Yearview Mirror
Some of my movements and writing from 2024
Last year was quite an eventful year. Covering quite a bit of ground, both literally and work-wise. So I thought I’d share some of my movements and issues that I wrote about.
A couple of days before Christmas 2023 I fell off my bike riding through Royal Park, breaking my shoulder and wrist. The timing wasn’t great as I’d been given a press pass for Taiwan’s election in mid-January. The opportunity was too great to let a few broken bones get in the way, so I lugged my arm to Taiwan and had an incredible time. Not only was it a chance to catch up with friends and eat some amazing food, but also be able to attend election rallies, have access to the international media press conferences of the political parties, and be in the Democratic Progressive Party’s media room on election night. Which was the place to be as Lai Ching-te won the presidency.
However, while in Taiwan I managed to pick up a virus – and with my shoulder and wrist still mending I was spending a lot of time on the couch on return to Melbourne. It was here that the wonders of the YouTube algorithm introduced me to the K-Pop group NewJeans, who happen to contain two Australians. Upon some further digging it became apparent that Australians are a dominant force in K-Pop, including its current biggest star Rosé.
So I wrote a piece for The Diplomat on K-Pop not just being a massive soft power asset for South Korea, but for Australia too. With the interest these stars generate in Australia probably currently doing far more than all Australia’s other tools of attraction.
Having dispensed with the virus, but still nursing a sore arm, I flew up to Canberra for the launch of Asia-Pacific Development, Diplomacy and Defence Dialogue’s (AP4D) then latest paper A Whole of Nation Approach to International Policy at Parliament House. We had the honour of both the foreign minister and shadow foreign minister speaking at the event.
From Canberra I was off to Perth for the Indian Ocean Conference, which was attended by a variety of ministers, officials and scholars from around the Indian Ocean region. I attended the conference as we were beginning work on a new paper for AP4D on Australia’s Indian Ocean engagement (with a focus on South Asia) and it was an opportunity to gather some intel. The paper was subsequently published in April.
Given the trip to Taiwan in January, the country remained on my mind, and so for the Lowy Institute I wrote about Taiwan’s exclusion from international organisations. And when it is allowed to participate in international sporting events it has to suffer the indignity of being called “Chinese Taipei”. However, I argued that this is actually our own indignity – the way we submit ourselves to the Chinese Communist Party’s bullying and emotional immaturity. Taiwan’s lack of normalisation within the international community is not China’s power over Taiwan, but the CCP’s power over us.
Part of the problem with how we understand Taiwan is fuelled by what I have called The Anti-Hegemonic Reflex. We see Taiwan not through the Taiwanese people, but through great power rivalry, and in particular within progressive politics there’s a perception of the United States as the world’s most sinister actor. So I wrote this essay about why, even with the current insanity of U.S domestic politics, the anti-hegemonic reflex is misguided.
Former Australian prime minister Paul Keating has become an exemplar of this impulse, and consistently demonstrates a callous disinterest in the welfare of the Taiwanese people. So I wrote a subsequent piece for The Diplomat later in the year addressing his comments.
In March, I had the honour of being invited to participate in the Southeast Asian Emerging Leaders Program, sponsored by Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT). Although clearly not Southeast Asian, my participation was about building relationships with the brilliant young(ish) people from the region that DFAT had selected. The program was split between Melbourne and Sydney with various workshops and cultural activities. It was a fantastic experience.
Over the past few years I have been working on issues concerning family courts worldwide – and how they were captured by a set of ideas that made it incredibly difficult for mothers to protect their children from violent fathers. Following on from this work, in April I published an essay seeking to understand the state’s tolerance of domestic violence through social contract theory. While we may think that our modern societies have escaped a Hobbesian state of nature, this is more complex for women. Far from being a sanctuary, the household remains the most dangerous place for women.
Hobbes was grappling with the nature of men, and used the term “vainglory” to describe the root of the chaos he feared. But rather than just a strong state to secure public security, Hobbes also understood that individual responsibility was also essential, and the cultivation of character, restraint and humility within men. This is also essential to secure private security for women. This is an issue I will continue to work on in 2025 with an idea in the works.
In May I wrote about what has become clearly a dangerous phenomenon in the U.S – its inability to adjudicate, let alone even comprehend, the idea of a neutral principle. The lunacy of politicising of every role from dog-catcher up to Supreme Court justices, the way people have party identities as their personal identities, as well as the country’s siloed media, has created the situation where the rule of law is now under incredible stress. Compounded by the re-election of a man who is actively hostile to rules and norms – something I wrote about in October.
In June, I headed back to Taiwan on a visit sponsored by the Taiwanese government. The purpose was to do a week-long immersion in Taiwan’s New Southbound Policy –one of its major foreign policy initiatives to seek greater cooperation with Southeast Asia, South Asia, Australia and New Zealand.
