the most common format today in programs for women’s political empowerment. Here, donor organisations gather potential women candidates or activists for 2-3 days or a week’s course and then leave again. These programs have surely been an encouragement for many women in developing countries, but have also been criticised, also by quota experts, including this reviewer, for creating mostly disappointment if, afterwards, the participants just meet the same exclusionary political parties, electoral systems, and political institutions.   

However, as a gender quota expert on missions for the International. IDEA, the Inter-Parliamentary Union, and UNWomen, etc. I have personally worked during all these three decades under constant resistance on opening and changing the closed, male-dominated nomination systems (old boys’ networks) to make room for women in elections. Consequently, I find the book’s argument that the ‘first generation’ just worked on “adding women” and not changing structures to be an unnecessary caricature (p.173).

Even if the Beijing Platform for Action did not mention the controversial work ‘quotas’, it was the first UN Platform to demand action by the political parties (the gatekeepers) and the political institutions to open up for women. In contrast, previously, women were blamed for their underrepresentation (‘women lack understanding of and interest in politics’).

New Frontiers

The last part of Aiding Empowerment, entitled “New Frontiers, consists of the authors’ ideas and suggestions for “a different assistance model.” Despite too many repetitions from previous chapters, these three concluding chapters present many interesting new ideas as responses to the points of critique mentioned above. Some look as realistic improvements, others more as a kind of ‘third generation’, maybe too utopian for foreign aid programs, and better suited for transformative social movements. It is a permanent dilemma that while donor aid programs are criticised for not being sufficiently transformative, they are limited in their critique of injustice in autocratic regimes, since they can operate only in foreign countries with the consent of national authorities, who are often not interested in system-changing actions.

‘Gender-washing’ is a new concept in gender studies, parallel to ‘green-washing’. It is the critique that political reforms, be they climate or gender equality reforms (e.g., gender quotas), are adopted only by authoritarian countries to suit international donors. However, recognising that political decisions are usually made for multiple motives, never purely feminist or green, such mixed motives may be preferable to the threat of no response at all during periods of democratic backsliding. In Senegal, a country with strong women’s movements and 41% women in parliament based on a strong quota rule (zipper-system, alternating women and men, although the candidate lists), the new president stated that when removing previous gains for women, he did not care about what Western donors would say (Africanpractice.com, published 3 July 2024).

Finally, after having read this ambitious and comprehensive work, one can only agree with the authors, Saskia Brechenmacher and Kathrine Mann’s argument for writing it: “Although we do not assume that international aid programs targeting women’s political empowerment are inherently effective or beneficial, we therefore argue that dismissing the field as a whole would be a mistake. Instead, the strength and limitations of existing approaches – and how they have evolved – merit careful analysis” (p.36).

This is a review of Saskia Brechenmacher and Kathrine Mann’s “Aiding Empowerment” (Oxford University Press, 2024), ISBN 9780197694275

Drude Dahlerup is a Professor Emerita of Political Science at Stockholm University and an international expert advisor on the empowerment of women related to electoral systems and gender quotas.

This article is published under Creative Commons License and may be republished with attribution.

The scenario portends realisation if preventive measures are not implemented. It begins in March 2028, when Russian forces cross the Narva River to occupy the Estonian city of the same name, along with an island in the Baltic Sea. After describing these operations in a brief initial chapter, the text proceeds as the retrospective story of a gathering storm for the West, especially Western Europe, plagued by bureaucratic inertia, indecision, disunity, apprehension, and myopia—unable to see or act to prevent the actual Russian attack on Ukraine in 2022, nor what might follow.

In scenario mode, the book imparts that in 2025 Ukraine was militarily defeated and forced to accept a “peace” agreement, signed in Geneva, and concede about 20 per cent of its territory. Western actors accept the outcome, some more readily than others. After his victory, Putin surprisingly retires voluntarily and is replaced by a 47-year-old economist who continues largely the same policy and political direction as his predecessor.

Concurrently, the book conveys that in the current real world, the West possesses far greater resources than Russia, which is under severe pressure to subdue, let alone defeat and occupy, its smaller and less-equipped neighbour, Ukraine. However, the West cannot sufficiently assert itself to end the war favourably and compel Russia to desist from provocations against NATO states, especially around the Baltic region. Domestic political and psychological problems hinder some European countries from comprehending what is happening and acting accordingly, causing vacillation or underpreparedness. Aware of their susceptibility to populism and hybrid warfare, the Kremlin persistently tests NATO to see how far it can go before provoking a vigorous response. Russia’s alliance with the People’s Republic of China assists in diversionary and other purposes.

Three (and now four) years after the Ukraine invasion, Russia uses multiple tactics to support its war effort: drones, balloons, planes, and submarines enter European airspace and waters, while migrants from Africa and the Middle East are pushed across land borders from Belarus and Russia. The concern of small Baltic states—Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—is reflected in their apparent hypervigilance. Despite restrictions, however, there is still two-way traffic over the bridge separating Narva (and thereby NATO territory) from Ivangorod on the Russian side of the river. Narva’s population is almost 90 per cent native Russian speakers. That does not mean that a majority exhibits primary loyalty to the Moscow regime, or would if what the book conjectures were to occur. Yet the prospect cannot be excluded. In any event, Mother Russia is 100 metres away. These are among the many issues the book notes or hints at.

Although it makes no claims to being intensive academic research, the book, perhaps unintentionally, points to divisions within the broadly conceived “Realist” school (classical, neo- or structural, neoclassical, defensive, offensive, etc.) to which Masala belongs. Despite the commonalities of this approach, individual adherents do not, in practice, interpret world affairs uniformly nor advance the same policy prescriptions. Some say the West is responsible for the crisis with Russia (Mearsheimer), some that the West should not interfere, while others insist that the West must assist Ukraine. The subtext of Wenn Russland Gewinnt goes beyond appeals for prudence or contentions that material power capability is the sole significant factor in world politics. This slim volume expresses disquiet that what has happened can happen. It transmits a normative message— fiat iustitia et pereat mundus—a plea for a more militant liberal democracy that demonstrates resolve and accepts domestic political risks when confronted with authoritarianism.

This is a review of Carlo Masala’s If Russia Wins (Atlantic, 2025), ISBN 9781805465744

Dr Steve Wood is an Associate Professor in Politics and International Relations at Macquarie University, Sydney. He is the author of four books and articles in Cooperation and Conflict, Review of International Studies, Energy Policy, International Relations, and Cambridge Review of International Affairs. In 2022 he was the recipient of an Alexander von Humboldt research grant.

This article is published under Creative Commons License and may be republished with attribution.

Despite 37 years in his nation’s foreign service and a reputation as a keen observer of global affairs, Bilahari Kausikan now describes himself simply as a “Singaporean pensioner.” He seems to delight in undermining common assumptions.

His recent Lowy Institute paper, The Myth of the Asian Century, which a diligent reader can get through in a few hours, is an obvious example. Kausikan starts this extended essay by unpacking the concept of “Asia”, reminding or informing us that what we understand as this region has shifted according to geopolitical priorities, often to serve as an “other” for the West.

Indeed, according to Kausikan, “the noun ‘Asia’ and its adjective ‘Asian’ simplify and conceal the complexities of this vast continent,” and it is more helpful to think of Asia as a complex patchwork of individual countries than an internally coherent whole.  

To speak then, of an “Asian Century” is shorthand for the emergence of only one part of Asia. Japan has had its day, India is “too far behind and too internally incoherent to matter much,” and successful countries in Southeast Asia are “too small” individually to represent the rise of an entire continent. In most accounts, the “Asian Century” currently intimates a rising China, with “the West,” a clumsy moniker for the United States in decline.

The term, according to Kausikan, is thus an oversimplification, often appropriated by Beijing and fed to people who “are not familiar with Asian history or interested in international affairs.” It’s also an invitation to more sophisticated thinkers to “suspend their critical faculties by instilling a sense of fatalistic inevitability” that China will lead the 21^st Century.

Kausikan reminds us, however, that in our era of strategic competition, interdependence still matters. China and the United States are both mixed economies seeking to dominate the current system of international trade and interstate relations, but neither is seeking to upend it completely. This is not the type of Cold War in which one power can “crush” the other without damaging itself. How much one can rise without the other is, then, an open question. 

After a chapter tracking Asian development, much of the paper is spent evaluating and dismissing the propositions that either China is likely to rise to a position of overwhelming dominance or the United States will decline to a point where it loses influence in the region. Kausikan quickly mentions the familiar demographic and economic difficulties China faces. However, he also points out that the self-important narratives that Beijing uses to motivate the Chinese population makes its diplomacy “clumsy and tone-deaf,” a crucial limitation on its power.

Meanwhile, the charge that the United States under the Trump administration is now an unreliable actor in the region is framed more as a continuation of US policy than a shift. Unlike Western Europe, which has treated its alliance with the United States as a “crutch,” most Asian countries, including treaty allies, have been socialised since the American abandonment of South Vietnam to deal “with the United States more on the basis of common interests than the illusion of common values.”

Where Kausikan is at his most cutting is in rejecting the binaries that he sees adopted by thinkers steeped in Western traditions of International Relations. Notions of particular Asian nations “choosing” or being “lost” to either China or the United States are treated with contempt. The notion that other Asian nations are in danger of succumbing to China’s overwhelming economic attraction is:

“an insulting and ethnocentric attitude as it assumes that we ‘natives’ are so venal as to sell our national interests for a mess of pottage or so stupid as not to know our own interests in the first place.“

This informs his statement that Chinese attempts at economic coercion—from South Korea to Japan to the Philippines to Australia—have not changed the basic strategic orientation of major countries in the region.

Instead, Kausikan argues that most Asian nations have long defined their interests in various contexts and that they are perfectly comfortable “simultaneously hedging, balancing, and bandwagoning in different domains vis-à-vis external powers.” Asian governments see no contradiction in trading with one power while training with another.

While explicitly treated as part of Asia, Australia here is an “exception” in a region where other nations practice “polygamous or omnidirectional” diplomacy. This is why, according to Kausikan, “Australians seem to feel more keenly betrayed than America’s other Asian allies now that their true love no longer feels obliged to reciprocate their feelings.”

I do wonder whether recent Australian practice aligns with this observation, given Anthony Albanese’s meeting with Donald Trump at the White House. At least at an elite level, Australia is arguably showing greater sophistication in engaging China while pursuing interest-based diplomacy with its larger ally. Moreover, it is doing so while focusing on its near abroad, deepening its relations with smaller Asian actors.

Nevertheless, as Australia seems set to embark on yet another round of examining our “Asia capability,” there is a lot we can learn from this little book, particularly in terms of how international relations actually work elsewhere in our region.

One of the biggest lessons that this book might impart, however, is that if “Asia” is a simplistic concept, our very notions of “Asia capability” might be inadequate. “Asia,” says Kausikan, “is a messy place, and a frame of mind that seeks to impose orderly answers on disorderly reality can lead to dubious conclusions. Better to embrace the contradictions.”