Following the trip I wrote a piece for the Lowy Institute on the burgeoning multiculturalism within Taiwan. How migration from Southeast Asia was not solely about filling labour shortages (and compensating for Taiwan’s low birthrate), but about building a set of durable connections and essential interests that can serve as a bulwark against Chinese aggression.
With just a few days back in Melbourne I was back on a plane to Sweden (or technically Copenhagen, the nearest airport to southern Sweden). Over the past four years I’ve only spend half my year in Melbourne and the other half first in Iceland, and then the last three years in Sweden.
Being in Sweden gave me the opportunity to write for the Lowy Institute about the country’s Mother Tongue Instruction program – where if a child has a home language different from Swedish they are afforded an hour of instruction in this language per week. I wrote about the reason behind this program and the political movements that are hostile to this.
In July, we at AP4D released a new paper on Pacific Regionalism – how the Pacific is central to Australia’s national interests and why a more integrated Pacific Islands region is the the benefit to all of us in the Pacific Family.
Of course, due to geographical constraints Pacific regionalism cannot move fully towards a European model. With the good fortune to be in Europe this is a model I enjoy taking full advantage of. Over the past few years I’ve had an idea to write about the Rail Baltica high speed rail line connecting the Baltic states through to Warsaw and the ideas surrounding it, but I’d never been able to make it work.
So I thought I’d try again by jumping on a flight to Tallinn and then getting the current train to Riga. At present to get between the Estonian and Latvian capitals you have to get a train to the border, wait four hours, and then get another train. This was rather amusing to me, and represented one of the problem that Rail Baltica will fix.
Eventually I’d get the piece written for Foreign Policy magazine – bringing together the Baltic Way, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the problem of gauges, the train as a symbol of European integration, and the spectre of a new grand bargain hanging over the region.
From Riga I hoped on a flight to Krakow and spend a couple of days there before getting a bus down through the gorgeous countryside of Slovakia and into Hungary. Budapest is an utterly glorious city, and it’s not hard to get caught up in the romance of it. Yet romance is easily morphed into nationalist political movements, as we are seeing with Fidesz. I posted a few thoughts on how Fidesz is able to co-opt the Hungarian people’s unique status within Europe to political advantage, and the tension between cultural preservation and nationalism.
Most of August was spent in London cat-sitting for some friends. I used to live in London in my early-20s, and I consider it my spiritual home. So the ability to spend some considerable time back there was amazing. I got to catch up with friends and go see PJ Harvey play, but mostly I was working from British Library. This included trying to put together a book proposal with the hope of getting a meeting with a literary agent while in London, but this didn’t eventuate. The proposal still needs some work, but hopefully I can get things moving on this in 2025.
Late-September I popped over to Helsinki for the annual Helsinki Security Forum, which I’ve been attended for the past three years. This afforded me the opportunity to write for the Lowy Institute about Finland’s doctrine of “total defence” and how Australia might learn from it. In particular, both the Finns and Swedes have started thinking seriously about “psychological defence” – how to build resilient and flourishing societies that have strong immunities to malign information.
Central to this is also the sense of duty and responsibility that the Finns especially feel towards their society. This, of course, is a necessity when situated next to a highly belligerent neighbour, but it’s also about how the country builds its own capabilities, and in particular the capabilities and responsibility of its young men. After visiting the Santahamina military training facility and meeting some young men performing their national service I’ve become increasingly convinced that some form of national service may be required in Australia to overcome the current crisis of masculinity. I’ll write more on this in 2025 (connecting it back to Hobbes’s problem of vainglory).
From Helsinki I decided to get the overnight ferry to Stockholm, which is always a great experience. These ferries are kind of gaudy floating cities, with bars, casinos and duty free shopping (something I wrote about a couple of year ago), but the real highlight is getting up early to sit on the roof for the approach into Stockholm as the ferry cuts through all the little islands that sit off the coast. As the weather was starting too cool, there was a spectacular fog on the water.
In November I took one last adventure down to Berlin. Despite having spent so much time in Europe I’d never been before. This afforded me the opportunity to do my favourite thing in the world – getting around by metro systems. This was particularly enjoyable due to some spectacular stations on the U-Bahn and fantastic looking trains.
It also fuelled my permanent frustration at how utterly shit Melbourne’s trains and trams look. Both in terms of silhouettes, colour schemes and seat designs. And how this is a massive missed soft power opportunity for the city (particularly with the world’s largest tram network – an asset the city should take better advantage of).
From Berlin I decided to get the train back to up Copenhagen via Hamburg. At present the route takes about four hours and 40 minutes, but a new tunnel between Germany and Denmark currently under construction will shave two hours off this journey. So I wrote a piece for the Lowy Institute on this tunnel and why it’s actually the Swedes who are driving it.
In mid-December I headed back to Melbourne. I was reasonably pleased with 2024 as a productive year. But there’s always much more to write about, and while I may seem to write a lot, I’m actually an incredibly slow writer with a terribly poor attention span. So here’s hoping for a little more focus in 2025.
Thanks for reading and your support!
What a year!