This is a review of Bilahari Kausikan’s The Myth of the Asian Century (Penguin Random House Australia, 2025).

Dr Bryce Wakefield is the CEO of the Australian Institute of International Affairs and a Visiting Fellow at the Australian National University. He has lived, worked and researched in the United States, Japan, Europe and New Zealand. He trained as a political scientist with particular expertise in International Relations and the international affairs of East Asia.

This article is published under a Creative Commons license and may be republished with attribution.

I was living and working in Ukraine in the early 1990s, shortly after it gained independence. It faced a complex triple transition: to statehood, democracy and a market economy after three generations under the Soviet yoke. The World Bank was eager to implement change and introduce shock therapy from Poland, and the architect of the Polish transition, Leszek Balcerowicz – one of the heroes of this book – visited the country to promote  capitalism to the Ukrainian Government. The country was not ready for rapid change, and what ensued was a botched privatisation programme and the widespread appropriation of state assets by a few oligarchs. For the next decade, the country’s human development indicators plummeted, and only large-scale humanitarian aid helped stave off growing poverty, while a minority became extremely wealthy.

None of this abnegates the conclusions that this book draws from the experiences of Vietnam and Poland, which are held up as examples of transitions to relative prosperity. The detailed accounts of these two transitions are of historical interest. However, the lessons are as much about the inefficiencies of central planning as about capitalism as a panacea for growth. In both cases, the transitions were long in coming based on relatively favourable conditions. These conditions included some bequeathed by a socialist system, such as sound universal education.

Additionally, in both countries, a latent entrepreneurial class existed, along with some familiarity with free markets: in the southern half of Vietnam and in the agricultural sector of  Poland, respectively. The example of Ukraine demonstrates that the conditions prevailing at independence were not conducive to a rapid capitalist takeoff. It reinforces the book’s arguments that capitalism cannot be imposed from above. (The example of Russia in the 1990s offers another cautionary tale.)

Thus, while the well-documented examples of Viet Nam and Poland are of interest, their experiences cannot provide clear blueprints for transitions in other countries that have been languishing under excessive statism and central planning. Even in those two countries, there were significant setbacks, such as high inflation, which could have eroded the political will to continue with reforms. There were also downsides, as we know from the experiences of other countries that have undertaken bold reform programmes. The changes wrought by Margaret Thatcher in the UK are held up as examples of successful reform. However, the 1980s led to some failures of privatisation, the destruction of whole communities and a significant rise in income inequality, which has persisted to the present day. The book’s discussion about inequality as a blessing can also be contested. Contemporary patterns of growth in today’s advanced economies have favoured the already rich, while many have failed to see an improvement in their incomes.

The surveys conducted by the author are a strong feature of the book. They reveal that in the two countries, there is a relatively stronger sentiment in favour of capitalism and of the rich than in the longer-established capitalist countries. These findings are significant, but not surprising. Capitalism has indeed contributed to more rapid growth in most countries. Still, in more recent years, especially, it has resulted in a widening of disparities, for example,  in the United States, the UK, and elsewhere. While in Poland and Vietnam, there is a widespread perception that most people can still aspire to become more affluent, the reality in other developed economies is that such opportunities have been steadily closing.

In sum, the circumstances in Vietnam and Poland were indeed conducive to a favourable transition out of central planning and into sustainable growth. However, the title of the book – and the Foreword – give the mistaken impression that the experiences of these two countries contain universal prescriptions for overcoming poverty. While evidence suggests that less statism can be beneficial, and there is a growing consensus about the limitations of development assistance in reducing poverty on a sustainable basis, other factors are also important, including strong and inclusive institutions, the judicious use of natural resources and energy, and access to overseas markets, among others. A more measured analysis would have included a discourse on the appropriate size and functions of the state, including its role in mitigating some of the distortions of capitalism, which may be a necessary, but by no means a sufficient condition for the escape from poverty.

This is a review of Rainer Zitelmann‘s How Nations Escape Poverty (Encounter Books, 2024).

Stephen Browne is a visiting lecturer at the University of Geneva and co-founder and co-director of the Future United Nations Development System (FutureUN.org) project. He is a former principal management adviser to the UN Industrial Development Organisation and has served in the United Nations system for more than 30 years, with half of that time spent on country assignments. Browne held positions as UN Representative in newly independent Ukraine and in Rwanda. His research interests include Official Development Assistance (ODA), United Nations reform, Sustainable Development Goals, peace building, and multilateralism.

This article is published under a Creative Commons license and may be republished with attribution.

Over the past few years, I have attended a number of security conferences in Europe, where I am often asked to comment on security arrangements in the Indo-Pacific and the potential for cooperation with European actors.

Embedded as they are in NATO, and in geography that encourages strategic unity, many European experts insist that large, formal, and treaty-based institutions should be the default in organising defence and foreign policy, a mode that actors elsewhere, including in the Indo-Pacific, should embrace. It’s a view that has arguably influenced recent proposals for NATO-like arrangements in the Indo-Pacific.

To gain a better understanding of the situation in our region, they should read Thomas Wilkins’ new book, Strategic Minilateralism and the Regional Security Architecture of the Indo-Pacific. This is a rigorously academic work, but one that is directly relevant to policymakers, analysts, and anyone seeking to understand how the security landscape of our arguably more complex region is evolving.

The book rejects a simple comparison of the security structures of NATO “multilateralism” and a “hub-and-spokes” model of our region that is often prevalent in the literature. Instead, it frames the security architecture in the Indo-Pacific as a triple-layered system. Multilateral bodies such as the ASEAN Regional Forum and the East Asia Summit provide platforms for dialogue but are often limited in their ability to deliver substantive outcomes. Bilateral alliances link the United States with its partners across the region, and are the usual focus of analysis. But this book’s focus is minilateralism: small groupings of states that bridge the space between bilateral and multilateral arrangements.

Specifically, Wilkins distinguishes between “functional” minilateralism, which might deal with technical cooperation or niche issues, and “strategic” minilateralism, which is concerned with high politics, power balances, and responses to strategic competition from rivals. Given that the book focuses on frameworks that include the US, this means, above all, China.

To evaluate how these groupings operate, he offers an analytical framework based on three dimensions: design, function, and solvency. In other words, he asks how they are set up, what they are meant to do, and how durable they are likely to be in the face of shifting political and strategic pressures.

The bulk of the book comprises three case studies, each of which involves both the United States and Australia. The first is the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or Quad, which brings together the United States, Japan, India, and Australia. Wilkins traces the Quad’s evolution from ad hoc cooperation during the 2004 tsunami relief effort, through a period of dormancy, to its revival as a key strategic grouping—at least until the time he was writing. According to Wilkins, the Quad has become a forum for both practical cooperation—such as naval exercises and dialogues—and normative signalling, particularly the promotion of a “free and open Indo-Pacific.”

The second case is AUKUS. Wilkins treats AUKUS as a qualitatively different form of minilateral, centred on deep defence cooperation and technology sharing. He argues that AUKUS is designed not only to strengthen hard power balancing against China, but also to reaffirm trust and alignment among allies with existing deep connections.

The third case is the Trilateral Strategic Dialogue, which links the United States, Japan, and Australia. This grouping has received less attention than the Quad or AUKUS, but Wilkins demonstrates how it has steadily institutionalised trilateral cooperation over two decades. Unlike the more dramatic announcements around AUKUS, the TSD has grown incrementally, quietly reinforcing bilateral alliances and helping to adapt them to contemporary strategic challenges.

Taken together, these case studies illustrate both the diversity of minilaterals and their growing importance in Indo-Pacific security. Some are flexible and open-ended, like the Quad; others are highly focused and ambitious, like AUKUS; still others are durable and steady, like the TSD. Each operates differently, but all serve to supplement bilateral alliances and fill gaps left by multilateral institutions.

The value of Wilkins’ book lies not only in these detailed case studies, but also in the way he situates minilateralism within the broader Indo-Pacific order. He shows that while bilateral alliances remain the foundation of the region’s security and multilateral forums remain diplomatically useful, it is in minilaterals that much of the innovation and adaptation is currently taking place. They are nimble enough to respond to strategic competition but structured enough to provide continuity and reassurance.

For those interested in Indo-Pacific security, particularly an Australian approach to the region, this book is essential reading. Understanding how these arrangements function, and how they complement or complicate other layers of the regional architecture, is vital for grasping Australia’s strategic environment.

Crucially, Wilkins does not treat minilateralism as a vague buzzword, and the distinction between functional and strategic forms he provides lends his book analytical clarity. This analytical framework, along with its focus on solvency or durability, enables him to compare different minilaterals effectively and assess their strengths and weaknesses. The research is also empirically rich, drawing on interviews and primary sources to provide detailed accounts of how these groupings emerged and evolved.

If there is a weakness, it lies in the scope. By focusing only on minilaterals that include the United States and Australia, the study overlooks other potentially illuminating cases, such as Asian-led minilaterals without Washington or Canberra, Chinese-led experiments in regional cooperation, or groupings like the France-Australia-New Zealand trilateral, which is an effective mechanism in the South Pacific.

As Wilkins notes, however, this is a deliberate choice, and one that gives the book analytical focus. However, it does mean that the picture presented is, by necessity, incomplete. Another limitation is that the book is more diagnostic than prescriptive. Wilkins explains how minilaterals work and why they matter, but offers fewer concrete policy recommendations.

One aspect I would have liked to see highlighted more is the exclusive nature of minilaterals, which has been the focus of other scholarship. I tend to think that if our European friends, for example, are serious about their desire to craft Indo-Pacific approaches, they should propose more practical and specific arrangements to a limited number of actors in the region, and be more clear about what they—whether the European Union or its singular member states—can bring to these arrangements.

This would be more effective than attempting to engage Australia in vaguely defined security partnerships-for-partnership’s-sake or mapping out broad guidelines and “strategies” which focus on “promoting multilateralism” and list buckets of activities that Europe is already doing in the region.

Indeed, some European countries have shown that they can embrace minilateralism, for example, with AUKUS or the Global Combat Air Program, an Italian, British, and Japanese venture to develop new fighter aircraft. Looking at a project like this, which includes neither Australia nor the United States might have been a useful comparison for Wilkins’ book.

Still, these are relatively minor criticisms of what is otherwise a significant contribution to our understanding of Indo-Pacific security. Wilkins’s rigorous book explains well why minilateralism has become such a prominent feature of the region’s order and provides tools for thinking about how these groupings may develop in the future.

Audiences across the Indo-Pacific will find this book a valuable guide to the dynamics reshaping their neighbourhood. Others can also learn much from it, as they seek to understand how security cooperation in this region differs so fundamentally from their own models. For anyone interested in how the Indo-Pacific works—and how it is likely to evolve—Wilkins has provided a clear and compelling account.

This is a review of Thomas Wilkins’s Strategic Minilateralism and the Regional Security Architecture of the Indo-Pacific
 (Palgrave Macmillan., 2025)

Dr Bryce Wakefield is the CEO of the Australian Institute of International Affairs and a Visiting Fellow at the Australian National University. He has lived, worked and researched in the United States, Japan, Europe and New Zealand. He trained as a political scientist with particular expertise in International Relations and the international affairs of East Asia.

This article is published under a Creative Commons license and may be republished with attribution.

“The United States has no better partner, no better friend in the world than Germany.” So spoke U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken in 2021” (141)—a moment that feels increasingly remote from the ruptured present of transatlantic relations. Blinken’s sentiment exemplified the “instinctive” transatlanticism of President Biden and his Administration (140) that is now deeply contested by the United States and a wide swath of right-wing parties in Europe alike. Sparding is a partisan for a close transatlantic “partnership” and his gambit is that history offers both inspiration and warning: “The ups and downs in the German-American relationship point to the vast potential that successful cooperation holds. But they also serve as a warning sign of what could ensue should ties falter again” (6). Sparding’s book offers a detailed historical account of the US-German relationship, from its roots in the late 18^th century to the Trump Administration and the Russian war on Ukraine. But Sparding’s book raises more interesting questions than merely whether the US and Germany should be friends. In highlighting the difficulties in the relationship to date, it reminds us that there is more than one way to be a friend.

Sparding offers two main ways of thinking about the post-1945 US-German friendship. Both emerge from the asymmetrical balance of power that arose from the US position as victor in the Second World War and as the architect of West Germany’s integration into Western economic and security arrangements. In its role as patron, the US began to encourage its client, West Germany, to adopt the role of a “mature” and “responsible” partner. This type of friend would, as it matured, learn to “share the burden” of providing for its own security. The nuclear shield that protected it from potential Soviet invasion should recede gradually in favour of conventional German rearmament. Long before Trump, Sparding shows, US politicians began to resent West Germans as “free riders” on the American security guarantee. While the Bundeswehr eventually became the largest European army in NATO, its forces were initially meagre. The US thus insisted on “offset payments” in the form of trade concessions. Senators Mike Mansfield in the 1970s and Sam Nunn in the 1980s sought to get West Germany to increase its defence budget. In 2011, Obama’s Secretary of Defence Robert Gates said the US had a “dwindling appetite” for NATO spending. Thus, Sparding shows that despite his tone-deafness to German sensibilities, Trump and Vance’s complaints about a “free-rider” problem were not unprecedented in substance, even if a departure in tone.

While the US has sought to steer Germany as its ideal image of a mature, responsible friend, Germans have often remained trapped in neurotic difficulties that prevent them from reaching maturity. Projection, ambivalence, resentment, and idealisation are the recurrent terms Sparding invokes to explain the complexity of the transatlantic relationship. If the 19^th century helped build a healthy, positive set of attachments between the two countries, the two world wars unbalanced the relationship. Beginning in the interwar period, German fascination and admiration with American modernity coexisted with an “inferiority complex” and a sense of lagging behind. The humiliations of defeat and occupation only deepened the “big brother, love/hate relationship” (77), and encouraged Germans to treat the US as a “projection screen” for its anxieties. The rationale for Sparding’s first two chapters on the US-German relationship from the late 18^th century to 1945 is that “the staying power of narratives, images and perceptions across several generations” (78) will help his readers understand the dynamics of an ambivalent attachment after 1945, what he calls contemporary Germans’ “double-edged obsession” (75) with the US.

However, the book does not effectively connect the cultural history of the first half to the policy dilemmas and diplomacy covered in the second. Both halves are still satisfying on their own terms. One of the book’s real strengths is its reminder of the dramatic role of German immigrants in the making of the U.S: “Washington Crossing the Delaware,” one of the most ubiquitous images in the 19^th century US, was painted by Emmanuel Gottlieb Leutze, a refugee of the 1848 revolution; the largest immigrant group in the Union Army was German; baseball icons Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth grew up speaking German; future US presidents studied abroad in German universities. After the US entry into World War I, sauerkraut was renamed “liberty cabbage.” Of the 800 German-language newspapers that existed in 1890, only half remained by war’s end. Sparding traces how German and US stereotypes about the other country oscillated from WWI to the end of WWII, noting that as late as 1942, US polls showed a lack of personal hatred for Germans that contrasted sharply with the image of the Japanese. From the mid-1960s to 1989, polls in West Germany consistently identified the US as the “number one best friend” of the state, with the number who said France ranged from one-fourth to one-third of the US share. Today, Sparding finds that “latent American sentiments remain fairly widespread though only a small segment of the population holds manifest and consistent anti-American views” (76). Since the end of the Cold War, we see “much larger swings in overall German feelings.”

After German reunification, George W. Bush proposed that Germany become the US’s ‘partner in leadership’ (116), but ‘ambivalence continued to rule Germany’s America debates’ (74). In the 1990s, Germany learned that “chequebook diplomacy” would no longer suffice; the US expected significant participation in US-led military campaigns, and Sparring wishes to remind US decision-makers that the German contribution to the US war in Afghanistan was both substantial and sustained over two decades. Still, the pattern Sparding emphasises is that “the US asks Germany to do more and Germany very slowly reacts to those demands.” (117) Thus, US “hopes of transforming Germany into a mature partner were disappointed” (118). Sparding suggests that Germany’s failure to emerge from its self-incurred immaturity originates with the “internalisation” of the idea of change via rapprochement and a rules-based model for international politics. As he notes, in 1991, 40% of Germans saw Switzerland as a foreign policy model, and it is this pacifism that still inhibits Germany from assuming responsibility for its defence today.

Much of the concluding section of the book focuses on the origins and aftermath of the diplomatic clash over the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which Sparding calls the “low point” of the transatlantic relationship. The refusal of Gerhard Schröder to endorse the Iraq invasion caused a “shock” to DC elites that Sparding argues is “still not fully understood in Germany” (128). Sparding’s book does not break new ground for historians, but connects the politics, economics and diplomacy of the post-’45 era to the post-Zeitenwende era of foreign policy debate with skill, precision, and good judgment.

This is a review of Peter Sparding’s No Better Friend? The United States and Germany since 1945 (London: Hurst & Co., 2024)

Matthew Specter is a Senior Fellow at the Institute of European Studies, UC Berkeley, and the author of The Atlantic Realists, published by Stanford. His work focuses on transatlantic relations and European studies.

This article is published under Creative Commons License and may be republished with attribution.

Dr Martin Hess’s The Politics of Police Diplomacy: The Australian Experience is a study of the international roles played by the Australian Federal Police (AFP) over the past six decades. It explores how the AFP has acted not merely as a law enforcement body, but as a diplomatic actor—situated within peacekeeping, justice systems, and foreign policy mechanisms.

In “The Politics of Police Diplomacy: The Australian Experience,” Martin Hess advances the thesis that international policing by the Australian Federal Police is, at its core, an exercise in diplomacy. Spanning six decades, from the AFP’s maiden deployment to Cyprus in 1964 through the traumatic aftermath of the Bali bombings and MH17 disaster, Hess paints a vivid portrait of police as agents of peace, justice, and international cooperation, which he views as highly significant yet surprisingly under-recognised. His narrative weaves case studies, policy analysis, and personal insight into a coherent argument that the AFP’s overseas roles comprise a distinct “Track Police” diplomacy, bridging law enforcement and foreign policy. To use Hess’ description – deploying “firm” police diplomacy, and thereby filling the gap between traditional “soft” diplomacy, and “hard” military intervention.

Hess argues an expanded view of diplomacy, convincingly espousing that diplomacy is not limited to formal ministerial channels—“Track 1” foreign relations—but extends to what might be termed “Track Police.” The AFP’s international roles—from training missions in the Pacific to disaster-response and crime-coordination centres—constitute a form of engagement that shapes geopolitical outcomes and bolsters Australia’s global reputation.

The author presents a coherent argument that an AFP deployment, like those described, democratises how we understand diplomacy, adding visible action and nuance to Australia’s soft-power toolkit.  He also describes the importance of “police as Social Barometers” and references the basis of Policing in most democratic societies – that being policing by consent, or “police are the public, and the public are the police”, with principles such as minimising use of force and moderation in the application of law.  Bringing these Policing Principles – Peel’s Nine Principles of Policing – to the AFP’s international deployments is seen as an essential and powerful influence in helping shape the nature of future policing in the countries to which the AFP has deployed.

Indeed, a compelling motif of the book is another of Peel’s Policing Principles – the idea that peace is not merely the absence of conflict, but the presence of justice. This principle drives the narrative: AFP’s engagements often seek to rebuild governance and legal systems (e.g., in Timor-Leste or the Solomon Islands), facilitating justice and, hence, durable peace.

The book grounds theory in case studies and real-world examples:

• Cyprus (1964 onward): The AFP’s earliest international deployment, typifying classic peacekeeping.
• Bali bombings (2002): A catastrophic terrorist attack that required swift law enforcement response – forensic expertise, community reassurance, and Police diplomacy.
• MH17 (2014): Hess explores how AFP’s involvement in victim identification and international coordination helped deliver ‘dignity and justice’ in tragedy, and indeed, in a diplomatic situation fraught with tension and potential long-term consequences if poorly undertaken.
• Timor Leste, Solomon Islands, PNG: more extended deployments of institution-building and capacity development.

These stories humanise the abstract, revealing the complexities—bureaucratic, cultural, and moral—of deploying police on foreign shores.

Hess writes with authority derived from experience. I first met Martin Hess when we were both seconded by our respective home agencies – Hess from AFP and me from the New Zealand Police – to the Australian Civil-Military Centre within the Australian Department of Defence in Canberra.   I learnt then that Hess had personally served in several of these missions. That lived experience adds depth and credibility to his analysis, making his reflections both researched and authentic.

In my view, there are many strengths to Dr Martin Hess’s The Politics of Police Diplomacy: The Australian Experience.  Firstly, I understand that the work is unique. Few studies have interrogated the AFP’s diplomatic role with such breadth and depth. Hess’s work fills a significant scholarly and practical gap.  Secondly, as I am not an academic myself, I found it to be a straightforward and enjoyable book to read.  I think this comes from Hess’s clever blend of case studies—dramatic, tragic, and hopeful —which provides a narrative texture often missing in policy analysis. The reader is drawn into not just the institutional, but the human stakes at play.  Thirdly, I found Hess’s argument that AFP’s framing of international policing as a diplomatic tool to be compelling and clearly articulated.  Lastly, this work remains timely and relevant.  As global tensions don’t seem to be abating, and multilateral engagement becomes increasingly vital, understanding non-traditional diplomatic instruments like police diplomacy is available and practical.

If anything, my one note—though it speaks to the book’s engaging quality—is that it left me wanting more about how other nations such as New Zealand, Canada, the UK, or other similar policing jurisdictions deploy police internationally. Whilst I understand that any comparative analysis of international Policing deployments from countries where a softer, consent-based diplomatic approach was not the experience wouldn’t be helpful in a book about diplomacy, there are many similar-minded countries where we could look for comparison. From my own experience, I am aware that the New Zealand Police has a very similar approach to bringing Policing diplomacy to deployments, albeit on a much smaller scale than that of the AFP.  That said, one of the strengths of the work is Hess’s lived experience, so I understand the desire to maintain this authenticity.

The Politics of Police Diplomacy: The Australian Experience is a deeply engaging, timely, and original contribution to the intersecting fields of international relations, policing, and diplomacy. Hess’s first-hand involvement, strategic framing, and vibrant case studies create a compelling narrative that redefines how we understand the AFP’s global footprint.

For policymakers, scholars, and practitioners in peacebuilding, policing, and diplomatic circles, this book offers both a framework and a call to recognise police diplomacy as a distinct and essential strand of foreign engagement. It invites a reimagining of security as not just coercive or military, but cooperative and justice-oriented.

This is a review of Martin Hess’s The Politics of Police Diplomacy: The Australian Experience (Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2025). ISBN: 9781923267176

Glenn Dunbier ONZM is the former Deputy Commissioner of New Zealand Police and the former Deputy Executive Director of the Australian Civil-Military Centre. He was awarded Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit for his services to NZ Policing and the community. His views are entirely his own.

This article is published under Creative Commons License and may be republished with attribution.

In “Tracing the Undersea Dragon: Chinese SSBN Programme and the Indo-Pacific”, Commodore (Dr) Amit Ray sets out with the ambitious objective of demystifying the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) rapidly advancing sea-based nuclear deterrent and assessing its profound implications for regional stability.

Ray, leveraging his unique background as a serving naval officer of the Indian Navy and a scholar of submarine hydrodynamics, delivers an analysis that is both technically grounded and strategically astute. The book provides a comprehensive synthesis of the PRC’s nuclear doctrine, its technological hurdles and triumphs in submarine design, and the immutable realities of maritime geography.

Ray’s analysis moves beyond generic assessments, offering pinpoint insights such as the detailed examination of the acoustic quieting challenges faced by the Jin-class (Type 094) nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines (SSBN) and the strategic imperatives driving the development of the longer-range JL-3 submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM). He argues persuasively that the People’s Liberation Army Navy’s (PLAN) strategic focus is the transformation of the South China Sea into a secure “bastion”, a protected operational area for its SSBNs. Crucially, Ray highlights how the sweeping land-reclamation campaign—turning reefs like Fiery Cross into heavily fortified artificial islands with runways, sea walls, and deep-water berths—extends this bastion seaward, creating concentric layers of surveillance and air-defence coverage that shield SSBN transits to and from Hainan Island in the South China Sea.

The author’s comparison of the Type 094’s building and commissioning timelines with those of similar Western and Russian nuclear-powered submarines gives a realistic, data-based look at the PRC’s military industrial potential.  Ray’s research shows that PLAN’s 7–9-year building cycle is very similar to those in the UK, France, and Russia.  This puts PRC’s progress right in the middle of SSBN building around the world, dispelling ideas of either rapid growth or crushing delay and showing that the country’s naval-industrial base is steadily moving forward. Building on this, Ray grounds the broader strategic discussion in the concrete technical realities of platform survivability, missile range, and the physical expansion of protected maritime space. In doing so, he demonstrates that PRC’s naval development reflects not only an advancing industrial base but also the practical constraints of marine warfare, offering a nuanced and indispensable contribution that bridges strategic theory with operational realities.

When comparing the book to its declared goal of offering a complete examination, certain key constraints in the subject matter become obvious.  Ray’s book is commendably detailed, although its assessment of the PRC’s No First Use (NFU) policy should have been more in-depth.  The book accepts Beijing’s stated NFU attitude but devotes less emphasis to delving into the ambiguities and prospective shifts in that doctrine, particularly in light of the increased survivability and operational readiness that a mature SSBN force offers.  A more focused examination of how the deployment of a near-invulnerable second-strike capability may, in fact, reduce the threshold for nuclear use in a crisis would have contributed an essential layer of vital depth.  The debate of regional consequences, while strong in its focus on the viewpoints of the United States and India, appears to be less developed in terms of other significant Indo-Pacific countries. The strategic anxieties and potential policy responses of nations like the Philippines, Indonesia, Japan, and Vietnam to the presence of Chinese SSBN deterrent patrols in their maritime backyard are touched upon but not explored with the same level of detail as the primary dyadic relationships. For a book centred on the Indo-Pacific, a more expansive treatment of these second-order effects would have more fully realised its stated analytical goals.

These limitations do not detract from the book’s overall significance. Instead, they underscore the inherent difficulty of analysing a subject shrouded in deliberate opacity and marked by rapid technological flux. Suppose Ray’s treatment of PRC’s NFU doctrine and the reactions of secondary Indo-Pacific actors leave room for further exploration. This is as much an invitation for subsequent scholarship as it is a shortcoming. The enduring strength of “Tracing the Undersea Dragon” lies in its capacity to provide a rigorous, practice-informed framework that integrates technical detail with strategic analysis. Even where gaps remain, Commodore Ray establishes a vital foundation upon which future researchers can build, making this study an indispensable starting point for anyone seeking to understand the evolving dynamics of PRC’s undersea deterrent and its implications for regional security.

This is a review of Cdre. (Dr) Amit Ray’s Tracing the Undersea Dragon Chinese SSBN Programme and the Indo-Pacific (London: Routledge, 2021). E-book ISBN: 9781003104896

Anubhav Shankar Goswami is a doctoral candidate in Politics and International Relations at the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, Murdoch University, Perth. His doctoral research focuses on the field of nuclear strategy, with a particular emphasis on strategic learning and brinkmanship. Anubhav is the author of the book, ‘Deterrence from Depth: SSBNs in India’s Nuclear Strategy’.

This article is published under a Creative Commons License and may be republished with attribution.

This work by Allan Behm shares its locus with other works that deal with the Australian-US alliance; it is marked by a certain unrelenting, biting anxiety. 

It is an anxiety discussed in Allan Gyngell’s Fear of Abandonment (2017); it features as the gulping concerns examined in Alan Renouf’s The Frightened Country (1979).  To this can be added the lingering sense of dependency so well described by Coral Bell in Dependent Ally (1984).  Instructive here is noting Behm’s establishment pedigree.  Before becoming the Director of International and Security Affairs at the Australia Institute, he held stints as First Assistant Secretary in the Department of Defence and advisory roles for the current Foreign Minister, Penny Wong, among others.

In The Odd Couple, the author offers generous lashings of anxiety in an appealing, splashy, and readable style.  And the focus, from the outset, is the purported instability of the United States and the implications for Australia.  Australia’s great strategic risk was “the political and social collapse” of its closest ally.  The China threat was hardly as pressing as “the threat of America’s political and social collapse”. The demise of the US would be something Australia would struggle to recover from.  With a pessimist’s relish, Behm writes how, “We are now emotionally glued to our new protector, our deep insecurity incarnated in a way that our dependency on Britain never was.  Our creation of the ANZUS myth, affording as it does a security vision of the sentimental Anzac myth, has provided us with a faith-based strategic platform that subsumes Australia’s security interests within America’s.  When ‘interchangeability’ replaces ‘interoperability’, insecurity morphs into subservience”. 

Fascinatingly, the book offers a checklist of the US imperium’s disasters and failings that should suggest detachment rather than prolonged attachment, a search for an annulment rather than the need for extensive marriage counselling.  (The use of human relationship analogies in this work can grate.)  The bloody misadventure in Vietnam saw the destruction of trust in the accountability of the imperium’s officials, “surely one of the fundamental causes of America’s fundamental malaise.”  The interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq were also “strategic disasters”.  His assessment of the domestic front is dire: “There are emerging signs that America’s democracy is being devoured from within.”  The country is convulsed by ideological division and heated political partisanship. It is structurally misogynist, with President Donald Trump as its foremost representative.  He takes the advice of Bruce Stokes to heart, quoting him: Supporters of ‘US stature and influence in the world must engage in strengthening American democracy at home.” 

Despite the somewhat dark mood, Behm sketches some parallels between US and Australian history – both settler societies violently disposed to and dispossessing of the indigenous population, both prone to continental insecurity.  These comparative attempts are interesting though uneven.  Both societies adhere to the rule of law, though Australia conspicuously lacks a bill of rights.  The author then veers into areas of cultural flirtation, considering, for instance, what children in the US and Australia “read and heard”, finding “literary values” fairly similar on both sides of the Pacific.  Presumably, the intended meaning of these exercises is to promote the view that similar histories point to common ground that could be reflected in a more constructive alliance.

In being constructive, then, time should be spent on diplomatic pursuits. Military adventurism should be avoided in favour of more peaceful objects: economic, cultural, and educational.  If economic, they should not take the form of the foolish Australia-United States Free Trade agreement cheered on by Prime Minister John Howard, one that served to blunt Australian policy while disproportionately favouring US companies.  Along the way, multilateral efforts were stymied.  Australia could also do worse than developing its lobbying presence in the salient centres of power and influence, having the ear of essential lawmakers in the way Israel and Taiwan do.

To that end, Behm still insists, rather normatively, that “America and Australia need each other for their own success, and the global community needs both for its success.”  They merely “need to find different ways to achieve different outcomes.”  He worries, furthermore, that Australia risks becoming “Nietzsche’s Last Man – anaesthetic, apathetic, bereft of agency”.  This is unduly pessimistic, returning Australia to a seemingly inescapable orbit of dependency.  Throughout the work, the lines of the cage are drawn: Australian anxiety, an eight-decade-long dependency; the refusal to contemplate a world of greater independence from US policy makers. “Without America, Australia would be alone, adrift on its continent in a region that it does not understand and with which it has no affinity.”   

Behm, at stages, hints at channelling Harold Macmillan’s famous assessment of Britain’s role in an age dominated by the US: as wise Greeks advising a buoyant, vigorous, vulgar Roman imperium.  Australia, however, is hardly a fitting candidate, being a middle power reliant rather than autonomously wise, more a follower than a leading voice.  Behm even uses the term employed by Clinton Fernandes on the issue of sub-imperial power, then errs in assuming that such a status entitles Australia to a particular influence.  Australia is hardly an able Jeeves to a clueless, bumbling Wooster, the former all-wise and capable of getting his employer out of scrapes and bother.  Most of the time, those in Canberra have been more than capable of getting as much into the mess as their planners in Washington.

With the advent of the trilateral security pact of AUKUS, which Behm neglects to delve into significantly, Australia has confirmed its subservience and subordination to US power, an essential prerequisite for future wars and containment of China.  Willing vassals are rarely listened to, losing the respect not merely of adversaries but of the powers they serve. 

This is a review of Allan Behm”s The Odd Couple: The Australia-America Relationship (Upswell, 2024). ISBN: 9780645247992

Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.  He currently lectures at RMIT University.  You can reach him via email at bkampmark@gmail.com

This article is published under Creative Commons License and may be republished with attribution.